What should've been a clear blue sky... but wasn't because Mother Nature decided to bless us with Cirrus Uncinus clouds.

Someone is wrong on the internet. Always. But really, guys? Chemtrails? For reals?

Here's the deal: I'm farting around on Flickr, looking at pretty pictures in an "all Montana" photogroup, when I come across a photo of excellent Montana clouds - the whispy kind that denotes only the most superb of days. It's one of the things I really love about Montana. Don't underestimate the luck of being able to look up and see fluff painted daintily across the heavens. After admiring the photo for a few seconds, I looked down to the description, where the photographer was bitching about how she was "disappointed that they didn't leave the sky alone" and how "the sky was obscured the entire time" she was in Montana. Now don't get me wrong; I like a blue sky as much as the next guy. But when it's Montana whispy cirrus vs. plain ol' blue sky? Exactly. Gimme the clouds.

So I made the mistake of posting a comment saying such. This is how I find out that the photographer is a crazy conspiracy theorist.

Ladies and gents, I consider myself to be a fine connoisseur of conspiracy theories, being that I was exposed to no less than 53 of the craziest (including the "chemtrails are a government conspiracy to kill the American people" one) conspiracy theories known to man, all by the age of 12 (I have a crazy uncle). I've seen the videos, read the tracts, and guess what? It all adds up to 'I'm A Scared Deranged Individual With Too Much Time On My Hands And Too Much Need To Be Somehow Better Or More In-The-Know Than Everybody Else So I Can Warn Them And Save Them From The Big Scary World'.

Then, understandably, she gets upset when I say she's taking the "paranoid approach". Okay, so I lack tact. She's "done research," you understand. She's an expert. I get nice. I forgot that conspiracy theorists don't like to be called paranoid. That they don't see their own crazy. They're always right, you know. I'm just ignorant. I bow out, letting her to her fear and loathing, though I tell her that I "must simply appreciate [her] beautiful cloud photography for what it is to my perception: photography of chemtrails and gorgeous (natural) Montanan cloud formations."

So, this is how gorgeous cirrus uncinus clouds get demoted to the status of vague threats on our lives. This is where you look up and see sparkling scars in our skies. This is where wind-blown ice crystals become reasons to blame every headcold, nosebleed, and cough on "someone's" wish to kill the American people. This is where we, as a society, lose it. It's more than just the lack of scientific knowledge or understanding; it's where there is an enemy around every corner. It's where, when a plane disappears into the rubble of a building, as it has been demonstrated that planes do when hard-crashing into something, it is someone trying to kill us. It's where there is no hope, no trust, no goodness in others, no escape from your own irrational fears. It's where so much goes wrong.

Love, love is a verb.

And so this was Christmas, a fine event if there ever was one. A virgin, impregnated by the power of God (who'll apparently go to great lengths to avoid the "birds and the bees" conversation), rides into the overcrowded town with her newly-shotgun-wed husband to pay their taxes, when, after weeks on the back of some poor burro, the thirteen-year-old miraculously pops out her first baby in a spray of blessed afterbirth and only the most pious amounts of pain. And so, to commemorate the occasion of this supposed anniversary (the birth certificate got lost in the mail somewhere), we fret over buying one another just the right thing, the thing that will prove that we love them forever (until Mothers' Day or their birthday or Valentine's Day); we pretend for a few hours to care about the poor, cold, sick, and downtrodden, the huddled masses (as long as we can also pretend that they are all so adorable as Tiny Tim or as poignant as The Little Match Girl); and we play obnoxious nonsense songs the meaning of which few understand (leave belief out; no true beliefs can be built on ignorance).

I'm not trying to be glib or flippant about Jesus' birth. I guess I just have a hard time looking at religion without looking at the bare bones of it. I think rationality is something applied to religious beliefs far too little, both in the beliefs themselves and in the practices which accompany them. It's not what I set out to write about tonight, but I thought Christ's Mass deserved to be noted before it slipped away, and this is what came out. I suppose that it's the product of a rage that's been building for some time now. That anyone can profess to follow in the footsteps of the Lamb of God, The Prince of Peace, that great forgiver of all sins and lover of all sinners, and yet deem someone - anyone - unworthy of HIS love - oh, my friends, I become very upset. My minority, non-Christian friends lie back and take it, even expect it. I know, though, that the baby that shivered in the night those many years ago didn't care if the arms holding him were gay or Jewish or even if they belonged to the Pope himself.

What mattered was love.

I am a manta ray.

When I came to Carroll 2 years ago, I knew nobody. I was mostly okay with that, given that I considered it a chance to start over with people who would get to know me as I am now, rather than as a amalgamation of all my past identities. I would get to be frank about every bit of me and hopefully find people who liked me – an honest, true me.

That is not to say, though, that I was wholly unafraid. For much of my life I had seen my town and the people in it as a cocoon. I took pride in identifying everyone in my class, and most of the people in my high school, by just the backs of their heads or the way they walked. I convinced myself that it really meant something to be a part of my school and my class. I cared deeply about the people around me despite the reality that very few gave a shit about me. I'm not sure how to describe the pain or the way it tore me apart when I realized in my senior year that the people I hung out with, my classmates, and the school were actually a very well-designed personal hell. I was miserable and abandoned, rejected by those I had held in highest esteem.


Given all that, I can understand not wanting to leave behind those bonds of friendship that had formed over 12 or 13 years. If you are afraid, it is easy – painless – to sidle down the road to the local state university, party with the same friends you had in high school, and come back to sit in the student section at high school basketball games. At first.

If you are any bit intrepid, though, you will begin to look around. You've known these people since kindergarten, have probably dated each of them at least once or seen them naked in the locker room. Surely the same social circle all that time gets boring. There are only so many times you can talk about that winning point at the state tournament 5 years ago before it begins to eat at you: nobody around you has changed, and neither have you. This is the time in your life during which you are supposed to challenge yourself, push yourself – not just academically, but personally. Don't you know? If you don't stretch your muscles now, you'll wake up sore all over and laying beside the girl who tattled on you that winter day in second grade. Then you'll know that you've betrayed that younger self, the one that vowed never to become that sad person who who now stares back at you in the mirror.