Crossville Flying Spaghetti Monster

Y’all, today I received an email so awesome that I’m a little in awe of the fact that people this cool think to write me and tell me about their coolness.

Before I get to it, let me just give you a little background, for those of you who are not from Tennessee.  Because, while I think you can find it funny without really understanding Tennessee, with a little background, you’ll enjoy the following story even more.

Here’s what you need to know about Tennessee–it’s filled with contrary people.  It’s one of the reasons why I love it here: I love contrary people.  But people in Tennessee are not going to be told what to do; that’s just the way it is.  We don’t need smart people coming here with their ideas telling us how they did things in New Haven (or wherever, shoot, we here in Nashville don’t need people from Jackson coming over here getting all high and mighty).  Hell, I don’t need, say, Slarti, coming over here from West Nashville with his singing and his cooking and his walking around.  We don’t need Yankees coming down here telling us we can’t have slaves, but god damn it, we’re not going to let some punk ass folks from Georgia or, god forbid, Alabama decide when we can rejoin the Union.  And we love Jesus, and fuck you if you don’t, but we also love to antagonize the people who love Jesus.

The story I’m about to bring you involves the community of Crossville, TN, which sent an equal number of men to fight for the Union as they did for the Confederacy, just to set things up.

Okay, so I get an email today from a woman over in Crossville, where the Jesus-lovers have taken to decorating the courthouse lawn with all manner of Jesus-y goodness–most of which appears to be carved out of logs with a chainsaw.  Because they love Jesus in Crossville and (remember) are not going to be told by some hippie outsiders like the ACLU that they can’t have their Christian stuff on the courthouse lawn and yet they aren’t looking to get sued, the folks in Crossville have to give equal space to whatever other religions want to put up displays.

I’m sure they just assumed that there would be no other religions represented on the courthouse lawn because they probably thought there weren’t any non-Christians who felt passionately about things so they could have the open invitation and never worry about it.

This woman–the email sender–has made her own effigy of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and put it up at the courthouse!

I ask you, America, doesn’t that make you feel a little proud?

After all, it’s one thing to make a display of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and put it up in some city where the Christians are not also talented chainsaw wielders, quite another thing to put it up in Crossville.