Lessons Learned From a Runny Nose

WARNING: I describe my naked self

Normally, when congested or suffering from a runny nose I let the steam from the shower loosen things up so I can blow and cough it down the drain. I know that's not pleasant sounding but I'm allergic to just about everything so frequently wake up with a bit of something or other in my nose that needs to be expressed. Typically that's all it takes- no allergy medicine or moving to the desert for me- a hot shower then everything is fine.

The morning after the baboso incident I took an extra long hot shower. My nose was still running (not as bad as the day before) and I had a lot of sinus pressure. So I knelt on the floor of the shower and let the steam do its job.

I see myself naked every day; that's no big deal. But kneeling there on the shower floor I got a pretty good look at myself- or, if not a good look, at least a long look from a perspective I normally miss. I'm weird looking.

I have spindly arms and legs ending in hands and feet that are too large for the sticks they're attached to. I'm hairy. My hands are scarred and veiny. I have uneven, three-toned coloring. My elbows and wrists are boney and for not having much fat to speak of, my obliques hang over the sides of my iliac crest and lead to a crease along either side of the front of my pelvis drawing one's perspective to a much too hairy groin.

I never maintained any illusion that my body is one anyone else would want to see, but I guess I just realized I might rank just above Mr. Burns as far as physical attractiveness goes- and he's a cartoon.

I explained this to Cyndi and she tried to tell me she likes my body. I understand that, we're married, we're in love, blah, blah, blah. Nonetheless, mine is not the physique used for marketing colognes and Caribbean vacations. I realize I look better clothed than I do naked but I am willing to address naked me.

So I'm funny looking. Whatever. That's not that a big a deal to me or probably all that interesting to you. The thing is I'm okay with my body- not just with how I look, but being seen, or even being seen naked. I don't mean that I am interested in flaunting my body or imagine that my body is at all beguiling. I mean, I am not the guy afraid of gang showers or worried about comparing myself to other people. I am not talking about running around naked, I completely understand the social mores and rules about nudity. I'm talking about being comfortable in my skin even though I am aware said skin and what comes with it is weird looking. Or maybe... even if not always comfortable, at least I know it's there- scrawny, pimpled, hairy.

It's okay to say this. It's okay to know that underneath all the clothes and in spite of entire industries devoted to diminishing, disguising, or denying our awkward nakedness, it's there. It's implied in the picture; it's a subtext to our dialogues. It's the moment and its feelings when a young man heard his fiancee was pregnant... but not by him. It's the father who failed his young pregnant wife, unable to find them a suitable place to stay. It's the looks and the murmurs and the end you don't see coming. It's ugly and a little disturbing but a part of the big picture.

Maybe that's a stretch, but it's Christmas Eve.

So the lessons are:
Baboso is a funny Spanish name to call someone with a runny nose.
Cyndi is delusional.
Christmas has some ugliness- check it out.

Well You'd Better Go Catch It

I think I embarrassed Jon and Aaron Monday. They came over to help me redo the floor in our front room. Which looks great. Normally, in a situation like that I embarrass myself by shooting a nail into my hand (building a set for Jeremiah) or falling from scaffolding (plastering the Trader Joe's on Mission). This time I embarrassed myself with a runny nose. That doesn't sound so bad, but runny doesn't really describe how much snot was flowing from my face.

I couldn't sniff fast or hard enough to keep the thin watery mucus off my lips, shirt, floor, saw, hands, and pants. Drugs were useless. Blowing my nose didn't help; I couldn't keep up with the flow. Wiping my nose with my sleeves just covered my face with sawdust and tore up my nostrils and lips. I soaked through two t-shirts tied around my face like bandanas.

So for the better part of the day, I was leaving a trail of slime everywhere I went. Jon poured salt on me and he and Aaron finished the last part of the floor pretty much on their own.

They both think I'm basically the greatest guy on earth so it was hard for them to see me in such a weakened state.

That night, I crammed tampons in my nostrils and they quickly filled and expanded- stretching my nose into an engorged purple bulb of clogged pores and chapped flesh. Sad.

Oh and just so I can say I said it: If King Kong isn't the greatest movie ever made, then something else is!

End O' The Year

Postings will be few and far between so we'd better get to what matters- like end of the year lists.

End of The Year List #1:
Boy's Names That Are Good for Adults But Seem Weird for a Baby
Carl
Gus
Frank
Gabe
Wolfgang


End of the Year List #2:
Things I Don't Need
My Name in Silver Wire Done While I Wait
A Sprint Cell Phone Plan
Shoe Cleaner
Hand Lotion
To Smell Like a Celebrity

Married?... Married!

I had a reunion of sorts the other day... Monday. That is technically the other day, but when I say that in real life Cyndi says it gives the impression that I mean sometime within the last three days. So specifically I mean Monday. Monday I saw and heard about a number of people that I've known since elementary school. So and So is a tattoo artist in Texas, Who's His Face lives in Los Feliz, stuff like that. Interesting to me is that everyone mentioned and everyone I saw remain unmarried. Not that I would marry any of them, but whether someone seems an attractive mate to me has never seemed to be a requirement for other people's weddings. Plenty of people who, to me, do not seem like they should be married, or should not be able to find someone to marry them are actually married. Weird.

Anyway, of all the people I hear of or have seen from my eighth grade class only 2 have married and one of those two recently divorced. It's a small class to be sure but that still surprises me. Of the thirty-some kids, I know the marital status of 16. Of those 16, 2 married (I'm not counting myself).

I don't know how that compares to any national demographics but I know how it compares to my wife's classmates. They are working on multiple marriages and divorces. She's not here to give me specific numbers as I think about this, but I know from previous conversations that more of her classmates have gotten married and/or divorced and remarried. I went to private Catholic school, she went to private "non-denominational" school. This means I can make the sweeping claim that Evangelicals love marriage more than Catholics do- they love it so much that some Evangelicals want to do it 3 or 4 times before they're 35.

If you don't believe me that's okay. It was, in fact, a joke. Well, the last sentence was anyway. There does seem to be some type of difference though. I would guess religious background accounts for some of it and it would be an interesting thing to research.

Somebody do that. Find out if Evangelicals are more likely than comparable populations of Catholics to marry younger, divorce and or remarry. Or just find out the attitudes of these groups towards marriage and divorce. C'mon this is golden, somebody use it.

But maybe you're not the researching type. Are you the game playing type? A game Cyndi and I play is setting odds and the line with people's marriages. We like to guess how likely couples are to get a divorce and how long it will take. If you wanted a piece of that action, this information could give you a very good edge.

This Was A Sweet Set
Hanging Around The Day- Polyphonic Spree
Regrets- Ben Folds Five
Mercy Mercy Me- Marvin Gaye
Where Is My Mind- The PIxies
Give It Up Turn It Loose- James Brown
Cancer For The Cure- The Eels
Muzzle of Bees- Wilco
Shining Star- Earth, Wind, and Fire
I Wanna Be Your Lover- Prince

I Feel LIke I'm Taking crazy Pills

I don't watch the OC, and barring any unforeseen rendition and its accompanying interrogation I do not plan on watching the OC. So if someone could explain to me what Christmukkah is I might appreciate it. If I understand anything from the commercials, it seems to be a confusing synthesis of the celebrations of the bottomless oil lamps and the baby born in a trough with an anti-gun violence message. That's just the surface though. My guess is- at its heart is the barely veiled contempt the writers have for the audience that watches the excrement that they hate themselves for writing expressed by debasing anything the viewer might value (boy that's an awkward sentence). Is that about right?

Let It Roll- Hieroglyphics

What Are Your Prime Directives?

My dad's a cop. My father in law is a cop. My best friend from elementary school through 9th grade became a cop. I've got family that are cops, family that married cops, divorced cops, and stole cops from their previous spouses. In short. I know cops as people. And as people some of them are great and some of them are jerks. All of them have their personal struggles and some of them have struggles exacerbated by being a cop. Divorce rates- higher among cops. Suicides- higher, domestic violence rates- higher, depression, heart attacks, hypertension, alcoholism, all higher among cops. This doesn't "mean" anything. It might suggest that if it's part of your job that you see the worst of humanity all the time you could possibly go nuts and die young. Cops aren't simply exposed to horrible things; generally they have to see the world as horrible.

I got pulled over the other day for avoiding an accident. There is a section of road south of our house that is notoriously dangerous. There are pretty bad accidents at least twice a month on this 1/4 mile stretch of highway- commuters enter and exit freeways here, competing with local big box shopping traffic for too few lanes, avoiding SUV driving/call making do-it-your-selfers and my-truck's-a-piece-anyway-so-who-cares-if-you-hit-me contractors, merging with local traffic that has no other north-south route to use to get to North Glendora, all driving on a road with poorly engineered traffic flow devices... Where was I? Oh- So I'm driving south bound when a white Ford mini-van coming from the west (so pointing east) makes a right turn in front of me. And rather than just slamming on the brakes and crashing into the van, I get off the gas and swerve to minimize the collision with the van and any car that might hit me from behind. (I really do think these things through. My dad didn't get too into passing good moral advice onto his kids but he really drilled active driving into my head. We would actually practice emergency driving drills in parking lots. I know exactly when to brake and turn to go from reverse, turn 180 degrees and accelerate forward, I know how to get a car out of a slide, spin, or fish tail- with that I also know how to put a car into a fish tail, spin, or power slide. That's weird... But also pretty great- Thanks, dad.) I accelerate straight for a bit then pull back into my lane. So anyway, I avoided an accident but looked a little crazy doing it.

So a cop saw all this- or at least part of this. He pulled me over. Being in Glendora, and me being in brown skin, half of Glendora PD also joined in the adventure (in the minute or so it took me to explain what happened, three other cops showed up). He asked me what was going on- I asked if he saw what happened. He hadn't seen the van, he said he only saw me driving crazy. I said it wasn't crazy to avoid an accident. He went back to the other cops then came back and asked for my driver's license, registration and insurance info. (It's interesting that it wasn't the first thing he asked for- maybe he was new). Then he went back for another discussion with his colleagues and to run my info. After the conference they decided I wasn't going to get a ticket. I didn't not get a ticket because he believed my explanation; I didn't get a ticket because my dad's a cop. I didn't tell him that, my driver's license did. If my driver's license had kept quiet, I probably would have gotten a ticket for an unsafe lane change that, in my estimation, wasn't unsafe. I would've been angry and taken it without dinner or a kiss. Oh well- everyone a cop pulls over has an excuse. Everyone is unbelievable. When it's your job to protect stupid people from stupider people you notice people being stupid and perhaps start to think people are only capable of being stupid. (One of my father in law's favorite expressions is, in fact, "stupid people"). Replace stupid with evil and that's a pretty miserable way to see the world.

So...

I know cops have dangerous jobs, but so do crab fishers. Cops face different dangers. The dangers they face don't only come from people shooting at you but from knowing that people want to shoot you, from having to see the stupid things people do, from seeing only the stupid things people do, from needing to see only that so you can do your job, from building calluses on your soul so you can get by. Similar things happen to people in the military and their families. Similar things happen to everybody. There are things we do that go against the grain of our being human...

Hmmm... I just lost interest in this. I was thinking of things that we do that go against that grain- well not what we do per se- but how we do them. I thought I wanted to write about what our "grain" is but now it's not that interesting to me. Or... I guess I'm interested but it seems like too much work.... Like I can't address it responsibly considering how lazy I feel right now. That's weird.

I'm gonna make a quesadilla.

All The Turkey's Gone
Better Git Hit in Your Soul- Charles Mingus
La La Love You- The Pixies
All Day and All of the Night- The Kinks
Army- Ben Folds Five
As Ugly As I Seem- The White Stripes
Sweet Talkin' Woman- ELO
Happy Jack- The Who
How I Could Just Kill A Man- Rage Against the Machine
Blue Orchid- The White Stripes
Run- Air
The National Anthem- Radiohead
My Love- Paul Mc Cartney
Murray- Pete Yorn
Raindrop- Tripping Daisy

The War on Christmas: Do Your Part

I buy great Christmas presents for Cyndi. It's not that I spend a lot of money- I just know what she wants. Without hints and without prompting, I know what to get her. I get her things she would get for herself. As great as I am, sometimes it turns out to be a problem. Cyndi does get things for herself- at Christmas; we've had to set rules so that she not buy anything for herself starting in September until her bierthday in January. It's rough.


Two Years Ago: With incredible forethought, in August I bought Cyndi a set of covered soup bowls that she had wanted. She wanted them so much she bought them for herself in November. Ha ha ha hah ha.

Last Year: I was searching ebay for a set of collectible wine glasses that matched her holiday water glasses and it turns out Cyndi and I were bidding against each other for the same item. Ha hahah ha ha hahahahahhhhh.

This Year: Knowing that for a happy Christmas she's better off not buying herself things before Christmas she was shopping for something for a friend of hers under my ebay account and somehow, accidentally, clicked "buy now" on one of my watched items. HA HAAHAHA HAHA HAA HAAA HAA AAAARRRRGHH AHAH AA.

You're Not Dying, You Just Can't Think of Anything Good to Do

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. -- Former President Gerald Ford, suffering from "a horrible cold," was in the hospital today for what his chief of staff called routine medical tests.

LA Times

I thought Gerald Ford was already dead.

You know who else has a cold? Me. You know who's not going to the doctor for any kind of tests? Me again. But then I'm not 92. And maybe my cold isn't all that horrible.

Symptoms: Sore throat, headache, sneezing, burning eyes, nothing-due induced ennui.

I don't get sick very often but when I do it is almost always in synch with the end of a school term. Like female housemates synchronizing their cycles, my immune system lays down arms when I turn in my last paper. So here I am, dying, briefly playing host to whatever microbial invader needs a place to stay. I'm not doing anything with me right now so why not?

I enjoy the not doing anything for a time and I enjoy the academic cycle in which the nothing comes and goes. But it is usually a transition I have to push through. Not because I I don't have anything to do but because I need to remember that the nothing there is to do is worth doing.

So another semester is right around the corner, Here's what's on tap for me come January: Hermeneutics, Exegesis, and Preaching from the 1st to 5th c., Knowledge and Culture, Peace Studies Seminar, Survey of Islamic Theology, Philosophy, and Mysticism.
That's right, fool- I'm straight-up rollin' wit da' suzixteen units.

There Certainly Is an "I" in iTunes
I Can't Get No Satisfaction- Devo
I've Been Tired- The Pixies
I've Got a Feeling- The Beetles
She Watch Channel Zero!?- Public Enemy

There Is No Spoon... Except That There Is and You Are Living as if The Spoon Absolutely Matters

I am struggling to finish a paper this morning. When I was looking at schools, I wanted to be in a Theological Ethics program. That's a very specific program that's not offered too many places. Typically programs are divided into Theology or Ethics because the Modern academic understanding is that the two are separate. This isn't simply the result of academic specialization, it's also a result of the Modern view that reason alone stands apart from the world and is somehow able to determine or reflect what is, let alone what ought to be done- or what is universally good. It's why we say something like, "C'mon be reasonable..." when someone doesn't see or do things our way. We imagine that there is some kind of universal reason that will convince somebody leaving only 4 oz. (that's about 100 ml, CityFrog) of milk in the refrigerator is wrong. (That's not the whole of the case- but it's something most of us can probably relate to).

So, briefly, Theological Ethics understands that there are systems in which reason functions according to specific parameters. It examines the specific commitments and knowledge that are those parameters and how those are lived. I didn't get into the school that offers the best Theological Ethics program in the world, go figure. The school I am at has a Theology, Ethics, and Culture program. I am not in that program- I'm in the Philosophy of Religion/Theology program. I originally applied to the "TEC" program but after meeting with the faculty we decided I would be better suited to the "PR/T" program. Here's why:

The TEC program does account for the theological and cultural influences on ethics. That's good. However, it imagines that you can freely deconstruct and recreate ethical systems however you see fit simply by replacing parts here and there. If you see a problem and want a specific outcome, create a system that leads to it. I guess you can do that, but it doesn't seem very effective. That's not so good. To me, that is very similar (different and better, but still similar) to separating Theology and Ethics. Here's why:

People are very committed to their systems- even if they aren't aware that they are part of it. You can't just take apart someone's system because you don't like what it's doing, build up another one, and try to force it on them. No one will buy it- or few people will buy it, but then they're not a part of that system. If I want a result from you that your system doesn't "allow," my creating another system external to you and trying to make you fit it is just as unlikely to work as my appealing to an all powerful external reason and saying, "Hey, you, reason dictates that you shouldn't leave less milk than someone will use in the refrigerator." The other person will say, "That's stupid and unreasonable. Reason dictates I shouldn't waste milk by pouring more than I need." Will they then accept it if I say, "Here, dummy, try this system that will convince you to not leave dribbles of milk in the refrigerator."?

You can deconstruct, and build, and have competing systems if you'd like, but it seems like art and crafts. There is something to it- I'm not saying it's worthless, but it's not always what people are going to use- at least it's not what I'm going to use.

So, if you are committed to one system and you think it needs tweaking- you need to find the elements within that system that may allow for some tweaking. If you break the rules, you're not in the system, but you can push the boundaries and test the flexibility of a system so that it remains intact (if it is worth keeping intact).

To take the imagery too far: If a system is producing an unwanted result, it may be that result is an inevitability of that system. Or it could be that the system is being misused. Or parts of the system are not used as they should be. Still another option is that the system may be functioning exactly as it should be but incidental to its use is an unwanted byproduct or negative externality. Or a system might function great but has the potential to function even better.

One has to discover if the system intends the result or if the result is unintended but necessary to the system or the result of misuse or malfunction or if it's going well how it can go even better. If bad things are an intended result then it may be necessary to chuck the system. If it is one of the other options then the problem may be remedied or improved. If you want a car to stop leaking oil, or backfiring, or get better gas mileage, or not run on hyrdrocarbons, or go faster, or have a smoother ride, there are things you can do to it while still keeping it a car. If you want a car to fly you to the moon though, you are no longer dealing with a car.

I know this might sound very existential and post-modern. Deal with it. (If you're paying attention- you'll notice that something external to these systems is necessarily implied. You just don't know what it is- but that's one of the reasons Christmas matters.)

I want to know my system- so I am in the PR/T program. I am not too interested in building new systems out of parts I find lying around the academic workshop. That's why I am not in the TEC program. I did however decide to take the TEC "flagship" class but now find myself reluctant to color in their lines. My bad.

But now that I got this out of my system (wink), I suppose I'll finish my paper.

iTunes Can Only Play What I Put Into Its Library
I Got a Girl- Tripping Daisy
My Love- Paul McCartney
Company In My Back- Wilco
Blue 'N' Boogie- Dizzy Gillespie
Mr. Tambourine Man- Bob Dylan
Maggie's Farm- Bob Dylan
Here Comes Your Man- The Pixies
Stepping Into Tomorrow- Madlib
No Surprises- Radiohead
Flower- The Eels

We Wish You a Sexy Christmas cont'd

Zales

The War on Christmas: Family Day

"This Christmas, no prayers will be said in several megachurches around the country. Even though the holiday falls this year on a Sunday, when churches normally host thousands for worship, pastors are canceling services, anticipating low attendance on what they call a family day."

AP Wire

Note: I changed the link on this. It's still an AP wire story but goes through CNN instead of the LA Times.

Nolite Timere

Did you know that the last Western human rights group in Iraq outside of the Green Zone is a Christian organization called Christian Peacemaker Teams? Did you know that CPT members were recently kidnapped by a heretofore unknown terrorist group? Did you know that in response to this Rush Limbaugh said, "I like any time a bunch of leftist feel-good hand-wringers are shown reality.?" You can read a transcript and hear an audio clip of him actually saying that here.

He says liberals fear faith. Although he's a bit of a clown, he may have something there. I'm pretty liberal when it comes to a lot of issues. And I have to admit, reading about the faith of these people all over the world on these Christian Peacemaking Teams in places like Iraq, Colombia, Burundi, and Hebron- I do have a sense of fear about it. But likely not in the way Rush thinks I might.

Christmas=Sex

I'm a crank. I'm not a humbug- I love Christmas. I'm a crank. I am a crank because I have little patience for our Christmas nonsense. The song Silent Night?- it's great. The Song Silent Night used to sell Pampers?- that's horrible.

So as a crank I am watching TV and notice that at this time of year, Christmas is used in commercials that typically use the idea of sex to sell their products. While during the rest of the year the formula usually is: Buy this you will be sexy and probably get to have sex- but you have to buy this first, now the formula is: it is Christmas time and you will have a good Christmas if you buy this. Instead of saying we make sex possible, they are saying we make good Christmas possible. So Christmas is as masturbatory a fantasy as beer commercials and so far these are some of the products/companies that show this best. That is, these are the commercials I first noticed wish me a Sexy Christmas:
Victoria's Secret
Gillette
De Beers (the diamond people)
Kay Jewelers

While right now I'm only counting it if Christmas is explicitly mentioned as a selling point and replaces or parallels sexual content or suggestiveness, I think the idea of Christmas easily replaces any cultural fantasy as seen in commercials. Instead of putting any difficult production work into a commercial- just show the product and play a Christmas song. Dancing babies with leak-free diapers: replaced with Christmas. Family togetherness and intimacy because of cell phones: replaced with Christmas. I want to see how this can be used for daytime TV products like injury attorneys and career colleges.

Everything In its Place

I don't know why this is making the rounds again, but this quote showed itself recently. It's from some time ago but in case there are any Christians who think Ann Coulter should inform their political thinking, maybe they should reconsider.
COULTER: God says, "Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It's yours."
FENN: Terrific. We're Americans, so we should consume as much of the earth's resources...
COULTER: Yes! Yes.
FENN: ... as fast as we possibly can.
COULTER: As opposed to living like the Indians.

from the Fox show Hannity & Colmes

If that seems out of context, she says the same thing in one of her columns.

I am not saying there's no place for debate. But that's not what this is- is it? This is theater. What she says is about as meaningful as this:

"When Randy Orton came to the ring to open Friday Night SmackDown, he thought he was on top of the world. However, he quickly found out that a trip to the south was in his future."

What?

Saying stuff like this, I expect her to come walking into an arena, managed by Vince McMahon, through fog and a lazer show to The Beautiful People.

What she says should not be confused for the thoughtful conservatism that exists, nor should her statements ever be seen as anything resembling facts or truth. She's distracting theater. That's her job. She's a caricature.

I know people take her seriously though. Not everyone who buys an Ann Coulter book does so ironically. I guess her disciples would be the backyard wrestlers of political discourse. That's too bad but not as troubling as the caricatures of Christian culture that people take seriously. I go to a school where, for one reason or another, students often have horrible misconceptions about what Christianity is. Sometimes their ideas are representative of some types of Christianity, other times they're just unfair narrow misrepresentations constructed as a foil to rationalize whatever belief their trying to cling to. And that's in the School of Religion. In other departments there is often an incredible bias against religion in general. That's one drawback. Another is, even if someone has an unrealistic, unfair picture of what it is to be a Christian, someone somewhere very probably holds that view. The "God Hates Fags" guy is real (maybe?), Paul Crouch is real. For some people that is as good as it gets. Hating fags is someone's truth. TBN is someone's truth. That's rough.

But then again. I am someone's cartoon. I am the "That's all there is?" other for someone else. I am someone else's clumsy groping at truth- then again, often I am my own clumsy groping.

No resolution here. Oh well.


Red Rain- The White Stripes
Happiness Is a Warm Gun- The Beatles
I Like Food- The Descendants
Mike Mills- Air
Psycho Killer- Talking Heads
Vertigo- U2
Piper- Phish
Adagio for Strings- Barber
Stepping Into Tomorrow- Madlib

A Christmas Miracle

"Three people, including a firefighter collecting donated presents for children, were wounded Sunday when gunfire erupted between rival motorcycle gangs gathered for a Christmas toy drive at a Riverside County saloon, authorities said."

LA Times

Oh that holiday magic. It's the time of year when we only have to believe in the goodness of humanity and there it is- hearts reaching out to each other, strangers helping strangers. We forget all about our petty differences and join together as a human family.
It really is the most wonderful time of the year.

To a young lady with red hair, waiting for her drink across from me by the door in a Starbucks:

I'm not checking you out- I am not wearing my glasses
so can't tell if you're someone I should wave to.
You're not.

This Is What We Do In Bible Study and After

That there is something rather than nothing
is really something.
Noting nothing is much more stable than anything.

Last night Russ reminded me-
Until nearly 10 years ago the study of insects in flight could account for only about a third or half of the lift necessary to support their weight.

Bumblebees and the Scientific Method
by Sheenagh Pugh

A scientist, a man of parts,
(some of which worked in fits and starts),
by using certain apparatus
proved bees could not be aviators.
There was no doubt, declared our hero,
the fundamental laws of aero-
nautics, -dynamics and whatever
must soon convince the unbeliever
that bees were built to such a model,
they scarcely could do more than waddle.
The ratio of their body weight
to wing-span, he could demonstrate,
precluded take-off, much less flight.
Colleagues allowed his sums were right:
Professors, Fellows, Doctors, Tutors,
sweating away at their computers,
confirmed our mans results in toto,
and grudgingly agreed to go to
honour his triumph at a party
(nobody really love a smarty).
While all acclaimed his theories,
nobody thought to tell the bees,
who, never having been to college,
nor stayed abreast of modern knowledge,
kept up a stunning imitation
of wing-powered aerial navigation.

Last night Cyndi reminded me-
Between Jessica Simpson and Nick Lache, Jessica Simpson is by far the better looking of the two.

Lady Pigs
by Solomon

As a ring of gold in a swine's snout
A beautiful woman who lacks discretion

Oh Right, It's the 29th

"The Vatican today formally released instructions that block active gay men from the priesthood, a long-anticipated document that has opened a divisive debate over how it will be applied and whether it will have a healing or detrimental effect on the Roman Catholic Church."

LA Times


So do you think he would count as active?

Phew?

So I stopped by the church office today to talk about the apocalyptic hope sermon. It helps that I live on the church property. Yes the apocalyptic language was intentional, but no the intention was not to deny the reality of the hope the Body of Christ lives in right now. It's all good- or at least it's mostly good. No one's getting loopy.

I mentioned my concern that there are enough people that are informed more by Hal Lindsey or Tim La Haye than the Bible that all you have to do is say apocalypse and you have a ton of baggage to unload. That this baggage wasn't unloaded worried me. See how much baggage there is? It freaked me out.

I would have erred on the side of really x 10 making clear that I wasn't talking about a hope that imagined hiding out until we are whisked off to the sky- especially in the context of Advent, but it's cool- I hope.

I trust our preaching pastors so I'm looking forward to where this ends up.

So talking about it was the right approach. It's important that Cyndi not hear she was right.

Hospital Song- Ben Fold's Five
So What- Miles Davis
Ten Years Gone- Led Zeppelin

I'm Sure in 1985, Plutonium Is Available at Every Corner Drugstore, But in 1955 It's a Little Hard to Come By

An aunt of mine remarried this weekend. Well technically she got married again for the first time.

Her first/never husband was a horrible man. He was an abusive, cheating, lying, drunk. When he was home, he was usually planted in front of the TV, drinking beer and watching soccer, crazy bug costume Mexican comedies, and Boxing. If it wasn't for my mom and grandmother I would have thought that's all there was to Spanish TV but they showed me it was also about novelas. Now I know it's also about crazy talk shows, grown ups dressed as little kids, and Sabado Gigante.

When I played with my cousins, we were told to keep it down because our noise made my not/uncle "nervous." It seems the more he drank, the more likely he was to get nervous and the more likely someone was to get smacked around.

My aunt never/eventually divorced him and after a long time married another man in a civil ceremony. She wanted a church ceremony so had to go through the process of getting an annulment.

She got her annulment so married the guy she married.

It's made my mom consider resuming the process of her annulment. That's not a happy thing. She and my dad have been divorced about 12 years now. She started the annulment process some time ago but didn't finish it because she's not getting married and it can be a very trying process.

It lays blame. It says you never had what it took to be married. It highlights your failure while at the same time there is a church official charged with contesting your claims that the marriage never was- and they are required to take the job very seriously. It doesn't allow one party to say it was all the other person's fault. It takes as reality the indissolubility of marriage. That's something I admit is necessary but I don't believe a special dispensation erases what really was. Also, I don't know how helpful it is to say, "You are so screwed up that the not marriage you were in technically never happened."

It at least acknowledges that there is more to marriage and (sotto voce) sex than simply a legal and physical arrangement. It seems to assume that the spiritual aspects of humans are as important and real as the corporeal (well I know it assumes that) even if I disagree with where it goes with that idea. Another "at least"- at least the Catholic Church treats the issue as if it is something that needs to be treated- and treated consistently at that. But still... you can't go back and pretend what was wasn't.

The cool thing about it though is it's kind of like time travel- well at least it has all those problems that need to be addressed if you were to travel back in time. Like- if you go back in time could you take anything with you- if what you have didn't exist in the time you travelled to, how could it have been made for you to take it? Or would I dissappear if my parent's marriage was annuled?

The Church long ago decreed that children from null marriages were legitimate (see- other people had the same question) and could still do all the Church-y things that needed to be done (so maybe that's not completely consistent). That's the big question my mom had. She asked me how I would feel if she got an annulment- she wanted to know if that would change how I saw myself. I reminded her I am not Catholic but still reassured her I would probably be okay.

I have a deeper appreciation for Catholicism now than I did growing up but there are a number of reasons I am decidedly not Catholic. Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia are only two of them. (If I were stupid, here is where I would insert "LOL.") This is probably another one.



I-Tunes Is On Fire This Morning
Pulled Up- Talking Heads
Little Acorns- The White Stripes
Come On Children, Let's Sing- Mahalia Jackson
A Night in Tunisia- Dizzy Gillespie
Razzle Dazzle- Scott Wise
Everything In Its Right Place- Radiohead
Good Vibrations- The Beach Boys
Houses of the Holy- Led Zeppelin
Wave of Mutilation- The Pixies
Mercy Mercy Me- Marvin Gaye
Overture- The Who
Problems- Sex Pistols

We Don't Even Fit In a Handbasket

Yesterday we began our advent preaching season. We've broken the Sundays up into five themes: Hope, Peace, Joy, Love, and Light. Generally, going with themes means whoever is preaching doesn't really use the Bible. I don't think preaching always has to be a verse by verse exposition of a passage of scripture. At our church though, it tends to be better if it is.

Yesterday was "Hope Sunday" and it was strangely not very hopeful. We had tag team preaching. That means the head and associate pastors took turns at the theme. The first, made a couple The Lord of the Rings references. It worked well. A couple of under-qualified, over looked, nobodies are charged with being the primary but underground struggle against evil even though they don't have a chance. That's a fair and apt illustration.

Then we got an overview of the Old Testament- well to be specific we got an overview of Genesis, Exodus, and I & II Samuel- along with a litany of how horrible things are today, what with wars, bird flu, earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis. The world is ending but hang on tight 'cos Jesus is coming.

The message seemed to be Yahweh was with His people in "Bible" days but He's not doing so much now so our hope is in the second coming of Jesus. That's Advent? That's hope? I wasn't sure at first if I was hearing what I thought I was hearing. I listened closer- and that's what it was. That's Christmas, folks. That's what there is.

Maybe I was supposed to be shocked into thinking more about the church and the real presence of Christ with his people. Maybe it was supposed to move me into participating in the preaching experience and find that despite those very real problems we move forward- not looking for resolution but relation. I hope that was it.

This was odd for our church. For the most part, we're not an end times, in case of rapture, left behind group. It's made me wonder where this came from. It is odd to say the least. To say more, Cyndi suggests I talk to the party involved about it- at least to ask for clarification on how their theology is developing these days or to suggest some authors on the subject of hope.

That sounds a bit arrogant to me. Clearly I think it's better to let it stew and be angry about it.

Interestingly, I read this (I'll warn you, it will make you think of the "F" word) this morning. I'm not going to list my Christian bona fides- I'm doing okay, so if this article freaks you out you'll have to find a way to deal with it other than questioning my thoughts on eschatology.


No Random Playlist Tonight
Jimi Hendrix- Band of Gypsies

Turkey Fest '05

Things other than turkey that went into the deep fryer:
Marshmallows
Brownies
Zingers
Twinkies
Mashed Potatoes
Pumpkin Bread
Pumpkin Pie
Bacon
An Egg

I am thankful for deep fried turkeys

Pecca Fortiter

My favorite scene in Animal House is about 5 seconds long. During the parade in the big finale, an attractive coed is catapulted, in her underwear, through an open window, and onto a pubescent boy's bed. He immediately looks up and says, "Thanks, God."

Most of us will be doing a lot of that today.

Dear Candidate;

Congratulations on your recent advancement to this stage of candidacy. Receiving the Sacrament of Orders is a serious and life changing event. We know you have approached this matter understanding the profound privilege and responsibility it is to serve as a minister of the Church, deputed and empowered to perform certain offices of Divine worship. We hope you are making yourself ready to receive an increase of sanctifying grace, making you a fit and holy minister in the discharge of your prospective office. To help us qualify our assessment of your spiritual, mental, moral, and physical qualities required for the fitting discharge of the order, please answer the following questions. Attach additional sheets if you feel further explanation is needed.

You go to dinner with Charles Nelson Reilly, Paul Lynde, and Richard Simmons. Who do you sit by?
What is Ultra-Suede?
Would you rather drive a Dodge Neon or KITT?
Have you ever worn chaps?
Have you ever been alone with another man while listening to "It's Raining Men?"
Which of the following would you describe as "fabulous?"

Your Yorkie
Your curtains

If you are not ordained, which "career lifestyle" do you see yourself following?

Florist
Interior designer
Flight attendant
Cowboy
Motorcycle Cop
Indian
Construction Worker
Biker

What is chevre?

Thank you for taking the time to help us discern your suitability and giftedness.

Sincerely,
- - -

There's No Need to Be Unhappy...

"Men who have 'deep-rooted homosexual tendencies' or who sustain a 'gay culture' may not be trained to become Roman Catholic priests, the Vatican says in a new document posted Tuesday on a Catholic news website.

However, the church says, if a man had 'transitory' homosexual tendencies that have been 'overcome' for at least three years, he may be admitted to a seminary, the school that trains priests.

The document was quickly criticized by some gay rights sympathizers, who say the church does not understand homosexuality."

LA Times

Never mind the long convoluted history of sex in the church- I guess I should say "The Church"- the Vatican's general position on homosexual priests was that one could not be actively gay and be a priest. That meant you could be gay but you couldn't do gay. This was consistent with the approach to celibacy for non-gay priests. You could be not gay but not do not gay (?). There are problems with this but at least it was consistent.

That part about tendencies though; that's new. I wonder what, if anything, that means for not gay priests, but even more I wonder what exactly "deep-rooted homosexual tendencies" or a "gay culture" are. If it's what I think it is- why does it matter? I don't imagine Paris Hilton or the characters from Sex & The City want to be priests anyway.

I'm not a gay Catholic priest; I'll never be a gay Catholic priest, but I think this feeds (and exists because of) a lot of the nonsense surrounding issues of sexuality in the church; so it matters to me and others too. I don't buy the approach to sex (and sometimes the universe in general) the Catholic church and a lot of the rest of the church rely on. (Hmm, that's loaded.) I don't mean it's inconvenient to me so I reject it. I mean it's wrong- as far as I understand it and Christianity.

If you work with the understanding that actions in themselves have value attached to them then you would say something like, "Don't do 'X'" or, "Be sure to do 'Not X' and you're in the club." In short- every act of sex has to be open to reproduction or it's wrong is the "Not X." Gay just like not gay celibacy fits that. But the tendency and culture parts change things. It may be a good change if it brings us to see actions connected to people. It seems more though that it will simply broaden the list of prohibited acts. We'll see.

The whole document will be released on the 29th; we'll know more then. But right now, how silly is it to believe there is a "gay culture" or "tendencies" that are sin that bar one from being a priest? All I can imagine are stupid stereotypes or absurdly hilarious questionnaires and interviews with a lot of "Do you now or have you ever..." type questions.

Sitting In Limbo- Jimmy Cliff
Uptight- Stevie Wonder
Jackass- Green Day
Last Stop: This Town- The Eels
Heroes- David Bowie
American Idiot- Green Day
She Watch Channel Zero?!- Public Enemy
The Guns of Brixton- The Clash

Ipecac

These explain an awful lot too.

This Is the Edge

This morning NPR was deconstructing parts of the same speech I looked at the other day. Of course they were much more circumspect about it, but they did say that there was a lot of hedging about what is true, especially when contrasting who said what they knew when and how. I'm guessing there's going to be a lot more in the news about the NIE on Iraq, another released intelligence review, and the president's statement that Congress had access to the same information he did. So what? I'm not saying I was the first to suggest these things- but hey I did mention them before NPR so there's something to my being a little bit ahead of the larger pop culture curve. Like being Latino- I was doing that way before it was cool.

I also got a ton of those "you have been logged on illegal websites..." emails a couple of days before anyone was talking about them. I'm so cutting edge. I didn't figure it was real so deleted it, and in the off chance that it was- I'm sure the CIA would know how to get in touch with me again. But then I started getting more and more.

It made me wonder how lame you have to be to open an attachment that comes from someone you don't know. If you haven't seen it already, this is how sophisticated the doorway is:

Dear Sir/Madam,

we have logged your IP-address on more than 30 illegal Websites.

Important:
Please answer our questions!
The list of questions are attached.


Yours faithfully,
Steven Allison



++++ Central Intelligence Agency -CIA-
++++ Office of Public Affairs
++++ Washington, D.C. 20505

++++ phone: (703) 482-0623

Really- that's how the CIA would conduct its investigations? Okay- I guess I should open the attachment- What, what happened?

Where do you even begin with how horribly stupid the set up is? I got a ton more in the following days with different headings- some from the FBI, aol, yahoo, schools, and administrators. This means people I know, or at least people with my address were opening the attachments.

So this is how we think the CIA works. It kind of explains a lot.


These Songs Are Cool- Get on the Wagon While You can
Hurricane- Bob Dylan
Riot- Miles Davis
World's A Mess- X

Sometimes Something is Nothing

Of the more than half a million sites one finds searching for "'see through a glass dimly" with Google in the UK, mine is the first. That's a pretty specific search isn't it?

Okay, so one guest on el show kept saying how horrible it was for anyone to judge any choice someone else makes. That what we needed to do was be open minded and accept other people's spirits. I don't even know what that means- and when pressed, neither did she.

The gist of her take was that there's an unfair social stigma attached to women involved in stripping, prostitution, and pornography; though in her own life she would not, date or marry a "sex worker" nor would she allow any of her children to do the same or be involved in the industry because there's a stigma attached. She said bodies are beautiful things and it's a wonderful thing for a woman to want to share that on a stage. She said I was a hypocrite if I ever saw a nude person in a movie or had sex with my wife while saying that it was wrong for anyone else to do the same. She couldn't understand why I thought they were not the same.

The other guy on the "panel" advocated seeing people (well at least the women) in the sex trade as "hoes" (is that the correct plural?)- it's a morally reprehensible thing to do. Though he conceded he would and does go to "gentlemen's clubs." Those are interesting sides to a coin. One side saying it's okay to do but I wouldn't do it. The other side saying it's not okay but I do it. I guess to be fair- he was actually saying what they were doing is wrong, not that going to see a stripper is necessarily wrong.

Nobody believed that I had never been to a strip bar- well at first they believed it 'cause they thought I was gay. Then when they learned I was married no one believed I wasn't into strippers. Again, that idea of not being able to see real live people as more than objects to be consumed came up. That's totally my bag- don't steal it.

I wasn't really good on the show because I didn't have an idea to throw out there. I was more interested in responding to and asking about what the others were saying. Not that I don't have thoughts on the subject- I was just kind of turned off by the format. I knew it was coming, my bad.

I'm not going to try to connect this or turn it into anything more than what it is here. Except that it's all kind of connected to that idea of chastity that I said I wanted to write about more but haven't. It was pretty lame. It took a lot for me to not be mean- or at least to not say, "That's stupid." Would that have been mean? Oh well.

Today's Column One (a Times feature) reported on the increase of having mistresses and divorces in China coinciding with the broadening of capitalism. Their divorce rate is still in the low 20% range though. Oh they have so much to learn.

Morning Has Broken- Cat Stevens
Motion Picture Soundtrack- Radiohead
Bombtrack- Rage Against the Machine
Big Me- Foo Fighters
Smile- Weezer
Circle- Miles Davis
Fairies Wear Boots- Black Sabbath
Medication is Wearing Off- The Eels
You Really Got Me- The Kinks
Where Boys Fear to Tread- Smashing Pumpkins
Top of the World- Shonen Knife

Qu'est-ce que c'est

So I taped the Latino View today. It was exactly what you would expect- if you expect a lot of talking over each other without listening. It was silly. I got a free meal out of it though. That made it worthwhile. I guess that makes me the Starr Jones.

Oh I just realized that seems like I'm making fun of her size. I'm not. I'm making fun of her reputation for looking for freebies.

This is the first opportunity I've had to sit and write about it, or anything else for that matter, and I've got a bee hive of thoughts on it- but I'm going to bed.

No Mas Trabajodoras de Sexo

So tomorrow I go to tape that TV show I mentioned. I've been describing it as a sort of hybrid of The View for Latinos and that show Jon Favreau makes where famous people sit around and gab about whatever. It's like that. A bunch of us sit around a table and talk about a specific topic, in this case the topic is "sex workers."

I was picked for this show because of my name (for those who don't know it's Mexican de los Brownies). Well I was selected as a possible participant because of my name. My picture and interview with the producers pushed me to the front of the line. This means they either thought I was articulate and thoughtful or that I was likely to get in a fight with the other participants. Given the way a lot of Spanish TV talk shows work it can only be the latter.

This is misleading- it's not a Spanish talk show. It's more oriented toward a market that is just beginning to be exploited- the Mes and Like Mes. You may see in the future, depending where you live, more and more shows, even a couple of channels, targeting English speaking Latino culture. This doesn't just mean Brown people, but White people who like Brown people's stuff (my wife would be one of those). This show is like that- except I don't have to wear a Luche Libre mask or do back-up vocals for Beck.

So the producers picked a handful of different nobodies who have some type of thought or other on this or that. I guess they want to show that Latinos, like everyone else, have only partially developed, inconsistent, and contradictory thoughts on a number of topics. I fear I'll do a great job of this.

What About Morissey, Buey?
Where I End and You Begin- Radiohead
Overture- The Marriage of Figaro
Wave of Mutilation- The Pixies
I'll Take You There- The Staple Singers
Satisfaction- Devo
In the Garage- Weezer
Dance War- Frank Black

It's Not You; It's Me

This might sound much worse than I mean it: I care about me. If it does sound bad it may be because we find it difficult to care for ourselves without caring only for ourselves. That's not what I mean. I care about my self, I care about who I am and who I am becoming.

Lately I've been really wrapped up in being angry and harping on things that don't help that. Or maybe I've just been settling for being angry about things that are so easily contemptible and thinking that's worth something. Maybe that's what it is- I don't know. Right now it feels shallow.

I read the paper this morning and among other things read yet another story about the Keystone Cop approach to governance and was more disgusted with myself for reacting to it than I could or maybe should be with the actors or powers in the story. Sure it matters, and it is entirely appropriate to get upset about stuff that is upset-worthy. But I wonder if I've been settling for that- or if it's been a sort of pornography to me. Well, I guess I less wonder if it is than confess that it has been.

This doesn't mean this is how it is or need be for anyone else. I don't know anyone else.

Que Onda Guero- Beck
Take, Take, Take- The White Stripes
Gimme Shelter- The Rolling Stones
Nowhere Man- The Beatles
Come Into My Life- Jimmy Cliff

The Wheel's Still In Spin

Who says satire's dead? We in the US have our very own Satirist Laureate.

We've had to call the cops on our neighbors a couple of times. One time "the mom" was in the middle of the street beating her grown kid with a shovel handle. A lot of times they just yell at each other a lot, but when it gets out of hand we'll make a call. The times we've interacted with them they've never given any indication that they hold this against us. I guess they know sometimes people nearby have to get others involved. But sometimes it's okay to just let people fight it out.

And What Is Truth?

Skybalon's Mom- Did you go to school today?
Skybalon- shocked to be asked- Yeah.
(I did in fact go to school- I just seldom stayed)
Skybalon's Mom- Why did I get a call from school asking where you were?
Skybalon- shrugging -Uhuhuh... There's another Robert Gonzalez there, they sometimes confuse us- maybe they meant the other one. I was at school today. (Really- I had no way of knowing why the school would call and ask where I was- I could speculate but that's not what I was asked to do. And there really was another student there with my name. That was true, and frequently very convenient.)

Ahh what passes for truth to the morally undeveloped... or spiritually dead.

Did you know that the Republican led Senate Select Intelligence Committee- the one group of Senators who had the intelligence clearance to see the actual, "uninterpreted," National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq voted against the authorization for the use of force against Iraq? That's right. Their Republican president wanted to invade Iraq and based on what they saw, they said, "no."

Hippies.

After that, others got the "sanitized" intelligence summary crafted by CIA director George Tenet. This version excluded information that discredited the intelligence and statements used as a justification for war.

"Members of the Congress of both political parties, and members of the United Nations Security Council, agree that Saddam Hussein is a threat to peace and must disarm. We agree that the Iraqi dictator must not be permitted to threaten America and the world with horrible poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons. Since we all agree on this goal, the issues is : how can we best achieve it?"
(Sure according to intelligence the threat is being successfully addressed with enormous no fly zones, international sanctions, weapons inspectors, and his own enemies surrounding him but I wants me a war.)

"We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas. Saddam Hussein also has experience in using chemical weapons. He has ordered chemical attacks on Iran, and on more than forty villages in his own country. These actions killed or injured at least 20,000 people, more than six times the number of people who died in the attacks of September the 11th."
(They did produce it- I'm totally telling the truth- they don't have it now- but whatever.)

"We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and gases."
(Hah we did 'learn' that. But we also know that the CIA finds the source not very credible- stupids)

If you go to this link see if anything in the graphic strikes you as ironic or... say subliminably confessional.

The Adventure and The Resolution- Frank Black
Let Down- Radiohead
New York- Sex Pistols
Army of Me- Bjork

A Tortured Argument

"Hey, Jesus, I can't help but look at women as if they were objects created simply for my pleasure and gratification; but I don't have sex with any of them, mostly because they tend to find me repulsive. I just look, well I guess, really, I leer.. and stare. I do that too. But no sex- none at all. So it's cool right?"

"No it's not cool- if you look at a woman that way, you don't see her the way I want you to see her. If you see anybody as an object- as something to be consumed by you- you don't see them the way I see them or the way you should see them. In fact you don't see yourself as you were created to. You're not alive the way you are meant to be, that's why you can't help it-

"Hey wait, Jesus, aren't you redefining 'adultery' by saying that?"

"Yes- I am."

"But you're making the definition more powerful than it was before."

"I am- that's because it's possible to live in a greater power than you do now. "

"That's weird"

...

"So hey, can I do that then? I mean, what if someday I need to torture somebody? I just change what it means to torture- and 'squibeldy-do' it's all good."

"No- that's the opposite of what I just did."

"So I can't do that?"

"No... you're kind of missing the point."

"Oh."

Make A Little Birdhouse in Your Soul

There are some church bodies responding to our not so Christian national advocacy or redefinition of torture. Their influence is limited though.

Sojourners has been calling our country to account and asking Christians to get engaged. The NCC has recently spoken out against torture too. That's good.

Sojourners has been effective in bringing to light other issues ignored by the Oval Office prayer team and reminding the church and the world that being a Christian is about more than putting up monuments to the 10 Commandments, resurrecting Deist creation theories, making sure babies have the right to be born (but after that screw them), or upholding marriage by making sure gays can't do it because we can't uphold it by staying married ourselves.

The thing about the NCC and Sojourners though, most Evangelical pastors could not care less what they say. The Bible might suggest it, the Holy Spirit might lead us to it, voices in the Body of Christ might be articulating it, but unless James Dobson or Ted Haggard decree it (and send out talking point bulletins), we just can't find the will to care.

I understand how difficult it must be to find the time to think about something like torture. If I had to preach and do all the other things pastors do, I might rely on topics sent from the Mother Hen too. So get the Mother Hen to say something.

Bob says he can't believe we're having this conversation in America. I can't either; it's letting out a cat that's been happily in the bag for a long time. (If that's too subtle- We, like other nations, have historically relied on torture). More egregious though is the silence of Evangelicals- I can't believe that. There- you have two people who can't believe something. Is that what we want- people going around in disbelief?

So absolutely contact your legislators (the Sojourners link above can help with that). But, like I said before, contact Pastor Ted and Jimmy D.. Remind them who they follow. Remind them who they represent. Remind them whose power fills us.

I think another feature I might add is how many times I avoided "swear" words- that is, how many seemed to crop up in my thoughts that I avoided in writing. (I tend to not believe in bad words- but I know other people do. What can I say- I'm a giver). This time there were 2. I wonder if you could guess which ones and where.

Samba Para Ti- Santana
Bonnie's Blues- Dizzy Gillespie
Come Around Again- Jet
Same Dress New Day- Tripping Daisy
Summertime- Johnny Come Lately
Humming Chorus- Herbert Von Karajan

[Not] Big In Japan

The World is one of my least favorite NPR shows. It is one of my favorite places though. In that spirit I thought I would mention the parts of the world people stopping by represent:
A bunch of us from all over the US
Australia
UK
Argentina
Portugal
Mexico
Barbados
Canada
Guatemala

Blinded Me With Science

I'm working on the assumption that there is a connection between feminized fish and the new strain of granola Evangelicals. Because I have a lot of other things to do I did some searching for any studies that show torture, poverty or bullets also causing feminization. If it works for fish...

I used "lead," "pollutant," "feminization," and "sex" for one set of search criteria. So far in biology journals I've found articles on fish, reptile, amphibian, roach, and mosquito feminization caused by various pollutants; unusually high same sex pairings (!!) among birds near Super Fund sites; and I learned there is something called a mummichog. But I haven't found anything to scare people into worrying that lead (in the form of bullets) might make someone gay.

I searched some social science databases with the criteria "torture," "poverty," "bullet," and "homosexual." I found some articles that discuss sexual risk as an outcome of social oppression, some data that can be misrepresented to correlate poverty with promiscuity, and gun shot wounds and STD's- nothing that says being poor will make you gay, though. That's too bad. I hoped I could find something that would convince Evangelicals that there are social concerns other than the whats and whos of people's sex lives. Of course I'm using sex to do that- ha!

I guess I don't really need facts. What I really need is a catchy title, some proof texts, a little innuendo, and just enough data to take advantage of our good old below average rankings in science education. All that in a carefully crafted email forward might create an Evangelical movement to rival that of Antebellum America.

She's Tidied Up and I Can't Find Anything
So Much Things To Say- Bob Marley
Kim- Charlie Parker
We'll Get Over- The Staple Singers
The Union Forever- The White Stripes

Guns Don't Make People Gay, I Do

The NAE and other Evangelical groups have recently declared the environment is a legitimate Christian concern.

Prior to this imprimatur, despite it seeming to be a Biblical value and part of the Church's history, environmentalism was seen as the interest of pagan hacky-sack playing abortionists. Long ago, a youth pastor from a Friends Church actually told me not to recycle because when we run out of everything Jesus was coming back. Recently, Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe and Pat Robertson explained that environmentalism is ultimately idolatry. Despite that, some Evangelicals have turned a corner on this issue, that's good.

I wonder what's different.

In a completely unrelated story, today's Times reports on a study that finds pollution is playing havoc with the sex traits of coastal fish. In short, male fish are being feminized because of pollution. This isn't new. Freshwater animals have long suffered in this way from sewage and industrial contaminants but this study is "among the first" to show these effects on saltwater marine life.

Now if we can just find a connection between gun shot wounds or poverty and "feminization."

Exodus- Bob Marley
MFC- Pearl Jam
Things Have Changed- Bob Dylan
Just Another- Pete Yorn

BRB

Ah mid-semester, the time when a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of not going to class, staying awake for 33 hours straight, and writing- lots and lots of writing. But not for my blog-

I will be out of the office the next couple of whiles. I'll miss you, DBravo, and you too, PaddyO. And you, CityFrog, I'll miss you most of all. I hope you're back when I am.

Oh how about a cliff hanger? I might be on a Latin TV show. It's not Jose Luis sin Censura or El Gordo y la Flaca, wouldn't that be fun? No, stupid, I meant stupid. I'll be playing "Raul" on Angel Rebelde. Oh that's not true either. So come on back to find out what's going on.

In the meantime send a note to John Mc Cain asking him to keep on fighting the good fight (he's said he will amend every major piece of legislation to include torture restrictions in response to W's threats of veto). This still has to go through the House so you could write your Representative too. And it's a long shot, but do you think we could get Pastor Ted or Dr. Dobson to care?

I Am Very Particular About Building Codes

If you didn't watch Arrested Development last night, you might be just a little more sad today than you would otherwise be. Unless of course, instead of almost puking from laughing so hard at a Jet Pack-Giant Mole battle, you really did puke, sadly ending a 21 year vomit-free streak. Then you may be worse off.

Don't worry, if you come over I will let you watch it on VHS. Probably not tonight though- there is a group in town calling themslves "Friends Fellowship" and I'm going to pay them a visit.

I wonder what will happen...

Ees A Sweater... What Can You Say About Men Such As These?

We are hardly as cold as we will be but the scarves and heavy sweaters have made their first appearances of the season. The beenies, scarves, and cashmere sweaters are more a fashion statement than any protection against the cold but there they are. And I use cold very loosely here. Maybe 60 degrees (that's about 15 to the rest of the world out there) only counts as cold compared to our triple digit summers. But our Southern California Abercrombies can hardly wait to show us how extensive and casually luxurious their winter wardrobes are. So these first few days of the temperature dropping are very important. You need to be the first to wear the Wakely Mountain supersoft 100% sueded cotton Vintage Abercrombie Wash in Heather Gray or else what's the point?

Sometimes evil is described as having a negative existence-like darkness to light or like cold to heat. It's not what is- but a result of what's missing. That's a pretty good way thinking about it unless we think that means there's nothing to it. There are only a few days of the year here when we get to feel the power of cold- when the wind is sharp on our ears and the air cuts through lifted collars, but even that hints at what cold is and does. It is different from our warmth. It steals from us. It takes our heat, a product of our being, and dissipates it. And when we're dead, that's it. No more heat, just cold -we're the same temperature as whatever's around us.

I was in New York last January. I walked everywhere and wasn't particularly cold except for one morning. I've been in the cold before. I've spent winters in the mountains and visited San Francisco in the Summer (sorry Mr. Twain). But that visit to New York was cold. I don't know if it was because it's close to the river, but walking up Broadway from 116th St. to 121st I was dying. Every breath I took was like a cold shower, my gloves were worthless, my eyeballs hurt and my ears burned. My ears even hurt inside, then they slowly went numb. When I finally got into a building, my ears slowly warmed again. It seemed like I could feel my blood forcing its way through my frozen cartilage. They stung as they warmed. It hurt more then their freezing.

I know 60 degrees isn't 50, 40's not 30, 20's not 10 and so on. But when is it cold enough that we notice. When is it so cold we can't?

This feels a lot more pretentious then most posts. Whatever. Maybe it is cold, maybe it isn't. Maybe it's time to put on a sweater, maybe it's just a show. Maybe it all depends on what the definition of "is" is.

Oh, and does anybody get the allusion in the title?

Coming Soon: Answers to Our St. Augustine Sex Quiz!!

Some ELO Forced Into the Party Shuffle Just for Bob
Efil's God- The Eels
Papa Don't Take No Mess- James Brown
Hanging Around the Day- The Polyphonic Spree
Let It Bleed- The Rolling Stones
Thirty-Three- Smashing Pumpkins
Clint Eastwood- Gorillaz
Swlabr- Cream
We Want the Funk- Parliament
What Is And What Should Never Be- Led Zeppelin
Can't Get It Out of My Head- ELO
Do Ya- ELO
Livin' Thing- ELO
Flamenco Sketches- Miles Davis

FREE VOCABULARY LESSON

Tautology: e.g. Anything I do is within the law because anything I do is within the law.

The Sky Is Glass The Sea Is Brown

Dear NAE;

I cannot find words to fully express my joy at your willingness to affirm the validity of expressions of Christianity other than the American. I had thought for too long you were working for the dominance of the US American type of Christianity and conflating western political and economic values with a distinct Christian ethos. Perhaps no one would fault you for that; after all, you are the "National" Association of Evangelicals.
But this is clarifying. This move expresses a necessary humility, the answer to prayer and, a long overdue confession that we have for too long confused what it means to be the Body of Christ with a milquetoasty, Main Street USA, Americana. Thank you.
Just by way of logistics though, why did you start with Armenia? Is it an alphabetical approach? Are they the least among us? Is it an attempt to reconcile Eastern and Western divisions too? Whatever the case may be, I am glad.
Thanks, NAE.

Sincerely,
---

maybe they meant something else

Anybody notice they took Pastor Ted off of the NAE main page? Too much press?

Titles Mean Something
To You- Duke Ellington
I Might Be Wrong- Radiohead
Mr. Blue Sky- ELO
One Step Closer- U2

Let's Pretend You're Augustine

Hey Kids, I use the word SEX in the following post. Put your thinking caps on.

You are St. Augustine, the theologian, not the grass. Put these sexual activities into their proper descending moral order:

1.) Heterosexual rape
2.) Married heterosexual reproductive sex
3.) Bestiality
4.) Married heterosexual non-reproductive sex
5.) Incest
6.) Unmarried heterosexual reproductive sex
7.) Masturbation
8.) Unmarried heterosexual non-reproductive sex
9.) Homosexual man to man sex
10.) Celibacy
11.) Homosexual woman to woman sex

Don't make Augustine angry by saying they're all the same or some of the distinctions don't matter. He spent a lot of time clarifying the differences. So give it a shot why don't you?

Natural Sonic Order
Blitzkrieg Bop- The Ramones
Landslide- Fleetwood Mac
Lost in the Supermarket- The Clash

So Easily Distracted

So I think I should explain something. It seems that if I criticize the president or his minions, someone inevitably assumes I am devoted to the opposition. I am, but not the opposition you might think. I'm not a Republican, but I'm not a Democrat either. It seems a natural assumption. If it's not black it's white. If you're not right wing, you're left wing. If you're not a Republican you're a Democrat. Most of the time, for many people, this is true.

I am very critical of this administration. To make sure I am clear, I was critical of the last administration. (I shouldn't, but I have to say that so that I can get to the end.) I am very critical of politicians in general. This is necessary. It's necessary because I am a part of the church. The church isn't supposed to be as it has, especially as Evangelicals have been. We shouldn't be so desperate to control a political agenda that we sacrifice our souls. We are not chaplains to the left or right. We are not the conscience of a world whose soul is so seared it won't listen anyway. We are the church; we are a people whose lives are possible because of the reality of Christ. We are the church so the world knows it's the world.

Related to what I've said before, this is political. The life a Christian is called to is political, and I am going to be the guy looking like a jerk saying to the "world" "they are dreaded and feared, their justice and authority originate with themselves, but they will be held guilty whose strength is their god." And if a politician claims they are a Christian (which I still have trouble with), well then "woe to them who is rebellious and defiled."

Unless being a Christian is just about being a Boy Scout.

You Never Know What You Can Do Unless You Try

You'll be lucky if I get another post up today- Seriously, I have a lot of good things to say, consider yourself lucky to read them. I have a ton to finish before this evening.

But I did want to mention something that was on my mind. I woke to Larry Wilkerson, being interviewed this morning on NPR and what he said got me a'wonderin.' What kind of husband would I be if I pushed the very limits of what was allowed in my marriage? I know I'm not the best husband in the world* but I try. But what if I didn't? What if I started "defining down" the whole husband bit? "Hey I might not be that great a husband, but at least I'm no OJ right? " I mean what if I never talked to her, never spent time with her, didn't kiss her or kill mice for her, we didn't pray together, didn't have sex with each other, what if I didn't clean up around this dump blah blah blah, but at the same time I didn't beat her, cheat on her, speak to her harshly or other bad husband stuff? Would that make it seem like I didn't really love my wife? Would that make it seem like I didn't really care about the vows I made with her? What would that say about me as a person?

Oohhhh there's a punch line here and it's so great but it might cross into unseemly hackery.

Okay here was the plan: I was going to say "You might call me a Dick. And you'd be right." Then I was going to link "Dick" to a picture of Big Time and the word "right" to the NPR story where Colin Powell's former chief of staff told Steve Inskeep that Big Time was the architect of the "Well what if we just electrocute their balls, is that torture? Oh... Okay how about saddamizing them (get it "saddam-ise')? That's cool right? Hmm... no thumb screws, we already know we can't do that... the rack.. no... Well let's just see what we can do before someone stops us" policy.

Is that hacky? I dunno.


*According to my research (Google Image search) this is the best husband in the world.

Unitl I return, why don't you read some of the "best ofs" I have archived just for you?

Highest Rating Jazz Smart Playlist

Oh That Liberal Media and GAMES, GAMES, GAMES

Or at least GAME, GAME
Could the lies of the media be any more clear than they are in this headline: CIA Running Secret Terror Jails? If it's a secret, how does anyone know? Liberal media, indeed.

Feeling Generous
So how about some more games? I just thought of two. Now a less giving blogger (I am totally okay with the identity now) would give you one game now and save the other for a less fruitful period. But not me. I give and I give, even when I have other things that I need to do. So here are the games:

1.) I give a word that no longer means what it used to mean. For example, "literally," as in, "You will 'literally' die when I tell you this story." This is a great one because it is now used to mean the opposite of what it really means. That would be worth more points.

Let's begin with "interrogate." As in:
"The Red Cross is investigating CIA 'interrogation' tactics."
Can you guess what it means?

Why don't you try uncovering some of your own?

Here's another game:
You know how a band like Led Zeppelin can create really lame songs like All Of My Love and The Crunge or really great songs like Communication Breakdown and Ten Years Gone By? Or the Wachowski brothers can make Matrix Revolutions and The Matrix, George Lucas- The Phantom Menace and Empire Strikes Back. Well looking at any one of those things someone could say, "Oh this is the end of Led Zeppelin- when they put out a song like The Crunge you know it's over." Then "wham" they hit you with an album like Physical Graffiti. Or you're watching The Matrix and think, "I can't wait for the rest of the story," then they they crap the next two movies all over you. If you got off the Zeppelin bus at The Crunge you would've missed Houses of the Holy but you'd still want to get off before All Of My Love. It's a gamble.

Anyway, I will pick a person, event, or some other cultural phenomena and you guess whether or not you should "hop on the bus, "sit tight," or pull the "stop request" cord.


Madonna as a Children's Book Author
Emergent Churches
I bet you thought I would put Karl Rove on this list... okay
Karl Rove

Overture- The Who
Where It's At- Beck
Maria- Rage Against the Machine
Spanish Flea- Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass
Tonight, Tonight- Smashing Pumpkins
Blessed To Be A Witness- Ben Harper
Exodus- Bob Marley
My Own Worst Enemy- Lit
Mi Par D'Essere Con la Testa- The Barber of Seville

Orange, Blue, Yellow...?

Does anybody know what the terror alert level is? I'm a little concerned, before last years elections we were getting updates all the time, now not even a peep. I'm worried someone might not have their eye on the ball.


Aluminum- The White Stripes

Another Game... Kind Of

Would you like the power of invisibility?

go to comments

Peter Falk Called...

One more thing, that whole bit with the search criteria above the title didn't work. Drag.

I Have a TV and I Know How to Use It

I don't watch a lot of TV. This isn't because I'm tragically hip or morally pretentious. To be clear, I may be morally pretentious, but that's not why I don't watch much TV. I'm just busy.

I am aware of TV. I tend to have a sense of what other people are watching and have seen most popular shows once or at least enough of them to know their premises and frequently, why I don't like them. But I am well below the national average for hours of television watched.

I am very committed to the shows I do like, though. So that makes up for my pinko TV snobbery right? Regretably, The Simpsons no longer makes this list, it does usually benefit from its Sunday evening time slot though. I don't know what happened. Remember when it used to be thoughtful, warm, critical, funny, and observant? I guess it still can be, it's just more miss than hit, or I'm turning in to a real Comic Book Guy.

So, these are the shows I go out of my way to watch or record (on magnetic tape- not TiVo, I'm keepin' it real, South Side 4-0, G.):

Arrested Development
King of The Hill
Bernie Mac
Everybody Hates Chris

And now... My Name Is Earl and The Office
Check your local listings but I'll be watching them tonight at 9pm on NBC

My Name Is Earl is great. At first glance it seems the show might just go with the easy and often mean-spirited jokes about poor people or Jack Ass style physical abuse. But it's easy and mean-spirited jokes about poor people and Jack Ass style physical abuse with moral awareness and development. Yes!

The basic gist of it is the title character figures his life stinks because he's been a horrible person his whole life so he tries to make up for it by fixing everything he's done wrong. This makes up the plot line of the individual episodes. The larger arc of the story is he won't cash a $100,000 lottery ticket until he has earned it (he's afraid of what will happen if something good he doesn't deserve comes his way). This is his understanding of Karma. That's not Karma but the writers of the show are smart enough to treat their limited knowledge of a deep religious teaching by communicating it through Earl. Earl hears about Karma in the hospital from Carson Daly in a morphine fog. Right there the writers critique the whole celebrity pop religion phenomenon and give themselves an out for the times when they completely misrepresent its true expression like when Earl will call for "an army of Karma" to come rescue him. Brilliant.

So though religion is often incorrectly portrayed, (see Bob's recent post on the subject) My Name Is Earl knows what it doesn't know. And even better, it knows what we tend to get wrong about things like repentance, justice, revenge, selfishness and how doing right is often difficult and different from what we originally thought.

That's a simple lesson, but it is so rarely done as well or as funny as it is on My Name Is Earl.

So watch it- especially if you are a Nielsen Family. Too many of the shows I like get cancelled.

(I just got a commercial on the telephone- not a telemarketer, a recorded commercial) Weird.

In The Evening- Led Zeppelin (This is one of the worst Led Zeppelin songs ever- what's it doing in my music library?)
I Wish- Stevie Wonder
Sgt. Pepper's...- The Beatles
Kiss- Prince
Stay Away- Nirvana
You and Whose Army- Radiohead
I Must Have That Man- Billie Holiday
Sigmund & The Seamonster- Tripping Daisy

What?! How Dare You or Just Scroll To The End

You really need to read previous posts and the comments to get what's going on here.

This is my blog- how dare you challenge anything I say?! Ever!

Actually I appreciate responses. These posts tend to be rough drafts of my thoughts... well... no I guess my thoughts are the rough drafts. What would the actualized thoughts be? Nonsense?

Anyway I appreciate the responses. I throw something out and someone else comes along and says "Do you really believe that?" That's good, except when I have papers due. You got that Dbravo and Paddy O? Save your thoughtful responses for when I don't have something to do! Oh wait- I don't want that- I need you to feed my narcissism. This has been gnawing at the back of my head and I had two papers due yesterday. What could I do?

That said...

It's not trollish to talk about politics. I think. I take trollish to mean "wanting to eat goats or possessing the quality of one who eats goats" - in which case I am trollish, but I don't think you said anything in your post that suggests you are. I guess you could be trollish. Do you like goat?

In any case, it's okay to talk about politics. In fact it's necessary, not in the "Why do you hate America, fag?" kinda' way but in the being political is a part of who we are kinda' way. Politics is usually narrowly viewed as just what deals with government or policy issues. But, that's boring and not all there is to it. Our lives are political, that's not all they are, but in our relationships and decisions where questions of right and ought come into play there is the political. "But those are moral decisions," one might say. They are, but our moral decisions have broader implications, especially as we do not live isolated lives. "Well then those are social concerns, not political," is the response. I say, "They are social concerns but they are also political becau- "No, no, no, the political only has to do with questions of governance." Well, "stop interrupting," I say.

Maybe this will help: Ms. Rosa Parks. Now I am not going to sully her memory by claiming she is on my side or anything like that. What I will do is suggest she offers an example of how the boundaries between the personal, social, economic, political et al are not so clear or are at least permeable. Her decision to not give up her seat was a moral decision in that she acted on the basis of a certain value. It was a social decision in that it was related to the larger society. It was a political decision in that it was designed to challenge the standing policy. It was even an economic decision in that it was connected to a planned bus boycott which itself was a political move. (Unlike the popular myth suggests she was not just too tired. It was a planned event which itself was a political, moral, social... act). It was all of these things and more. To see it as only one of them is to not see the decision and event as it is. To limit who we are to one of these categories, or to eliminate one of them is to not acknowledge fully who we are. As another example, take the social, moral, spiritual, political, et al act of confessing Jesus is the Christ. To keep it in bounds, all one has to do is confess with their lips and believe in their heart that Jesus is Lord. In context, all one has to do is challenge the accepted political order that claimed another Lord and say Jesus is Lord. All one has to do is come to the spiritual realization that Jesus is Lord. All one has to do is etc... This doesn't mean it's all just one big thing- or it means it is one big thing with many properties.

So this only explains why I see the political in things, now whether or not my words may be more or less Christian than the words of people who get into bed with the president is something else.

I wouldn't answer that specific question because I don't think I see degrees of Christianity in things or characterize things (other than people) as Christian. I might say my words are more truthful than those of some of the people who get into bed with the president. I would say that tentatively though.

I too was bothered by some of the attacks on the Clintons from Christians. It wasn't that Clinton was above criticism nor is it because of the NT admonition that Christians be subject to the government. I don't see subjection precluding speaking honestly to what is wrong. It's because a lot of the attacks on Clinton were not honest. A lot of the attacks on this president are not honest.

It was okay to say Clinton's lustfulness and adultery were wrong. It was okay to say his lowering the poverty threshold to manipulate poverty rates and boot people from welfare roles was wrong (not many people did though). It was also okay to say that the era of economic prosperity he oversaw was fundamentally flawed in its exclusion of an entire class of working people. It's okay to say that W's pridefulness and inability to admit mistakes are wrong. It's okay to say his lying to push for a war is wrong too. It is okay to say his approach to global security is wrong because it is more likely to create regions of intense instability and the growth of insurgent/terrorist groups. These things matter. They affect real people.

But now there are other things to consider. The government is not the church. No matter how many 18th century Natural Law deists are quoted, the state, even the United States, is not the Assembly of Yahweh. Wrong is wrong, but what guides the state is not the same as what guides the Body of Christ.

I will differ from some other Quakers in this, (oh that's right, everybody, I'm a Quaker) I do think the state will differ greatly from the church in how it exists. A sovereign state will have enemies and destroy them. The church will have enemies and love them. The state operates on a principle of parochial or internally guided interest (if the state were a person I'd say self-interest), The church is guided by an externally directed love. A state would not last very long as the church and the church would not last very long as a state. I say this completely aware of what this implies for the last 1700 years of Western history.

What I do think passages like Romans 13 say is that Nero had as legitimate a claim to power as Jimmy Carter, a fascist regime is as valid as a democracy. That's a tough pipe to smoke but that's what the passage seems to say. It doesn't say Nero is good because he is an authority, or that anything he does as an authority is good. His authority is legal but this does not vindicate what he does, it just explains my subordinate position to the state. I can critique the state and I would hopefully use a method understood by the state (not that I imagine my words reach "the state," I'm speaking generically.)

I can critique the church and the standard should be how well we bear witness to the reality of Jesus Christ. Rather than a critique though, I would like to think of my words as inspired, sometimes corrective, sometimes encouraging, always directed as much at myself as to other members, and developed in connection with other members...

...what was I saying...? Oh, we are necessarily political, it's okay to critique the state and its members, it's okay to critique the church and its members but this occurs differently... This is too much, I must interrupt me.

...

Here's a nutshell:

I'm glad W is a Christian, I'm glad Clinton is a Christian. I shudder to think how much worse their behavior would be if they weren't. Whether or not we identify with them is not the issue. Will we identify with the church, will we be a body the testifies to Jesus? Those are my words to a church that too easily cozies up to the powers of the world- those were the words in my previous post. I'm trying to heed those words myself.

My critique of the state is different. W may be a Christian, Clinton may be a Christian too. Pray for them, absolutely pray for them- but this is a democracy and we needn't let anyone get away with murder. That was also a message of the post.

So now, the brilliance of its title is seen. My grandfather was a big old pinko leftist, hence the critique of the state. I am a Christian- there's the source of my warning to the church.

And last but not least- DBravo- a response to your post is coming too.

I Wanna Be Your Lover- Prince
Shining Star- Earth, Wind and Fire
Man In Uniform- Pete Yorn
Now's The Time- Charlie Parker
Strange Fruit- Billie Holiday
Don't Give Up- Peter Gabriel
Sensation- The Who
Motivation- Tripping Daisy
BBF3- Godspeed You! Black Warrior
Santo- The Pixies
Venus- Air
Sweet Talkin' Woman- ELO
Italian Leather Sofa- Cake
Luz Azul- Aterciopelados
'Tis Autumn- Stan Getz
I Can't Explain- The Who