Encapsulating Stupidity and Pettiness Since 2004

Shoot.  Has it been that long?  This blog is going to turn five in the fall?  Should I plan on sending it to kindergarten?

Anyway, listen.  I think we need to have just a brief “state of the blog” address here.  See, this thing you are reading, it’s just some words put on a screen by a gal who likes to put words on a screen.  It is, like it says over to the right there, about “about completing the task of living with enough spontaneity to splurge some of it on bystanders, to share with others working through their own travails a little of your bonus life.”

I don’t believe Donnell Alexander ever thought that would be used as a feminist’s manifesto (but he’s on the internet, so, if you’re inclined, you can ask him), but I do consider those words an excellent description of my feminist project–to splurge on you, who are going through your own shit, a little of my life.  If you don’t want it, fine.  Don’t come here.  Don’t read me.

But if you do come here and you do read me, get that it’s a gift and it’s rude to dictate what gifts you’re given.  So, if it doesn’t work for you, again, don’t come here.

I consider this a feminist project because it allows me to say outloud what I see, to admit the pressures I feel, not to gain your sympathy–I don’t want your sympathy–but to say, in public, the things that aren’t right, the ways that the things that are wrong or right with the world express themselves in my personal world.  It is a great and novel luxury for a woman to have a public voice.  In the whole history of the world, it’s a great and novel luxury for a woman to have a public voice, to be able to be unseemly and loud and rude and funny and sad and happy and passionate and opinionated in public, where everyone can see.  And I revel in that luxury.

But this is mine.

If you think things should be done differently, said differently, handled differently, then there’s the whole wide internet.  Do it your own way.  More power to you.

But if you’re going to read me and realize that it means you can’t be online anymore… well, best of luck to ya, but that’s pretty fucked up.

(And when does the day come when someone reads me and realizes that they cannot rest until their face is buried in my cooter?  When, I ask you, does that day come?)

Gentlemen! Come to our aid!

I know you don’t like looking in each other’s crotchal regions, but it’s for science!  Could you go over there and explain what’s going on with that man’s stuff?

Now is Not the Time, Nor, More Importantly, the Place

I want to talk about David Hawk getting up in front of the Tennessee legislature and preaching, but before I can even get that far, we must talk theology, just for a minute.  Please turn your attention to

I wake up hoping and praying to live a sin-free life just like Christ did. Every day I fail miserably. Now although God does not condone or accept the sins that I commit, he has the almighty power of forgiveness. I ask God for forgiveness every day and he blesses me even though I’m not worthy.

Because I just have to ask, is that a common understanding of what the Christian god wants–for people to live sin-free lives like Christ did?  I don’t know.  It’s an interesting question.  How, for instance, did Jesus understand sin?  Hawk says that he fails every day to live a sin-free life, and that he fails miserably.  And yet, when Jesus told the adulterer to go and sin no more, clearly, He must have thought it was entirely possible for her to do so, right?  Or did he just mean for her to stop sleeping with someone who wasn’t her husband?  Is Jesus’ emphasis on living without sinning or is it on all that, as Mark Driscoll puts it, that “neutered and limp-wristed popular Sky Fairy”, hippie, queer Christ stuff*?  I don’t know.  We seem to be at this strange moment in history where Jesus is some kind of pissed-off, violent Mr. Clean.  And I just wonder when that happened.

But here is my main point: who the hell thinks that it’s appropriate to stand up in front of the State Legislature in his roll as an elected official to stand up and talk about people turning their lives over to Jesus?

I’m glad people were snickering.

Seriously, the fact that an elected official could have so little respect for the Constitution of the country he’s supposed to be serving on a state level is disturbing.  And, frankly, I think the only way to stop this kind of bullshit is for folks to push the issue.  Jesus can’t be the only One who’s got an opinion on what Williams did.  So, let’s hear from some other folks with heart-felt religious leanings, I say.  Every time someone stands up to give some bullshit sermon about Jesus IN THE STATE LEGISLATURE, I want a line of other folks ready to stand up and give some bullshit sermon on someone else.  Or, fine, more on Jesus, but from a different theological perspective.  Maybe if, every time Jesus came up, it turned into 30 minutes of hearing everybody’s theological opinion, this nonsense would stop.

If Republicans want to know why hippie liberals like me don’t have more respect for their ideas, it’s because some of you carry on like brainwashed lunatics and none of the rest of you call them on it.

It’s not church.

*Poor Driscoll really wants to worship someone like Thor, apparently, but doesn’t have the balls to admit he’s shilling for a god he finds disgusting.

30 Pieces of Silver

So, let me get this straight, Bill Hobbs thinks what Kent Williams did is the equivalent of betraying Jesus?!  The TNGOP are now, collectively, somehow, Christ?

Holy shit!

Just when I start to feel a little bad for them, they’re all, “Yeah, Jesus and us, we’ve suffered.”  If there is a just and loving god, why isn’t Bill Hobbs struck by lightning for this kind of nonsense?  Or at least tripped as he’s walking down the street by the Risen Savior?

To Plug in or Not to Plug In

So, the high today is going to be twenty.  We have, in our garage, a cord that you can plug in that supposedly goes to some doohickey on the pipes to keep them warm enough to keep them open.  We have never tested said doohickey, so we don’t even know if it works.  But, if ever we were going to try it, it seems like today would be the day (though I had water this morning, so…).

And yet, my power bill last month was almost twice what it was the month before, and I have not yet begun to pay for the TVA’s inability to foresee that people who run power plants need to keep them from destroying the lives of their customers…

And can I just sidetrack a minute and say that, while I in general believe that nuclear power is fine and wonderful and I have many dear friends who are where they are today because of bills nuclear power paid, if the TVA wasn’t going to do any better a job than they seem to be doing with our coal plants, thank the gods those are coal plants and not nuclear.  It’s one thing–and don’t get me wrong a terrible thing–to make half-assed repairs on a coal plant because it’s less expensive, but you pull shit like that on a nuclear plant?

Here’s the thing.  The TVA has been, in many, many respects, wonderful for the South and, by extension, wonderful for the country.  And I am a hippie liberal and so I believe in government programs.  But it may be that the TVA has served its purpose and that it’s now time to downgrade it from government behemoth to just another power company and open up the doors to competition.

There may be other power companies out there who can do it better, safer, and dare I say cheaper, and we ought to have the option of buying power from them.

Anyway, where was I?  Plug the cord in on the off-chance it’ll help the pipes and pay whatever that might cost or just assume it doesn’t work and hope for the best?