I think I'll refrain from letting my aunt know I'm a nun-devouring fiend . . . And I guess there's at least two ways of interpretting that statement . . .
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Door-to-door evangelical atheism as a response to Mormon evangelism
A co-worker sent this to me and it's quite hilarious.
The way Mormons respond to a door-to-door evangelical atheist strikes me as rather hypocritical, no? (I'm tempted to do this, but I'd probably get killed if I tried it in the South.)
The way Mormons respond to a door-to-door evangelical atheist strikes me as rather hypocritical, no? (I'm tempted to do this, but I'd probably get killed if I tried it in the South.)
Interesting conversation about post-feminism and "raunch culture"
Today's episode of Fresh Air has an intriguing conversation I thought I'd share with all of you.
I haven't listened to the whole conversation myself yet, but the topic alone intrigued me. I suppose it's a debate I've had in my own head more than a few times. Is a woman flaunting her sexuality blatantly something to be admired or censured? Is sex work something legitimate, even potentially empowering, or something inherently degrading to a person? Is pornography a fantasy genre to enjoy or a force tearing down the fabric of romantic intimacy in our culture?
I'll enjoy reading your comments.
I haven't listened to the whole conversation myself yet, but the topic alone intrigued me. I suppose it's a debate I've had in my own head more than a few times. Is a woman flaunting her sexuality blatantly something to be admired or censured? Is sex work something legitimate, even potentially empowering, or something inherently degrading to a person? Is pornography a fantasy genre to enjoy or a force tearing down the fabric of romantic intimacy in our culture?
I'll enjoy reading your comments.
Monday, November 20, 2006
Global Orgasm for Peace
Well, you feel like you're having trouble doing something for peace. You're busy with work or school. You have a lot of other things on your plate and not much free time. There's the kids, book discussion groups, work-outs, hobbies, favorite TV shows, dating, the second job, World of Warcraft . . . There's always something interfering, right?
Well, maybe you'll make time for this. You have to be smokin' some kinda doobie to think this could actually have any effect (beyond publicity stunt status), but you know, then again, better to be on the safe side, right? It won't take too much time out of your busy day. Just find some time on Friday, December 22nd, to get a little privacy with a partner (or your favorite masturbatory technique) and see how much amazing coming you can do to end all this armed conflict. I mean, it really is about the least you can possibly do.
If anybody wants to post detailed and lurid descriptions of their participation, well, I'm willing to donate the comments section of this post for any accounts you feel you must share . . . ;-)
Enjoy the Solstice everybody! Because the Solstice really is the reason for the holiday season!!! ;-)
Well, maybe you'll make time for this. You have to be smokin' some kinda doobie to think this could actually have any effect (beyond publicity stunt status), but you know, then again, better to be on the safe side, right? It won't take too much time out of your busy day. Just find some time on Friday, December 22nd, to get a little privacy with a partner (or your favorite masturbatory technique) and see how much amazing coming you can do to end all this armed conflict. I mean, it really is about the least you can possibly do.
If anybody wants to post detailed and lurid descriptions of their participation, well, I'm willing to donate the comments section of this post for any accounts you feel you must share . . . ;-)
Enjoy the Solstice everybody! Because the Solstice really is the reason for the holiday season!!! ;-)
Monday, November 13, 2006
Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses (presented by Swine Palace)
This past Thursday night (we lucky state employees had off last Friday for the observance of Veteran's Day after getting off work Tuesday, as well, for the election!), I gave myself a special treat: I took myself and three friends to go see Metamorphoses, a play based on the ancient Roman poet Ovid's long poem of the same name. Ovid's poem recounts a great many ancient myths about the transformation of one thing into another. Zimmerman managed to create a play that makes the power and majesty of ancient myth completely contemporary and I loved every second of it.
The central stage was dominated by a large, shallow swimming pool, a wonderful central symbol of the transformative and the maleable source of life. The actors splashed into it almost immediately, and began recreating Ovid's various myths of transformation. Sometimes narators were on stage, standing beside the pool and having conversations with each other about the story being reenacted, and often offering interpretations, in a few cases even debating the proper interpretation. The play recounts less than a dozen of the most popular and striking myths from the original, making each one completely contemporary in the retelling. A teenage Phaeton lounges in the pool while telling you about how his distant father, the Sun, tries to make-up for being absent during his childhood by granting him a privilege he cannot handle. He uses copious amounts of contemporary slang and typically modern teenage irony while spilling out the tale, reminding you of every spoiled boy-man you've ever met who had something to prove. Bacchus wiggles around as it to techno rhythms and parties with Silenus like they're high at a trendy nightclub. Aphrodite wears a slinky red dress and smokes with a cigarette holder. These gods didn't die fifteen hundred years ago; they inhabit the twenty-first century, like the gods of a Neal Gaiman novel or reminscent of the contemporary mythic awareness of Ginette Paris. To me, it was alive and glorious.
Nobody who went with me was that inspired by the play, though. One friend of mine found the narations (especially the analytical ones) really annoying. Another found the contemporization of the stories to feel phoney and flip, detracting from the majesty and power of Ovid's original. They didn't seem to get that same feeling of something that spoke right at them that I got. I was wearing a silly grin the whole time and feeling touched, even though I was steadily getting more and more sick as the night progressed. (My ears were filling with fluid, my head was stuffing up, and my throat was sore.) Perhaps the magic I felt was idiosyncratic, though reviews I read online seem to show that others also felt some of what I felt when seeing other productions of the play.
If you ever get a chance to see this play performed, I recommend you take yourself up on it, particularly if you like Gaiman's Sandman graphic novels or have read either Paris' Pagan Grace or her Pagan Meditations and thought they were good. This place was just my style: transcendent, contemporary, suffused with ancient meaning, and heavy with a symbolism relevant to everyday life. (At least, to mine.) Zimmerman has created a wonder and Swine Palace brought it to life very well!
The central stage was dominated by a large, shallow swimming pool, a wonderful central symbol of the transformative and the maleable source of life. The actors splashed into it almost immediately, and began recreating Ovid's various myths of transformation. Sometimes narators were on stage, standing beside the pool and having conversations with each other about the story being reenacted, and often offering interpretations, in a few cases even debating the proper interpretation. The play recounts less than a dozen of the most popular and striking myths from the original, making each one completely contemporary in the retelling. A teenage Phaeton lounges in the pool while telling you about how his distant father, the Sun, tries to make-up for being absent during his childhood by granting him a privilege he cannot handle. He uses copious amounts of contemporary slang and typically modern teenage irony while spilling out the tale, reminding you of every spoiled boy-man you've ever met who had something to prove. Bacchus wiggles around as it to techno rhythms and parties with Silenus like they're high at a trendy nightclub. Aphrodite wears a slinky red dress and smokes with a cigarette holder. These gods didn't die fifteen hundred years ago; they inhabit the twenty-first century, like the gods of a Neal Gaiman novel or reminscent of the contemporary mythic awareness of Ginette Paris. To me, it was alive and glorious.
Nobody who went with me was that inspired by the play, though. One friend of mine found the narations (especially the analytical ones) really annoying. Another found the contemporization of the stories to feel phoney and flip, detracting from the majesty and power of Ovid's original. They didn't seem to get that same feeling of something that spoke right at them that I got. I was wearing a silly grin the whole time and feeling touched, even though I was steadily getting more and more sick as the night progressed. (My ears were filling with fluid, my head was stuffing up, and my throat was sore.) Perhaps the magic I felt was idiosyncratic, though reviews I read online seem to show that others also felt some of what I felt when seeing other productions of the play.
If you ever get a chance to see this play performed, I recommend you take yourself up on it, particularly if you like Gaiman's Sandman graphic novels or have read either Paris' Pagan Grace or her Pagan Meditations and thought they were good. This place was just my style: transcendent, contemporary, suffused with ancient meaning, and heavy with a symbolism relevant to everyday life. (At least, to mine.) Zimmerman has created a wonder and Swine Palace brought it to life very well!
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
"Fall Festival"
OK, Halloween is the second-most popular holiday in the U. S. It's something that almost all of us enjoyed as kids, dressing up in goulish or silly costumes and pretending to be some monster or super-hero or fantasy just-so character. We all loved going around and scooping up the candy from our neighbors. We all have memorable stories from this night, when somebody managed to scare somebody, but good, or when we got some fantastic candy or something.
This last year, though, the forces of Puritanical religiousity seem to have become ascendent on October 31st. Here in my (government) office, we did not celebrate the secular holiday of Halloween. We celebrated "fall festival." All the evangelical churches in town have developed "fall festival" celebrations, as they dismiss Haloween as a holiday devoted to promoting the occult and other evils. So, they encourage everyone to dismiss Halloween, and instead they've sanitized the hell out of it and we're all supposed to have candy and sing Kumbaya with nobody dressed as a ghost or a magician or a goul or a superhero. They're encouraged to dress as Bible characters instead.
Now, bowdlerization is a very old process. It happens often. It recurs perenially, to protect the supposedly vulnerable from an authentic understanding of traditions of sexuality or horror or blasphemy. The censorious and puritanical seem to bloom again in every age. But dammit, when you apply it to Halloween, you're really taking away the last enclave of authorized mischeif in our culture. You're really going too far. You're really denying something with a sacredness all its own.
I hope that at some point in the future, we can accept and embrace Haloween in my city again. I suppose a lot of it just has to do with exactly where I live around my city (think rural) and the exactly character of the people now running my office (think prissy).
I just don't think it's f**king healthy to deny the gouls, the magicians, the unnatural, and the horrible all year long. Every culture needs a Saturnalia.
This last year, though, the forces of Puritanical religiousity seem to have become ascendent on October 31st. Here in my (government) office, we did not celebrate the secular holiday of Halloween. We celebrated "fall festival." All the evangelical churches in town have developed "fall festival" celebrations, as they dismiss Haloween as a holiday devoted to promoting the occult and other evils. So, they encourage everyone to dismiss Halloween, and instead they've sanitized the hell out of it and we're all supposed to have candy and sing Kumbaya with nobody dressed as a ghost or a magician or a goul or a superhero. They're encouraged to dress as Bible characters instead.
Now, bowdlerization is a very old process. It happens often. It recurs perenially, to protect the supposedly vulnerable from an authentic understanding of traditions of sexuality or horror or blasphemy. The censorious and puritanical seem to bloom again in every age. But dammit, when you apply it to Halloween, you're really taking away the last enclave of authorized mischeif in our culture. You're really going too far. You're really denying something with a sacredness all its own.
I hope that at some point in the future, we can accept and embrace Haloween in my city again. I suppose a lot of it just has to do with exactly where I live around my city (think rural) and the exactly character of the people now running my office (think prissy).
I just don't think it's f**king healthy to deny the gouls, the magicians, the unnatural, and the horrible all year long. Every culture needs a Saturnalia.
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