cut the kids in half

A longer writing, condensed and self-censored, of a not-so-daily grind of constant absurdity on the part of both customers and powers that be, of conversations treading different ground, of procrastination and existential ponderings of the way things are and deconstructing the idealism of my surroundings and finding ways to laugh at things like cat vomit on library books and the absurdity of those we serve, and ourselves.

I tried to be creative tonight, but my brain was racing too wildly to focus on picking one color of glaze to paint a teacup and I don't want to dump my cognitive craziness on unsuspecting artistes, and sometimes I wonder if it freaks people out, that ultimately I will say the wrong thing and totally offend someone or they'll get sick of my rants about third world countries and their favorite politicians, because I don't believe in excusing the unexcusable no matter who it is.

And people talk politics and rant about those awful Democrats and scumbag Republicans and I just want them all to shut the hell up. I hate Election Day with every fiber of my being because one party runs the state into the ground and the other runs the city into the ground and then each of the two takes their turn running the country into the ground but I guess it's like that everywhere right?

Governments do shitty things to powerless people, give the perks and the power to their cronies, and the everyday schlubs are left in the middle, paying taxes, pacified by entertainment or too tired or burned out to even bother trying, grabbing for any bone thrown their way and keeping anyone else from getting close.

I feel like my generation is the kids in a loveless marriage and my country is two selfish and immature parents in a marriage falling apart, where the big shiny house built up so fast is a mess and the credit card bills from years of buying the newest shiniest brightest thing are coming in and there's no money left to pay. In every marriage, it's the fault of both sides, and in this case, they're the same people ultimately, but they'd never admit to that, and they're screaming at each other, dangling promises and baubles for the kids, playing them off of each other, instigating fights that distract from the matter at hand, and the spite fences between us and the next door neighbor. It's for the kids, they say, but they're ultimately thinking only about themselves and what they can get before all of it's gone, because it's all going to be gone someday.

Sometimes the kids will take sides, they'll be loyal to one or the other or whichever one fits their immediate needs. Sometimes they just go and hide in the room or in the treehouse in the backyard with fingers in the ears wanting this big long nightmare to go away.

posts from last night

So last night I was sitting at a kitchen table at a friend's house letting the dog get some fresh air and compiling tuneage for the show this morning, thinking about the transpiring of the past few days, of revolutions borne out of hope and frustration only to see more of the same, of self-styled holy warriors who kill children and blow things up, of nations too busy bickering over partisan lines than actually dealing with actual problems, preferring to snipe about the mannerisms of one's spouse or what someone's wearing.

Sometimes the fuckedupness of it all gets a bit overwhelming and I find myself returning to Job and the Psalms to use the words of others to simultaneously express wonder at the Divine and the beauty of the world and to be furious at the grievous and incomprehensible wrongs that we inflict upon each other.

I don't believe that everyone who professes what I believe is going to end up where they think they're going, or that they're right or justified. Since Glenn Beck is an adherent of a religion that bears as much resemblance to my Christianity as Farrakhan's does to classical Islam, I don't take him seriously but to imply that it's somehow their fault they got shot makes me sick. So does Pat Buchanan who's always been afraid of the coming days when the world won't be so crackertastic. You know what, all these other people have souls too. God made them just as much as he made you.

Buchanan applauds the guy's grasp of history, but being a bit of a history geek, I also don't understand this conflation of Christianity and xenophobia evident here, and also stateside, especially considering that a substantial amount of early converts were not of Nordic, or even European stock and came from areas that we now lump into the general category of "the Arab World." Augustine, Perpetua, Simon of Cyrene hailed from Roman Africa, which is now modern-day Tunisia, Algeria, Libya... most of the churches in the book of Revelation are in modern-day Turkey. So, yeah, I know nobody cares about stuff like that except for me, but I somehow feel like it's relevant to point out that while the pre-Islamic world was converting to various forms of Christianity, my ancestors to the north (Celtic and Slav) were still doing that whole human sacrifice thing. Norway was still pagan for about a thousand years after. Just sayin'.

And yeah, European thought and religion have dominated the world through colonization, globalization, and mass media, so for a lot of people the West is equated with at least a cultural framework that has some basis in Judeo-Christian thought. And talk about bloody political conflicts. It wasn't all peace and love under Ferdinand and Isabella, or in the Balkans where everyone's been doing nasty things to each other for centuries, or the Crusades, or England and Ireland. It was brutal and barbaric too and like now I'd guess that the fanaticism was more of a bloodlust and lust for power wrapped up in a moralistic guise rather than any deep religious faith or understanding.

And I don't know if there's anyone who makes my blood boil than those who kill in the name of whatever religion or ideology they espouse because they have it out for whoever. I don't care what it is. It's sick and wrong. And just because someone else did something bad doesn't mean you have to do it worse. The Neo-Nazi types who think they're somehow superior because they're more likely to get sunburned are some of the hardest people for me to even try to understand or interact with, and the ones who'd say that the Hitleristas are reprehensible but more or less espouse the same garbage.

I've heard people talk about the perceived menace of Islam and can't help but think that it seems there seems to be this hard-wired human need to have an enemy, an abstract group of people to fight against. In my parents' years, it was the communists, and Hitler before that, and before that, whatever interethnic conflict which led to people immigrating here in the first place. For my lefty friends, it's those damn wingnuts, for the righties, it's the secular humanists or the perceived elite.

And sure there's wackjobs with violent tendencies in every camp who like to blow shit up and put their ideology over whatever human collateral stands in their way. And it seems more and more like we as a country focus on the talking heads and what their acolytes might do while our tax dollars are used to blow the heck out of othfer places halfway around the world and do all sorts of shady stuff and don't even pretend it's not happening anymore. I was born halfway through the Reagan years and can't remember when we weren't blowing something up halfway around the world... arming shady dictators in Latin America, going into the Balkans, Sudan, Granada, Somalia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan. But those last ones, it's not really war, just some sophisticated technology that kills people from far away, so you don't have to look in that person's eyes.

I don't buy this whole "oh they're ruthless and can't be dealt with like normal human beings" because it's not like Al-Qaeda was the first or only group to use suicide bombers or there weren't people brainwashed with ideology.

But maybe it's just my own weird perspective of God-so-loved-the-world and not God-loves-my-country-best-because-I'm-cracker. I just don't understand hating someone else's guts because they practice a different religion or don't look like you or do the same things. And there are things that other cultures do that I'm really glad I don't have to deal with, especially being female. I like being able to get an education, live on my own and hang out with whoever and not have to deal with the lady parts getting cut off because heaven forbid that I experience pleasure during intercourse. I don't hate other people because they do those things even if I think it's messed up. We do things in our country that are horrible too but it's always easy to point the finger at someone else.



I should note here that I almost didn't post this, in part because I found myself so angry and frustrated at my lack of powerlessness but upon hearing the tonedeafness of the punditry, I felt like I had to tip the balance the other way somehow.

I should also note here that the above song was playing during the penning of said rant, and said song is awesome in that totally apocalyptic way.

the life of the world to come

I think there's a certain set of people who really really hope a disaster happens so they can say they're right and everyone else is wrong. I also think there's a sense that most of us have that what is now can't go on forever, there has to be some kind of finiteness, a shelf life, an end, be it self-destructive human dumbassery, the sun swallowing us up, the Second Coming, the Mahdi, Cthulu, Quetzalcoatl, Shiva the Destroyer of All Worlds. It's hardwired in there.

As your token born-again-er, who still believes that no mere mortal knows the day or the hour, I really haven't been paying much attention to whoever this Harold Camping and his Family Radio people are. I honestly just tune it out because everyone is always wrong, considering that in my lifetime, 1989, 2000, and countless others have gone by without even, and find the whole Left Behind thing a bit absurd. It's cheap catastrophic entertainment for people who like to read mediocre fiction. I figure that everyone got the whole first coming thing completely wrong, what's to say we won't do so with the second?



If history is any indication, it's just another in a long string of speculations from everywhere. I've got circa AD 1000 medieval "chants for the end of the world" sitting on my bookshelf at home, our library-ish amusement at sensationalistic pamphlets from Renaissance England reveals speculations about the Antichrist being everyone from Muhammad, Oliver Cromwell, and of course whoever the Pope was, thanks to the pending year of 1666 and the earthquakes and comets and other "straunge syghtes" such as the "rayning of bloud" in Rome.

I'm sure that someday all sorts of crazy will break loose if it hasn't already, but honestly, I really don't want to be around when it all goes down.



And am I born to die?
And lay this body down?
And as my trembling spirits fly
Into a world unknown

A land of deeper shade
Unpierced by human thought
The dreary region of the dead
Where all things are forgot

Soon as from earth I go
What will become of me?
Eternal happiness or woe
Must then my fortune be

Waked by the trumpet's sound
I from my grave shall rise
And see the Judge with glory crowned
And see the flaming skies