Texas:

Oh Jesus Christ. And they do it all in your name, mate.

Every evening I get to see corridors like the one below as I walk around and deliver my day-sheets (sheets outlining the following day's activities that I type up for everyone so they know what time to get up and be ready to leave, etc. etc. No one reads them and then they spend the next day asking me what was on the sheet). Sometimes walking around a hotel at night can be spooky. This hotel was very quiet.





I can only assume everyone was in their rooms watching the Christian DAYSTAR TV CHANNEL. Almost all of the men on the channel have very trimmed and dyed beards, and weird starey eyes. When I saw a few moments of it (and that was all I could take; my dead black soul unable to bear the presence of such pure Christian love for any longer) I saw a segment in which a man was talking about his wife's 14 year-long battle with depression; depression eventually cured by a dream of Jesus coming down and telling her (I'm paraphrasing) "enough with the depression already." The woman was then able to put 14 years of depression behind her because of her faith. I thought it was interesting that her husband didn't seem to examine why his wife had been depressed for 14 years... to be honest, and I'm taking a wild guess, but being married to a man with an unnatural beard, starey eyes, who couches everything in divine a self-aggrandising context might depress me for 14 years too. But what do I know? I have no soul. Not anymore. I watch everything with blank glassy eyes and try to remember what it was like to feel moved by something. However, I've just come back from South By Southwest so that might have something to do with it.

Seeing as it's such a Christian state, and people take their god very seriously here, if not their adherence to all that tedious religious doctrine, I was surprised to find that the devil had won out on the hotel Movie Channels. There were 49 different channels of full penetration pornography on my TV. Maybe that's why the corridors were so quiet at night?





Tangentally, while shopping for stage props (dont' ask) a few days later in Austin, I had the fortune to visit this fine emporium. Next to the I-35 interstate a few miles outside of town, it is a huge shed full of smut. It has a discreet parking lot around the back and inside it's like a blockbuster video store full of scut. I had to look in the "toy" section and I have to be honest and say I obviously come from a very small town. There were appendages there longer than my limbs, and thicker too. Nothing makes me realise how pedestrian I am than seeing the range of toys, gadgets, titilaters and plain old flesh-wreckers on sale in a porn store. That, and seeing who is buying all this stuff. That's more interesting, to be honest. Especially if you can follow them home and then, later on, back to work where you'll be able to blackmail them, or maybe date them. Or both. Which would be like Christmas and your birthday all at the same time.