Don't run off the company.

The little Texas town of Stephenville is all abuzz - seems a several dozen folks have reported seeing a UFO in the area over the last few weeks. Shirley MacLaine must be positively quaking with glee! If I were a B&B owner in Stephenville, I'd go ahead and get a room ready for her. But I digress.

I have no problem with the idea of life outside our little green planet. And Lord knows that if you're an intelligent life form and you're traveling to Earth, you're going to pick Texas to hang out. It's only logical. So, if the folks in Stephenville say they've seen a UFO, then by golly, maybe they saw a UFO.

My real concern in that story I've linked to is that the guy says, with no apparent sarcasm, that "this is the Bible Belt." Excuse me? Texas. Is. Not. The. Bible. Belt.

I realize I live in Austin, which is hipper and more liberal (sometimes to my consternation) than pretty much everywhere else in Texas. I get that. But I grew up in Houston, and never once did I hear anyone there refer to it as part of the Bible Belt. And certainly no one in Austin would ever claim that.

The Bible Belt is Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina - those Deep South kinda places. I've been there, to the Deep South. A couple of times. And it's very different from Texas. I'm a Methodist, and I've been to several Methodist churches around the Texas, and they're all pretty close - laid back, inclusive, open. And then I went to one in Alabama. There's not a Southern Baptist church in Texas that could out fire-and-brimstone the Methodist church I went to in a small town in Alabama. I couldn't believe it could even be considered part of the same denomination. It was truly like I'd entered another world.

So, someone needs to set Smithville straight. If you'd like to live in the Bible Belt, you are free to move there. No passport necessary. But the state of Texas is not it, nor do most of us want it to be. And if you keep saying that it is out loud, the aliens are going to hear you, and they're going go to say, "Oh crap! The Bible Belt! I thought we steered clear of that - go! go! go!" and they're gonna be outta there. If you want them to stay, or you want Shirley MacLaine to visit, you'll just say, "This is Texas" and leave the Bible Belt stuff for people not half as cool as Texans.