Burning Cats and Dogs

Oengus Moonbones over at one of the final Contra Crunchy posts described Rod Dreher as genial and chatty, although not really to be taken seriously. The upside to incurable sanguines like myself is that this style attracts chatty commenters and subsequently spawns some hilarious combox threads. The recent Santeria thread is a great example, here are some small doses:

There's animal sacrifice, and there's animal sacrifice. I once came across a burning stump in the woods. There was a sense of great danger and wrongness. After I approached and stared at it for a minute I made out the body of a cat in the coals.The fire department dismissed it as "kids playing with fire and a dead cat." - Lisa 02.08.07 - 1:15 pm #

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Lisa, that story about the burning stump ENRAGES me. We need more advocacy for STUMP'S RIGHTS!! - Pauli Homepage 02.08.07 - 1:20 pm #

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Pauli,I know that you're joking, but doesn't the idea of burning a cat alive bother you? - watsy 02.08.07 - 2:09 pm #

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Watsy, OK, I'll let the cat out of the bag. I'm joking. But how do you know the cat was burnt alive? You need the CSI folks to determine that. It could have been found already dead or maybe lethally injected first. Or given the ol' baseball bat in the head like DeNiro's Capone in that "Untouchables" remake.Or maybe the pet owner just opted for cremation rather than burial and didn't have funds for the crematorium.Commenter Lisa provided no real evidence pointing to animal sacrifice, e.g., strange markings or symbols or other indications. Maybe she could clue us in on what gave her the "sense of danger and wrongness" beyond her own imagination. - Pauli Homepage 02.08.07 - 3:14 pm #

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Pauli, the sense of wrongness was 1) my imagination, 2) my subconscious putting clues together, 3) a true perception of spiritual evil. Take your pick.I felt the wrongness before I saw the cat. There was no smell of burning flesh. I've seen a lot of unpleasant things in the woods, dead animals, animals eating animals, entrails dropped from the sky, a flasher, an adolescent groper on a bike, a crawling likely rabid bat, a dead squirrel tied to a rope, fires... and nothing else triggered that sense of wrongness and uncommon evil.My own guess - #3. - Lisa 02.08.07 - 5:07 pm #

Anyway, that was my favorite part and the part to which I contributed the most, but there are true gems of wisdom all thoughout the thread. I'll include some pearls of miscellaneous hilarity here:

• If you can't appreciate the power struggle and class dynamic underlying Santeria's infusion of traditional African religion with Christian imagery, then you probably shouldn't really say anything about it in the same sense that if you don't understand anything about sin then you should probably keep silent about salvation.
• Really, one mans's (sic) demon is another man's God.... I may not get along very well with those Gods, but I certainly will not call them Evil or Demons just becuase (sic) I don't like them. Just like I wouldn't call a fellow human a loser or a moron solely based on whether or not I like them.
• The average grocery store chicken goes through a life of pain and misery with a very horrifying death at the end.
• Slaughtering animals for gods that have no physical body seems like a violation of animal rights.
• For chicken done right, one MUST go to Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles in Los Angeles.
• ...whether federal animal welfare statutes are being broken.

(Also: commenter Daniel brings up Stranger in a Strange Land. We all grok it, Daniel. Embarrassing. There should be a blog rule against bringing up that book like the Hitler rule.)