the Wikkid podcast

An influx of new voices into the podcast is announced, including my elusive sister, my old bandmate Troy, and Jay Semko, singer, songwriter and bass player for The Northern Pikes, and a host of others. Three ways people tend to deal with conflict. Writing songs. A revisiting of what's been asserted by the podcast thus far.

Last episode of Season Two. I've always had a deep and abiding interest in evil. (Not in doing it. In how it's depicted one way in the bible, and a very different way everywhere else). Making self-fulfilling prophecies about other people. Homer, Virgil, Dante, Goethe, Milton and so on. All the guys. Spitting in the eye of despair.

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Cars rusting in fields. Gene Simmons of KISS action figures. Bass players and pretty girls who alike don't show up. Being told you're laid off work. Again. Did I write this song or did Martin Luther, Fanny Crosby or Thom Yorke? Tyler uses whatever he's got lying around the house. Two main kinds of churches selling two main kinds of product. What suited me about my own church, in retrospect. When are you making things better, and when you gilding the lily? My most-requested (noncomedic) song.

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I get some help to attempt an country song, sung by the Almighty. Life advice for me from an 80s hair metal shredder lead guitarist. Neon pink, bubblegum-flavoured church icing on your steak and mashed potatoes. Why doesn't Michael Sweet age? How much of Stryper is, as he claims, mainly just him? The Christian answer to everything (besides "go to church") is "surrender all to God." (Let go and let God.) Let God make all your life's decisions, essentially. Well, two problems: 1) if you grew up with your life entirely bound to church expectations, you have no say over your "all" to begin with. You can't surrender something you're not in possession of. 2) What if God refuses to make your life decisions for you? Bill tells us what Christians do. Teenagers wandering the street at night, drunk and looking for trouble, benefit from more rules, expectations and structure. Teenagers raised with no freedom are all full up. The Almighty covers Cheap Trick.

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What if your church took everything, leaving you nothing to "surrender all" to God? If God's real, are we cool with Him being a person with a personality? If so, what kind of personality? What does He want? Some lions are "Born Free" (by Andy Williams) and others aren't. Slipping restraining bolts, dwarf-following and joining Starfleet through the wardrobe. People can make texts appear to have only one possible interpretation, but that's simple-minded. Attempting a wikkid groove.

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Drunks who get saved into churchified sobriety have to ensure they don't backslide into the gutter, the misery and the puke. But people like me? We had to ensure we didn't backslide into that grey, bland, paranoid, controlled, muted, competitive piety thing. The "everything's perfectly all right now. We're fine. We're all fine here now, thank you." culture, with people dying inside. Why you don't need to buy a 12-string guitar to get a 12-string sound. The rise and fall of Kevin Smith. Kids know EXACTLY what their parents are getting wrong, but will most likely repeat the same mistakes or invent ones of their own when it's their turn. Neil Gaiman says "make good art." Deer hunting with toothpaste. Making sure that, like a shark, I keep moving forward, keep making stuff, to keep alive, even if people think it's amateurish, vain, negative or casts certain people and groups in a bad light.

https://www.amazon.com/Beowulf-Other-Tales-Foster-MacPhail/dp/035910987X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=beowulf+and+other+tales&qid=1621885186&sr=8-1

http://www.teenagepharisee.com/

What happens when people are "raised on rails," like locomotives on tracks that take them to church and nowhere else, and they jump out of the groove and start heading up the road at speed? How bad can things get? Was the Lord speaking? (If trigger warnings worked, this ep would surely have one.)

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painting on map: Michael Vedder

Excommunicated! Shunned for Life! Unintentional fundamentalist outreach porn.

A Wikkid Contest: There's a 90s pop culture game in this week's podcast! Email me at [email protected] with your best identification of the many 90s computer and video game sounds, standup comics and live bands in the montage that starts around 20min in. Winners will be mentioned by name (unless they request otherwise) in future podcast episodes.

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The giant killer conscience, created in the lab/church, goes on a rampage, stamping on pool halls, arcades, video rental stores, Dungeons & Dragons and other random things. Our church divides in two, and I try my first beer, movie at the theatre, and live musical act, at age 21.