Monday, November 22, 2004

it's like the thorn birds...

...but more disturbing.

i'm no catholic, but i'm sensing a celndar of hot italian priests would open the door to all sorts of, um, inappropriate thoughts.

the year of compassion

CNN.com - FBI: More than 7,400 hate crimes last year - Nov 22, 2004

well, that takes care of race. let's start a pool on how long it'll take for gender specific crime to spike now that it's federally banned for women to receive information about abortion.

Sunday, November 21, 2004

well. suckage.

thanks, president bush, for slashing domestic spending to anemic levels.

Thursday, November 18, 2004

what we're forced to do

Shooting Spurs Iraqi Uproar, U.S. Inquiry

long story short:

faking death (i.e, living) forces marine to kill unarmed insurgent (who'd already been shot and taken prisoner).

i don't know if the word 'absurdity' quite describes what is happening over there.

in the final calculation of history (here below and before God) who will answer for this? who will bear the blame for this huge loss of human life and humanity? who will answer for this outrage against decency?

i'm going to hell

and all because of this.

my tattoo is over my right shoulder blade. it's a cute little salamander winding down the curve of my upper blade. i named it jake.

the summer i successfully defended my dissertation plan and passed my prelims, i decided to mark the moment. so, with some friends, i picked a clean tattoo salon on sunset blvd, ruched up my skirt, took off my shirt and straddled the back of a chair while tony, the ex-con from east la, etched a tattoo into my skin with black ink.

rebellion? whatever.

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

article update

so the article i've been working on for the past week and a half has changed in direction. at first it was about how progressives need to get with the god program and start talking jesus. then i started to refine that position.

the issue isn't that progressives aren't churchy enough - it's that we honestly don't know how to maneuver in this new 'faith and values battleground.' it's my opinion that faith is a linguistic cover for class, urbanization, gender and race. in other words, the anxiety (or certitude) people are showing over the values/faith debate is actually the byproduct of good old-fashioned isms. so i've also expanded my focus to talk aboutpeople of color and women, as well (write what you know, after all). to find the way out, we progressives are going to have to remember what it's like to be activists again.

i want to have this done done done by the weekend.
now it's old ladies.

when did being a christian mean losing all common sense? when did being a pastor mean that all sense of boundaries and civility could be totally forgotten?

hey, here's a heads up for all those pastors out there: when you make elderly women call the police you have officially become scary.

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

god-whipped

The New Republic Online: The Elect

i differ in intensity with this article (i think the left must engage in this faith fetish if it wants to put some fire in its movement) but i agree wholeheartedly with the idea that morality and virtue aren't the same thing.

Friday, November 12, 2004

t r u t h o u t - Evangelical Leader: 'Evangelical Christianity Has Been Hijacked'

t r u t h o u t - Evangelical Leader: 'Evangelical Christianity Has Been Hijacked'

i've been writing about this and i'll respond to this later, once my latest draft is finished. (if i can't find a place to submit it, i'll post it here because i'm afraid like that.)

fool me once...

t r u t h o u t - MultiMedia

i wanted to put the whole ohio thing behind me. it made us look like babies. whiners.

but now, it looks like perhaps we were right. again.

why, oh WHY did we concede before every vote was counted??

Thursday, November 11, 2004

it's just too easy

Salon.com Life | Tex ed

hm.
banal sex ed books. highest teen birth rate in the nation.
think there's a connection?

idiots.

the corruption of christianity?

Michael Feingold | Our Vanished Values

money quote:

"For make no mistake, this is the election in which American Christianity destroyed itself. Today the church is no longer a religion but a tacky political lobby, with an obsessive concentration on a minuscule number of social topics so irrelevant to questions of governance that they barely constitute political issues at all. These are the points of contention tied into what are blurrily referred to as "moral values," though they have almost nothing to do with the larger moral question of how one lives one's life, and everything to do with the fundamentally un-Christian and un-American idea of forcing others to live the way you believe they should. The displacement of faith involved is eerie, almost psychotic: Here are people willing to vote against their own well-being and their own children's future, just so they can compel someone else's daughter to bear an unwanted child and deprive someone else's son of the right to file a joint income tax return with his male partner."

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

values

wingnuts

follow the links and read the originals carefully.
then ask yourself a few questions:

what's christian about this?

(ok, ask yourself just one question.)

Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson

another great mind. read and get inspired.

Body and Soul: Onward, Christianist soldiers

Body and Soul: Onward, Christianist soldiers

i'm writing an article about this now. but this is a good post about some of the things i'm concerned with: the new heavily reactionist, anti-rational wing of the right. if this is the face of christianity, then we have a problem.

sorry i've been absent. the election knocked me for a loop.
but now i'm back.

i'm quitting my cushy job to fight for the left. so if you thought i was militant before, wait until i really get warmed up.