Mon Dieu!

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death

Just the other day I decided to take the scenic route home in the evening. Rather than zipping home on the highway, I meandered along the back country roads, mooed at some cows, and generally enjoyed the breeze and the sway of the trees. The journey was lovely and relaxing but for one blemish--the endless stream of churches. There are loads of them along the way, but one church message board particularly caught my eye; it mentioned the usual schedule for Sunday service, but added this vapid pearl of pseudo-wisdom, "BOWED KNEES SAVE FAMILIES". Firstly, it is difficult to take anything seriously that has been written to rhyme. Secondly: Huh? Are they really trying to say that the way to help mankind--to save the world--to ease suffering is to talk to their invisible mutual friend? It's such a ridiculously trite sentiment that I can't understand how anyone could express it without being nauseated. This particular church is essentially saying, "Don't worry about volunteering or service work. Just pray to G-d to make it all better. Think happy thoughts and your work is done here". It is absolutely appalling for anyone who sees a point to the conservation of humanity to say that they're just going to sit on their asses and hope things get better. They're going to to feel self-righteous for having wished for sunshine and daisies? That's their strategy?

On a more lighthearted note:

Prescience?

I was flipping through a book of New Yorker comics through the ages when this one caught my eye:
It was captioned "Fundamentally, the ship was sound." It was published in 1932.

Letter to the Editor

Yesterday I was reading the newspaper and getting angry as usual, but for some reason, a letter to the editor motivated me into action: I'm writing a response.

Here is the ridiculous letter:

Minority Rule

Here we go again. The UNC-CH library is not putting up a Christmas tree for fear of someone being "offended." Are we offended when someone wears a yarmulke? Are we offended when someone wears a turban? Are we offended when someone wears an abaya? Are we offended when we hear someone say, "Happy Hanukkah"? Do we insist that Muslims not fast during Ramadan? Of course, we don't. These are all public displays of religious beliefs. Christians wear no special clothing or badges to identify themselves, and the only public display of their religion is twice a year: Easter and Christmas.
Over 80 percent of Americans "profess" to be Christians. ARe we going to allow the minority to rule the majority? Emblazoned on office buildings in Washington and in courthouses throughout the nation are the words "In God We Trust." How can we continue to be a strong nation if we don't stand up for our beliefs? When we allow this to happen, we become weak and trampled upon.
What's next? Thank God, Congress still opens its session with a prayer.
God bless America and Merry Christmas.
-Richard Pinkard
Apex

My first response, unfortunately, was a blind "Whathakljhiosjhti;hioh o e", but I've recovered. Here's my draft in response:

Richard Pinkard's Dec. 13^th Letter, “Minority rule”, complaining of the lack of representation of Christianity at UNC-CH, namely a Christmas tree, is absolutely ludicrous. Mr. Pinkard sets up several remarkably misleading parallels regarding the expression of faith in public—making the specious claim that personal/individual expressions like yarmulkes, turbans, and hijabs are essentially the same as that of a public university displaying a Christmas tree. It is astounding that Mr. Pinkard cannot see the difference between a state school specifically endorsing a particular religion and an individual expressing his/her faith. Further, he portrays Christians as a persecuted class by failing to mention that there are no regulations preventing Christians from wearing crucifixes, affixing the Ichthys to their cars, and putting up their own Christmas trees. There is a strange argument implicit in his insistence that Christians are being prevented from showing their beliefs publicly: one's faith is somehow being disrespected if it is not at center stage in the public square.

On top of his strange logic regarding the expression of faith, Mr. Pinkard entirely disregards the separation of church and state by using the percentage of the population who are Christian to justify his outrage. Not only is it irrelevant, but his apocryphal statistics are incorrect: according to the CIA World Factbook, only 68.5%, not the 80% he claims, of Americans are Christian (Protestant, Roman Catholic, Mormon, and “Other Christian”).

-Jessie

Apex

There are so many things wrong with his thinking that I couldn't possibly fit them into one letter, but I certainly tried to hit the worst offenses. I didn't even try to touch the congressional prayer issue...

Thoughts?

Parsnips-a-Plenty

I know that one ought to only have righteous rage regarding the important issues in life: injustice, violence, and poverty should make us angry, but at the moment, I'm quite angry about veg. I hate parsnips, turnips, and celery with a fiery and all-consuming passion. I've always felt this way, but the soup I'm desperately trying to eat at the moment has brought it to the front of my consciousness.

Parsnips and turnips are similar in that they both have miserable flavors and textures--they're like horrible imitations of potatoes that simply haven't got it right. They are the rubbish covers of Beatles songs of the vegetable world. They're somewhat similar in appearance to the real thing, and if you're not paying attention, you might be fooled, but ultimately they're an unpleasant surprise. There is nothing worse at the dinner table than biting into what you thought was a lovely potato and discovering it to be none other than the dreaded parsnip.
There is no situation where someone could hand you a parsnip, and you could not say, "Hey-- lemme do ya one better: here's a potato!" Parsnips, however, have one redeeming trait: they are the subject of one of my favorite idioms:

"Fine words butter no parsnips."

World Wide Words has an interesting discussion of the origins of this expression here.

On the topic of celery, which is a vile form of veg if I ever unintentionally ate one, I can only say this: there are two kinds of people in the world--people who hate celery, and people who cannot taste celery. If you complain about celery, non-celery-detesting-people invariably claim that it has no taste. They are horribly wrong: I can genuinely smell it from the other side of a room, and it is instantaneously recognizable in any sort of a soup, stew, or salad. Apart from it's polluting flavor, it has a shockingly disgusting texture that ought to put any right-thinking person off their food for several days!

How do people consume these horrifying vegetables? I do not know.

American Legion

OK. Guess where I was on September 11th this year, (which also happens to be patriot day). No, I wasn't out burning flags---I spent the evening at a Raleigh post of the American Legion. Their strange little shack is about the scariest place you can imagine: the sign is shaped not unlike the blade of a circular saw, the the whole place looks like it was very... hill-billy-home-made, and the sagging roof had a couple of beer cans perched on top. After I drove up the winding gravel drive, I parked and meandered over to the entrance. I was greeted by Ms. Honeycutt, a nice little old lady, who was quite a contrast to the terrifying man standing behind her: he was about 6 feet tall, wearing a leather vest, and he had the most sunken, hollow eyes I've ever had the misfortune to stare into. I said, "Good evening sir", but he just looked at me blankly. He had the aura of a person whose life hasn't gone quite the way they hoped it would. After I darted past them to grab my name-tag, I hurried away to find a friendlier face. Who should I see but Jo! She had brought her sister along and they were both wearing the dreaded Girls' State polos.

I suppose I ought to back up: the entire reason for my presence at this terrifying hide-out was to (a.) tell the Legionnaires how much I loved Girls' State, and (b.) thank them ever s0 much for sending me. A member of the American Legion Auxiliary, or as I like to call it, "The Crazy Conservative Confederation", called me and asked me straight up, "What was you favorite part of Girls' State?" Initially I assumed that it was an idle question so I gave a saccharine statement about how much I loved the program and how wonderful it was to meet new people. Then she informed that I would be talking about it in a speech for the American Legion. Yeah. Ugh. I quickly had an about-face and told her I was fascinated by learning about lobbying.

I know I could have told her that I was going to be out of town, but I didn't, and my reasons were not entirely noble: I had visited the creepy Legion post once before, and I wanted to get a photo of it. Sadly, the photos were accidentally deleted... Also, this place is so far out in the boonies that GoogleMaps hasn't got a street view for it!

Anyway: Point is that I went, and it was unpleasant. They crowded about 25 of us over on the far side for the benefit of perhaps 3 old Legionnaires. Several blowhards stood at the front of the admittedly small room and used a microphone--it was uncalled for. They could have whispered and we would have heard them just fine. After they had rambled on for a bit, we recited some patriotic tripe and prayed several times. Yes--praying once was not enough for God to hear us. Maybe the call was dropped. If so, they should have their prayer-provider looked into. After sitting quietly for what seemed like an eternity, the march of falsely enthusiastic participants began. Each girl walked up the microphone and desperately tried to think of something to say. Some seemed to have genuinely enjoyed it; in fact, one girl went on for about 5 minutes about how much it had increased her patriotism and how much more she loves Murkuh now. Oy.

When I got up to the microphone, I was sorely tempted to use it as an opportunity to give them all a piece of my mind. I wanted to share with them my distaste for extreme patriotism. I wanted to make them see how ridiculous the whole idea is. I didn't. I said something about how I'd enjoyed every aspect of the program and thanked them for giving me the opportunity. They all smiled like self-satisfied toads and leaned back in their chairs basking in the glow of being appreciated by a whole bunch of young people. Perhaps that's a bit harsh... less like toads... more like fat cats. I can't really badmouth them because as I left, they gave me a doughnut.

mmm...tasty...

What can you say?

'Man shot churchgoers over liberal views'

American society is very very sick.

• In 2006, about 68% of all murders, 42% of all robberies, and 22% of all aggravated assaults that were reported to the police were committed with a firearm.
• in 2001 about 39% of the deaths that resulted from firearm injuries were homicides, 57% were suicides, 3% were unintentional, and 1% were of undetermined intent.
• On the wikipedia List of School-Related Attacks, 102 occurred in the United States, and only 44 in the rest of the entire world. It even includes actions by the Viet Cong. The US is STILL more violent.
  

National Teapot Show VII

On an otherwise mundane Saturday, I found myself driving steadily into an ever thickening horizon of green-- Middle of Nowhere, N.C.  This was not a peaceful weekend drive reminiscent of the old days when people went for a drive solely for the joy of it; I was on a mission.  A strange mission perhaps, but it was my intention to see as many teapots as is humanly possible.

Yes, I was heading out to the 7th National Teapot Show, a triennial celebration of teapots held at Cedar Creek Gallery  in Creedmoor.  I went to the show in the hopes of seeing some teapots, but what I found were TEAPOTS!  which are entirely different animals.

Some were as small as my little finger, and others could have, with little difficultly, been mistaken for mid-sized mountains.  There were teapots made out of stone, wood, metal, glass, porcelain, and anything else these artists could get their hands on.  

Styles ranged from whimsical to disturbing to elegant and back to whimsical again.  As brilliant as it is to see them in person, you can still see this year's teapots here.  

So many gorgeous teapots...  I am filled with teapot lust.  

Oh!  On another note: I've started a class at Artspace in sculpting the human form in terracotta!  It is taught by Paris Alexander who also taught a fantastic figure drawing class.  He is absolutely fantastic, and lots of his work is on display in his studio area in artspace (on the first floor and to the right).  Soooo good!  

Ding Dong the Witch is Dead!

Why aren't the munchkins dancing in the streets?  That's what I want to know.  

Jesse Helms died on July 4th, and his obituary in the Raleigh News & Observer (N&O) had this to say:

'he redefined politics in North Carolina, reinvigorated U.S. conservatism'

'Dole remembers Helms as genteel, generous'

'Defiant Helms drove South's GOP'

Allow me to say: WHAT!?  We're being flattering about a man who was an unrepentant bigot (racist, sexist, homophobic) to the last!?  We're pretending that this bastard was a good guy!?  

Reasons to be glad he's dead:

• He sang the pro-slavery song 'Dixie' at Carol Moseley-Braun (1st & only black woman in the U.S. Senate)
• Opposed AIDS funding because he believed that victims had contracted it because of their "deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct" (because they were gay)
• He referred to homosexuals as "weak, morally sick wretches"
• He supported Augusto Pinochet
• He routinely aired racially divisive campaign ads
• He called the 1964 Civil Rights Act "the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the congress"
• He took the 'fun' out of 'fundamentalist'
• He didn't even have the courtesy to pretend he wasn't a bigot''

Sen. Elizabeth Dole carefully skirted the issue of what he actually stood for by talking about how nice and polite he was.  Surprise, surprise: he was pleasant to a white, southern, christian woman.  

What was actually surprising was in Rob Christensen's article:

...Helms was one of the key figures in the modern conservative movement-- trying to roll back the Democratic New Deals and Great Societies, seeking to stiffen the country's spine against communism, and trying to return American life to the 1950s in terms of race, gender and sexual orientation. 

We all know that the right-wingers tend to be homophobic, but I think most of them would object to this characterization with regards to their ideas about race and gender...  hmmm...

Anyway, here's a real obituary.

P.S. Happy Birthday President Bush.  

The 'Senior Portrait' from HELL!!

I hate having photos taken of me. I particularly hate the yearly misery that is school photos. Somehow, they're significantly worse than the norm; they inspire a sort of mindless, rebellious rage in me, which, as you may imagine, does not result in attractive pictures. This year, our senior year, we don't file into the room one by one-- instead, we must make our own appointments with the photographers. 'Senior portraits', I'm told, must be taken by a particular photographer (don't try to tell me there aren't any kick-backs in that deal), and I've dutifully made my appointment. This year though, is going to be different for another reason: I'm going to wear a mask! sort of...

I went through some old magazines and cut out the faces that were roughly the same size as my face, then trimmed sections to put on my face! I've photographed the preliminary results:



I'm leaning toward #1. Thoughts?