For Us, El Guapo is a Big Dangerous Man Who Wants to Kill Us

If you haven't an eye for obvious turns and cliches: Spoiler Alert

Remember when Billy Graham wrote that editorial in the NY Times about the My Lai war crimes and Lt. Calley's court martial saying we all know war is ugly so why harp on the mass murders, gang rapes, beatings, and mutilations of civilians and in any case we all have our own My Lai's to deal with whether it's an unkind word or thoughtless act so the actual My Lai isn't worth the divisiveness thinking about it might cause but we should pause and reflect on our own personal My Lai's in anticipation of Easter because what's Easter for if not relieving your conscience? No, you don't remember? M'eh well, there's no need to think about it now.

In any case, Billy did have a point there, sometimes, as they say, it's difficult to see the forest for the trees, or in his case, the war crimes for the individual babies heaved into irrigation canals and shot with machine guns or carved with bayonets.

So speaking of the big picture, did you see Indiana Jones and the Reason Brown People Moved Out of Caves? What a nihilistic abyss of a movie that was.

It would be easy to say only the first act of the last Indiana Jones movie is enjoyable, but then that would suggest there is a coherent whole of which that first act is a part. As it is, it seems the first portion of the movie is a bit of developed narrative and well-imagined world accidentally spliced with a long and boring chase, ending with Indiana Jones in a church. In a church? Yes, a church. But not in the type of churches that exist elsewhere in the world of Indiana Jones- existing externally to Indie as objects of investigation. Here, this church functions only as it can when all meaning has collapsed but one hasn't the decency to end one's life: as a last desperate means and symbol of validation and insular self-preservation.

This means something. Treasure isn't the real treasure, knowledge is the real treasure, except that real or pure knowledge isn't suitable to our dimensionally-fixed monkey brains, so friends and family are the real treasure, except friends and family aren't treasure at all, they're just what's left standing when the rugs been pulled from under you and if that's all that's left you'd best cling to it as tenaciously, if not as bitterly, as you can because treasure or not, it's better than nothing.

What?

If you're a baby, don't continue...

So, things start out as they ought, carefree youth speeds away as Indie is bound and wrapped up with a fascism indistinguishable from American militarism. We learn soon enough that Indie is alone in the world- communists and erstwhile comrades threaten his life. His own government finds him suspect. He's no family, no friends, no world of academia. In the most fitting tableau, wholesome Americana is revealed as a world of artifice and death, Indie can't choose death, still he climbs into a coffin- well, a state of the art, lead-lined refrigerator, clearly representing the death that waits at the end of the line for capitalism- so, a coffin. So he climbs in in an attempt to preserve his life, but he is cast out of that world by the agent of mid-century capitalism's savior (an atomic bomb) so he becomes worse than dead.

He is a man without a world.

Then there're some indigenous Meso-American helpers, some Meso-American baddies, a chase, a reunion, some sword fighting, ants, not aliens, and then nothing. If it had ended there it would have been The Graduate. But this is a different world. There can't be nothing. So we get to see the not nothing he chooses.

Indie marries the woman he abandoned years ago, becomes a father to the son he didn't know he had (even though he'd undermined the possibility of fatherhood and is unable to make it more than a performance of fatherhood) and props it all up with a church- THE CHURCH.

And to prove that it saved him, Indie puts his hat back on at the end.

Or it didn't save him and all that's left is this form of Indie that can't really exist, the unexamined Indie he is forced to compulsively play because he is unwilling to actively choose anything out of concern or passion- he settle only for what is left- even of himself. Is Indie really Indie if he's not being Indie all the time?

I knew you weren't a baby. Of course, we all have our own inter-dimensional aliens to face. We must climb into our own lead-lined refrigerators-coffins and journey along the perfectly licensable thrill rides that is our choosing existence.

M'eh.

Oh but more than "M'eh" stay tuned for something big. Rules and regulations are a'comin'.

The Unnecessary Speech

My friends, some forty years ago, in a POW camp in North Viet Nam, a Christian prison guard demonstrated an incredible act of charity that has remained fixed in my mind to this day. This guard showed me a secret kindness by loosening my bonds so I might know even the smallest degree of comfort in that hell. He then traced a cross in the dirt of the prison ground so that I would know why he did what he did. When his superiors approached, he quickly destroyed any evidence of that cross, and life continued for me in that camp much as it had before. But I knew then that God was present.

My faith has been a personal source of stability and strength for all these years, though I've not been keen to wear my faith on my sleeve, as they say. And because of this, through this campaign some have criticized me as not being religious enough, while others have seen my reconciliation with the traditional Christian Republican base as selling out to those I once labeled as agents of intolerance.

Some may ask, given my personal history and values, why I would seek out the endorsements of men like John Hagee and Rod Parsley- one who has said the Catholic church is the great whore, that hurricane Katrina was God's judgment on New Orleans' hedonism, that Hitler was God's agent in bringing about the modern state of Israel, an other has declared America's divine mission to be the destruction of Islam. Well my friends, I confess that if all I knew of these men were their well-known stances and comments on these issues, I would not have sought them out and embraced them. But the truth of the matter is, these men represent an incredibly important part of America, sincere and faithful Americans for whom the week in and week out preaching of Reverends Hagee and Parsley are the core of faith.

My friends, I whole-heartedly reject the comments made by John Hagee and Rod Parsley, comments that correspond to a destructive and plainly insane religious expression, but I cannot, in any practical sense reject the people these pastors represent. They are America- an America in which people believe Adam and Eve walked hand in hand in claw with dinosaurs, an America that believes that many of you will literally spend eternity being poked with pitchforks by horned imps, an America that believes you can change the course of a tornado by thinking real hard at it, an America that believes a fortunate few will float away through the clouds like balloons to heaven, while the unbelievers are left behind to battle the forces of the anti-Christ, who is probably alive right now, and very likely a Jew- or possibly even, a light-skinned Muslim. They are my America. The America I love. The America that has sent my predecessors to the White House, and they are the America that will support and elect me to the highest office in the land.

Some will see this as an attempt to excuse or justify positions that are plainly beyond the pale of thoughtful, compassionate religion. All I can say to that is: it isn't. My friends I can no more justify those positions than I could justify saying the earth is flat or the moon is made of green cheese. The remarks of the Reverends Hagee and Parsley represent a deeply confused, bordering on insane, picture of the world. I want to make it clear that I disagree with the statements that a few have found offensive or controversial, but I am neither a theologian nor pastor and must state that there are many things in religion that are a matter of faith. It was faith that convinced me God was present in that horrible prison camp in North Viet Nam, it was faith that saw me through that time. It is faith that sustains us during tough economic times and our faith that will see us through. It is faith that will lead us to a victory in the global war on terrorism and Islamist extremism and it is faith that keeps this nation strong and proud.

I'd like to leave you with a story. It's the story of Clara Jean Brown- while I was campaigning in Alabama she told me her story. During a thunder storm, Clara was concerned about the safety of her children, so she began to pray. She prayed that they would make it through the storm unharmed. As the storm grew ever closer, she prayed more earnestly for her family. At the moment she said "Amen" the storm was clearly overhead an no sooner was she done praying then lightning struck the street outside her home, travelled through the utility lines and engulfed her room in flames.

Now, Clara, struck by lightning, in the burned out shell of a home, says she feels blessed to be alive. And, my friends, we are as well. We're continuing on because of people like Clara- people who are struck by the lightning life has to offer but keep on. And together, we will continue on, through this campaign, on to the White House, on to a future where we will remain one nation under God.

__________________________
Wear! Wear! Wear!

Some of My Best Friends...

As I've been watching the analysis- as it were- of the Oregon and Kentucky primaries I am struck by the earnestness of some of the punditry that suggests some explanation or another of the difference in the voting behaviors of what we are calling "ethnic whites" in these states. What is particularly striking about their sincerity is that they speak as if the various explanations they offer are credible, though none include the fact necessary for credibility: of these two states only one sits on the side of the Ohio river that was slave territory.

Oh right, I forgot to mention Barack Obama is a black guy and black people used to be slaves in the United States. I think that might matter.

Back to the pundits.

None want to think that this has anything to do with Barack Obama's performance in Kentucky, specifically with those "ethnic whites". It's strange to see all manner of explanations offered while the obvious issue of racism is overlooked. Of course, it may be difficult to broach that subject because none of the exit polls ask; "Did you not vote for Obama because you are racist?" or more pointedly, and likely to get at the issue: "Did you not vote for Obama because he's a [N-word]?" (Sorry, I can't even bring myself to type it- it is not merely impolite but meant to kill. I am a baby about some things.) And if you don't have the hard data that prove ethnic whites didn't vote for Obama because they think, "I don't hate black people, white people are just somehow better," then you can't say it. This seems to me similar to the non-treatment John McCain's pursuit and subsequent rejection of Hagee's and Parsley's endorsements has received.

They are the kind of things we'd rather not talk about because we would have to confront that there is a good deal of ugly inside us as a people. Sure, few Americans are hood-wearing, mouth-breathing racists, still, some of those that run forces, are the same that burn crosses.

Oh that doesn't make the point. The point being that our racism is subtle and pervasive.

It is the racism of this:
The Qweenbean: I don't think I've ever seen this many black people on the news (commenting on the recent surge in the number of commentators that have to be black in order to be allowed to say things about Barack)
skybalon: Sure you have
The Qweenbaen: When?
skybalon: Remember Katrina?

To be clear, I don't think The Qweenbean's racist in noticing more black people on the news though the way know and weigh some of the physical differences in people is part of a racist world. Rather the subtle racism is in the construction and performance of the need for black people that are present to make comments particular comments about Obama.

What? Forget it. The point is we don't want the language and resources to properly confront it because then we would either have to properly confront it or concede that we are very sympathetic to the racism that currently exists as the status quo. We have a way of being that is dependent upon thinking of difference as not entirely a matter of negative "otherness" but a "less than" kind of difference. We may not use pejorative, humanity-killing words to describe people different from us, but we know that the difference is not merely difference but is a matter that carries a measure of worth.

Join Us... It's Bliss

A better venue has presented itself. If you are an unemployable loafer like me, you are invited to join a group of no-account jackanapes who will be watching the Champion's League final at Michaelangelo's in San Dimas.

Be there and see skybalon in person, only there is no skybalon in person. As The Blonde Buddha suggested in an other world- skybalon exists only in the text. Unless you're interested in buying skybalon a drink. Then it absolutely exists.

Ship It to the Irish Babies We Will Eat

Here in the USA, we waste 27% of the food that's available for consumption. That's a bland fact. Hey wait a second... it's not. Saying we waste that food already suggests more than it would if I'd said, "Here in the USA, we discard 27% of the food that's available for consumption." That is a bland fact. There is nothing that necessarily follows that statement. If I say "One solution to that problem might be blah blah blah..." I'm begging the question, as they say. (We've discussed before the proper use of that expression) There is nothing in the bland fact expression that says "solution required".

Now if you accept that it is waste, we wander together. If you accept that waste carries some negative weight, we continue together. If we agree that it is a problem needing a solution, well, on we continue still. If your response to that statement is: "Something ought to be done," you reveal that we share a common sense. But what solution might we develop? What solution might be born in the world we inhabit together?

There is nothing in the statement itself that presents a solution. Well, maybe we might say, "Stop." But that's more a response than a solution.

That's all. Kind of pointless isn't it?

I Promise This Will Be The Best Thing You Will Ever See In Your Life- Even if You Were to Live to Be Two thousand Years Old

Speaking of Anberlin-
This from their MySpace/Press Release:
Throughout rock history, from "OK Computer" to "War" to "London Calling", third albums have defined careers. With the bombastic, breathtaking Cities, Anberlin's cohesive and adventurous new album, the group puts itself in some esteemed company with a modern classic that uplifts as much as it initiates thought and elicits emotion. The Winter Haven, Florida-reared quintet -- who have watched its career rise while touring with everyone from Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance to Yellowcard and Hawthorne Heights -- doesnt just build on the energy and determination of recent singles like "Paperthin Hymn", "The Feel Good Drag", and "A Day Late". Instead, Anberlin expands its grasp of what a rock record can be with the Aaron Sprinkle produced Cities. Be it the huge-sounding, memorable roar of "Reclusion" or the bright, infectious "Adelaide", the writing team of singer Stephen Christian and guitarist Joseph Milligan drives Anberlin - which also counts bassist Deon Rexroat, guitarist Christian McAlhaney and drummer Nathan Young - as it retains the airwave ready allure that earned the band a pair of radio hits last year. But, with the sprawling, epic "Fin*" and the gorgeous, lighter-ready "Unwinding Cable Car" the group vastly widens its musical boundaries on Cities. Expect Cities to light up the globe in 2007.

Seriously? OK Computer? War? London Calling?*
How about NSYNC's the Winter Album, or Poison's Flesh and Blood, or Britney Spears' Britney? Those may be more apt as defining third album comparisons. Except that people know who Justin Timberlake is, Unskinny Bop is a stripper anthem, and no one in Anberlin will likely do a video in a red lace catsuit.

Oh wait, judging by the publicity photos, maybe I have to take back that last one.

In any case, I just listened to Adelaide. It is "bright". It is "infectious". I wouldn't change the station the first time I heard it, but I wouldn't think it's "bombastic," "breathtaking," or "adventurous," is part of something that expands the "grasp of what a rock record can be," or is a "modern classic," unless those words I just read and used don't mean what I think they mean.

I "felt led" to start OK Computer, and after the aural equivalent of a department store perfume spray assault that comes with loading the Anberlin MySpace page, I can say without hyperbole that Anberlin's third outing is a thousand times worse than what one hears in the coffee shops in hell. It is the musical equivalent of the brief but too clear moment of realization you have as you drink the last sip from a glass offered you by your kind quiet neighbor when you stopped by to just drop off the mail delivered by accident to your address right when you had casually noted the strange curves and color of his dining room set and the strange, "what kind of leather is this?" upholstery on his sofa about the same time you recognize the sick sweet smell of rot and why is he pulling a butcher's knife from the block as your field of vision narrows and gently goes black...

It's that.

Of course I only think this because of the standard they set for me. If they had said "fun harmless pop", well then maybe we could have had something here.

* If I were internettier I would know how to make it possible for you to hear cuts from songs on these albums.

What is There Between Bad and Good?

I read the Chronicles of Narnia books in fourth and fifth grade. I liked them enough then but when I returned to them later in life I found them stale and somewhat offensive. I know, I know it's CS Lewis- as a contemporary western Christian I'm supposed to love him. M'eh. From what I hear, as a Christian I'm also supposed to love the National Treasure movies but I'd rather watch a root canal than see those again.

I actually sat through the second National Treasure movie while getting a root canal. I went to a fancy oral surgeon that had beautiful, expensive monitors above the operating chairs. I found myself focusing on the reflection of my mouth surgery in his face shield rather than the movie.

Back to Lewis... the staleness of the books perhaps results from too desperately wanting to foist his Christianity into every aspect of his fiction. That is, with too rigid an agenda, he seemed to prevent himself from telling a story or creating characters that might be... well, stories and characters. As it is, they are merely stand ins for what he deals with elsewhere. That's what symbols are generally I suppose, and every author can only write what they can write, but it seems to me the art of literature is lost in his fiction. If I must, I'll affirm his work as an apologist, even if I could not swallow all of the content. However, for me, his fiction perhaps exists in a similar place as Anberlin's cover of Love Song stands to the world of music.

Like I said, as a child, I enjoyed it well enough. But unlike other books I loved as a child, Watership Down as an example, The Chronicles of Narnia did not survive into adulthood- or whatever else this stage of my life may more appropriately be called. (I'd even returned to Bunnicula as an adult and found it fun, what's with the rabbits?)

The offensiveness of his material is connected to the staleness. Perhaps he could do nothing else, but he is so much of a beautiful=noble=good=dominant=English world that there is little question about what could happen in his stories. Sure, for Lewis, Aslan is a lion is strong is Jesus and he kicks ass exactly as one might expect a lion to be able to do. Any weakness the lion shows is feigned and merely a part of a butt-kicking ploy and, clearly butt-kicking is what Aslan is about. Perhaps, given what things mean to us today, his Aslan would now have to be Chuck Norris or a nuclear warhead. He almost certainly could not use a lamb or a skinny, bald, peaceful, Hindu. That's a good enough segue. To be clearer, Lewis' fiction is likely as much about wagging his finger at a world that was rejecting the good and gracious dominion of English empire- the unquestioned rightness of the White Man's burden to deliver the blessings of civilization to the world tied to a justified fear of growing fascist movements- as it is about his Christian proselytization. And I would guess that expressing it this way separates the two more than they could be in Lewis' world.

So I saw the second movie this weekend. People will speak of the bloodless violence and death, it will be seen as better than the first, and fine for the kids but be careful because it's "darker" (read a bit plodding). And it will make enough money to feed a small nation.

That said It was better than having diarrhea (no one escapes my anus for long, The Blonde Buddha).

ed.-I replaced an open parentheses with a comma. I hope the integrity of the content has not been harmed and that people looking for a helpful review of Prince Caspian find one here.

What To Do?

So you are invited to either hear me preach tomorrow at GFC or come to my place Wednesday at 11:30 to watch the Champion's League (can you say that without singing it?) final.

I know which I would choose.

Of course if a better venue comes up I'll be there instead- I write, of course, about the final.

My enemy's enemy is my friend, so my home will be a Chelsea house.

Easy As Pie

-Standby- we have the window in 5... 4... 3... -....-....
-GREETINGS, MY CHILDREN. DO NOT FEAR- hello? Is this on? Is this on, I can't hear it? GREETINGS- No. I can't hear it.
- It's on, the levels are good. Just speak normally
-Okay. GREETINGS, DO NOT FEAR- it still doesn't sound right, can you turn up my monitor?
-Alright... go.
-Hello, hello, check... check. Yeah, that's better.
-Go.
-GREETINGS, MY CHILDREN, DO NOT
[incredible feedback]
-No no, just speak normally, don't yell into the mic.
-GREETINGS, MY CHILDREN-
-No, no use your normal voice.
-MY CHILDREN
-No softer, softer
-my children
-More authority
-Greetings, my children
-Let them hear the smile
-Greetings, my children. Do not fear, I have seen your affliction and have heard your cries. I have seen you and now promise that I will bring you up out of your suffering... No...
-We're still live.
- ... Okay, I'm gonna go off script here for a minute. There's really only one thing that I need to clarify, just one thing that you must absolutely be clear on, and I'll get to that, but since I'm here there's something that's been bothering me. Okay... well this is kind of embarrassing... So I have no interest in foreskins. I don't know exactly how that got started but it can stop. Now. Keep them, chop them off, whatever, I mean I wouldn't do it- chopping off part of a baby boy's penis? Eesh- But really, I don't care either way so you can stop saying your doing it for me. It makes me look... well... weird- and it kind of creeps me out. The whole thing's been bothering me for a while and it just got to a point... You know... I'd let it go for so long that I wasn't sure how to bring it up casually. Some signals must've gotten crossed somewhere and I didn't want to embarrass anyone, but it got built into the whole system... and anyway, I just want you to know- guys, you don't have to chop up your penises for me. Phew... well... okay... Y'know that feels pretty good to get that out of the way. Good. Okay. This is gonna be all right. So, you know, there are some other things, but let me just get to what really matters. What I really need you to do, what you must, must, must understand is, you ne-- jgg- nngg--- ch- sh--
[static and silence]
-Okay we're clear.
-Wait- What?
-We're out, that's it.
-Oh. Okay. That was enough though, right? At least I told them there was only one thing they actually need to be concerned with. They should be able to figure it out from that.
-Oh sure they got it.
-Yeah, I think so too. But that foreskins thing, crazy huh?

Love: There Is No Such Thing

Let's pretend for a moment that facts are things that can be falsified. We'll say something can be a fact only if it is the kind of thing that we can say either is or isn't. With that we'll say that there are certain things that can be described or proposed accordingly. For the sake of convention, let's call those things matters of objective reflection, and so we'll say that matters of objectivity are indifferent or accidental. More specifically, the more certain of a thing's objective factuality you may be, the less it is a matter of concern to you, the observer.*

We should see that this would be a way of talking about things; stuff like: the box is open, the cat is on the roof, the girl is tall, the earth orbits the sun. Whether there is any confusion over what we mean by open, roof, tall, earth, sun, those are the kinds of things that can be communicated, clarified, or translated even if they are not universally known. It is a matter of spatial existence and logical possibility. Open is the kind of thing that a box may be and a box is the kind of thing that may be open. So- to be clear- I don't mean it as a matter of perception- there is no "But, man, did you ever think, like, the box that exists in your mind, is, like, it's like, totally different from the box that's really there?" I mean A is A.

Though I would hate to use the word "true" for things like that, for now, let's say those things are what we would say are objectively true. I would prefer that we would say those things are facts, but as long as we're clearer about what we mean, we can say they are objectively true. Or maybe, to avoid that nonsense, let's say they are a matter for objective speculation.

Well, now that the map has been unfolded, we may see it is a very limited field dealing with matters of that kind. We may see further, that if it were possible to catalogue every last thing we may call a fact so that we have a full scale, detailed description of every thing that is and so also is not, we would have only that. I mean, if you had a complete account of those things about which it is possible to give a factual account, that is all you would have. You would not have anything more than an arrangement of facts; you would most certainly not have any inkling about what ought to be, what is right, what is wrong, what is good, or most importantly, at least if you are concerned with actually existing, how and what you ought to do.

But we are supremely concerned with how and what we ought to do. Well, I am anyway.

I'm losing interest too so I should probably cut to the chase. [There's the concern] What I'd like to get at is that the "oughts" of what we do, as much as we'd like them to be, are not fixed or certain like facts. It is a matter of commitment and decision- drifting in air. Those things that are the most meaningful to us are the most meaningful to us. They are very much not things about which we may be indifferent, objective, or dispassionate. To borrow an idea, if we could cease to be, those things would not matter, and only what was objective or fixed would be of import- only they wouldn't be, because we would not be, so nothing could be of import. Things can only be important if there is some concerned me to be concerned with what is important. But if some thing is objective- it is indifferent to me and it's factuality is not a matter of my concern. I guess, though, if nothing matters, then nothing matters, and that's a bit of a relief. Or it would be if there was some me that existed to be relieved, but there wouldn't be so who cares? Not me, but only because there is no existing me to care. Got it?

No? Do you not buy that? Do you say there is actually some you that is concerned with living, some you that has being, that has to exist in your skin? Do you realize how crazy that sounds?

Hmph. Well, crazy or not, let's go that route. Let's pretend you really are there, things really matter to you- some you is concerned with being. As absurd as that might be, I guess we can pretend it's possible. But with that you'll have to confront that if you really exist, and are some living you, then you cannot accept the relief that not-being allows. You cannot rest in the certain security that frozen not-being offers. Do you really want that?

I mean, it's not like you'll die if you accept not-being. Well, you will die someday, I mean you will not die just because you accept not being. My dogs are alive and seem as happy as pigs in poop; they don't have to confront being. You could do that. Maybe you've been doing that- and have seemed as happy as a pig in poop- just like my dogs. It might be better for you to stick with that. Do you really want to confront uncertainty? It could be miserable. It could be crazy-making. Sure it seems like humans should be being something more than dogs- but it only seems that way. You have to decide to be committed and live as if it is that way, and commitment is hard. It requires commitment. Maybe what you'd prefer is obedience. That works for a lot of people. It's all mapped out and when you get the range of what to obey just right, you could coast for a while.

Coasting seems like a nice middle passage between being and not-being.

But coasting doesn't seem like it would make much sense of concerns like love or justice, and I'm kind of convinced that as a human- a human that's busy being- I am concerned with love and justice. I guess we could think love or justice might be the systematic application of a certain range of "things" to obey. Like each time I give the Qweenbean a flower I have applied a thing of love and so love is a matter of giving more and more flowers. Or applying a thing of justice would mean something like taking the life of anyone who ever took someone else's life.

In fact (hah), love seems like the very kind of concern about which I am completely concerned. Love seems like it cannot have objectivity and requires commitment to a way of being, not not-being. If I am not being, or if I am coasting in obedience, love wouldn't matter. Doing the x,y, and z of obedience would be enough. But love matters- at least to me. Love seems to require a commitment through what cannot be known, almost as if it's a matter of faith and not certainty. Justice likewise.

It would be silly to say we have to live. We don't have to do anything. But to live, to have life- I mean to really have life in a way worth having, a way that is affirming, abundant, full- it seems I have to be willing to commit to uncertainty and be concerned with living.

Or not.

They Say I Got Brains But They Ain't Doing Me No Good
Pet Sounds- The Beach Boys

* We'll say we don't mean that you must exist in order to articulate or express the thing as a fact or give it some existence via your knowledge. That's just dumb.

Your Old Road is Rapidly Aging

Perhaps today you felt a tug and a tear somewhere not quite inside but clearly within you. At first it was a subtle and ineffable drift. Some part of your being was drawn sensibly but invisibly away. Eventually, you stifled a whimper as something was pulled from your core- as if your awareness of your self- the you that is inside your hands but is not your hands- the you that draws you beyond the horizon of you- was gently but surely gripped and coerced from your soles, from your chest, your arms, your face. And finally like a breath that would not return or as if sight were reversed, it emptied your being with a final tear as delicate as it was painful.

But rather than empty and unaware, you are left with a heavy oblivion that can not carry itself.

You are your phantom limb.

Why did this happen?

Because, today, California's Supreme Court destroyed marriage.

While this may be a day of unspeakable joy for some, for others it's a sign of the apocalypse... mostly those who believe in an apocalypse.

Remember when I wrote this? Really? Don't you have anything else to do?

Anyway, the decision is in. The question was: "The question we must address is [I just said that] whether, under these circumstances, the failure to designate the official relationship of same-sex couples as marriage violates the California Constitution."

The decision is: "... upon review of the numerous California decisions that have examined the underlying bases and significance of the constitutional right to marry (and that illuminate why this right has been recognized as one of the basic, inalienable civil rights guaranteed to an individual by the California Constitution), we conclude that, under this state’s Constitution, the constitutionally based right to marry properly must be understood to encompass the core set of basic substantive legal rights and attributes traditionally associated with marriage that are so integral to an individual’s liberty and personal autonomy that they may not be eliminated or abrogated by the Legislature or by the electorate through the statutory initiative process. These core substantive rights include, most fundamentally, the opportunity of an individual to establish — with the person with whom the individual has chosen to share his or her life — an officially recognized and protected family possessing mutual rights and responsibilities and entitled to the same respect and dignity accorded a union traditionally designated as marriage. As past cases establish, the substantive right of two adults who share a loving relationship to join together to establish an officially recognized family of their own — and, if the couple chooses, to raise children within that family — constitutes a vitally important attribute of the fundamental interest in liberty and personal autonomy that the California Constitution secures to all persons for the benefit of both the individual and society.
Furthermore, in contrast to earlier times, our state now recognizes that an individual’s capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual’s sexual orientation, and, more generally, that an individual’s sexual orientation — like a person’s race or gender— does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights. We therefore conclude that in view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship, the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples."

If you're not afraid of catching The Gay, you can download all 172 pages of the decision here.

Now before your inbox is filled with all manner of alerts and battle cries (read: requests for money), realize this is not judicial activism- though that dog whistle will be blown. This is, understand clearly, a plain, conservative reading of the state constitution and legal precedent. It is not a decision based on what the Republican appointed judges think policy ought to be because of personal preference or inclination. It is not a twisting of definitions to suit their own agenda. It is based on what they understand to be the rights guaranteed and protected by our constitution. So, disagree with it if you must, but don't disagree with it as a dummy.

That said, I can understand if you feel that, today, the very foundations of being have been destroyed. How will we go on? How will my marriage survive? How will I not be forced to marry my shoes? How will the way we say things ought to be remain if we don't believe in them real hard and force others to do the same?

Coincidentally, providentially, serendipitously, by cosmic accident- whatever your sensibilities allow- this week I had to find my and the Qweenbean's marriage license to verify to an insurance company we were married and it got me a'thinkin'. It's a strange thing that the state has any business in saying that we are allowed to have the type of relationship we have agreed to try out. She said it's a good thing there is because I would have married my cat to make a point. Whether that's the case, I think that will be an out for some churches. Marrying cats? No, I mean after they've exhausted themselves with initiatives that will ultimately prove unconstitutional, churches will have to decide if they want to continue being agents of the state- more concerned with producing good citizens than people who have no place to lay their heads.

To me this is a good thing, not least of all because all of this head resting has made for lazy brains.

Their Father's Hell Did Slowly Go By

I know I am afraid. I am afraid of writing this post because it will make reference to my yet unborn kid and I do not want this to become a self-indulgent paean to masturbatory parenting. But here we are. She's not yet born and she comes up in three posts already.

Don't get me wrong- I know this is self-indulgent, I mean I don't want my child-rearing to be self-indulgent- or at least where and when it is I want to be able to deny it and it will be difficult if I degenerate into...

Little Gigi learned how to stare at fruit today. Oh her name is Gioi, pronounced Joy, but we call her Little Gigi. LOL.

So yesterday Little Gigi learned how to stare at a basket of fruit. It was just so beautiful. She's just such an amazing creature. Wow she just smiled, it's like she's just praying and thanking God for the fruit that He just gave her that she can't eat yet. I just watched her the whole time and it was just so beautiful.

Bible verse this, the Ezzos that.

Oh we just finished painting her nursery mural. The Ron DiCianni angel theme was just so beautiful.

Here's the full three hour video of her prayerfully staring at a basket of fruit. Watch it and leave a comment about how wonderful it is to watch it and leave a comment...

Prayer Requests: Please keep her future husband in prayer that he would just be such a Godly Man.

So kill me when it becomes that...

But on to the post I do want to write. I've already told you that I don't use toilet paper the way you probably do. It's worth repeating that I think my use of baby wipes to clean poop is better than using toilet paper but that the world we live in is not ready... Or perhaps it isn't that it's not ready- that suggests it may be simply a matter of time before we all have cleaner, baby-wiped (only not just for babies anymore) anuses, and it is not simply a matter of time. If we want a better, cleaner anus world, we have to work for it.

And that's the rub. [snickering offstage]

The point is, I already told you that I use baby wipes to clean my butt.

I am having a child. I know my world of clean anuses is better, but look around: itchy anuses, tissue paper, laxatives, standardized overeating, seat level toilet decks, blah blah blah... All is oriented toward this particular world of poo. I tell her, X is right but Y is what we do? Do I raise her to be clean or do I raise her to be normal? She won't believe in Santa Claus, a six-day creation, or heaven as a place, but there's enough openness in our world for difference on those points. We're talking about our poop life- something that clearly matters. There will be no accommodations [that's too inside] for her if she is not playing the dry wood pulp scraping the anus game.

Which is better for her- raising her to be well-adjusted to a world I know is wrong, or raising her according to what is true but has no place in the world beyond her?

It's one thing for me to be committed to what I know must be true. I have already struggled with the concerns and commitments about a clean butt. I am willing and able to come to terms with the difference I am to the world of dirty anuses. But can I ask that of a child? Should I set her up to be the freak who uses baby wipes? Is it right and good for her to be about her father's business?
___________

Hat tip to the Blonde Buddha for turning me on to Ron DiCianni. As I said before, I wondered what is born when a Footprints mug and Psalm 23 were incubated in Thomas Kinkade's colon. Before I knew only in part, now I understand fully.

This is called Praying for Peace by Ron DiCianni.

And one more thing- her name is not Gioi.

Carry On, Carry On, As if Nothing Really Matters...

You may know that Mother's Day in the United States was intended as a day for Mother's to unite in opposition to war. That sounds like something dirty hippies would do. It was- dirty, Sunday school teaching, Methodist, hippies.

Of course, you can't run a country if you have a day set aside to publicly oppose war, so when Mother's Day became a nationally recognized holiday it was promoted as a day to fly a flag honoring those mothers who lost children to war. Well, actually, it wasn't for all mothers who lost children in war, it was for mothers who lost sons in war. Well, again, not all mothers who lost sons in war, mothers who lost sons who were soldiers in war. Well, no, not that either. Mothers who lost soldier-sons on "our side" in war.

Again, you can't run a country if you think about the actual consequences of a war. So Mother's Day became an opportunity to honor an abstraction, and there is little easier to abstract than the dead.

The Dead.

But then, these days, if you're a soldier you're much less likely to die in combat than you were in the good old days of the first Mother's Day. These days, only one in fifteen American soldiers (or one in five for infantry in super wars) become war casualties. The training is very good. It is, after all, a soldiers job to take life, not give it. And our medical technology is so great that injuries are less likely to result in death. Hoorays all around. The point being we have fewer dead to honor and it would be self-defeating to honor the amputated, brain-damaged, burned, paralyzed, divorced, and addicted. Understand that correctly, there are plenty of dead. We are a well-trained, well-supplied, efficient machine. There are just few dead that we would honor.

So there you go.

Or not.

Anna Jarvis, the daughter of the mother that tried to start the hippy mother's day was appalled at what the holiday had become and worked to have people remember what it was originally for. She thought it had become an ideological monster completely at odds with what her mother intended the day to be. But screw her, right?

I mean, if she had her way we wouldn't have what we have today: something that everyone can love and get behind. There's nothing ideologically coercive about a day that's as meaningful to a four year old nobody as it is to a 61 year old president. It's completely harmless. Totally neutral. It doesn't disturb a thing, and that sounds exactly like what we need these days.

If you'd like to learn more about the history of Mother's Day, visit your local library, or if tax cuts and public neglect have left you without a local library, use the wikipedias like a normal person.

Fresh and Bitter Water

Hey, you know how there's that whole world of how we treat each other in real life that matches some of the stuff about how we say we ought to treat each other in real life and then there's that world of abstracted relations that is still how we treat each other in real life but we remove it from us in a way so we're no longer responsible for the outcomes of the how we actually treat each other and it becomes a part of the "I'm just one person, what can I do?" or the "That's Just The Way It Is" world?

That's funny,* hah?**



* Sorry about the preview screen with the link. I'll make it up to you.
** Hah pronounced here as that sound we make when we mean, "isn't it?"

Shine On You Crazy Diamond

About five in the morning in mid-November, the Qweenbean woke me up shaking a positive pregnancy test in my face. I couldn't say how other people would respond to that. I know that there is probably a popular conception of what that moment should be like- a young couple, eager, hopeful, white, in a silk-lit bathroom, the chorus of We've only Just Begun swelling in the background...

That sounds nice.

This was not that. It was dark, cold, and my wife was waving a peed-on stick in my face. She was reluctant to buy a pregnancy test at all because they had become reminders of what wasn't, or the first step down a path we didn't want to walk: guarded optimism followed by nostalgia for things that would never be.

So it was positive. She was hardly looking forward to being sad, but it was positive and it had been some time since we'd had a positive pregnancy test. This was difficult.

I think it's supposed to be crazy that a couple wanting to be pregnant would look at a pregnancy with angst but that's how it was. And even now, with the congratulations from others and the excitement I feel, I don't want my happiness to be exclusive or oppressive.

I'm a downer. Don't invite me to any parties.

I know what it is to be on the other end of "When are you going to have kids," "Being a parent is the best thing in the world," "You'll understand when you have a baby" comments, let alone certain Christian claims that women are nothing if they are not mothers or men must fulfill their divinely instituted nature by fathering many babies, sex is for reproduction, humans are not whole unless they are doing it (and all that's attached to that).

I must be clear. I can not put into words the happiness I feel with the looming baby, but it is not for me. I mean, you should punch me in the mouth if I say this is an answer to prayer, that I am blessed, that this is right, that I am what is supposed to be and your difference from me is your mark. However, should I live in a way that demonstrates gratefulness, joy, hope for the future- don't punch me in the mouth.

Again, I'm a total drag, but you could think of it this way: I'm only a total drag because I care about actually existing.

Does that even make sense?

Frequently Feingold

Russ Feingold, PBUH, has a thought-provoking editorial in today's LA Times about secret laws. Of course I'm a big hippy so I could eat this stuff up all day- tell me more about how horrible this administration is, tell me how good I am because I see this, use secret words only you and I understand. Pat my head- I'll run and get your slippers.

Of course, this is Russ Feingold, PBUH, he doesn't do any of that. He appeals to shared values, clearly explains legal issues as moral issues, offers solutions according to what is both possible and right. It's almost as if he's playing a completely different game than everyone else, and somehow gets re-elected.

I've said it before, I'll say it again- I love Russ Feingold, PBUH.

Look What Happened

Long time readers of my online diary are unemployable shut-ins and probably remember me mentioning a few times that the Qweenbean and I had sinny sex. That is, we had sex knowing that it was likely not possible that she would get pregnant, and centuries of Christian doctrine taught that sex that does not lead to a baby is wrong.

Of course there was the Modern rub that allowed for sex if a couple was open to the possibility of conception, regardless of how unlikely it may be. That was sticky because it opened the door to any number of pairings wherein the pair were open to the possibility of conception even if the Authorities were not open to the pair's pairing.

But that was mostly for Catholics. Protestants often lacked the fora for discussing these things with the care or concern of Catholic moral philosophers. Even if Catholic thinkers were wrongheaded and bumbling, they were consistent, thoughtful, and firmly rooted in their horribly bizarre world of original sin transmitted via sex and heterosexual incest being better than masturbation because it was natural and other oriented. Protestants have largely just been wrongheaded and bumbling because we've pretended there is no world in which we are rooted. We pretend there is only The World and it is as it should be for everyone everywhere because the Bible says so. Only, it wasn't... isn't, and so we miss the why we say what we say the Bible says anchor that has us rooted in a world that has no place to anchor for some people called out of the world.

But here I am beating a dead horse. Or perhaps pointing out that we are beating a dead horse- a horse we nevertheless insist on trying to ride out of slavery- but as dead horses are wont to do- it goes nowhere and the rest of the exodus moves right past us. That's okay, as long as we tell ourselves we're the only ones that have the right to ride a horse, and despite appearances, we are getting somewhere. That makes it all okay, right?

Anyway, returning to the point, the Qweenbean and I continued having sex knowing that some someone somewhere may have reason to wag fingers at that, but also knowing that finger wagging was largely irrelevant to who we are together.

Awful, awful people we are.

But now this.

We are well past the point of subtle introduction into the memento that this internets diary is, so there she is, full of creature. I have no more explanation for why she is pregnant than why she wasn't before- I mean in light of our having sex. So that's that.

This being with child has reached a saturation point in our life. There have been other times that I have thought about internets comments stemming from this, but out of sensitivity to the Qweenbean, who has been very superstitious about the whole affair, I have not shared them. But now it's okay to share with you, the globespread mesh, and that which has been background will be more directly present.

The breaking point may have been the incredible dis-ease with which I approached registering for baby gifts. After a brief conversation about how uncomfortable I am with imagining we "need" so much more than other parents throughout history, how insidious it is that babies are introduced immediately to a world of consumption and commodification, the fear on which baby-marketing is parasitic, the compartmentalization I had been negotiating with that was brought to an end. Besides, nobody in Babies Backwards "R" Us wanted to hear any of that, but I knew you would.

There is more that will come, I'm sure. Not that this will become a baby blog, but this is part of the world, and it should be clear it is so.

A Title Should Go Here

Ken Hutcherson is a lunatic or a jerk. Yikes, that's rough.

Maybe I'll make it more palatable by invoking CS Lewis. I hear, as wrong as he may ever be, he's magic. So, a la Lewisian rhetorical constructs: Ken Hutcherson is a lunatic, jerk, or savior.

In case you're a decent human being, Ken Hutcherson is one of those athlete turned religious guru phenoms and lords it over a mega church in Kirkland, Washington. His specialty is gay-panic.

He claims to have been appointed as a Special Envoy to Latvia by the Bush Administration to discuss the crises homosexuals are instigating throughout Eastern Europe and what role The Gays had in instigating the Holocaust. That's delusional. Delusional is crazy. Oh sure, Latvia exists, and he has built a number of ties, ironically enough, with Eastern European proto-fascist Christians but the Bush administration denies he has ever been given the official status of "Special Envoy" or undertaken diplomatic missions on behalf of our country.

That sounds like something a lunatic would say.

...

Well, now I find myself in the strange position of having to believe something out of the Bush administration. I find myself like an inverted Ignatius of Loyola; should the Bush Administration say black is black, I would have to disagree for the sake of my soul.

Now I should say that bit of evidence may be suspect. I guess it's not entirely beyond the pale to imagine a former linebacker with a Bible college degree and no training in diplomacy would be given an appointment by this administration. Though if it was consistent with their MO (modus operandi, not the horrid state Missouri*), given his credentials he would be appointed to the Supreme Court.

He may also be delusional because he sees the threat of homosexuality everywhere. I don't mean that he sees gay people everywhere; we all do that (yes even you Snoqualmie, WA). I mean he sees the threat of homosexuality as a strategically orchestrated campaign to make people gay or even subjugate the world to the rule of some Gay Illuminati perpetrated by the highest levels of the corporate and political world. That sounds delusional as well, or maybe more symptomatic of some sort of paranoia or antisocial pathology. I think we can make the case that he is paranoid though it would be tough to make the case that his paranoia is a disorder. It hardly interferes with his life or causes him harm; in fact it has become his bread and butter. He is all about successfully converting the generalized antipathy towards some idea of gay into a direct and pointed malevolence... and a paycheck. He's built himself quite an empire on the backs of gay people. Now if I were interested in working blue I would connect all of this gay-panic on Hutcherson's part to the "backs of gay people" line in a perfectly played punchline suggesting he's just another tragic closet-case.

Not this time. There are more important concerns.

Which brings us to the second possibility, Ken Hutcherson may be a jerk. He is currently taking credit for leading a protest against the "Day of Silence" activities at Mt. Si High School wherein a number of students walked out to show their disapproval of and opposition to the Day of Silence, or more specifically, their opposition to saying it's not okay for students to call each other fag, dyke, pussy, ho, and all the other not so subtle ways young people make life hell for each other. This is what The Day of Silence is about: essentially calling out the high school culture and the powers/adults that support it. What it's calling out is that adolescent culture that is really just a non-perfected adult culture. Of course adults aren't as ham-fisted with the name calling and hate because we've had years of practice and place-putting to set things right. If you've ever witnessed a group of teenage boys call each other "fag" or "woman" as putdowns, you see they are still learning how to get all that bigotry just right. It's cute in the way that maggots must be cute because they're baby flies. Babies are always cute.

Anyway, that's what the Day of Silence is for, saying that brand of becoming an adult is not okay.

Look, I get it, you're convinced the Bible says something about some thing we call homosexuality. It's a do not do. You're absolutely positive it says that. Great. Hooray for you. You have to be a dick about it?

Ken Hutcherson supported a group of students who walked out of school and led a demonstration for the right to harass and bully and he's happy about it.

Really. It's a success for him to get 600+ high school students (85 athletes**) to defend their right to call other kids fag. That sounds like a jerk to me (it also doesn't sound like all that much of a challenge).

But wait, isn't the Day of Silence all about tolerance and diversity? How can you say you are tolerant if you won't tolerate my intolerance? That just makes you a hypocrite.

Well first let me say, "Who keeps letting you in here?" Second, "You're an idiot." You don't really mean to ask anything; you're looking for a way to pardon your fascism as necessary for dialogue and democracy. I could respond that their is no tolerance qua tolerance and that the use of it as necessary in an open democracy precludes your understanding of it in light of your desire to dominate, but you would just blink a couple of times and call me a fag. So, let me be clear. I think it is right for someone who thinks there is something wrong with some such and such to say so and Ken Hutcherson should be allowed to be as dumb as he wants to be in doing that. But it is possible that a tolerant people could not tolerate the existence of an intolerant in the same way a body that values growth would not rightly value a cancer.

Anyway, someone should point out that he's being dumb. Hey, that someone is me.


*To be fair, I only say Missouri is horrid because of the horrid experiences I had there.
**That's right, I said it.