I have been very good this year. Please see the attached photo for my Christmas list.
Chutney
P.S. I think Godzilla can kick his ass.
(Thanks, gangesfan!)
Dear Santy Claus…
11.21.04 | Permalink | Comments Off on Dear Santy Claus…
Fetal-American rights now!
11.18.04 | Permalink | 4 Comments
I’ve been convinced for a while now that no further good can come of public discussion and what not of the whole abortion issue. It’s just been played out. But tonight I realized I was wrong.
I have a new tactic. But before I spoil the fun, here’s the background. As you know, anti-abortionators (or whatever the hell the PC term for them is these days) assert that fetuses (fetii?) are people too. So are my cats, I might add, but that doesn’t give them legal rights.
But that’s a tangent. Click to continue reading “Fetal-American rights now!”
America’s “blue” urban achipelago
11.16.04 | Permalink | 4 Comments
Do you live in a large metropolitan area, a small city, or a college town? Then odds are you live in the real “blue America.” And, according to these guys over at “The Stranger,” you should be pissed that red, rural and exurban Americans wants to tell you what to do.
The old Democratic alliance of rural populists and urban liberals is broke—the rural populists have left the fold to vote with their culturally conservative cousins. We’re not going to get them back. But we don’t have to. We outnumber them. And if the cities keep growing (as they have), we’ll only outnumber them more.
Democratic values, then, should be wholly urban values. After reading of The Stranger’s article, I came up with a quick list of a dozen things you can do to get your country back for your city: Click to continue reading “America’s “blue” urban achipelago”
Your own. Personal. Protest.
From the front of the bus she spoke. “Lord Jesus…wages of sin is death…get to a good church…sin in your life…repent…eternal life…the Word says…”
Sitting in the middle of the bus, I couldn’t quite make it all out. But I knew the script well from my childhood in charismatic churches. Lead with how you’ve been convicted by the Holy Spirit to speak. Something about god having a message for your hearer’s life. A lot about sin. A lot of citations of St. Paul. Something about heaven (or hell). And then close with the “sinner’s prayer.”
Once they figured out what was going on, most people on the bus tuned her out. I tried to listen in without looking at her—I didn’t want to encourage her. Another woman watched her the whole time but with confused fascination, as if to ask, “What are you trying to do?” Click to continue reading “Your own. Personal. Protest.”
Obama 2008 and last minute racism
11.11.04 | Permalink | 9 Comments
I was talking to a friend yesterday about the excitement here about a Barak Obama presidency in 2008.
But he had doubts that it could happen because of American racism. Not the out-and-out racism of confederate flag wavers, but the passive, hidden racism that’s led white voters to change their minds at the last minute and vote against that black candidate they’d said they would vote for only the day before (over and over again). He doesn’t think America is willing to leave that passive racism behind yet. I wondered how else it could leave it behind without being presented with just such a high stakes choice.
Is America really ready to give itself a black President yet? Or would last minute racism rear its ugly head at the ballot box again?
How to apologize
“I’m sorry. I know I was wrong. I would like to acknowledge that. I feel very bad about what I have done, and I realize that I have caused you great hurt. And now let me hear you speak, so I can get a fuller sense of what I have done to you. And after you have finished, let me prove that you have been heard, and let me try to make things right and restore our relationship and earn back, or gain, your friendship and respect.” (From Thane Rosenbaum’s The Myth of Moral Justice: Why Our Legal System Fails to Do What’s Right, p180.)
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