The Kid loves fantasy stuff. He likes to imagine that he is some all powerful warrior with the ability to smite enemies with a single blow. At least once a week, we have a discussion about “what would your superpower be?” He changes his powers almost every week. Sometimes it’s super-strength. Sometimes it’s invisibility. Sometimes, after an especially long day when we are walking home, he wants rocket powered feet to power him up the hill by our house.

I always want the same things- the ability to speak every language and to shoot laser beams out of my left eye when my eyebrow is raised. The Kid thinks it’s boring that I don’t want to be able to fly around the world or stop time, but I think language and lasers are pretty cool.

So kids- what would your superpower be?

Taken after many drinks while standing on a table- I am not that tall really!

By being friends with the band- of course!

I went to fantastic show at the Funhouse last night to see my dear friend, Ruthzilla, and her band ScaryBear play. I am not a huge prog rock fan (it just doesn’t mix with the indy-pop Queen status) but last night might have converted me.

ScaryBear is a tight “frantic instrumental techno thrash” joy to see. They rock the genre like no bodies business without a lot of the cock swagger generally associated with anything that loud. But that wasn’t all the joy I got last night.

Next up was Black Elk– a band from Portland with a lead singer who is a weird cross between Mick Jagger and Iggy Pop if they both were screaming in terror. We were right up by the stage getting pushed by a few hapless moshers. The last time I had been in a mosh pit I was pregnant with the Kid, but I remembered how to use my elbows pretty quick and the bouncer chilled the guys out pretty fast. But the band kicked ass. This is where I get converted to loud, angry Noise Rock.

After their set, Ruth was saying hello to the bassist for Black Elk and introduced me by saying “This is Elizabeth. You guys were so good she even liked you, and she likes Franz Ferdinand!” Turns out that this scrappy bass player also like Franz. I told him how at the last Franz Ferdinand concert the band dedicated a song to “the 2 girls dancing in the balcony” and I was one of those girls. The bass player promised a shout out to me next time. My four and half minutes of rock and roll fame have now been extended by a whole 15 seconds. Whoo hoo!

Also playing were Blood Hag. They throw science fiction books at the crowd which is cool. But by then I could barely hear them because I’d been standing right by the amp during Black Elk and not wearing ear plugs. Everything still sounds muffled today.

The final act was Captured By Robots- one guy and a bunch of robots he built to play music. It was all cover songs last night and that was cute and kitschy for the first 3 songs, but by the time he broke out with Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing, I had enough.

I had meant to take some pictures of Scarybear, but drunkenness interfered. Instead you all get blurry drunken pictures of crowds, robots, and Ruthzilla with what looks like a giant light-filled tumor coming out of her nose. Enjoy!

It’s not just me that is drunk and blurry- The Robots drink PBR!

Ruthzilla, bass player for ScaryBear, looking possessed by the light-filled tumor attached to her head

THE coach of the Iraqi national tennis team and two of his players were shot
dead in Baghdad, apparently for wearing shorts, in a district where Islamic
radicals have started to enforce brutal, Taleban-style law.

They were fricken tennis players (a subject close to my heart) and for that they get killed. Yeah- democracy is certainly on the march in Iraq- right out the door.

Argh! This is one of those stories that just makes me mad and sick all at the same time. I am tired, so very tired of people (Christian, Muslim, and Jewish alike) forgetting that the whole “Not taking the Lord’s name in vain” part of the bible means not killing people because you think God says it’s OK. It is not ok to kill someone because they are not doing what you tell them to do.

Ok, so maybe the 10 commandments aren’t exactly in the Qur’an- but this is:

“….anyone who murders any person who had not committed murder or
horrendous crimes, it shall be as if he murdered all the people.”

Wearing shorts, playing sports, buying mayonaise or being a woman who drives are not horrendous crimes.

Wingnuts of any religious flavor need their screws tightened a bit. They seem to have come loose.

I guess it’s faith weekend here at the White Papers, so I am putting my two cents in.

I am a die-hard agnostic. I lean far enough that I should break the last thread and become an atheist, but something prevents me. Maybe it’s my own unwillingness to lose Pascal’s wager. Or maybe that last little thread is what faith is all about- believing in something without any proof of it being true.

Now having faith and being religious are two different things. I am not, nor will I ever be religious. I firmly believe that religion is a creation of man and that like most creations of man- it is fallible. I believe that organized religion is a structure placed over something that humans do naturally just fine. And structures, being prone to hierarchies, are prone to corruption and to the motives of those at the top of the hierarchy that are not to the benefit of those at the bottom. Those with power (just like in all bureaucracies) will do what ever they need to keep power. They never act against their own best interests.

I know that those of you who are religious are wailing “but not all churches or religions are like that” But they all are created by man- and therefore they are all prone to mistakes. I prefer to make those mistakes myself, rather than making a mistake based on what someone else tells me I should do or believe. And I believe in taking responsibility for those mistakes. Because I acknowledge that I am human, and fallible, then my mistakes are not a reflection on God, but evidence of the struggle we all go through in life. By giving my moral responsibility to an organization like a religion, taking responsibility for my own mistakes then becomes a reflection on my religion and therefore- God. But God cannot be fallible, and if I am following the guidelines of a religion that speaks for God, then I cannot acknowledge my own mistakes and take responsibility for them. Little Flower’s post on Ken Lay is the perfect example of this. Someone who is doing bad things but thinks they are ok because God is on his side. My own story is the exact opposite. I did what I thought God wanted me to do and couldn’t figure out why all I wanted to do at the end of the day was drown myself in the bathtub with a bottle of vodka and a straight razor at my side.

About five years ago I went through a massive struggle with depression. I had been doing everything I thought I was supposed to be doing: working hard, devoting myself to my child, taking care of a physically and mentally ill parent, not having any fun because a good mother is supposed to give up herself for her family. You know- no sex, drugs or rock n’ roll. Everything around me was soul-crushingly awful. And I couldn’t understand it. I was being good- why would I be so miserable if I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. Why was God putting so much crap on me?

The problem wasn’t so much that I was suffering because I was doing what God wanted me to do, but I was suffering because I was trying to follow society’s idea of what I was supposed to do. I’m a mother, and a young, single one at that, so I thought I was supposed to sacrifice myself in order to prove that I am a good mother. I remember being so self-righteous. I was not going to be one of those Jerry Springer types who had a new baby-daddy every week or neglected their children while they went out to clubs. The Kid never even stayed with a babysitter till after he was two, and then it was only for an hour every week so I could do volunteer work. But I was miserable and being self-righteous is a lonely thing.

Then everything that I had carefully built up was knocked down in the space of a few months. I lost my job and my home. But by losing those things that I had struggled to keep, I found out that I was trying to hold onto to things that I didn’t really need or want. By becoming what I was most afraid of- I gained the freedom to choose my own path. And I realized that God wasn’t punishing me for some un-clarified sin, but that I had been responsible for my own misery because I wasn’t doing what I needed to do. I got a lot less judgmental about other people and discovered friends who were generous and kind. Without them, the Kid and I never would have made it.

I am now a rock n’ roll mom who cares very little what the tweed-clad parents at the Kid’s school think of me. I am perpetually poor and freely admit it. I have little ambition to ever be wealthy, or even middle class. I have sex – a lot of it, with different people- and I never feel bad about it. I have amazing friends who are all human and fallible and generous and kind. I still have low points, but I know that everyone has low points. When things go badly I look to see what I can do to make a change, and if I can’t change it -I roll with it. When things go well, I toast with a vodka tonic and a bad karaoke version of a They Might Be Giants song. I act ethically because it is the right thing to do, not because it is what I am supposed to do. I’m responsible for my own behavior, and I don’t dream about bathtubs and straight razors anymore.

I’m listening to Travel with Rick Steves on NPR and he’s interviewing Arthur Frommer– the originator of the Europe on $5 a day. It’s no secret that I would sell a kidney or a sliver of my liver to travel. As soon as the Kid heads off to college, I plan on giving up a permanent address to live out of a suitcase. Thanks to Rick Steves packing light tips, I think I can successfully manage that life with little more than my pink convertible carry-on backpack (they don’t make it in pink anymore- haha).

But why do I have a crush on Frommer? Comments made by Frommer in his guide to Branson, Missouri about the racism and lack of minority employees in his travel guide got attention from local newspapers. Because of that, all the places Frommer wrote about now have at least one token African American employee.

Damn- I wish they had a transcript online- I am not good at doing dictation quotes from broadcasts and I am way too lazy to keep re-playing the podcast. Forgive me if quotes are horribly paraphrased.

Frommer said that he believes in pushing to fully implement Jefferson’s idea that “All men are created equal”. He unabashedly declared himself a liberal. And then he went on to talk about how a free society should have no limits on where they are allowed to travel during peacetime- specifically pointing out the ban on travel to Cuba.

It’s really a good interview- go download the podcast .

So you thought the Enron scandal was maybe about corporate thievery or the need for regulation of the energy industry, what with the Bush Administration having appointed Enron foxes to guard the financial henhouses.
Nope.
According to Ken Lay, it’s about his relationship with God.
After his conviction, Lay maintained his innocence and quoted the apostle Paul’s comfort to the persecuted (back in the days when persecution meant a slow, painful death, mind you) : “All things work to the good for those who love God.”
See, California consumers might have been ripped off to the tune of $9 billion, and Enron investors and employees may have lost tens of billions, some losing their life savings. But the real story is that it’s been a test of the faith of Ken Lay, who sees himself as Job….

So one day in 2000 Satan gets engrossed in his iPod and winds up walking into the throne room in heaven.
“Hey God,” he says, scratching a horn and turning down the Bright Eyes song, “Everything is greaat. Notice how I have had all the people in the globe under my thumb since the ’60s.”
“Not my humble servant Kenny Boy Lay,” God says. “For that, I have blessed him with unimaginable riches.”
“Yeah, but take the money away and he will curse you,” says the red one.
“No way.”
“Way. Wanna bet?”
So God sent stock analysts and accountants to create illegal offshore accounts that were discovered by the government, who set upon Enron and destroyed it.
But Ken Lay refused to curse God, even after surrendering many of his personal mansions.
A few years later, God sees Satan. “I told you, Ken Lay remains faithful.”
Says Satan: “He hasn’t had it tough enough. Throw him in prison and without his mansions and servants he will curse you.”
Thus was Lay convicted of a crime he did not commit. And still he praised God, …

Hopefully Lay will serve a long term, giving him time to ponder another Biblical precept, the one about how hard it is for a rich man to enter the Kingdom.

There are certain words and phrases that should be innocuous but are used by some people with a sneer or a snarl to show that they disdain the thing they are talking about. The most obvious example is “liberal”. (And I won’t even get into how most people are completely fucked up by the actual origin of liberal politics- but it’s why I describe myself as progressive instead of liberal). But it is not the only one.

Consider “Politically Correct”. To be politically correct means to act in a way to cause minimum offense. But whenever I hear the term used it is by people bragging about how “not politically correct” they are. I generally tend to accept these statements as meaning “I am a bigoted asswipe who doesn’t mind announcing my stupidity in public”.

Then there’s “Secular Humanists”. The conservative Christians like to tell us that secular humanists are the cause of evil and will be the downfall of our “Great Christian Nation”. But what are secular humanists about exactly? (Oh Wikipedia- how I love thee!)

Some Tenets: Need to test beliefs, reason, evidence, ethics, search for truth, and building a better world.

Wait- how is testing a belief a wrong thing? And where in the bible does it say that by searching for truth and having ethics you will bring about the downfall of mankind?

And we can’t forget the “Homosexual Agenda” that is out to destroy families and marriage. First- has anyone ever seen an actual homosexual agenda? Is it leather-bound, or paperback, or maybe just a hastily scrawled manifesto that has been zeroxed a million times and handed out at the secret Gays Against Families meetings where to gain entrance you have to produce the severed head of your wife and children? What, you’ve never seen it either?

There is no homosexual agenda. There are reasoning, ethical people (both gay and straight and everything in-between) who think that people should have equal rights, including marriage. Period. I have never met someone who supports gay marriage that wants to break up all heterosexual marriages and convert people to being gay. If you have- let me know cause I would really love to see that straw man in person.

And then there’s “Modern” as opposed to “Traditional”. This one is a little different in that it is “traditional” that is used in a positive spin way- think “traditional family values”- much more frequently than “modern” is used as a smear. However, in a comment today at another site someone bragged about being “biased against modern feminists”. (as if feminists of any period have been anything but modern- feminists are always fighting the traditions that keep them from autonomy over their own lives and bodies). But why throw out tradition? If people did it for hundreds or even thousands of years- is it really so bad?

It was traditional to wipe your ass with a handful of leaves. It is modern to use toilet paper. It was traditional to bathe once a week, it is modern to shower everyday. It was traditional to be uneducated and illiterate. It is modern to be educated and able to read. It was traditional to have your marriage arranged without your consent. It is modern to choose to marry whom you want, if you want to marry at all. It was traditional for women to marry young, get pregnant often, have lots of miscarriages or stillbirths, watch their children die young of disease, and die from pregnancy complications with alarming regularity. It is modern for women to use birth control, marry later, have fewer children but that are more likely to reach adulthood, and not die from pregnancy quite so often.

With that I will say that I am a politically correct, secular humanist and modern feminist that fully supports the homosexual agenda. But only if it’s a hardcover – paperbacks will never last through the second coming or the downfall of our Great Christian Nation.

Why, for the love of god why would someone steal my box of tissue off my desk?

Seriously, I get one box of tissue for the year. It’s not on my desk or in my lab or in the lecture hall next door. Since it would have to physically leave the building to be somewhere else on campus- I must assume that aliens have tractor beamed it into space.

I wonder if I could arm wrestle the secretary for her kleenex stash?

UPDATE- Kleenex box has been found. One of the instructors used for a visual demonstration in class this morning. No aliens or arm wrestling involved.