Have you ever had a day where, on the whole it is quite wonderful, but just under the surface everything seems just a tad…off? The juxtaposition of great weather, being outdoors in the fresh air with family and friends, eating great food and having no pressures or stress weighing you down but mixed with just a hint of, “mhmmm that’s weird”? Yeah, that was Saturday.
May has been such a busy month (only a couple weeks in, but it seems like a full one already), we decided to do a catch-up episode. Kris went to Canada on business, The Mugly Truth has a new mascot (Kym’s new Mini Australian Shepherd named MOOCH!), Kris’ oldest is driving, her youngest made cheer squad going into high school, we’ve been bingeing amazing new podcasts, documentaries, audiobooks, and t.v. shows….SO MUCH to talk about!!
So we settled down under a lovely oak tree, chattered gleefully about all the things – completely topic-less – wrapped the episode, and started packing up the equipment only to discover the recording was useless. USE. LESS. #SIGH. Our producer/audio technician (ummmmm, KRIS) failed to notice the mics weren’t running to the recording software, blah, blah, blah (really, no need to go into details). Let’s just say it was an inauspicious start to what would become a kind of bizarre day.
Ah well, shite happens, eh? We shrugged it off as exactly that, made plans to regroup in three hours and went separate ways for nourishment. Oh the things that can happen in three hours. You can hear Kris recount channeling her best foul-mouthed New Yorker spirit outside the local Hobby Lobby upon discovering two very large (seriously, at least 6′ 5″) dudes being vurrrrrry interested in the contents of her car. For whatever reason, her 5′ 1″ self with 10′ tall East Side attitude (aided by 16 oz of Vietnamese coffee) managed to shoo them away without incident. On second thought, that probably doesn’t sound so weird depending on where you might live, but at the time it was not something one expects to have to cope with whilst leaving the secondary house of the Lord with a bag full of craft paints and resin decorative items scored at 50% off.
Perhaps the oddest event of the entire day was the first stop for Kris and the kids getting lunch…parking in an everyday parking lot of a typical busy strip mall in a (fairly) quiet, (fairly) mundane little suburb town in Southern California…basically a spot one doesn’t usually come across evil symbols of hate, yet there it was. A swastika, written in what looked to be red lipstick on the hood of a pretty, white new(ish) car. Just sitting there. A Nazi f**king swastika. Initial reaction? Photo posted to Facebook with a rant about #noH8.
That’s when a friend posted in the kindest way stating while it might LOOK like the wretched Nazi emblem, the way it was written didn’t match how the Nazis used the swastika (tilted to the right). He further pointed out there was a figurine on the dashboard that appeared to be Hindu (or perhaps Buddhist) and that the symbol was ancient, used in other societies, religions and cultures as a sign of good luck or divinity. In Sanskrit, the word swastika is a combination of ‘su’ (meaning ‘good’) and ‘asti’ (meaning ‘to exist’). After researching a bit, we’ve found a couple really good articles, one actually being this Quora forum which provides all the information you could want to know about why someone might draw a swastika on their car. And maybe why they shouldn’t do it in such a blatant spot. It’s worth reading all the answers. Then there’s this BBC article about the symbol, some group’s efforts to revitalize the true meaning of the swastika, and why it is highly unlikely anyone is going to be able to get past how any iteration is seen as representing the highly effed-up and hateful ideology of Hitler (and later Charles Manson who carved it on to his own forehead).
By the end of the day (literally) everything turned out to be an amazing kickoff to a wonderful Mother’s Day (oh yeah, that happened too!)…we got the recording done right the second time around. New things had been learned and shared. We then sat and talked more with Kym’s folks, Kris’ girls painted more rocks. The barbecue was started and really good food was consumed as the sun set, the breeze calmed, and the owls and mockingbirds serenaded little Mooch to sleep (again).
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