Jesus Is Our Following Jesus

Speculum- ... so I was so overcome and convicted by my own role in that whole stinkin' process that I bought as many newspapers as I could and ripped that picture out- I mean the picture of that dad crying over his dead little girl's body just overtook me- and so I ripped it out- out of each newspaper and wrote "This is the face of our sin" on each one with a magic marker. So I'm running up and down the street-
The Curator- Like a crazy person?
Speculum- Like a crazy person- and giving these- I guess flyers, giving these flyers to everyone and finally, you know a group starts to gather around me, and so I just ask myself- I ask us all- I ask how we cannot confess this as ours? I just ask why we say this is necessary and good- how we can live with ourselves if who we are depends on this kind of death- I mean this death, even this one specific death- if who we are is worth this one little girl let alone how many countless others, And I say, "we have to know this little girl, we have to know what we've done to her"-
The Curator- And you don't think that was a bit extreme?
Speculum- ... well...
The Curator- Do you think that's what people wanted to see? Do you think that picture was going to get people to listen to what you had to say?
Speculum- I don't know if it was about getting people to hear me... I thought it was about- I dunno I was just confronted with what it means if i seriously think I'm following Jesus
The Curator- If it's not about getting people to hear you then why say anything? You do want people to hear you. You have a very important message to offer them, but you will only drive people away with this...
You have to remember the heart of your message- the heart of our message: Jesus is our peace.
Speculum- Yeah but, well I guess, yeah Jesus is my peace, it doesn't seem like I'm not saying that-
The Curator- But you might be turning people off though, right?
Speculum- I suppose-
The Curator- And how will people hear your message if you've turned them off. How will they know that good news if you've sent them away? Our message is Jesus.
Speculum- Sure, right. I don't suppose they could- but... Well no. Isn't their being turned off a matter of their being committed to death? I mean if we're going to turn from death-
The Curator Jesus is our life.
Speculum- What? Yes. No- wait, there's going to be a bit of feeling bad- I felt bad when I was confronted by this picture- I don't see how I couldn't if it's a matter of really being confronted- if it's a matter of sin being overcome-
The Curator Jesus overcomes our sin.
Speculum Sure, but I don't think you would say "Don't confront a man whose beating his wife because he'll feel bad and won't want to listen to you"-
The Curator Jesus is our response to domestic violence.
Speculum What?

Objectivity

Said in line at Stater Bros.- Ugh, Valerie Bertinelli beach body at 48? Yeah it's easy when you have a personal trainer, cooks, and get to work out all day...

...

Before purchasing-
Off-Brand Drumsticks
Spaghetti Sauce
Frozen Pizza
Diet Coke
Lay's Potato Chips
2 Healthy Choice Soups

The Morning Lasts All Day

The Lovely Elizabeth is singing the chorus to Life in a Northern Town these days. A lot. It makes the Qweenbean happy.

She admitted that it makes her hurry home from work now. The soft inference is she previously did not come home as quickly as she could. Whereas I, the good parent, can't wait to get around our little spawn's filled diapers, inarticulate articulation of wants, demand to be held, need to be constantly watched, and all that fun stuff.

...

A student asked if I enjoyed parenting and I said I do not. I love The Lovely Elizabeth. I want to do everything I can to take care of her, think of her when I'm away from her, like the little person I see developing, want to treat that responsibly, am excited about being with her in the future, and who knows what all else. I like that I am her parent as far as that goes, but I don't think I could say I like parenting. Other, better people, may like parenting as a concept and try somehow to develop that dynamic with people whose parents they are not (was there a better way to write that?). I am not one of them. I can't imagine myself waking up 5 times a night for... well you, dear reader as an example. I don't see myself doing the things I do as a parent as enjoyable in themselves.

Do I?

No. I think I stand by that. And I think I can say that the joy I find in knowing The Lovely Elizabeth, the strange feeling of elation that wells up in my chest when she smiles, when I hear her little voice, when she lunges toward me to give what seems like a hug, the fondness I feel for her, the concern, interest etc... is all carried by our knowing and getting to know each other rather than through being part of some preformed template for a relationship that we may call "parent" or doing "parenting".

There's a difference?

This may seem a silly difference to point out, but the silliness has broader implications.

As we hold out certain concepts as good: parenthood, dating, marriage, what have you- we obscure its reality that includes awfulness, ugliness, sadness, suffering, etc... I don't mean that we don't perhaps know that any set of relations will have difficulties, I mean our putting the relations forward as an ideal, especially as an ideal to which we say folks ought to aspire can lead to despair or guilt for feeling things that are a part of living with and knowing someone, let alone raising someone.

Whatever, it's not like the confusion someone may feel at being sad when everyone tells them them they are experiencing the greatest joy ever is a big deal.


The Lovely Elizabeth is the one with the goatee.

Oh Thank God

"One Republican Senator, Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, voted against the legislation. He was joined by seven Democrats: Barbara Boxer of California, Richard H. Bryan of Nevada, Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland, Mr. Dorgan and Mr. Wellstone."

NY Times

So he remains God's prophet.

It's All of The Same...

Back in the day when I taught Neo-Fascism (high school economics)-

Oh that's right I was a high school social-sciences teacher. You didn't know that? Oh well, I was. Isn't that something? Good times.-

So, back then, it was a challenge to get the private Christian high schoolers to see the meaninglessness of the label "liberal" as far as our economics or politics was concerned. One of the things we did to that end was investigate how WorldCom collapsed. Remember that? WorldCom. It was a current event at the time and though it happened on W's watch, it was easy to pin on Clinton, so the little right-wingers could get into it and it taught an important lesson.

Anyway, we looked at WorldCom's apparent growth and collapse, and one of the things that was plain as anything to them, was the state made the legal arrangements that made conflicting interests no longer conflict. They understood that commercial and investment banks merging benefited "someone" and with my heavy-handed browbeating they learned that someone was the Wall St. bankers who gave money to the lawmakers who made the legal arrangements that made these new banks possible. These new banks could buy the stocks of companies like WorldCom as an investment bank with money from their commercial bank side and then inflate its value and use this inflated value to buy other "telephone" companies inflating the value even more and then do this over and over again with the new bank handling each deal and collecting fees for doing so. This could go on and on and on forever. It was a win-win. Until it wasn't. Except for those for whom it still was.

The kids could see that this was no accident or flaw in the machine but a design of the machine. In fact, I got some of these kids into hating the repeal of Glass-Steagal before hating the repeal of Glass-Steagal was cool (if only because young people love to hate people who get to take advantage of unfair situations even if they don't hate unfairness itself). None of us saw this coming- the great fake money collapse of the 21st century- but we could see that where and how the cogs of the legal machine were set, they were set in such a way as to benefit those who set them.

Duh.

But even back then it was about fake value, fake money. But that fake money represented the possibilities of real power to those that made and benefited from the legal arrangements that made the fake real.

This wasn't about liberal or conservative.* Those labels only mean something to class collaborators and fat cats. (Okay take it easy, Karl) This was about wealth and the way it manifests itself- making politicians rebel and keep the company of thieves, and all that. It reveals a little bit of what's hidden behind a veil of legitimacy.

Anywho... If any of that was a candle, this is a flood light. I know, I know, he uses bad words and doesn't show proper deference to religion. What are you gonna do?

Here, at least read this:

"People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they're not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d'état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations."

This is prophetic work for our dispensation- for good, bad, or other.

* Though I might add it was about big government. The lack of government oversight made the bad worse, both in terms of the lack of governmental oversight or concerted citizen power acting as a check on the dismantling of existing banking regulations and the creation of new ones that made the financial arrangements that led our present crisis- but they are kind of the same thing, aren't they?

So in this case, it would make sense to do what your gut might tell you: blame Clinton
Idioteque- Radiohead
Anywhere's Better Than Here- The Replacements
What's Behind the Mask- The Cramps
The National Anthem- Radiohead
Baba O'Reilly- The Who
I Ain't Got no Home- Bruce Springstein
Soul of A Man- Beck
Summertime Rolls- Jane's Addiciton
Don't Talk- The Beach Boys

If We'd Only Recognize The Things That Make for Peace

I think I've seen enough of me and others to know that we often harp loudest about that with which we struggle most. I mean I was raised in a pretty aggressive and violent environment. I was in a lot of fights and often didn't think twice about hurting others. In many ways, violence was the primary language and often a ready solution throughout my upbringing. So I understand that what I see as a spiritual commitment to nonviolence can be attributed to some reactionary motive. Fine, it may be I'm a big peace baby because I'm struggling to overcome my own violent tendencies.

So it's no surprise to me when someone who makes gross efforts to monitor and control the sexual behaviors of others that they are finally outed as doing things that make all their preaching a punchline.

And so I wonder, is that what's going on with THE GAY? I mean think of all the teachings, all the dos and do not dos, all the commands, and moral assumptions that could make up Christian sexual ethics but don't. Think of every potential resource in the Bible and the broad field of possibility in what we call Church History that is left alone because we say it has no bearing on us. Think of all that is passed over, ignored, rationalized and explained away in one way or another. And THE GAY, a concept I don't see in the texts that make up the Bible, remains. What's going on here?

I'm reluctant to universally apply my experience (or reduce to Freudian silliness what I see as a deep commitment), but is this of the same reactive substance as my nonviolence? Are you building walls to keep yourself safe?

I remember reading Robert Gagnon's The Bible and Homosexual Practice and uncharitably saying to myself, "Good Lord, this guy is a closet case." I can charitably say the book's imprecision, imbalance, and, general dependence on what we now call truthiness seem the result of some kind of blinding rage or panic. It's horribly clear that he has decided that homoeroticism and what we broadly call homosexuality is "inherently" awful (whatever inherently does to qualify awful) and so grasps at anything that may fit the bill. But are incest, rape, anal penetration, "uncovering nakedness", consensual intercourse, etc... homosexual practices? Are they homosexual practices any more than they are heterosexual practices? Does either phrase mean anything outside of a sense of the phrase as dehumanizing euphemism?

Really. Help me out here. I guess I'm a Kinseyan 0 so don't find the protection all that necessary. But others of you? Is same-sex attraction more prevalent among men than I can realize? Did I miss out on some haunting but seminal rites of male passage by not joining a fraternity, and now you all are making up for it? Do the belittling jokes and comments about women suggest you prefer the company of men in a deeper way than I first thought? (And I focus on men here because "man" is the status that has currency for these negotiations.)

Or is there something else? Is this confusion and frustration evidence of a larger confusion- a confusion about who and what we might be for? Does y/our need to read Leviticus 18.22 (for example) as having anything to do with homosexuality demonstrate y/our loyalty to an illegitimate power?

You've probably read my allusions to the idea that something like "enhanced interrogation" can only make sense if you're willing to accept and be determined by certain things- things that make a claim on you, things that hold you, things that blind you. That "thing" makes us slaves. Sometimes happy house slaves, but we are slaves nonetheless, and we take whatever mark or brand is necessary to get along and do business with that master. How does homosexuality make sense to us? How does heterosexuality? What has us bound for that to work?

Drag. If only there was something that freed us...

Oh hey! Wait a minute.

Look, your king comes riding on a donkey. Triumphant, but humble on a donkey...

Oh wait no...

I guess that doesn't have anything to do with this.

Thanks, Billy.

I'm That Guy?

So I'm waiting for a friend in front of a local eatery* last night and I am jerked out of the moment. I catch myself resting my hand on my chin and staring at something far away yet not within the horizon. I don't know exactly how long I'd been like that, long enough to somehow get from the corner of Citrus and Alosta to "but if we say we have something to say to matters of sexuality then we're really affirming the reality of a world in which that exists and that seems wholly parasitic on modes of dominance that don't correspond to how we actually live and negotiate our lives with each other, let alone how we ought to if "church" means anything good, and that's what I mean by suggesting we ought to repent of heterosexuality if we imagine we have anything to say about homosexuality..."

Really.

So I snapped out of it because in that moment, in the warm, clear, early evening, the foothills in the distance- temporarily lush, the soft drone of traffic, people all around me coming and going, I was reminded of my college days and walking with a friend past a tired-looking man sitting outside a cafe. His skin was pinched hard around his mouth and eyes as he said to no one, "What your data fail to include is the effect of gravity on the observer..."

I now realize his words were especially for me.

* Eatery? Really?

A message from R-2 appears on the small monitor screen in front of
Luke. He smiles at the monitor and speaks to R-2, as he pulls a black
glove on to cover his wounded mechanical hand
Section 27 (Mental Cabaret)- The Polyphonic Spree
Sea Legs- The Shins
Donatello- Jawbreaker
Come on Eileen- Dexy's Midnight Runners

Nuts and Gum, Together at Last

I've just seen this. It's the trailer for Where the Wild Things Are.

I like Where The Wild Things Are, David Eggers, Spike Jonze, and Arcade Fire...

Yet something doesn't sit well... I know it's just a trailer but it seems far more mopey... wan... maudlin... wistful... emo-soaked... than the book has ever seemed to me.

Is it the pall of golden light? That world strikes me as more vibrtant.
The sad pale little boy peering sadly around the corner or longingly out a schoolroom window? Max always seemed more confident to me.

We'll see. I like to be surprised. (Remember I said that when you leap out at me from a dark corner.)

There are people that make it possible for me to be a Christian.
There is one less in the world.

"We need to understand that no theology can escape the epistemological characteristics of its time, even if it intends to oppose them."

Marcella Althaus-Reid, 1952-2009

I Think You're Cool, Homer Simpson

Sorry, we'll save you a seat at lunch tomorrow.

The National Religious Campaign Against Torture is just that... a national religious campaign against torture. Longtime readers of my tubesdiary are probably sci-fi/fantasy fans but have also likely come across me mentioning it before.

Unfortunately, it's existence as an inclusive religious campaign makes it suspect in the eyes of many evangelicals who know other religions are confused at best or demonic at worst. So even if evangelicals wanted to join a more concerted effort to end torture, it would not be the NRCAT.

Perhaps recognizing this, the NRCAT set up Evangelicals for Human Rights. They drafted the Evangelical Declaration Against Torture. If you were in the Sunday school class wherein we covered that document you may know it, otherwise, probably not. It was a bit too direct for evangelicals and a bit too evangelical for broader interest.

Oh we just set up the game, you can play next... Eh, we got tired of playing this game.

That's just not how evangelicals do things. This is how evangelicals do things. We take something that many folks would consider a Christian concern, peace for example, and then turn it into an acronym like P(retty) E(xhausting) A(ctually) C(onfronting) E(mpire) so we don't risk making people fell bad about themselves or losing attenders.

Oh, acronyms, what would our church life be without you?

In the world of at leasts, at least action through acronym is action.* The more prevalent mode of contemporary evangelical action is spiritualizing a concern in a way that suggests something only matters to your insides. As far as this goes, Billy Graham was the king. My favorite (if I may torture the word favorite) example of this is the way he offered an interpretation of the My Lai massacre:

"Perhaps it is a good time for each of us to re-evaluate our life. We have all had our Mylais in one way or another, perhaps not with guns, but we have hurt others with a thoughtless word, an arrogant act or a selfish deed..."

Yes Billy, I drank the last of the milk this morning knowing someone else in the house may have wanted some for their cereal. That is just like murdering unarmed men, women, children and babies, forcing them into an irrigation ditch and shooting them as they cower, bayonetting infants in front of their mothers, and rape... don't forget the rape. Drinking milk is my My Lai- The real My Lai has noting to do with me, after all, I wasn't there so how could it? I feel bad about drinking the milk but much better about My Lai. Thanks, Billy.**

Theater 12? Nooo, we were in theater 10. Oh man... Oh well.

So EHR is a good idea, right? It's things like that that folks like Glen Stassen, Ron Sider, and Jim Wallis, might use to get evangelicals like James Dobson, Rick Warren, and Tony Perkins on the same page. Well, not literally on the same page, the latter have not signed the Declaration.

So on the one hand, there is this group and document that show, "See, there are evangelicals who think following Jesus means more than filling buildings and opposing THE GAY." On the other hand, this group and document likely mean very little to those evangelicals whose raison d'être is filling buildings and opposing THE GAY. Oh, be nice. Okay. Whose emphasis is a kind of self-actualization via Jesus.

Anywho... It brings to mind the present use of the name Friends/Quakers among Friends/Quakers who are not all that interested in being Friends/Quakers although it seems there is a stranger, webbier dynamic at work among Evangelical Friends than with the above. And of course this depends entirely on what I think it means to be Friends/Quakers, and I'll be the first to say I don't get to say what that is. Though, I will say that people (not Quakers) are often surprised by the present... guardedness- that's a good word... by the present guardedness of Evangelical Friends when it comes to being Friends/Quakers at all let alone emphasizing any of those more distinct points that have made Friends Friends.

I don't get to say what makes a Quaker a Quaker, but it seems other folks think active pacifism is a part of the picture. At least...

There's a story The Monster Machine tells about a professor of his asking about Quakers in class. So The Monster Machine volunteers a description- pacifism, a certain understanding of sacraments, simplicity. You know, the very things you probably think of when you think of Quakers (unless you happen to be one of us). And all the while, there's another student behind The Monster Machine growing more and more agitated until she finally says, "That's not what we're about at all." (or some such- it's your story, you tell it, The Monster Machine).

So this is a setup.

To what will have to wait. And it's waiting.


* Though I think we ought to recognize how dangerously blinding this type of church behavior is. We should talk about that some time.
** Let's make "Thanks, Billy" what we say when we find a way to let ourselves off the hook.

Siamese Dream is what Bivouac could have been
Bivouac-Jawbreaker

These Floors Are Dirty as Hell, and I'm Not Gonna Take It Anymore!

When did being Wally George become a real career?
It's weird. You'd think you could actually pinpoint the moment in time that over-the-top stoner fodder became a news network's mainstay.




Friends, there comes a time in every man's life when he has to look the potato of injustice right in the eye...
So What- Miles davis

An Ideological Hammer Forging the Chains of Our Slavery

skybalon: Ugh, Obama's health care proposals are driving me nuts.
The Qweenbean: Hey don't say anything bad about Obama... He's my W.

Orange or Green Today?

So my wife is, somewhere in her ancestry, Irish. We play along a bit with the St. Patrick's Day, mostly by punching each other. Hey-ooo!

Anyway, the whole color thing- she's protestant, so orange, right?

But she comes from a long line of folks who embodied poverty and cultural exclusion. That seems green to me.

But her more immediate ancestry has bought in and is very much a part of the hegemon... So... orange?

Of course the embrace of stereotype and the idea of Irish sort of transcends concerns about orange and green.

I guess that makes it very much a matter of white.

Once again... Hey-ooo!

Pomona Matters

Before the Lovely Elizabeth was born, The Qweenbean was much more sympathetic to the idea of moving to Pomona. She's thinking maybe south Claremont is the most we could handle.

She's so bourgeois now.

It's got a bad reputation around here, so you may be surprised to know that its property crime levels are at about the national average. It's violent crime, on the other hand, is higher than the national average. That's because of its gang and drug problems.

So don't do drugs or join a gang and you'll be fine.

In any case I used to think that it would be important for folks that care about where and why they live, folks like me and the Qweenbean, to choose places like Pomona.

Now I think, "Maybe not as bad as Pomona".

It turns out the president will be visiting the Edison electric car center in Pomona this Thursday. That seems like the kind of visit you get from your great grandkids... when it's not Christmas.

If the president's coming by on Thursday, I expect the city to be walled and under the control of The Duke by Saturday.

I Say Collateral Damage, You Say Terrorism, I Say War Hero, You Say War Criminal...

"Washington -- The International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a secret report that the Bush administration's treatment of Al Qaeda captives 'constituted torture,' according to newly published excerpts from the long-concealed 2007 document."

LA Times

-This again? This doesn't matter any more, it's done with.

-No, no, no. You don't understand, they're only war crimes when bad guys do them.

-Right. And we're the good guys, so what we do is good, even if it is regrettably gruesome.

-Besides, we couldn't be who we are if we didn't do this.


All things considered, I wouldn't think beating a dead horse would be a problem for us, but perhaps there is little left to say about it.

Perhaps, from now on, when it comes up, all I will ask is this:
What kind of god do we serve if this is not necessarily confessed and confronted in our churches?

It Takes One to Know One

"The funny thing is, of course, that socialists know that Barack Obama is not one of us. Not only is he not a socialist, he may in fact not even be a liberal. Socialists understand him more as a hedge-fund Democrat -- one of a generation of neoliberal politicians firmly committed to free-market policies."

Billy Wharton of the Socialist Party USA in the Washington Post.

Told ya.

St. Jon the Evangelist

There is a good deal of hand-wringing over the looming death of evangelicalism. For good or ill, younger folks, at least many of those with whom I speak are finding less and less that resonates with the many-headed, yet faceless, beast that has dominated Western American Christianity for the better half of a century. And this is terrifying older folks who have gone, and are still willing to go, to the mattresses over matters of confession and practice. It's not that confession and practice don't matter to a lot of these younger people, it's rather a matter of confession and practice being shown in something other than confession and practice. That is, they seem to have little interest in worshipping a god that is all about creating well-trained parrots.

I suppose that has to happen if the Good News remains good news, but I wonder if this is helped along by the fact that evangelical churches largely agree to be happy accomplices to the powers that want to destroy us.

Oh, this is about Jon Stewart again.

Movements die, and evangelicalism as a movement is/was not long for this world, but how much does a comedian acting as a prophet help to pull the plug? Stewart is willing to clearly lay out the picture and call evil what it is, while we, as churches, suggest this is no concern of ours, it'll be fine because God tells us we don't have to worry, or worse we say it's our job to support the oligarchs that want to determine an existence for us wholly at odds with what it means to be human (as far as Christians may be concerned).

While You Were Sleeping

If we have another child it will be named Jonathan Stewart [skybalon]


or

Rachel Maddow[nominalized] [skybalon]

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Barring that possibility, they ought to be declared Servant of God*. God knows the church can use the inspiration.

* Without their needing to be dead- we're not Catholic after all.

A Facebook Game and Open Letter to The States I've Not Visited

Alabama
Alaska
Arizona X
Arkansas X
California X
Colorado X
Connecticut X
Delaware X
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois X
Indiana X
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky X
Louisiana X
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts X
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri X
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada X
New Hampshire
New Jersey X
New Mexico
New York X
North Carolina X
North Dakota
Ohio X
Oklahoma
Oregon X
Pennsylvania X
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee X
Texas X
Utah X
Vermont
Virginia X
Washington X
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming

The rest of you states, really? C'mon.
Missouri only made the list because it was in the way, how do the rest of you have a chance?
First of all, I'm from California, the one state that has everything the rest of you can only offer piecemeal. Beautiful deserts, forests, beaches, mountains, farms, ghettoes, Beverly Hills and Brawley, Berkley and Newport Beach, 40% of the Pac-10 (or half if you count soccer), the Pacific Ocean?!
Over-crowded prisons? We've got them.
Under-funded schools? Check.
Except for you, Kentucky, we don't have a Big Bone Lick; I'll grant you that.
The point is, other than my own wanderlust or a magnanimous visit, there's no reason to see most of you.
Alabama, if I want depressing poverty and racism, I'll go to San Bernardino.
Thanks anyway, Nebraska, we have our own oppressively featureless landscapes.
Secondofly, I've met enough of your folks here to know what I'm not missing.
North Dakota, I know folks who had the talent, ambition and wherewithal to leave Bismarck, why should I go to see those left behind?
Slack-jawed yokels, hippies, old money, white supremacists, debutantes, illiterate Oaxacans, Persian Jews, movie stars, middle-management nobodies. We've got it all covered.
Don't take this to mean I think you don't matter.
Mississippi, what would we be without you? California would be just one place closer to dead last in spending per pupil.
Florida, without you, California would be that much closer to being first in the number of divorces.
So keep on being what you are and doing what you do, rest of the U.S. California will keep on doing it better.
Sincerely,
[skybalon]

BOOOOOO

Have you ever received a "bill" for a hospital or doctor's office visit itemizing the cost of each little thing you were offered or that was used in your treatment? For example, when I tried to chop off my thumb, the statement I received for the subsequent treatment showed the cost of the exam, the sutures, the whole vial of numbing agent (though they didn't give the whole bottle), the syringes, etc... It was incredibly expensive.

Typically they have some indication on them that they are not bills. Usually something like "THIS IS NOT A BILL". That's very clear.

A friend of mine learned a fun little secret about those "statements".

They're lies.

He received an itemized statement from his insurance company that a.) did not include the THIS IS NOT A BILL clarifier and b.) itemized things he was sure he did not receive or use, so he called the hospital to give his insurance info and make sure he, or his insurance company, was not being overcharged, and he called his insurance company to find out why he was being charged for things his insurance was supposed to cover.

Turns out, the hospital had already been paid, and the statement he received from his insurance company was, in fact, one of those THIS IS NOT A BILL statements.

Phew.

But the itemized things he didn't use?

It wouldn't be right if someone was being charged for goods or services that weren't used, no? After some bureaucratic back and forth, he was told it was okay if there were a few things overlooked or added to the statement because the amounts on the statement are not what what the insurance company pays. They actually paid about a third of what was listed so there was no need to worry about being overcharged. Thanks for his concern, have a nice day.

Isn't that good news? Isn't that lucky?

The insurance company can negotiate and contract for set rates because of its size and market control, so they pay less than what might otherwise be the market rate* for those goods and services injured and sick people might need.

Bully for them.

I wonder though, why send a statement indicating they paid X when they actually paid less than X? What's that bit of deception for?

A cynical person might say it's meant to make you extra thankful for your insurance company taking the hit. Maybe, if you're doing an analysis of what your insurance costs against what you receive, it's meant to make you think you're getting a better deal. (That sounds like fraud.) Maybe it's meant to make you think "Healthcare costs are out of control", while you shake your fist at the sky.

I don't know.

Here's something else I don't know. If item A really only costs $500 (for example), what's the big idea of charging the uninsured $1500? That's odd, too.

What I do know is that the idea of mandating universal insurance coverage is nonsense. Especially because a.) the above is the kind of garbage insurance companies are up to and b.) insurance companies do not exist to provide health care but make money for their shareholders by minimizing expenses, i.e. paying for your health care.

President Obama (nickname pending) thinks this nonsense makes good sense. That's awful; it's more awful when you consider that before he was President Obama (nickname pending), he understood that the best approach to healthcare was a single payer system.

Oh, but why worry about that? You'll be dead soon and never have to worry about being sick or hurt again. Well, maybe not soon, maybe after a bitter and long battle with a terrible disease brought on by your poor eating and exercise choices, then you'll be dead. Still, it seems political, and you're not political. You're just some schmo who's gonna die from heart disease or cancer. What do you care about health care?

Oh I shouldn't assume. Maybe you're not the kind to be pacified by the sweet release of death. If this is something you are interested in, you should get behind H.R. 676. Contact your representative, and tell them to co-sponsor it. Maybe donate to the Citizens Alliance for National Health Insurance.

* That seems confused. Insurance companies get to bypass the market? That's fundamentally not free-market, isn't it?

I Was Saying Oboooma
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Building and Repairing Bridges is Liberal?

If you put up with me all the way to the asterisks in the last post, kudos to you.

I am ready to believe that this bundle of thumbs approach to Republican argument is a strategy meant to further move a corporatist state agenda. (Here comes my unique cuckoo.) Tying Obama to a leftist agenda and describing his policies as socialist obscures what is actually left.

Subsidizing insurance companies and calling that healthcare reform is not socialism. Indefinitely occupying Iraq with tens of thousands of whatever-euphemism-is-used military forces is not leftist liberalism. Escalating the war in Afghanistan is not socialist. Taking our money and giving it to banks in the hope they lend it back to us is certainly not socialism (though that policy began under a "conservative" president). Continuing Bush administration secrecy is not being a good pinko. I don't write this as a disillusioned Obama supporter, I write this as a person who values leftist politics.

Obama's not a leftist. Or, if he is, he's a leftist in the same way President Jesus was a conservative. And just like dum-dum support of President Jesus pushed thoughtful, genuine conservatism off the table, calling Obama's overarching ideologies socialist confuses what is socialist. That's fine if that's what you're after- in fact, it seems strategically brilliant if that's what you're after, but it seems like you would only be after that if you were The Man and if you're reading this you are very likely not The Man.

Calling Obama's agenda socialist makes sense if a.) you're a dummy or b.) you're trying, for whatever reasons, to co-opt the label to limit the possibility for leftist reforms. Wether that's good or bad to you consider this, the President Jesus years saw so many "conservatives" hop on a band-wagon loaded with such glaringly non-conservative baggage that Ron Paul could seem presidential.* Real advocates of a small government, fiscal tight-fistedness, and anti-imperial foreign policy could only stand by with their hats in their hands while being a conservative came to be a matter of clobbering homosekshuls with the KBR version of the Bible. That may be a lot of things- stupid, shallow, plutocratic, anti-Chrsitian, what have you- but it is not conservative. So while conservatism was hobbled we had a country that could pursue an imperial vision, unchecked executive power, illegal spying on its own citizens, torture, kidnapping, TARP, etc. That is some coup.

So where will we be if we have a similarly confused notion of what is socialism or what is liberal? Will politics largely be a matter of aesthetic choices? We'll allow Obama to continue with the above but everyone will know we're liberals because of our Shepard Fairey-ized pictures. Blah blah blah, point being, I'm the kind of paranoid/crazy that could believe entrenched corporate interests only benefit from Joe The Plumber conservatives on one side and Apple® liberals on the other (as if it were a matter of sides).

Maybe the upshot of this is Dennis Kucinich will someday seem presidential.

* At this, you should shudder like Sideshow Bob getting whacked in the face with a rake handle.

You're Fighting the Last War, Pops

Long time readers of my webworld diary risk alienating friends and family but may also recall my brilliant assessment of the previous presidential campaign's race-based strategies. In short, I said I thought the racial "othering"* of Obama wouldn't be the success it had been for Republicans in previous campaigns because the "signifiers,"* when compared to the actual Barack Obama, just didn't stand.

I think the same applies to the use of "socialist" among those lunatics and intellectual cripples trying to tie some vague fear of the misunderstood to Obama's social and economic policies. So just as the clumsy use of racism backfired (in the US, against a black man, of all things), I think the "socialist this" "socialist that" nonsense won't fly and may, in fact, backfire.

First, when one describes any of the present policies as socialism, and means that as an argument against them I think, "This person's a bit silly, they're just not someone I can take seriously on this matter, perhaps I should change the subject to building pigeon traps".

In order for this bit of crazy to carry any weight, I'd have to be of a like-kind of crazy. I'm not, so it turns me off and leads us to something else. It's the kind of point that can only be a point for those who see it as a point, as such it's the kind of thing that builds the walls of stupid higher and reduces the possibility of reaching anyone not already comfortably settled in that garden of dumb.

See. It's self-defeating in its self-buidling.

Secondly, like the "I guess I'm not that scared of black people if Barack is black people" phenomenon that won over enough white folks, the concrete comparisons that may follow from "It's Socialism, BOO!" may have the effect of opening people to socialist policies that the rest of the western industrialized world finds good and helpful.**

There's no Evil Empire, Joe Mc Carthy. Your clicks and clacks invite comparisons to Sweden, Canada, England, and Germany rather than the Soviet Union.

The what?

Exactly.

"You mean socialist like our allies? Okay... That sounds pretty good."

"You mean a single payer healthcare system could be like the fire department? That's not scary. That just sounds like good social and economic policy."

* Wonk wonk wonk
** Though Obama's policies are not socialist so what they're actually open to may be something else cleverly disguised as the socialism they think they're open to. What? Maybe I'll come back to that.

I Hit You Only Because I Love You So Much

So I'm thinking lots about silence these days. To be specific silence as an act, silence as an act of critical language. Blah blah blah...

I write this because normally I offer some clever or funny intro and segue into the subject, but not this time.

I know, I know, I'll write something to make you LOL or say "So true... so true" at another time.

What I have is something to ponder, maybe query style but perhaps not so systematic, around this point. Here 'tis: Do acts of love need verbal justification?

Are loving acts loving, in and of themselves, when they can be done without a need for explanation?
The more we need to verbally justify an action, is it less a work of love?
Is it ultimately self-serving to explain to someone that an act as loving, if it is not understood as such without an explanation ("self" here needing to be understood not merely as some inward sense of agency and consciousness but also including at least a framework and world of understanding that affirms and makes that sense of self possible)?
If, as a Christian, I say, "I do 'such and such' in the name of Christ" am I not actually doing it for self?
How would imagining how to silently show love (that is, without words) be transformative? (And then of course, doing.)
Am I just hearing the lingering echoes of Works of Love here? Ugh, that would be wasteful...

I suppose it might help to think of the things you do with and for those you love and how they are known as such in that world of understanding you share with them.

What?

I mean, you likely know people, live with people, share a world with people that you love- that you live with in love- wherein love is shown in the lives that you live with each other with little, if any, verbal justification. It may actually be that verbal justification diminishes the act to you, even if it would seem to otherwise follow from knowing that you love each other-

"I want you to know, I'm doing this because I love you"...

"I'd really like to do such and such for you, but if I can't tell you that I'm doing it for love, then I'd rather not bother..."

Seems creepy, disingenuous, or sinister, rather than loving, no?

What would you do, if you wanted to show someone you love them but weren't allowed to tell them you were doing it "for love"?
Who could you show?
Who would you have not the least clue how to show?

By the way, I do see the absurdity of using words to communicate questions born by pondering silence or meant to encourage silently demonstrating love but this is meant to be thrown away.

Food Goes In Here

The Monster Machine and I were speaking briefly about Lenten practices, specifically about the "I'm giving up 'X'" bit.

His sense was that it is a bit disingenuous that we talk so much about what we're giving up. I think his exact words were, "They're all a bunch of phonies and I'd like to punch each and every one of them in the [redacted] mouth".

You're right. He is awful.

I, as you have no doubt come to learn, am far more gracious and understated.

Whatever.

There are as many understandings of fasting and prayer as there are people so it might be silly to say, "Isn't Lent supposed to be blah blah blargh?" but who am I to not be silly?

Right.

Let's assume that there is some sense of Lenten practice, fasting from some such or other, that is meant to convey an idea of anticipation and preparation for the celebration of Jesus' victory over the world, and an acknowledgment of the nature of that confrontation between Word and world wherein we're the buttholes* that want to destroy the Word. Let's say it's meant to remind us that the source of our hope is not in anything in the world save Jesus, and that is uniquely as God. It would seem the practice should be oriented about confronting us with that relation.

So... you don't eat perhaps with the the purpose of being confronted with hunger and that with the purpose of bringing to mind the idea that if you don't eat you'll die, and that perhaps brings to mind what you do to save yourself, only you remember you don't save yourself- even by eating, though eating seems like the very kind of thing that would save you because, if you remember, if you don't eat you'll die.

You might despair because you realize that the most seemingly fundamental and life-giving aspects of your existence are for nothing, so if it were up to you you'd be lost. Then perhaps ultimately this relation brings to mind hope and gratefulness because it's not up to you, at least as far as you're concerned as a Christian.

But face it, if you're an American, you're not likely famishing- pear-shaped softies that we are. We generally don't have the kind of relation to food that going without it is all that threatening. Moreover, as Christians (of a certain kind perhaps) we already know that we don't do anything to earn our salvation**. As good protestants, we know "we can't do anything to be saved". It is our mantra.

Except that we do- I mean we do have our "musts" for salvation. We must say the right things and think the right things. And saying and thinking are entirely matters of doing. They are a matter of our doing.

Tangentially, how convenient it is that we say "You could never feed enough hungry people to earn heaven so, though your master says to do it, don't bother except as an accessory," and then we follow that with "What you must do is think and speak 'thusly'". Perhaps "to what" or "for whom" that is convenient is a question we could sit with during Lent.

Back to our doing...

Isn't this doing our security? Rather than food, perhaps it is this foundational Protestant "doing" from which we must rest. Could you stop reading your Bible for forty days? Could you stop gathering with like-minded folks to sing and hear about God's grandiosity these few Sundays? Could you not preach? Attend Sunday School? Teach a Bible study?

No? If you don't do it you'll die?

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*I use the word "buttholes" in this. Don't read it if this scandalizes your sensibilities. -OR-
Fast from your sensibilities.

**This is just a variation on the theme you likely know- some form of "you can't earn your salvation" "you can't do anything to warrant God's grace"...

I'm Here to Ruin Your Day

So it turns out The Road is soon to be a major motion picture. I'm curious to see how it's been put to film but you should read the book before its release.

Even if it had not been made into a movie, I would recommend the book. I've been recommending it here and there, but my learning that it will be/is a movie has presented a kind of urgency, so...

Here it is: my global recommendation that you read The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It is the greatest theological book of the 21st century.

Really.

I warn you that it is bleak and haunting, conjuring images that are deeply disturbing and indelible, but I don't know of another book* that more plainly or unflinchingly holds a mirror to the reader and demands some sense of responsibility. It's a horrible, horrible book, starkly holding out what it means to be human, and who wants to confront that?

Read it. Quick, before it's a movie.
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*I'd say we're largely out of the practice of biblical texts doing this, and I can't overstate how shockingly aggressive The Road is in this regard. As such it's a good text to push one into that place.