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My Evil Family

in praise of bad taste

Divine lives up to her name.

My grandmother and my parents are always talking about good taste. What's in good taste, what's not in good taste, what's done and what's simply not done, who are our kind of people and who aren't. Well I'm sick of it. Good taste is SO BORING.

I'm writing today in praise of bad taste. Bad taste is good. Everything I like is considered bad taste. Why? Because it scares the good taste people! And scaring the good taste people is my new mission in life.

Please join me in my celebration of bad taste, starting with the Pope of Trash, John Waters (see deranged Santa, left). Read More 

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Joan of Arc and the Cramps

Maybe you're wondering what the pictures on my blog mean. First there's our house, which Bridget drew for me--I have to admit she's a way better artist than I am. I have three brothers and two sisters and the oldest kid living at home gets the Tower Room for a bedroom. First St. John had it, then Sully, and now my sister Norrie . . . but next year she's going to college and it will be my turn.

Next: Joan of Arc. Sister Mary Joseph made us choose a patron saint in Religion class and she's mine. For one thing, we have (almost) the same name: Jane/Joan. But mostly she is the most badass saint. She was a teenage rebel. She was burned at the stake for defying the Church. Later (years and years later) the Church gave in and made her a saint. They should have listened to her in the first place! It makes me mad whenever I think about it.

For fun I threw in a picture of St. Uncumber, the beaded-lady saint. Her father was making her get married but she didn't want to so she prayed to God to keep her a virgin. The next morning she woke up with a beard. Mission accomplished, God. Read More 

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Evil Comes to America

My ancestor Francis Sullivan immigrated to Baltimore
from County Meath, Ireland, in 1847, during the
Great Famine. He was twenty-one and illiterate. Like
many Irish immigrants, he found work on the B&O
Railroad. Francis liked to drink a lot. So did most of
the other railroad men. It was starting to become a
problem — fights, broken marriages, the usual — so
some women and priests started an abstinence
movement called Society of the Divine Thirst. It was
kind of like Prohibition in the 1930s, except drinking
wasn’t outlawed, just severely frowned upon. Read More 
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