The Perfect Gift

If I don’t give my parents specific ideas about what kinds of presents to get me, they usually give me something slightly off the mark. Even though they’ve known me for my whole life, they never come up with gifts that really seem like something I always wanted, even though I didn’t even know it before said gift showed up in my life.

Which is too bad because I secretly want gifts that seem inevitably like something I’d like if only I knew it existed and yet my parents’ inability to do that for me is not something I can complain about without seeming like an enormously ungrateful bitch.

And yet, once, they bought me the most perfect gift ever.

A lightning rod.

A lightning rod topped off by two lightning rod balls.

Hee, my rod has two balls.

I am twelve.

Kleinheider Shocks the Shit out of Me

You all may remember how back in May, Kleinheider equated homosexuality with "alcoholism, pedophilia, and murder," saying "No, I am not equating homosexuality with murder or child molestation. I am simply pointing out that genetic predisposition does not make something legal, moral or advisable." and how I had to write him a sternly worded post about what an idiot he was being and how he rebutted my post by acting surprised that a feminist would take the political so personally.

Well, anyway, today Kleinheider says

 

Many reasons, I suspect, but I believe it is very much the same as the reasons why sexual misconduct is so prevalent in the clergy.

 

Social conservatives come in two flavors. The first are the authentic religious converts and those who were reared with conservative values who did not rebel.

Then there is a second category. Those who are trying to fix themselves through their faith and/or ideology. Nominal conservatives, who have a sickness and are trying to self medicate. They know what they do is wrong, they know they have a problem.

They think, maybe, if they stand with those who are "right" and "moral", if they mouth the words enough, they will be cured. They hope that they will no longer do those dirty little deeds that their impulse control will not combat.

Seldom works though.

Now, I know it’s hard to see through the Kleinheiderian rhetoric, but go back and reread that.   Buried in there is the realization that some things are innate to people and cannot be "cured."

Is this a baby step?  I don’t know.

 ********

Also, I feel like, in light of the Foley nonsense, that this is a good time to remind you all of why grown-ass people sleep with (or in Foley’s case–try to sleep with) teenagers. 

Let me explain it to you.   Teenagers need space to fuck around and make mistakes and grow up.  Grown ass people who fuck teenagers, as I’ve said before, have a vested interest in preventing that teenager from growing up and realizing what a loser the teen-fucker is.  That’s why fucking a teenager, even if they appear to be willing, is wrong, because, in order to fuck a teenager, a grown ass person must fuck with that teenager’s head.  If they didn’t fuck with that teenager’s head, the teenager would eventually ask such troubling questions as "Why can’t this person find someone his or her own age to fuck?" and realize that the answer is "Because this person is a loser" and stop fucking them.

[…]

These teenage boys have no experience with ordinary life.  They don’t pay bills or work or feel the full weight of adulthood and so they have no expectation that these women will either.  The woman has found someone who only sees her as the pretty, pretty princess and who expects her always and forever to need special attention that no other man can give her.  So, she chooses the boy who can help her maintain her belief in her special, unique self over the man who wants her to be a grown up.

I suspect the dynamic is similar for men who fuck teenage girls.  He loves that, to her, he is always so smart and powerful and special, because she’s got little history to compare him to.

I think this is applicable to Foley, too, with the added benefit that his victims have the pressure of cultural homophobia to keep them quiet.

 

If You’re Not Salty, What are You Worth?

A picnic table, pork barbecue, a sunny day, and three leftists chewing over the world’s problems.  Is there a better way to spend one’s lunch?

I don’t know.

On Saturday, the Professor and I serendipitously ended up having lunch with John H. and we got to talking about how one can understand how the Christian Right has achieved the cultural role of speaking for all of U.S. Christendom.  And the Professor was talking about how she thought it went back to school prayer–the Left’s efforts to remove prayer from school proved to a lot of religious folks that there was some war against Christianity and that folks had better set aside their differences in order to fight it.

And I was saying that I think our approach to fighting these kinds of cultural battles has been misguided, because it’s been based on demanding exclusion (“Stop praying” “Don’t celebrate Christmas in public schools” etc.) instead of demanding inclusion, which, frankly, is what we’re good at.

We, as a movement, have never been any good at seeking out the taint of anything and trying to get rid of it.  And it’s crazy that we start when it comes to religion.

No, instead, what we need to do is use every opportunity we can for the inclusion of diverse ideas.

And John H. had this brilliant idea that we could even start with the diversity of Christian thought.  For instance, every time someone wants to put the ten commandments up at a courthouse or in a public school room, we on the Left should be “Okay, great.  I’ll fight for posting the Ten Commandments if you fight for posting the Beatitudes.”

God, John H.  that’s so brilliant I don’t even know how to continue this post, so I’ll just trail off here in awe…

 Oh, and quote that crazy hippie, Jesus.

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
      for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
 Blessed are those who mourn,
      for they will be comforted.
 Blessed are the meek,
      for they will inherit the earth.
 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
      for they will be filled.
 Blessed are the merciful,
      for they will be shown mercy.
 Blessed are the pure in heart,
      for they will see God.
 Blessed are the peacemakers,
      for they will be called sons of God.
 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
      for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

 Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice
and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same
way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

 

Stuff I Want To Not Forget to Mention

1.  This post by Say Uncle is so awesome that I’m not sure what the proper response from a reader should be.  What do libertarians like?  I don’t have guns.  I don’t live close enough to buy him a beer.  So, I thought about the libertarians I know, and clicked on over to Uncle’s sight, closed  my office door, and flashed my tits in honor of him.  Kudos, Unc.

2.  Kat schools Abramson about rich people.  Thanks, Kat. 

3.  Remind me to tell you about the awesome lunch we had with John H. and his beatitudes idea.  I love leftist Christians. 

At Home

I was thinking this morning on my walk with Mrs. Wigglebottom again about whether I’m weird.  Obviously, this is not a question I expect you to be able to answer, because it really has to do with some internal perception of myself.

I consider myself to be pretty much like everyone else.

But it’s hard to really know if one is intrinsically weird because, if one is not putting on an act or mentally ill, one cannot be unfamiliar to one’s self.  And I think for some thing to be weird, it has to be creepy (a little) and strange.

Oh, Freud, I hate to bring you into this conversation, but if I am always at home in myself (heimlich), how can anything I do ever be un-homey (unheimlich, or uncanny) to me?

No, I think that, if you are in right relation to yourself, it is impossible for you to understand yourself as weird unless you have some kind of outside evidence.

Anyway, I was walking Mrs. Wigglebottom this morning and this black dog came barreling out of nowhere, unleashed and looking to make friends with my dog–Oscar was his name, I think.

I tried to keep Mrs. Wigglebottom moving, and so of course right at that moment her collar came undone and suddenly there I was in the middle of the road with a leash and an empty collar in one hand and an excited dog in the other hand.  I was yelling at the other dog to back off and then finally his owner appeared out of nowhere and took his dog.

And then, America, something happened that made me so enraged I almost started just beating that guy to death.  His unleashed dog comes barreling over to my dog and he starts asking questions like why his unleashed dog would run away from him towards another dog is a complete mystery to him.  Or like this whole situation is my fault.

“Is your dog in heat?”

“Are you sure?”

“Did your collar break?”

“Well, my dog just loves other dogs.  It’s fine if they meet.”

Etc. Etc.

Y’all, I swear.  Folks think pit bulls are dangerous and yet the mammal just about to fight the black dog and then lung at the neck of its owner was not the four-legged one.

If you want your dog to be outside without a leash, get a fence.

Also, I wanted to beat the collar for breaking, but I refrained, because I haven’t yet lost my damn mind.

Still, when we got home, Mrs. Wigglebottom went right upstairs to hide from me.