Still trying to figure it all out

"If there is a God, I certainly hope he/she/it is more concerned with genocide in Somalia or homeless Haitians or the single mother with breast cancer and no medical insurance than with whether or not an overpaid guy playing a kid's game gets a win or a pass completion."
My comments on Farcebook were referring to this:
















and this:

















BTW, I didn't see this working too well in that game where threw four interceptions.

and got me defriended by a couple of in-duh-viduals. Somebody had posted a photo of a group of Muslims touching their heads to the ground and the caption asked why that was okay but Tebow kneeling on the sidelines was mocked. I replied to this with a scripture from the book of Matthew, chapter 6 verses 6-8, which say that hypocrites and heathens who pray in public do so to be seen of men, that prayer should be done humbly and in secret.  I got flamed.  "But he's sincere!" was the main argument.  So, apparently some of my Farcebook acquaintances are omniscient like their God and can tell when somebody's being sincere or if they're just putting on a show. My problem, I stated, was with hypocrisy, not with religion, and I question the sincerity of somebody who has to make such a public display of their belief. Xtians just like to trump up charges of persecution so they can justify their hatred and persecution of others.  BTW, that course of action isn't scriptural either.  In Matthew chapter 5, Jesus tells his people to pray for their persecutors.

 In his defense, everything I've heard about Tebow is that he's a leader and a gentleman who doesn't try to proselyte to his teammates or fans. Besides, Tebow isn't the first professional athlete I've seen do this.  We've seen rofessional athletes kneeling or pointing at the sky after a well-executed play for years. My response:  meh.  Until Xtians start screaming persecution.  Then I call bullshit.

Excuse me for the jaundiced view of such public piety.  In church, as a young person, I was told that if I didn't have a "testimony" of "the Gospel" yet, that I should "fake it till I make it."  That is, pretend to believe until I'd convinced myself that I did, and I would eventually be "blessed" with a knowledge of the "truth."  So I played apologist for polygamy and racism, carried a Book of Mormon around to class and pretended to be reading it during downtime. It was many years before I realized it was never going to work and I freed myself from the Morg for good.

Writers are encouraged to "show" and not "tell" when writing a story, play, or novel. Don't tell me this person was intelligent.  Give me words and actions to show me their smarts.  I find it very hard to believe you're a loving follower of Jesus Christ when you're standing outside a soldier's funeral with a sign that says "God Hates Fags." Show me you love your God by loving all his creation--that includes spiders and people whose political or religious views you disagree with. 

Peanuts, Bloom County, Calvin and Hobbes. . . I hate it when the good comics end. 

Somebody with more time on their hands than I have put together this animation of Calvin's many snowman torture scenes.  The choice of music. . . ironic and kinda sick? 

And the stoopid just keeps on coming.


Actually, worse than stupid.  Insensitive and completely lacking compassion.  
First we have Ron Paul saying we should let people die.  Or let their churches take care of them.  The audience reaction is horrifying here:


Apparently atheists or people who claim no church affiliation should be let to die as well.

But it isn't just Ron Paul:



There's a bumper sticker out there somewhere that says, "The last time the Republicans cared about you was when you were a fetus." If I find it, I'll come back and post it.

I found this a few days ago and have restrained myself from commenting on it, but today I got yet another message in my inbox from PopSmart telling me I need to buy this book.

People with phD's are fans of the Twilight series.  Some of them apparently feel a need to justify their obsession by publishing essays that get all meta-analytical and shit. 

Do we congratulate the authors for being able to see past shallow Mary-Sue characters, sloppy research, purple prose, writing that tells and doesn't show, lack of plot, the complete lack of tension or pacing, the author's infidelity to her own canon, the sexism, the racism, the author's co-opting of a Native culture (without the people's permission) and getting it all wrong, and the portrayal of an abusive, controlling relationship as romantic and even commendable?

Or do we simply congratulate them for finding a clever way to make some serious cash off herds of gullible women and girls who will buy anything with "Twilight" in the title?

The Psychology of Twilight by E. David Klonsky, phD and Alexis Black

The pop-cultural significance of this series of books deserves some analysis, and I admit that there's definitely reason to put Bella, Edward, and their creator on a couch. But look at the list of articles and you'll see ones that actually contend that these characters and their fuckwittery are admirable. The popularity of the series and the near-rabidity of the fans is more of a sad commentary on a culture that raises girls to believe that they should aspire to having a rich, pretty, glittery, controlling man-beast fall in love with them so that they never have to make any of their own choices or work to bring about their own happiness and success.

I don't know what's more pathetic:  Stephenie Meyer, her legions of fans, or people who attempt to a) make a few bucks off the phenomenon themselves (like all those hideous craft projects on Etsy) or b) use phony intellectualism to justify their obsession with books that should never be considered anything but a trashy guilty pleasure. 

As a resident of the area near Provo, Utah, I was saddened by the fire that destroyed the Provo Tabernacle last December.  Here's the link to the entry I wrote, which turned into a ranty post on preserving historic buildings. The tabernacle featured stained glass windows, heavy oak timbers, a pipe organ.  Community concerts and recitals were held there.  When we lived in nearby Orem, we would sometimes go there to picnic on the grounds and  sit inside to soak in the history and the ambience of the place.  It wasn't Notre Dame or St. Sulpice, but it was peaceful and lovely and had that built-by-faithful-people-at-great-sacrifice kind of energy about it.  Despite my atheism, all beautiful holy buildings have that effect on my heart.

It's just been announced that the site will be used to build another Mormon temple in Provo, practically within spitting distance of the ugly bank building  the temple near the mouth of Rock Canyon.

My previous post has a link to an article explaining the significance and function of LDS temples, so I won't go into that here.  The short story is that weddings are performed for living people and vicarious Mormon ordinances (baptisms, endowments, marriages) are performed for dead people.  The church has gotten into trouble with the Jewish community over the baptisms of Holocaust survivors.  I personally am afraid that if I precede my sisters in death, they will try to restore my membership in the church by taking my name through the temple and doing (or re-doing) the ordinances I petitioned the church to cancel when I was alive.  If there is an afterlife, I plan to haunt the shit out of them if they do it.  Just for fun, since those ordinances and the supposed priesthood authority with which they are performed amount to zilch anyway.  My problem is with the high-handed arrogance, not with the waste of time .  Well, yeah, I do have a problem with so much time-wasting, I guess.  Time that could be spent helping the living instead of wearing funny clothes and participating in meaningless rituals. 

Only faithful Mormons are allowed to see their children/friends/relatives married in their temples.  I have many ex-Mormon friends who have had to sit outside the temple while their children were married inside. The church, for all of its touting its "Family First" slogans, is particularly unkind to non-Mormons who have Mormon family members.  "Family First" only covers those who believe as you do. Of course, you and your prospective spouse (hetero pairings only, please) have to be "worthy" (tithe-paying, non-drinking, non-smoking, church-attending, morally clean--whatever that means) to be married there.  You have to be "worthy" to perform the ordinances for the dead.  You have to pass an interview with local clergy and are given a card, called a "recommend," so you can enter and perform rituals for the dead or watch a friend or relative be married.  One of my daughter's friends, a faithful Mormon engaged to a faithful Mormon, got married in a civil ceremony so her mother, a non-Mormon, could see her married. She and her husband will now have to wait a year before having an "eternal" marriage performed in the temple.  The stigma attached to young LDS who marry outside of the temple is a mostly negative one.  If you didn't marry in the Temple, you must be "unworthy," meaning you probably did the nasty outside the bonds of holy matrimony, causing tongues to wag in the local congregation, as if you were answerable to them in the first place.  

I am so glad my entire family left the church together.  My children will be married (or not) to whomever they choose, however they choose, with anyone they choose present to share the event.  

So the Provo Tabernacle, once a center for community as well as church activities and open to the public, joins 15 other buildings in Utah that are designated as elitist secret clubhouses only open to Mormons with church ID and the maddening sense of superiority that accompanies it.  I wish Europe weren't so far away.

I don't even think I've mentioned this yet, but my colleague who was teaching Creative Writing gave it up so he could teach German, and they gave the classes to me. It's been fun, but a little daunting.  Being a published writer, he has more cred than I do.   

The next few lessons are dealing with character creation and development.  Sadly, too many 7th and 8th-graders are okay with blank, generic characters because they actually want to "step into" the character's shoes.  I hated to burst their bubbles and explain that such characters are the work of writers who are lazy or unskilled or both.  I asked them to name names of specific characters from their reading whom they wanted to bitch-slap (not using those words, of course) at any point in the novel.  Many of them named Harry Potter, particularly at his angsty (super-angsty?  angstier?) period during Order of the Phoenix.  I asked them if they continued to read the books and if they finished the series.  All my students who got to the fifth book finished the series because they cared enough about the characters to see their stories through. 

As writers, I pointed out to them, they had to be brave enough to give their characters flaws and weaknesses, and I introduced the terms "Mary Sue" and "Gary Stu."  I don't really like the second one--I would have used a generic name like "Bob" to designate a generic character, but nobody asked me, so we're stuck with Gary Stu.  

I didn't want to spend the entire period on Sues, so I just chose the  parts of The Universal Mary-Sue Litmus Test that deal with name and appearance.  We hadn't even gotten to Item #14 about the character having an unusual scent when a bright student piped up,"You could be describing Twilight." "Thank you!"  was my reply.  "Bella Swan is a classic Mary-Sue."  I hope I didn't ruffle too many feathers.  

I had to reiterate that it's okay to like those books, not because I'm afraid of 12 and 13-year-old girls, but if they have mothers who are fans, I don't want those people coming after me with pitchforks.  Their daughters tend to be much more reasonable.

 

Of course, it's Obama's fault that Saint Ronnie Ray-Gun relaxed regulations and anti-trust laws and set the nasty precedent of "trickle-down" economics, and that Bush Jr. raised the nation's debt ceiling SEVEN times during his presidency and made even bigger giveaways to his rich buddies (including the golden-parachute bank bailouts).  This disaster has been at least thirty years in the making, but let everybody blame the current president, who has been stymied by Tea Party shenanigans and by being too willing to compromise, thereby alienating his base. 

So, here are some (serious this time) links.  No comment necessary.

http://www.sodahead.com/united-sta…


http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/…

I return from vacation to find some of my video embeds have been moved and some links don't work the way they should.  When I log in, I'm getting messages that there are still technical difficulties. These attacks are happening entirely too often and it's getting tiresome.  I hate Blogger and WordPress, but am considering switching. During previous attacks, I'd received e-mails about the attacks, and LJ was doing a good job of keeping members informed, but this time. . . bupkis.  I only found out about the attacks from checking some of the journals I follow regularly, and the most recent update at the status page is dated July 29.   I don't want to try to edit the entries that have been corrupted for fear that further errors making me look stoopid and disorganized will occur. 

Feh.

ETA:  What the hell.  It appears to be all better now.  *crosses fingers*

I knew when I entered the teaching profession I would have to put up with a complete lack of respect and empathy from students, parents, and elected officials none of whom would be caught dead in an eighth-grade Language Arts classroom.  

In U-duh, the state legislature has voted themselves the power to choose who serves on the state Board of Education, effectively making the Board into their personal puppets.  These guys think themselves experts on education because they've been to public school.  By that same logic, someone who has watched "E. R." for thirteen years should be qualified to practice medicine, right?

State Senator Howard Stephenson is a notorious education-basher.  And a hypocrite.  He's one of those Republicans who sound the drumbeat for states' rights but will accept bribes from out-of-state, for-profit school corporations to ram education voucher legislation through the legislature.  We citizens managed a referendum, approved by 62% of the voters, to defeat the voucher law, but the legislature, flush with new money, is going to try it again.

Stephenson, instead of offering to work with us, ups the rhetoric and the criticism in the desperate hope that maybe people will begin to believe after enough repetition.  

Several years ago, I wrote the illustrious senator (who also represents my district--hell no, I didn't vote for him), inviting him to come to my classroom and show me how to be a good teacher because he seemed to have so many ideas on education. He never acknowledged my message  Perhaps that was due to the laundry list I sent him outlining some of the challenges faced by myself and my students.  I figured it was only fair for him to come into my classroom somewhat acquainted with my students.  I knew he was an ivory-tower politician; I just wanted to ruffle his feathers.

It's been years since I've kicked a hornet's nest, so I decided in light of Stephenson's recent statement that teachers' unions promote and encourage mediocrity, I'd fire off another of my ranty e-mails.  

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With an awesome voice and a great beat.