Robin says I'm out of touch because I live in an area with thousands of UUs in a couple of dozen churches (Thank you, A. Powell Davies), so I can't understand what more rural UUs go through.

And as much as I feel like the "I go to a 50-member UU church in the middle of nowhere and I find the people I go to church with intolerant of my views" people are overrepresented on the internet, for the record, I did used to be one to some degree.

I've lived in a place where there were only one or two UU churches within a reasonable distance (by which I mean "within 60 miles") and where I didn't particularly agree with a lot of the opinions that were voiced, from the pulpit and at coffee hour.

What did I do about it?

1. I picked the church that was older, smaller and needed me more. I did this mostly because they hugged less and made less of a fuss about greeting me. Pretty much one guy greeted at the smaller church. I loved that. Extroversion scares me off on Sunday morning. When I want to talk to you, I will. But let me test the water first. Anyway, they did, but when I joined, they were pleased to have me, even if I did believe weird things.
2. I participated with great enthusiasm in a discussion group where lots of people disagreed with me on lots of things, but where I learned about their beliefs as well as broadcasting my own.
3. I joined the worship committee where I worked with other people to design services better suited to people who believed what I did.*
4. When something was going on that I didn't believe in, I sat at the toasting table and watched the crowning of the queen of the may as the kids skipped around the maypole, and I tried to learn something from the experience.
5. I redoubled my efforts to explore my own spiritual beliefs through reading authors who saw the world similarly and through writing about what I believed.
6. I met some people online that I agreed with.
7. And yes, I found some people who agreed with me and went out to lunch with them and bitched about the service on occasion. Or tried to. But frankly, we liked some folks who disagreed with us so much that we always ended up inviting them along and our bitch session ended up more like a conversation. Also, my favorite pagan had an amazing voice and the blues trio at the restaurant we liked always wanted her to sing and when I was listening to her theological differences didn't seem terribly important.
8. I reached out to the people I went to church with. I got involved in charitable projects, I worked on lots of stuff for the church and I made lots of friends.
9. I tried to see if things I disagreed with could be interpreted as useful metaphor. This had been my parents' suggestion when I was a kid non-believer** and they were informing me that I was a Presbyterian until I turned 18***.

I learned more about who I was spiritually and what I believed at that church than I have at any of the churches where I've been more comfortable. And I developed a more sophisticated spiritual relationship with faiths different from my own and learned about things other faiths had to teach me, as well as more thoughtful reasons about why some things don't work for me spiritually.

CC
who again, stuck it out as a Presby for 18 years, let's remember. Once your Great Aunt has calmly told you over a game of chess that this particular game of chess was in God's plan and the outcome of the game would be whatever God's hand and God's purpose predestined to occur, ain't nothing a UU can say that's going to bother you all that much.


*Again, I worked WITH people. I didn't make dire threats about what would happen to membership if I didn't get my way, and I didn't try to impose my way 100 percent and take over. I was in the minority and I respected that and picked my battles and got a lot of what I wanted.

**As I've mentioned before, it was Abraham and Isaac that did it for me. The idea that God was a colossal jerk who didn't actually give a shit about us made a lot of things in my life make sense, especially once I got to Junior High. The God I believe in now is indeed different from the one I didn't believe in then, as we theistic UUs like to put it.

***Before I turned 18 and a half, the Presbyterian church had fired their minister because she was a lesbian and I had quit. The minister and I are still friends. My parents, brothers and theChaliceRelative still go to the church. Much of life is battle-picking, kids.

No, I don't know why I feel so much like writing recently.

The other day, theCSO and I were going someplace and listening to the songs saved on my Iphone. (I no longer inflict my taste in music on most people. Be it the Colin Raye or the 2 Live Crew, I always manage to offend my passengers' taste. But the CSO is used to my ways and pretty tolerant.)

Anyway, I have that La Vie Boheme song from Rent in there and as we were listening to:

To hand-crafted beers made in local breweries
To yoga, to yogurt, to rice and beans and cheese
To leather, to dildos, To curry Vindaloo
To Huevos Rancheros and Maya Angelou


TheCSO commented that we're pretty mainstream and we really like most of that stuff, and have no particular objection to the rest. And indeed, out of context, that almost looks like a list of yuppie favorite things rather than a list of counterculture favorite things.

And we had a pleasant discussion of how interesting it is that the general principles that the song espouses (riding your bike midday past the three-peice-suits) remain something that we associate with hipsters and being counterculture, but the cultural specifics have drifted into the mainstream so quickly.

On a related note, I have a friend who is into S+M who is in total denial about the mainstream acceptance of S+M.

"Look, right here! It's in Cosmo!"

"Shut up! Shut up!"

So that's another thing I'm thinking about.

CC

"If only UUism was more theistic/atheistic/Christian/activist and agreed with me, then surely we would have more members?"

I know it's the human urge to think "If only I explained my position well enough, surely everybody would think like me."

But is "rational, good, people can disagree, and often do" really such a difficult concept? Lack of understanding of that seems to be the heart of this issue.

This is one interesting thing about living near an urban area with lots of flourishing UU churches. We have more and less theistic churches, more and less Christian churches, more and less activist churches, and some are more popular than others, but no one category particularly wants for members.

My particular conception of God doesn't work well with theistic services, and I like my activism to be focussed toward charity rather than politics, and it took awhile to find a church to match, but I did. My church is proof that humanist, less political churches can succeed. But all I have to do is drive in to the city to see a Christian UU church and a quite political UU church that are flourishing, too.

Even on the blogosphere, we have UUs who've left because we aren't theistic enough AND UUs who have left because we are too theistic.

The discussions about race and class issues as reasons the church is smaller have a fair amount of truth to them, but I never know what to do about those. I have a strong yen to say "If we're mostly white and educated, can't we just be who we are?" I don't want to exclude people, but I don't want to pander either, and many of the ideas for making ourselves seem welcoming to people with different cultures seem pandering to me.

At the same time, looking at UU churches and a map, it seems clear to me that UU churches of all theological stripes do well where there are lots of wealthy and educated people. So perhaps trying to make our faith appeal to the less wealthy and less well educated would help us grow.

Still thinking about these things.

CC

of people who say "Now how would you feel if someone did that to you?"

I've written on this topic before because I've had several friends in the past who liked to recite my minor sins back to me, always ending with that dumbass question. I've heard it applied to, among other sins, "kissing your ex at a party," "needing to work on the college newspaper when you have yet another boyfriend drama" and "poorly disgusing that I didn't like the romantic surprise you painstakingly prepared for me because you didn't know me very well and assumed I would love something I actually found mildly traumatic.*"

I always feel like responding "I would feel like a melodramatic, self-important idiot if I made a fuss about it." (Ok, I genuinely felt really bad about the romantic surprise at the time, though in retrospect, I don't have a lot of sympathy for planning romantic surprises for people one doesn't know very well.)

Anwyay, I'm sure with "how would YOU feel if..." the idea is that I will have a sudden, shocking revelation:

"Oh my gosh! If I had plans with a friend and they had to cancel a few days before because of a work crisis, I would feel...bad! How horribly I must have wounded you!"

(Cue dramatic, un-CC-like sobbing, wailing, moaning and begging of forgiveness,)

I think I've written before that my total disgust for anybody who uses this phrase dates back to a clingy, in retrospect completely mental college friend who used it constantly. Since, then, I've regarded it as a red flag that the person I'm dealing with might be a self-important pain-in-the-ass.

I'm fairly certain that for most of us, considering the "how would *I* feel" point is pretty much a reflex when we're about to do something that someone else will likely find unpleasant. For me it is always factored in to the cost benefit analysis I go through when making a choice about whether to, say, report someone who is giving me bad customer service, to say nothing of when I'm about to do something than might annoy a friend. So to me, there's something inherently quite insulting about asking someone to consider how they would feel in the same situation.

Anway, I've written all that before, though it has been a couple of years. Yet I find myself revisiting the idea today, because I've several times recently encoutered people who can't deal with having their own logic applied to themselves and actually haven't considered this point, and are in some cases in total denial. (Well, yeah, when you do the same thing I did, it's much worse, because of these minor distinctions that don't make much sense...)

And I am totally flummoxed by the mere existance of these people.

I've discussed this and similar issues with an admittedly snotty close friend who says that if you're going to argue with stupid people, you need to prepare yourself with the sort of logic that appeals to stupid people. This logic includes several variations on Pascal's wager, any political logic that fits on a bumper sticker, and yes, my least favorite question. But that's for winning an argument.

Usually I don't even bother to try to show stupid people they've wronged me and get an apology. It's always more work than it is worth.

So that's what I'm thinking about today. Suggestions?

CC

*This was not theCSO. TheCSO would never ask me that question. He's way too smart and way to aware that he and I think differently.

Your result for The Fashion Style Test...

Fashionista

31% Flamboyance, 55% Originality, 63% Deliberateness, 48% Sexiness

Take The Fashion Style Test at HelloQuizzy

and this is really funny.

CC

I would not tan at this salon. I wouldnt want to be that color.

Hello,

Due to the scrawled initials, smeared postmark and generic card, I haven't a clue who you are.

I know only these things:

1. You know my actual name and home address, which narrows it down somewhat, though not as much as I wish it did some days.
2. You're very forgiving given what I wrote about the last Meadville Reception I attended.

Anyway, I appreciate the invite and indeed would be happy to go give Meadville another chance to feed and woo me. Unfortunately, I'm not going to GA this year.

Thanks, anyway and I really appreciate the invite. I hope you're a reader and you see this.

CC

I know this because Katy-the-Wise and I are going to miss our yearly breakfast where we solve all of UUism's problems.

I'm not going to GA. I'm not boycotting or anything, it just seems really pointless to go on a year when so few of my friends will be there. Discreet inquiries among friends and past GA attendees who aren't ministers and whom I think I could stand to share a room with didn't even produce a roommate this year. (My understanding is that ministers, after all, usually pay for their rooms out of professional expenses and they don't need roommates as much.)

I realize I'm helping the boycotters "win" in some sense and believe me, this cheeses me off.

Sigh.

And I'm bummed about it. But not too bummed, because again, very few of my friends will be there and while GA is a spiritual thing for me as well, a lot of the spiritual value comes from the conversations I have. Goodness, I'm going to miss seeing Katy-the-Wise.

So can we PLEASE all go to Salt Lake???

And FWIW, who IS going to GA this year?

CC

...Or CC loves Laura Lippman and identifies with this article.

At the ripe old age of 19, I bummed around India for a month and a half with a bunch of folks from college, including a guy who was known to the whole campus as "Gay Chuck,*" a nickname he relished. GC was half white and half African American, and wherever we went in India, people seemed to take GC as being from India, just from a different part of India than they were.

So GC and I hatched this plan. For most of the trip, we went around together. He was the clever Indian husband, careful with the family's money, and I was the flightly American wife who simply had to have some little trinket. We played "Good Cop, Bad Cop" on the salespeople in the marketplaces and got just about everything for cheaper prices than everyone else on our trip. (Flighty American wife that I was, I sometimes would pay the original asking price with a wink while Chuck was pretending to look away. Saving money was only a side objective, we really wanted to get better deals than our friends were getting.)

In retrospect, I am sort of amazed that this worked, and I have long wondered whether the dealers gave us low prices because we were so darn entertaining, not because our little vaudeville routine fooled anybody.

Anyway, we did this huge walk around Mysore, and about halfway through, there was a dealer selling these hideous, life-sized wooden cobras. GC and I stood there, looking at them and whispering snarky things to one another about them for a full five minutes, then moved on.

But I kept thinking about the snake.

We were most of the way back, less than a mile from the hotel, when I turned to GC,

"I'm sorry, darlin', but I think I need one of those snakes."

Clearly I was playing the flighty American wife to the hilt.

Good sport that he was, Chuck walked with me all the way back. By the time we got back to the hotel, almost all of our friends were back. We set the snake down on the dining room table in the common room and it elicited a very satisfying scream of terror from one of our traveling companions when she walked into the room to find it staring at her.

I brought a lot of stuff back from India. Most of it, I gave away. Some of it is packed away in the attic. One tablecloth I bought in Mumbai is still in regular rotation when I give parties.

And there's the snake, always the snake.

Right now, the snake sits on a knicknack shelf built into my dining room wall, posed, as ever, to strike. That snake has been prominently displayed in five different dorm rooms, houses and apartments in four different states, though one summer when we lived with my mother-in-law my husband and I thought it would be prudent to keep it packed away.

A few weeks ago, ZombieKid's teacher gave him an assignment where he had to pick ten, and only ten, objects from his house to take with him when he moved and write an essay about the one of them he would pick if he could only take one. I rarely develop emotional attachments to objects. When Jana-who-creates told me about this assignment, I certainly could imagine it causing crying jags from every kid in the class, but I had trouble coming up with even ten things that couldn't be replaced.

My wedding album was the only object to spring immediately to mind.

I'd forgotten the snake. But now that I've remembered it, I have trouble imagining living anywhere without being under its watchful eye.

Funny how some things grab ahold of you and won't let go.

CC

*There were no other guys on campus named Chuck at this time.

All of internet culture has been building up to this moment.

CC

It was way fun, but I have stuff I need to get done and as you might have guessed from my previous post, my concentration is non-awesome recently. If you have a perverse streak and would enjoy being the "goofing off police," feel free to send me bitchy e-mail, texts, Googlechats and facebook messages if you catch me not working.

CC

Ps. I think that's my favorite web comic ever.

Sure you do.

I had this weird series of little nightmares on Sunday night, and I haven't been myself since. I haven't slept well in days.

Maybe it's the nightmares. For lack of something to do as it's two-a-freaking-clock-in-the-morning, I will describe the nightmares I can remember. They were a series, leading in to one another with a sort of narrative flow. I have the impression that I actually dreamed about ten of them, but here's what I remember:

-I screwed something up at work. It wasn't something that was going to cost my firm or a client any money, but it was personally aggravating to my boss, who had to spend (unbillable) hours fixing the situation.

-Sometime later, I was on a field trip or something with ZombieKid* There was a bicycle coming toward us on the road, straight for ZombieKid, I pushed him out of the way, which made him fall into a mud puddle in front of all his friends, who laughed at him. The bicycle swerved in plenty of time and wouldn't have hit him.

-I took him home to get him cleaned up. I drew a bath for him while he played the computer, then told him to take a bath. As he was getting out, my best friend came home and I told her about the mud puddle.

"You didn't give him a bath, did you?"
"Well, yeah, he was muddy"
"Did you put some of the chemical in the blue bottle in the water?"
"No...?"
"Oh God. His skin is really sensitive. You can't give him a bath without his chemical! Now he's going to get a horrible rash!"

-Some time after that, I realize that theCSO's coworkers were't coming over for dinner any more. I asked him about it and he gently explained that his coworkers thought I was boring and that they liked our house, but didn't want to be around me.

I don't remember the others, but as far as I can recall, it was me hurting and embarassing people I care about all night long.

It was like my subconcious was sending me a message encoded in dreams, and that message was "You suck."

It was a rough night, y'all.

CC

*ZK is my best friend's nine year old. He's geeky in many of the ways TheCSO and I remember being as children and we are very protective of him. TheGnome is younger, but a little more savvy about the world. Anyway, I am not related to these children, but they are the children in my life in a fundamental way.

But it captures well what the band looks like from my seat.

Actually, girls YOU would be having THEIR babies.

That's a bad sign

Jezebel.com has vibrator reviews. As far as I can recall, every one of these reviews has boiled down to "Eh, it's OK, but it's no Hitachi magic wand."*

Anyway, I was reading the review of the last device that didn't, erm, measure up and I noticed the fascinating number of terms women have for their vaginas, from the clinical to the cutesy. It reminded me of a college friend's odd little vagina terminology story that I posted for the Vagina monologue anniversary.

The human impulse to name and nickname things fascinates me. I wonder why we do it, perhaps to signify the thing's meaning to us?

Linguist Friend has a mouse in his house that has mostly escaped the cat's attention and has survived being caught multiple times. After awhile, LF gave up and named it "Stewart." Now sometimes LF and I will be talking on the phone and he will say something like "Oh, look who raced by! Hello Stewart!" Thus a mouse is elevated to a pet.

To bring it back to vaginas, I always assume when I'm writing something that a woman who talks about her "vadge" is a different sort of woman from one who has a specific name for it. A woman who thinks about her "naughty bits" probably doesn't talk about them much at all.

Dunno.

CC
who has a car she calls the "Hot Tomato," so she's far from immune.

*But then, what is?

Robin's a guy with strong will,
But his poetry skills sure are nil,
To save an elegy so sweet,
this Chick's hitting "Delete"
Bad meter is such a buzzkill!


Seriously, Robin put the following limerick in the comments of the elegy thread. I don't usually delete posts, but it kinda messes up the vibe we have going, so I'm putting it here and getting rid of the one in the comments over there.

Thoughfully-written additions to that thread are still welcome.


Robin's limerick:

There once was a U*U named CC

Who had a penchant for whiskey

When having a bad day

She could pack a few bottles away

including Kentucky bourbon oh so PC. . . ;-)

1:50 PM, June 09, 2008

I am not done disliking Obama’s supporters* but Obama himself did something that really pleased me on the night he cinched the nomination.

I loved the ass pat.

The much-discussed fist bump was good too, and it is already becoming fashionable in my circle of friends. Indeed, it reminded me of how at the Youth Service this year, my beloved YRUUs had the congregation high-five at the greeting of peace. It would seem forced on any other Sunday, but at the Youth Service it was just a little bit hip and silly and a reminder that “hey, we’re going to do things a little differently today, but stick with us, it will be fun.”

There are worse messages Obama could be sending to America.

The fist bump had an awesome “we did this together” vibe, and the ass pat might have been a little more questionable without it, but, yeah, the ass pat was my favorite part. Some have argued that it was, in reality, a lower back pat. But I think we’ve all been in relationships and we all know what a lower-back pat means. (E.g. I’d like to give you an ass pat, but we’re on National TV, Baby. So here’s the next best thing, the close neighbor of the ass pat, the ass pat’s best friend, the sexy lower back pat. Because America is totally into us, and we’re totally into each other. )

Either way, it was completely hot and I really, really liked it.

I’ve heard the bump and ass-pat compared to Al and Tipper’s make out kiss at the DNC after his nomination.

Actually, no, this was WAY BETTER. Because honestly, the Mr. and Mrs. Gore make out kiss looked really, really staged. You could hear the gears turning. “How can we show America we’re different from those tiresome Clintons, whose marital affections were so questionable? Ah, yes, a Hollywood kiss.”

I’ve argued before, and still believe, that Obama is an actual politician, as Rebecca Traister put it in Salon, he “is not, despite what some of his supporters seem to believe, built entirely of altruism and hope and, I don't know, puppies.”

I, as a rule, do not believe politicians.

I have faith in the affectionate marital ass pat.

Nobody scripts an ass pat. I really can’t imagine it being much more than instinctual. The moment was right, Obama felt good, and he reached for his wife. Sexy, natural, confident and so much fun. It was awesome.

I was really sad that night. I still am, when I think about the possibilities. But even as I was being reminded that us gyno-Americans have a way to go, I was still pleased with what I was seeing.

OK, he wasn’t my first choice, or even my second choice. But I have to admit that Barack Obama is an intensely likeable, brilliant guy and I don’t have more than my usual issues with voting for him. He doesn’t believe what I do, but pretty much nobody does. The past sleaziness we’ve learned about so far gets pretty much a total pass from me thanks to my cynicism about Chicago politics. I can’t have a diplomat and I can’t have a woman, but I can really, really live with awesome.

And I suspect America can, too.

Again, I think almost all of the 17,493,836** Hillary supporters will come around, though if Obama supporters wouldn't be jerks about her, that would certainly help. If nothing else, keep in mind that if John Edwards were the nominee and running against McCain, I would in the end, suck it up and vote for him. And I really don’t like John Edwards as a politician, his platform never seemed particularly thoughtful or substantive, he's clueless about economics yet talks about economics all the time and I just get a tremendous asshole vibe from him as a person.

But I'm pro-sexiness and fun, pro-historic achievement, pro-sensible Economic policy, Pro-non-Scary Supreme Court Picks, pro-passion, pro-candidate actually understanding the constitution, so here we go:

Get the Barack Obama Badge widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox!

CC

Ps. You have no idea how much Chalicesseur love I feel when I look at the post where Obijuan, anonymous, Ogre, Fausto and Lois have started actually writing an elegy for that bottle. You people so know how to make things better when I'm having a bad day.

*Indeed, Marry in Massachusetts made it clear that Hillary wouldn’t be truly acceptable until she “released her delegates” to vote for Obama at the convention. Were this political tradition and had anybody asked it of John Edwards, I wouldn’t care, but as it is a request for an entirely meaningless gesture, (1. If all of Hillary’s delegates vote for her, she still won’t win 2. Her delegates are not bound anyway. After Edwards dropped out, some of Edwards’ said they will vote for him anyway, some have said they are voting for Obama. It’s up to them and the candidate has no real control.) it seems like one more demand that Clinton eat dirt. Even as she leads her supporters in chanting “yes, we can” she’s still really threatening to a lot of people.

Good, maybe the next female candidate will seem acceptably ladylike by comparison.

(Yes, yes, she would almost have to. Shut up.)

** So quit talking down to her, M’kay?

Justice O'Connor is putting together a video game about the judiciary and how it works.

"We hear a great deal about judges who are activists -- godless, secular, humanists trying to impose their will on the rest of us," she said. "Now I always thought an activist judge was one who got up in the morning and went to work."

This is way awesome.

She said the only way to preserve an independent judiciary was through public education, which she said was failing to produce citizens with enough knowledge about the three branches of U.S. government -- legislative, executive and judicial.

The Our Courts project will have two parts, O'Connor said. The first is on online interactive civics program designed to be used by children from 7th to 9th grades either to supplement existing courses or as a distinct unit in the curriculum.

Justice O'Connor is a lawyer friend of mine's hero. I am a little bit more of a Justice Brennan fan when it comes to the judiciary, but I have to say that O'Conner seems really wonderful and I was forever changed by the New York Times article from last year where she was so understanding and strong and mature and decent about the fact that her Alzheimer's-patient husband has a girlfriend in the ward because he can no longer remember his marriage to O'Connor*.

CC

*She gave up a seat on the Supreme Court to spend more time with him, and yet she's so amazing about the whole situation. I'm seriously tearing up a bit now just thinking about it. John Edwards, I realize that if you're reading this, you no longer consider me a reasonable candidate for president. The feeling is mutual.

Ok, This post from 'Marry in Massachusetts' pisses me off.

I really don't think the "mysterious scads of Clinton voters who won't vote for Obama" is going to be the issue that people think it is come November. (Do you honestly think every Republican is thrilled with McCain? If you think that, you really don't know any Republicans. Well, I do, and I can assure you...) I can appreciate what Kim said in my comments yesterday about some people calling in to talk shows to say they voted for Hillary but wouldn't vote for Obama. That said, I don't think talk show callers represent the mainstream. I don't think talk show LISTENERS even represent the mainstream.

To me, it seems like an excuse to keep trashing Hillary supporters and Hillary herself in the face of Obama supporters having GOTTEN WHAT THEY WANTED.

Come on, Hillary herself is telling her supporters to vote for Obama.

Also it seems really weird to me that MIM writes "Not everyone can be that big and that wise as to revel in Clinton's accomplishments," in the context of a post that, excepting a couple of paragraphs of mostly quoted material, pretty much completely trashes Clinton and her supporters.

One would think that now would be a time to (a) revel in the fact that Obama is the candidate and (b) have a bit of class about Hillary's accomplishments, which, whether you are willing to write it in your own words or not, are pretty sigificant.

I would never deny that racism has been a factor in the campaign, but I have to point out that Obama didn't have to look out into a crowd and see signs saying "pick some cotton and make me a shirt," which I guess would be the equivilent of the "Iron my shirt" signs at Hillary rallies. Hillary looked at those signs, presumably rolled her eyes, and went right back to campaigning. Good for her.

The sexism was so blatant, and so annoying, that it got me more emotionally invested in a primary than I ever remember being. I still honestly think Richardson was a better candidate than Hillary. (To say nothing of Obama, who has the foreign policy experience of the president of a junior high chess club.) But I saw Chris Matthews and I saw John Edwards and I saw how my own friends jumped on any sign of Hillary's weakness like Sherlock Holmes searching for the big clue and it made me mad.

This campaign was just amazingly tough. I could not have stood it and I don't know that Obama supporters who were watching it all through that hermeneutic have or could completely get it. I have literally never heard the N-word applied to Obama. But the C-word was ON T-SHIRTS.

And she almost made it.

She, a woman, ran as the establishment candidate, the symbol of the party insider, and it almost worked. She chose women for her senior staff, and her tenacity, intelligence and general badassedness was a better response to John Edwards' "we need in a commander-in-chief is strength and resolve, and presidential campaigns are tough business" garbage than the most gifted public speaker could have crafted

88 percent of Americans now agree with the statement “I am glad to see a woman as a serious contender for president.”

Ok, ok, Obama fans. You won. Call off your dogs, or at least sick them on McCain. Leave Hillary's "diseased campaign corpse," as MIM so poetically writes, to those of us who see something in it worth mourning.

And seriously, fuck off.

CC

*Yes, I'm still mad about that. Because John Edwards uses emotion so blatantly in his own campaigns but is so excited to pull out the knives whem a women does the same thing. And he criticizes Hillary's outfits. My impression is that he was so scarred by the Republicans calling him "Breck Girl" that he has to go out of his way to prove what a big man he is by being a pig.

I'll give the last word to Pat Schroeder, who is more rational on the subject than I am, "When people say they don't want anyone's finger on the button who cries, I say I don't want anyone's finger there who doesn't cry."


CLARIFICATION: Obviously, I'm not talking about every Obama supporter here. But I have recently heard the "Just because I've had nothing but nastiness to say about your candidate for the last six months doesn't mean you have any right to not embrace mine immediately" sentiment several times recently and it really strikes a nerve.

Could there at least be a week or so between "You're delusional/racist/stupid for supporting Hillary" and "How can you call yourself a Democrat if you don't adore Obama?"

I mean even if there are lots of Hillary supporters who don't feel inclined to vote for Obama right now, is that really such a shock given the way some of the Obama supporters are acting even in the face of their candidate's victory?

I promise you, come November, a lot of these wounds will be healed and a tremendous majority of Hillary supporters will go to the polls for Obama. But for now, have one percent of the grace in victory that you're expecting from Hillary in defeat and shut up.

I have wondered if my love of my smartcar comes from having an adult version of this toy car. (My smartcar is even red.)

Also, the blue smartcar is really quite handsome.

CC

Ps. Am still debating with self and spouse over the vanity plate.

Regrettably, "MAXWELL" is taken. "YPANTS" is not, but I've made an executive decision that it's stupid.

We're down to "BRIEFD" or "HT TMTO"

Opinions welcome.

So apparently Obijuan and I weren't alone on hating what happened in the Season Finale of Bones.

CC

Maybe I will vote for Obama

CC
who stopped being a Ron Paul supporter awhile ago, actually, but was flummoxed to read this.

I've thought about quitting my church. I won't say that I think about it a lot. I have good friends, and the youth group and lots of people I care about at my church and I wouldn't leave it lightly. God and I are OK on our own, but these connections to other people help keep me in a community and a tradition where a bunch of us working together do a lot more than me working alone.

But the thoughts of quitting do flit through.

Like, oh, yesterday, when a sermon that could have been just as good without the clear assumption that everyone in the room was a political liberal had to throw in those assumptions anyway. They were in the context of a general message of being tolerant to others, even those ghastly conservatives, but the assumption is still annoying.

The thoughts flit through. Yet I don't seriously ever plan to leave my church unless I move, and I don't frankly plan to do that ever.

But then, no minister has ever given me the trouble that Obama's ministers are giving him.

I am a big fan of the Parsonage Life Blog and its writer. But his story on Obama leaving his church mystifies me.

No, I don't think the issue for conservatives or the media was Black Liberation theology in the sense of preaching about taking care of the poor. I've never seen a church that didn't talk that talk, though some of them walk the walk better than others. (And admittedly, Trinity walks that walk beautifully.)

Honestly, I'm amazed that the Obamas lasted as long as they did at a church that seemed to be doing its damnedest to sink their political ambitions.

I'm sorry, Pfleger preaching IN A SERMON that Hillary's disappointment comes from anger that a "black man" could be beating her is JUST PLAIN WRONG, to say nothing of the fact that it is the sort of sexist* sentiment that has me leaping to Hillary's defense. It starts a little voice going in my head saying "Yeah, Hillary is acting defensive and irrational. But people are PRINTING UP T-SHIRTS WITH THE C-WORD ON THEM. Don't YOU get a little defensive and irrational when you think about that? Of course, you want a president more level headed than you, but still..."

As RevRose has noted, it's possible I should do something about these voices.

But anyway, between Rev. Wright's assurances to the National Press Club that Obama is a mere politician answering to the polls but Wright himself answers to God and Rev. Pfleger's little Hillary imitation (that he is shocked, SHOCKED ended up on YouTube) the church has been a tremendous political liability for Obama and I can't imagine that the folks in the pulpit didn't know what they are doing. Everybody, Adam included, is quick to blame the press, but nobody forced Rev. Wright to go in front of the press club and they certainly didn't ask Rev. Pfleger to preach on Hillary keeping a black man down.

Say what you will about squeezing the story 'til it went dry. To my memory, the story of Obama's faith has gone dry twice, right before Rev. Wright did his little talk show speaking tour and right before Pfleger's sunday morning Clinton comedy routine.

To my eyes, it's not the press and not even Obama's opponents who are keeping this story alive. His church is doing it and I don't know why they would do this to him. He really seems like a good candidate and I will happily vote for him no matter what these crazy people say in his name.

But this is NOT about his sainted ministers being criticized for standing up for the poor, not at all.

CC

*Because we all know that women aren't sufficiently ambitious to want the presidency for themselves. All they care about is that it DOESN'T go to a black guy. It's all about reacting to a man, you see. Obama's experience is enough to earn him the right to run for president. Hillary's just means that she thinks she's entitled to the presidency. Because she's a bitch that way. And have I shown you my new t-shirt?

If you like that, go for it. If you don't, don't go.

CC
A major Charlotte fan.

Will asked me a couple of days ago in the comments of my post on vacation sites for a girls' weekend.

Smiley Dave, ZombieKid and The Gnome were going to hang out with some friends of Smiley Dave's near Hershey Park, so Saturday we all drove up to Hershey Park and had an exhausting but very fun day where she learned that amusement parks are way more fun when one does not attend them with the ChaliceMom and ChaliceDad.

(E.g. When I was a kid, my mother would HARASS me until I went on the log flume with her. I HATED the log flume. I was SCARED of the log flume. I would dread her starting in with the "Oh, it's not that high and we should all go if one of us goes..." routine. As an adult, if you don't want to ride the log flume, you say "Hey, I don't want to ride the long flume. I'm going to wander while you people ride the log flume, call me on my cell phone when you're done" and nobody gives you crap about it. It's awesome.)

The Chaliceparents also maintained that nobody ever wins the carnival games at Amusement parks so we were never allowed to play them ever. I won a medium-sized stuffed monkey for theCSO on my third try at a two dollar game. (Yes, it was a monkey probably worth less than six bucks, but shut up.) Smiley Dave came away with a stuffed monkey AND this giant daisy.

Then Smiley Dave took the kids and headed to go hang out with his friends and Jana and I went up to Corning, NY. We were in the convertible and we could not have asked for better weather. We listened to Meg Barnhouse and Hairspray and the Indigo Girls and this goofy mix cd of songs I liked in college. Twas awesome.

We had the ultimate bed and breakfast experience in Corning here. Y'all, it's a Greek revival mansion that is full of beautiful antiques and run my two charming men whose moved to Corning from Seattle was primarily motivated by their love of Steuben glass. In fact, a discussion of Steuben glass with one of the guys enthused CC so much that she ALMOST dropped $250 on this small sculpture at the Corning Glass Museum's gift shop the following day before realizing that Steuben glass Victorian hand cooler collectors were really Hummel figurine collectors with more expensive educations. OK, I still kind of want the elephant, but again, shut up.

So we had this incredibly blissful time in Corning, so much so that she and I are already booked for next year at the Bed and Breakfast of the awesome, where they proudly display a signed photo of Eartha Kitt wishing the two guys luck on their business venture.

At the Corning glass museum, we went to these beginner glass classes and got totally enthused about bringing Smiley Dave, Zombie Kid and theGnome back next year, though the kids would need to stay someplace with less fragile surroundings.

CC

Right here

CC

Say something interesting.

FortiesGirl, Dr.When, theCSO and I were a team in the first PostHunt, which was a competition where we ran around DC answering complex, multi-step puzzles. It was a lot of fun, though of the five puzzles we only completely solved one. We got a solid halfway on three others and were totally lost on the fifth. It was really, really, hard, y'all. (We missed one puzzle because we couldn't tell that a fortune cookie was coconut-flavored.) But at least half a dozen teams finished the whole thing, so it was us, not the puzzles.

TheCSO, FG and DW were really disappointed that we didn't do better, though I was more Zen about it because frankly these days I'm used to feeling like lots of people are smarter or at least better prepared than me and seeing things I can't. Thank you, Law school.

Anyway, I've been talking it up for the last two days and at least Jana-who-creates and Kate-the-lawyer are wanting to participate next year with their respective mates, so I don't think I'm going to have a problem getting a team together if they bail. Besides, if Jana is in, her kids are in and there's no way TheGnome would have missed the coconut.

I think the highlight of the day for FG and DW was getting to meet Dave Barry and I took this picture of them. (Dave Barry was really nice about posing for pictures and signing books.)

It was a good day.

CC

Sorry I've been so lax in updating. The Write-On competition (which is how you get on to journals at GULC) is kicking my ass. My grades were respectable by any non-law-school standard, but not that great law-school-wise, so I'm going to have to rock this to make it onto a journal.

(I probably won't rock this. Seriously. Even the case we're supposed to be commenting on completely sucks. But I am trying.)

Anyway... I did catch the season finale for Bones last night. And as much as I appreciated the bathtub scene with David Boreanaz (Seriously. Thank you for that scene.) I am confused on a couple of points.

If everything happened the way it looked like it happened with the explosion:

What was the point?

Who stole the skeleton?

Why did Goremegon's assistant think it was rational to sacrifice himself for something so, well, silly? (That might be question one again, but seriously...)

What's the deal with his motivation for working with Gormegon anyway? I mean, an earlier episode revealed that this person had a support system that I envied. Why did he do this?

I assume they are going for brainwashing here, but I just did a paper on brainwashing (indeed, my entire practice case comment for my legal writing class was on the admissibility of evidence of brainwashing and the jurisprudential upshot of accepting brainwashing as a defense, explanation or mitigating factor) and brainwashing doesn't really work the way Bones made it look at all, and this is a show that is normally pretty decent on the science.

The acting in the episode was awesome. But the writing was some of the worst I've ever seen in TV, though I've gotten used to that this season. The writer's strike has not made me appreciate the writers at all as I wasn't terribly sympathetic to large portions of their cause in the first place* and it has produced so much bad writing.

CC

* The Networks' argument "You did get paid once to write the five minute episode we're putting on the web for free to promote the show. We're not getting paid when we show it, so we're not going to pay royalties for every view. That said, these things make the show more popular, which helps keep you in a job and insures that the show will end up syndicated, so everybody wins." made sense to me.

But then every bit of writing I've ever done professionally I did on a "We paid you to write it once, now we own it and will use it as we like" basis, so the "We're not being fairly compensated unless we get paid every time you use our work" argument seems really odd. Or maybe I'm just jealous.

South Carolina governor Mark Sanford is going after wacky and obsolete South Carolina laws.

So, when do you think he will get to that bit about Atheists not being allowed to hold public office?

CC

“Yes, there have been appeasers in the past, and the president is exactly right, and one of them is Neville Chamberlain,'’ Mr. McCain told reporters on his campaign bus after a speech in Columbus, Ohio. “I believe that it’s not an accident that our hostages came home from Iran when President Reagan was president of the United States. He didn’t sit down in a negotiation with the religious extremists in Iran, he made it very clear that those hostages were coming home.'’

Hint: I don't mean the Godwin's law violation.

CC

He belongs to my brother's friend, God help him

I realized that if I left Georgetown right after my Contracts final and booked it over to the E street cinema, I could catch the 9:55 showing of Zombie Strippers.

Anybody want to meet me?

CC

How sad. Mildred Loving died.

CC

It sort of defies explanation how I ended up at my mother’s house on Saturday morning in my pajamas, knowing that the police were on their way.

Well, no, it doesn’t. She'd brought my brother Oliver over to my house that morning and theCSO and I had rolled out of bed, pulled on jeans and met them at the door. My brother and my husband had business to discuss. After fifteen minutes of negotiations about how much extra Oliver was going to charge theCSO and me when he mowed around all the construction stuff in our yard, my mother needed to get back to her house.

I’d told Oliver I would drive him to his first job of the morning so he and theCSO could finish their negotiation. As he was getting out of the car, Oliver casually mentioned that I should probably call and check on my mother. She’d had to leave because she was kicking a big mean guy out of her house.

(The ChaliceMom and ChaliceDad for reasons CC can’t fathom allow Jason and Oliver to run a flophouse for their degenerate little friends in the basement. Sometimes, those friends need to get kicked out.)

Sigh.

I drove over to my mother’s house.

This was one UGLY big mean guy. He stomped around halfassedly packing his car, but mostly yelling threats and in general making a spectacle of himself. My parents’ neighbors paused at their flowerbeds and looked up to watch. They have to be used to this by now, but I was still dying a bit inside.

Big mean guy hadn’t been paying any rent, but he had been there over 30 days, which grants him some rights in our county. When it was pointed out that he couldn’t PROVE he’d been there over 30 days, he decided to call the cops and ask them to work it out.

Fair enough.

It was about then that I realized that I may be a Smith by birth and thus capable of anything as far as law enforcement is concerned, but I usually like to be wearing a bra when I talk to the police.

“Things here seem pretty good,” I said. “I think I’ll head on home.”

My mother reached out and grabbed my wrist, "Please?" she said. I held her hand.

Big mean guy slammed a large box down in the driveway. “My car is legal,” he said mock philosophically, “I don’t know about Oliver’s car.”

The Chalicemom and I looked at each other and shrugged. So what if it’s not? You can have a non-street legal car in your driveway. The cops can only ticket if it’s a junker that has been there for 90 days or so or if they see you driving it. Every Smith knows that.

“And what if they search your house? I bet Oliver has some nasty stuff on his computer.”

My mother and I looked at each other. This might be a problem. If Oliver had any particularly weird porn or had contracted with any hookers and left evidence on his computer, he could go back to jail. And the police have an excellent record of finding probable cause to search the houses where my brothers live.

I will freely admit my brother is a terrible person, but he is a terrible person who is giving making an honest living a shot and on some level I respect that.

My mother looked at me. “Can you get rid of anything weird on Oliver’s computer?” she asked.

“Dunno. Don’t think so. But I can keep the police from looking in it. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

I took the computer and stuck it in the back of my car. I drove home, trying really hard not to think about those lines from Animal Farm, “Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

I dropped the laptop off and put on some lawyer clothes. One of my more casual suits, some pearls, some nice shoes. Look at me, respectable member of society.

I was back at my parents’ house in time to talk to the police. I talked to them about our unruly houseguest. Big ugly guy stalked off. The police left. I talked to my mom about going to the magistrate to get a stay-away order.

“So,” my mother said. “I’m going to head over to the county courthouse, but the Flower Mart at the National Cathedral is today and your father and I were thinking about going later this afternoon. Would you like to come along?”

I declined. The day was starting to heat up, and my suit was starting to get uncomfortable.

CC
Whose brother insists there was nothing weird on the computer, but who didn’t look herself.

Yeah, that's me.

CC

I'm still getting the hang of law school exam writing, so be nice. That said, I'm willing to take suggestions on improving my style. I know the analysis is a little spotty in places, but I gave myself a 90 minute deadline to write this as I felt that analyzing the movie should not be allowed to take longer than the movie itself.

An Analysis of tort law in The Omen

Soon after the movie begins, Ambassador Steven Harris suffers a fatal accident. A fuel truck driver who is driving negligently spills his cargo onto the Ambassador’s limousine. A homeless guy drops a match and Ambassador Harris and his driver are killed in the resulting explosion. Ambassador Harris’ family has quite a few avenues for recovering for negligence.

Firstly, if the driver of the oil truck were driving negligently, he may be held responsible for the entire accident. A driver of an oil truck through London has a duty to be aware of the traffic around him and drive carefully as a result. He breached that duty by driving negligently. Though the homeless man dropping a cigarette was also a cause of the accident, this action would have had not effect had the oil truck not spilled. The homeless man and the driver are in this sense jointly and severally liable for the Ambassador’s death. That said, a homeless man is often judgment-proof. In many states that would place the burden to be divided between the other parties.

Under vicarious liability, the oil company that owned the truck is responsible for the torts of its employee under respondaet superior since transporting oil is presumably within the scope of the deliveryman’s job duties. Even if the company has rules against negligent driving, the driving would still have been in furtherance of the driver’s employment and thus within the scope of vicarious liability.

The Ambassador and the oil truck driver might have a reasonable products liability claim against the maker of the oil truck if some material defect in the truck could be considered a cause of the accident. If the brakes were defective in some material way, strict liability would apply as an oil truck is not unavoidably unsafe. But there isn’t enough information to do much more than speculate as the particulars of the accident are not a focus of the movies.

The Ambassador’s family may go so far as to try to call driving an oil truck through the middle of the city an Ultrahazardous activity, but it is likely that the utility of oil deliveries would render that approach unworkable.
Wrongful death is the most obvious legal direction for the ambassador’s family to take. As the entire accident is over in a matter of seconds, it is unlikely that the Ambassador suffered any, but they could easily recover for the economic support and companionship they lost in his death.

Later in the movie, Damien’s nanny hangs herself as the attendees at his birthday party look on in horror. Any person who sees the hanging could indeed suffer distress great enough that they would need to seek medical treatment. But they would not have been afraid for their own safety, nor that of a member of their family, so the woman’s conduct is not tortious.

Years later, Katherine, who is pregnant, is standing on a stool watering a plant on the ledge of a mezzanine. Damien is riding his tricycle along and knocks her over the ledge. She hangs there for a moment begging Damien to help her. He doesn’t and she falls, breaking her collarbone and losing the baby when she hits the ground.
If Damien’s contact with his mother’s person was intentional, he could be held fully liable as battery is an intentional tort and children can be held responsible for intentional torts. Even if he only intended to scare her, the doctrine of transferred intent indicates that the intent will transfer to a battery claim. As Damien approaches Katherine, she screams and tells him to stop, meaning that she did have reasonable apprehension of what was to come, which adds an assault claim to the aforementioned.

Assuming, arguendo, that it was in fact an accident, Damien will be held to the “Reasonable child” standard, wherein the courts will ask themselves what a reasonable five-year-old would do in that situation. Anyone riding a tricycle has a duty not to hit people with it. This goes double for people who are riding tricycles on the second floor. His careless riding of the tricycle is a breach of this duty, and directly causes his mother’s fall. That her injuries put her in the hospital serves as ample evidence that she was harmed. A court would probably find that Damien was negligent as the reasonable six year old would know that both riding tricycles into people and riding them indoors are bad ideas.

Courts are split on whether Katherine would be able to recover for the death of her unborn child.

Keith and David, while in a cemetery at night, are chased by wild dogs. They had been directed to the cemetery by Father Spileto, meaning that they weren’t trespassers, so the licensee standard of care would apply. If Father Spileto keeps guard dogs, or if wild dogs have been roaming the area, then the priest had a duty to tell the father and Keith about the potential danger. The dogs do not bite Keith and David, but the priest could be liable for an emotional distress claim if they developed a physical manifestation of their distress.

Keith, however, has bigger problems than his emotional distress claim. While walking down a back alley, he is killed by a falling sign. Keith’s intestate would be able to sue under a negligence theory as the store owner is required to maintain his shop and keep such dangers in good repair.

In what was for my money the scariest scene in the movie, Damien’s nanny murders Katherine by injecting her IV with an air bubble while she is in the hospital. By the end of the scene, it’s clear that nobody in the hospital ever saw Damien or the nanny. Were Damien so inclined, he might well try a medical malpractice claim against the hospital. Though Damien would lack evidence that the hospital’s negligence caused his mother’s death, he could argue that embolisms caused by small punctures in an IV lines do not typically occur unless someone at the hospital has been negligent, and that the negligence was more likely than not that of the hospital staff. Thus, Damien has all of the elements of a res ipsa loquitor case of negligence.

Finally, Damien’s father dies when he is shot by an officer of the diplomatic protection group as he tries tries to stab Damien with a piece of the cross of Meggido. Stabbing someone is unprivileged contact with the plaintiff’s person, so that’s another battery claim. As outlined above, the factors for assualt and intentional infliction of emotional distress also apply.

However, the soldier shooting David is privileged as a defense of others claim. David was mere seconds away from stabbing Damien, thus satisfying the timeliness requirement. Even the officer’s use of deadly force is acceptable as it was reasonable force under the circumstances.

CC

A response to PB

Honestly, I don’t know what else Obama could have done.

I believe Wright speaks a great deal of truth, but unfortunately for all concerned, he also speaks about what a great guy Louis Farrakhan is and how the Marines are similar to the Romans who killed Jesus and how the the US government invented AIDS to kill African-Americans.

More to the point, the Rev. Wright was probably speaking the truth when he said that Obama may or may not agree with what Wright was saying, but that Obama had to say what he had to say to get elected, but it was pretty much political attempted homicide, so I guess that would make Obama’s actions self-defense.*

When it was just clips taken out of context, then that was no big deal. I’d say that had about blown over. However, when Wright repeated his comments in front of the National Press Club then there wasn’t much Obama could do about it, other than say, in effect, “hey, this guy is wrong and I disagree with what he is saying and the hateful directions he is taking the discourse in, and by the way, speculating that I’m just saying what I need to say to get elected was way uncool. I would think my spiritual mentor would have more respect for my integrity.”

It really makes me wonder if Rev. Wright was trying to sabotage Obama. Mind you, I have no idea why he would do this, but damn, I’d say that Wright saying:

Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls, Huffington, whoever’s doing the polls. Preachers say what they say because they’re pastors. They have a different person to whom they’re accountable.

is hard to interpret any other way.

If I were a minister and I thought that a former congregant was answering to the polls rather than God, I sure wouldn't say so in front of the National Press Club.

Would you?

CC

*Note also that Rev. Wright could have said that people of faith can disagree when asked why Obama disagreed with him, instead of throwing Obama under the bus by confirming Rev. Wright’s detractor’s worst fears.

The Smart is the ultimate “Hey, middle-aged-geeky-man, come talk to me!” car. CC has appreciation for geeky men of all ages, so she could be in a worse state. Even under torture I could not tell you the gas mileage of any other car I’ve ever had, but I’ve been asked so often about the Smart that “the EPA says 38, but people have been reporting up to 50.” is a reflex.

The only place most people have seen a smart is Europe. So I’m asked “Did you have that shipped over from Italy” on a fairly regular basis.

I’ve never had a car that people so regularly waved at, honked at, smiled at, etc. Have low self-esteem while driving a Smart is impossible as you are constantly getting random validation from seventeen different directions.

It’s not you, it’s the car.

The dealership experience was a breeze. Our salesguy mentioned a few more options, but we'd ordered the car in advance, so most of that had already been taken care of. The credit union had never heard of the car, but once they'd verified its existence, financing was no problem.

More generic information on the Smart is available here.

I'll probably post another picture or two here, but most of them will go in a Facebook album as I really doubt the average Chalicesseur cares that much.

CC

Yes, that's a painting of Castro on fire.

Let's be clear. My prior post was making fun of the New York Times.

THIS is making fun of Catholicism.

CC made a few mistakes in her reporter days, but never one like this one from the New York Times.

As I predicted, the abortion art project was a hoax and the media reaction WAS the real art project.

"Ms. Shvarts is engaged in performance art," a Yale spokeswoman, Helaine Klasky, said. "She stated to three senior Yale University officials today, including two deans, that she did not impregnate herself and that she did not induce any miscarriages. The entire project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman’s body."

I'm sure many news stories are out on this by now. Here's Yale's statement on this.

CC

He was at tonight's basketball game between GULC professors and
members of Congress.

$323,000 plus raised for Washington Legal Clinic for the homeless. I
heart my school.

As of this writing the Hoya Lawyas are leading the Hills Angels 22-21,
but whatever happens, we won.

at the same time, if I ever write something like this it will all have been worth it.

I think you should read the whole thing where he takes their claims apart piece-by-piece but here's an excerpt from the end:


Let me be clear about this: there are only two ways for you to get anything out of me. You will either need to (1) convince me that I have infringed, or (2) obtain a final judgment to that effect from a court of competent jurisdiction. It may be that my inability to see the pragmatic value of settling frivolous claims is a deep character flaw, and I am sure a few of the insurance carriers for whom I have done work have seen it that way; but it is how I have done business for the last quarter-century and you are not going to change my mind. If you sue me, the case will go to judgment, and I will hold the court's attention upon the merits of your claims—or, to speak more precisely, the absence of merit from your claims—from start to finish. Not only am I unintimidated by litigation; I sometimes rather miss it.

Hot! Hot! Hot!

I find it striking how people who are writing letters of complaint usually can't do it this well. Lots of people try to make the other party feel bad, make moral judgements and exaggerate their issue with crazy comparisions and/or obvious advertising fluff treated literally. You'll note how this gentleman doesn't say "When you accuse me of violating your patent, it's like a human rights violation in Darfur" or "Your company motto is 'Excellence in Cables,' but you have failed to be excellent in the following fifty ways:". He keeps it focused on the issue at hand and strictly practical about the matter.

And I suspect he will get exactly the result he wants with no additional fuss.

Awesome.

CC
who has found the "only madmen write letters in excess of three pages" rule to be accurate, usually, but is delighted to consider this an exception to the rule.

A Gawker Blog I like did a story the other day about whether or not you should tell your sex partners if you have herpes. The lady who wrote the story cheerfully explained that she has herpes and didn't tell her last boyfriend until they were breaking up.

Lots of people in the comments are commending her for her honesty (her honesty in talking about how dishonest she was with her boyfriend, I assume) and taking others to task for being so "judgmental."

The survey attached has the following choices:

Do You Tell People About Your STDs?
When boning a new person, do you let them know about the STDs you have/had, even if dormant?
* Yes, always! I'm perfect!
* Yeah, sometimes, if I remember when I'm that drunk.
* Well, only if I think it could develop into a real relationship.
* No, never! I'm trying to get fucked here!

At one point last night, only 20 percent of those surveyed were in the "always tell" category. We're up to 44 percent. And I'm sure the "I'm perfect" doesn't help.

But still.

Even the STIs that are no big deal when treated BECOME A BIG DEAL when a person doesn't know he/she has them. I'm not sure on what planet putting your future partners and their future partners at risk of infertility and worse is acceptable just because you're embarassed or you've decided that it is "dormant."

Not my planet.

If you don't know someone well enough to feel comfortable telling him/her about your STIs, you should probably assume that person feels the same way about you. Plenty of STIs can find ways around condems.

Please people, be moral and be safe.

CC

And there was much rejoicing.

CC

After my former wife and I were married, she was surprised to find out that I talked in my sleep in Russian, a language which in some respects I know much better than my native English. (The fact that she found that out only after we married is of course an indicator of how long ago that was.) I owed this speaking ability mainly to two women who supplemented my college classroom language instruction by teaching me how to actually speak the language.

I connected with one of them, Shulamith Schneider, through our family physician and friend Dr. Irving Berlin. She was one of his aunts, a native of Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, and the daughter of a learned rabbi who was himself a distinguished scholar of languages and of religious and classical texts. His name can be found in major Jewish reference books, with the fact that he was killed by the Nazis in 1941. It was partly this personal background that inclined her to help me with my spoken Russian when I was at home in southeast Virginia, where she had made a life and a career as a pharmacist after leaving Lithuania. To many of the poor people who bought from her, she was known as “the little doctor”. She was indeed short, and in that time and place, I do not doubt that she was the closest thing to a medical contact that many of them had.

When I was at home in Hampton during my college years, she and I would sit out on the back porch of her modest home on occasional evenings, listening to the mosquitoes and reading through and discussing classical Russian poetry and prose. In return, I was able to expand her library of Russian books somewhat, the closest to any payment that she would accept. Her Russian, although dated, was excellent, so good that in high school she had acted as a tutor in Russian to the daughter of a Russian general, a young woman who like many prerevolutionary nobles had been brought up with French as her primary language, but with a change of times needed to improve her Russian. It is a fundamental aspect of Judaism to emphasize the role of the individual in community, and in America, Ms. Schneider had made a place for herself by her professional skills and the way in which she used them. As the little doctor, she won the acceptance and trust of an impoverished clientele. But with such a clientele, violence is rarely distant; her brother Moses, who had come to America with her, was at one point the object of an attack so violent that I can still remember the lines of knife scars on his face. After he died, and I married so that I came to Virginia less often, I would still visit her, but eventually she told my wife and me in her now subdued Russian: “It is good that you are visiting me now. The next time you come, you will not find me alive.”

The other Russian woman from whom I learned to speak Russian was a member of the university language staff, who ran regular conversation lessons with material supplied by the Slavic Department. Her own education, although not academic, was also excellent, but it was the education of a Russian noblewoman, which she was, the Countess Nina Georg’evna Murav’yova. When I came to know her well, I learned that she shared an apartment half way between Harvard and MIT with an elderly Russian economic geographer, Taras Vasil’evich Butoff. A series of graduate students in Slavic languages sublet rooms in the apartment, one of whom I was during the summer after I graduated from college, before I married.


Nina Georg’evna had a sharp mind and an acerbic tongue, but she had difficulty in adapting to life in America. Her English was limited, and in her large bedroom she slept under a beautiful overhanging canopy, one of her remnants of former wealth. Like many Russians of an older generation, she knew much classical Russian poetry by heart. But the world in which she lived was foreign to her. To learn to drive an automobile was an unimaginable achievement to her. As a noble, she had been brought up to be above the crowd, not to learn to serve them as did Ms. Schneider. But other people made possible her occasional indispensable interactions with the official world, like the young Boston attorney who joined our conversation classes informally and fought off various Massachusetts authorities for her gratis when it was necessary. When, having read through and tired of all the Russian and French literature that appealed to her, she decided that she needed to read “Moby Dick”, it was up to me to find and buy for her a Russian translation of it, which eventually I was able to do. Still, even within the large upper floor of the apartment house on Hancock St. where she had her residence, much of the time she lived basically in isolation. When she had the stroke that killed her, she lay undiscovered for some time in her bedroom before her apartment mates finally broke into her bedroom when she did not respond to calls and knocks.

On rereading these sketches, I grow terrified that as I grow older, I approximate to Nina Georg’evna’s inability (suicidal in the long run) to adapt to changes in my place and world.. But I see the same effect even more strongly in the area of religion. I see the same pattern of inability or refusal to adapt in various ongoing conflicts in religion, with the resulting damage magnified by efforts to capitalize on them for political and career purposes. Those who adapt to a changing world are therefore deemed guilty of heresy; those who refuse to adapt are the virtuous orthodox, who perhaps have never suspected that the fate of the dodo might be relevant to theology. To add a note, when friends and family cleared out Nina Georg’evna’s effects, they found the Russian translation of “Moby Dick” that I had given her, and they had no idea what to make of it, it was so uncharacteristic of her to branch into a new area of thought. Actually, she had read it and was impressed, I can say from personal knowledge. Perhaps there is always a glimmer of the possibility of opening up to new ways of thought, but the present and prospective damage from such ongoing disputes is overwhelming.

Due to a confluence of sci-fi and gaming related events, Jana-who-creates and I will be husbandless and childless for memorial day weeked.

We want to do something fun, preferably with a high awesomeness-to-cost ratio. Vegas's awesomeness is high, but the cost in time and money was a little too high for a weekend. Camping is cheap, but not very awesome, especially when I'm around, because I bitch A LOT.

We know there are lots of places where we could stay in a B and B and bum around an artsy little town. That's kinda the default.

Any other ideas?

Within driving distance of DC is a big plus, obviously.

CC
who is lobbying for this, but wants some more options.

You'd like to attend this.

CC

1. By March 11, 2004 John Kerry had enough delegates to have the Democratic nomination in the bag. Post Super Tuesday 2000, Al Gore had over 2500 delegates. At this point, Obama’s lead over Hillary is about a third of the lead that Kerry March 2004 has over Obama’s April 2008 delegate count and a fifth of the lead Gore’s 2000 delegate count has over him, and that’s not even counting a month’s worth of primary’s totals for April for Kerry and Gore.*

Yet still I keep hearing that Hillary should resign because Obama is beating the pants off her and he’s clearly the people’s choice. (I even said so myself, though not in those terms, before I looked at the numbers. I’m going to change my position to “somebody should probably resign if only to save both candidates money, but I’m not calling for either candidate to do so.”)

2. The way we pick Democratic delegates does not reflect the way delegates will work in the fall election. Awesome that the five Democrats in Idaho picked Obama, but general-election-wise, so what? Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania generally are the ones who decide elections. Clinton polls better in all of them.

3. When Democratic officials made bad decisions in 2000 that ended up disenfranchising voters, people cared. Even looking at this purely pragmatically, y’all don’t think the folks in Florida are going to remember which candidate wanted their votes to count? If Obama wins the nomination, I’m sure the McCain camp will be happy to remind them how Obama favored mail-in voting in Congress, but rejected it when a state he was going to lose might be able to use it.

Yes, the Democratic officials in Florida and Michigan were the ones who screwed up. Much like it was Democrat screwups all around in Florida 2000. But I still think that Democrats in those two vital states are going to stay home if the guy who wanted their votes not to count is the Democratic nominee.

4. I just don’t like candidates who use emotion over reason as much as Obama does and I hate the way his supporters are talking about him and about Clinton. I’m tired of hearing criticisms of Obama being framed as “attacks on hope.” The man is not hope incarnate. He’s a politician. When the popular vote is with him and the delegate count isn’t, he says he really won. When the delegate count is with him and the popular vote isn’t, he also says he won. Duh, all politicians do that. I don’t hold the fact that he’s a politician against him. He hides it better than Clinton does, but when you get down to it, the tactics are a lot the same.

I’m tired of hearing Hillary’s offer to have Obama as a vice-president be called racist or at least demeaning, while Obama offering Gore (delegate count, March 2000: 2514) a job (not even the Vice Presidency) is a sign of Obama’s general awesomeness. WtF?

5. His most passionate supporters are so damn scary. You know how you can mention that the sky is blue and Robin Edgar can find a way to turn that into a negative thing about Unitarian Universalism or his church? Obama supporters are a little like that with Hillary Clinton. (E.g. Clinton just released her tax returns. It’s fascinating to watch people complain that the fact that she and Bill make a lot of money from speaking fees and/or complaint that they gave 10 percent of their income to charities and spin that as somehow less virtuous than the three percent Obama gave away. Huh?) Listening to Obama supporters feels like watching Fox News.

Also, it creeps me out how many Obama supporters say that if Clinton does win, they won’t vote for her.

How did “Dean or Green” work out in 2004? Not very well.


Anyway, I’m planning to vote for the guy come November if he wins the nomination. I don’t mind politicians. But I’m still nervous.

CC
Ducking and covering.


* That is all very awkwardly phrased. The simple version is “Kerry and Gore had their nominations more than sewn up a full month before now. If Obama is the people’s choice, why aren’t more people voting for him?”

"What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous . . . it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God. Get out of that seat . . . You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon."

This reminder that theists getting shit from atheists happens sometimes in UU churches, but it's usually the reverse is brought to you by Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago), who is
bitching out Rob Sherman for daring to testify that the government giving $1 million to a church was not Constitutional.

CC

Ps. Another tidbit on this subject.

I generally am not a believer in making fun of the dead, especially the recently dead. I can understand doing something cruel, I can understand doing something pointless, but to make fun of the recently dead is an intersection of cruelty and pointlessness that is repugnant.

That said, I totally get the temptation to make "cold, dead fingers" jokes given what a point Mr. Heston made of his own death.

CC

NSFW unless your workplace is cool.

CC

and other thoughts I had while observing courtrooms in DC for a morning.

(When class assignments aren't graded, I see no reason why I can't write them like blog posts.)

Landlord-tenant court seemed to be all about everyone wanting to go home as soon as possible. Judge Fern Leibowitz presided over a courtroom that looked like an office. The clerks in the front of the room had pictures and little toys on their desks. The environment was informal and the hearings went very fast. The bailiff ignored ringing cell phones and people were in and out of the room constantly. Almost everyone wanted a continuance.

One case, Argyle Properties vs. Ethan Gomez, was representative. The renter’s legal aid attorney announced that the claimant had fallen behind on his bills because he had gotten sick. The landlord said he’d never heard that before the hearing. The renter’s attorney wanted to set up a supervised payment plan for an amount less than the rent because he said a recent increase had been illegal. Again, the landlord’s attorney said it was news to him. Judge Leibowitz told Gomez’s attorney to bring some sort of proof of the sickness and everyone agreed to discuss the matter again in two weeks. It amazed me how routine it all seemed. Lots of tenants represented themselves, some with knowledge of the system that suggested they were experienced lease-breakers.

I had not caught Judge Leibowitz’s name and was waiting in line at the clerk’s office to ask when Mr. Arniss, the attorney for Argyle, got in line behind me. When I introduced myself and told him why I was there, he was happy to give me his opinions on the proceedings. He called Washington DC the most “tenant-friendly” district in America and outlined several of Argyle Properties’ recent cases, asking me with each description if I thought the outcome was fair. He didn’t take “Well, I haven’t heard both sides” for an answer.

The Courtrooms at the DC District Court were more reminiscent of church. They were quiet and respectful. Probably the most interesting hearing I attended all day was a detention hearing in front of a Magistrate. The US. vs. Mendoza involved a convicted drug dealer who ran from the police for what my suburban self would say was no apparent reason. Officer Sidney Catlett of the DC police testified that he had seen the defendant running away, holding something at his waistband. Catlett had predicted where the defendant was running and taken a shortcut while two other officers followed the Defendant. Before Officer Catlett caught up with him, the defendant had stopped. When the officer came up to the defendant, there was a gun lying on the ground and the two other police officers on the scene said the defendant had thrown the gun down. But the only officer at the hearing was Officer Catlett. The defense attorney, whose name I didn’t catch, did a very impressive job of muddying the issue and making it clear that the witness had not actually seen the defendant throw down the gun.

I did think it was strange that there were a few points that went unaddressed:

1. Both prosecution and defense spent a lot of time asking the officer questions about exactly where he ran. It was admittedly confusing at the time as the streets were irregular, but in writing this paper I looked the defendant’s two block run to the address in question up in Google maps, which showed the odd layout of streets and made it very clear what had happened. I wondered why nobody bothered to bring a map, preferably one blown up to poster size.

2. There was a lot of time spent on what the officer saw, but neither the prosecution nor defense asked him if he had HEARD a metal gun being thrown onto a concrete sidewalk on an empty street in the middle of the night. Whether the answer was “yes” or “no,” one would think it would have helped somebody.

3. Nobody brought up the issue of fingerprints on the gun one way or another.

4. Nobody even speculated why the officer who’d seen the least was the one sent to testify. Given where the defense was going with how little he saw, I would think they would have at least mentioned that he was a strange choice of witnesses given that his testimony was mostly hearsay.

After some negative testimony from the defendant’s parole officer about the defendant’s harassment of an ex-girlfriend, the magistrate ruled that the defendant should remain in jail until his next court date, saying sardonically that the defendant’s supervised release had been “eventful.” The magistrate was quite sarcastic to both sides. I wondered if he was showing off for the law students in the back.

After the verdict, a depressed-looking woman in blue jeans waved goodbye to the defendant. I wondered if she was the old girlfriend or a new one. Either way, she was very understanding, all things considered. As we filed out of the room, I caught Officer Catlett and asked him why he was the witness if the other officers were closer. He said he didn’t know.

The detention hearing had taken under an hour, so I watched the first argument in In Re Fannie Mae Securities litigation, about whether Fannie Mae should be forced to turn over 4,000 documents to a plaintiff that was, I believe, the state of Ohio. They had turned the documents over to a regulatory agency voluntarily and the argument was over whether this voluntary submission of the documents to the agency meant that the documents were not privileged. At least, that’s how I understood it. This argument had been going on since well before the first motion to compel was sent in April 2007.

As I did my observation right before this paper was due, several of my fellow students were working on it the same day. Half a dozen had attended the detention hearing and come upstairs to the securities case. After about 45 minutes of listening to Attorney Melanie Corbin argue for the plaintiff about discovery rules, I figured I had seen enough. I had to get back to work, and the securities hearing looked like it would go on for hours. When Ms. Corbin sat down and one of her co-counselors stood up, I slipped out of the room.

One of my classmates left the same time I did. As we waited for the elevator, I said “Didn’t it blow your mind how the detention hearing only had one prosecutor and one defense attorney and this one motion has a dozen people in expensive suits on each side?”

“Why not?” My classmate asked, totally without irony, “The motion in the securities case is important.”

I have a lot of very smart friends. Indeed, for all practical purposes, I have a panel of advisers.

When I have a psychology question, I call my smart friend Pam, who is a psychologist. Katy-the-Wise gets lots of my personal problems and religion questions, though other people have been known to handle the overflow as I have lots of both. Smiley-Dave the structural engineer told us how to fix a sagging wall in our garage and told us where to put our bookcases.

Obviously, LinguistFriend gets the language questions.

TheCSO and I kind of share a brain on a lot of things.

My question is: Do other people not do this? If not, why the hell not?

I went over to my parents' house this evening to help them jumpstart my mother's truck. When she and my father and brother went off to drive it around to get it charged up, I sat on the couch brushing the dog. Eventually, I started looking through the papers on the coffee table for a magazine.

I found notes in my mother's handwriting. Suspicious notes.

When my family got back, I held the paper aloft.

"Um, Ma? Is this a get rich quick scheme?"

"Well..." My mother said.

"She lost a lot of money. I wasn't supposed to tell you." My brother Jason filled in cheerfully.

"It was my fault. I didn't spend enough time on it," My mother said.

"Oh, come on, Mom. That's what they always tell you."

"It is?"

"Yes," I said, exasperated. "They convince you it's your fault for not working hard enough. It keeps you from suing and to make you easier to convince next time. Amway has been doing that forever."

This went on for awhile. I never did find out exactly what sort of scam it was, though I'm gathering it had something to do with real estate. They lost more money than I would want to lose, but not so much as to create a serious problem.

But still...

I really tried not to be a sanctimonious pain-in-the-ass about it. At the same time, I was shocked. I thought about the Psychiatrist in California who lost 1.3 million to the Nigerian scam and what his kids must have gone through.

And I thought about how naturally I ask people for advice and rely on the knowledge of others. If I were going into the real estate business and I had a daughter who was a law student, a son-in-law who was good with finances and did my taxes, I might ask the daughter to research the company and/or the son-in-law to look over the paperwork.

WtF?

My mom isn't what you would call book smart, but she's no fool either. I almost think on some level she knew it was a scam. Maybe she wanted the dream of easy money more than she wanted the money she spent getting into it.

If that's the case, I hope she just buys a lottery ticket next time.

CC
exasperated.

From underneath.

TheCSO and I are geocaching with friends.

The cars sound like the ocean. Its all a crazy suburban kind of
beautiful.

I had been kicking around going on my church's summer service trip to fix up houses in New Orleans until I realized that it was the same week as GA.

I'm less into GA this year than I have been in the past. A lot of my friends aren't going, I'm not speaking at a workshop this year.

But I still am planning to go.

Still, it bums me out that my church's work trip to El Salvador always conflicts with GA, and the New Orleans trip is another thing I can't do.

Anyway, I got to thinking. I know lots of people have said they aren't going to GA because of the ID issue. If people want to boycott GA, they can do it, but instead of staying home that week, I wish they would take the time and money they are going to spend and help out other people.

As I used to live in NOLA, I'm helping a little but with trying to recruit people to go on the trip. So I'm going to go ahead and extend the invitation to Chalicesseurs.

If you're boycotting GA and would like to do something really valuable with that week, shoot me an email and I would be happy to hook you up with the group in my church that is planning to go. If New Orleans and El Salvador in June aren't to your liking, there are lots of other charitable projects that could use some volunteers.

CC

This t-shirt made me laugh.

The old people singing rock music movie.

CC
Sent from my iPhone

If you asked me, as the press asked Clinton, if I would go to a church where Rev. Wright was the pastor, I also would say that choice of ministers was a personal decision, but I personally would not have kept attending Rev. Wright's church.

I think I've mentioned a few times that I really hate it when ministers preach about politics.

I get that Rev. Wright was very important to Obama. Katy-the-Wise is very important to me and goodness knows I have argued with her when I have thought she was wrong. I've usually lost, but those of you who know Katy-the-Wise know that arguing with her usually leads to that result. She's wicked smart and whatever you're arguing about, she's thought about it more than you have.

I do find it strange that Obama never said "Hey, I think you're wrong on that" to Rev. Wright before he did so in front of the nation. (If he did, I would think he would have mentioned it by now.) I get that in many religions you don't say "Hey, I think you're wrong on that" to the minister, I just didn't think Obama's religion was one of those.

This stuff about Obama's minister in no way lowers my opinion of Obama, but as this is a blog where I argue with ministers fairly regularly, it would be weird if I didn't mention how strange I thought it was.

I also think Hillary should probably concede the race.

But I still don't really understand why people get so focused on ascribing hateful motives to her every action* and in general acting like she's so terrible.

CORRECTION: Lizard Eater provides quotes from a story where he said he did talk to his minister about these things. My bad.

CC
who remembers having to tell some of her liberal friends eight years ago that John McCain, while being a cool guy, was actually quite conservative. She wonders when the demonization of him will start from the same people.

*I've heard over and over that it was racist for her to offer Obama the vice presidency. Huh? Admittedly, the "less charismatic more experienced candidate with more charismatic less experienced running mate" model didn't work out too well four years ago, but it's a common political tactic and I don't see that using it when Obama is in the race makes it racist. If the poll numbers were reversed and Omaba offered to make Hillary his running mate, would that be sexist?

ZombieKid and theGnome loved it too.

Sent from my iPhone

This is awesome.

CC

I don't like him, but I don't have the enthusiasm for disliking him that a lot of UUs have.

That said, ye Gods...

I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed."

"It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks," Bush said.

CC

but the UUs aren't getting behind it.

Oh well.

CC

He looks like a very small Druid getting a very expensive education

This is for her.


CC
who changed the spelling of her name when she was 14 because she thought her name was boring.

First of all, I should say that it's probably a credit to Scott Wells that he was able to write a post that I had to think about for like a week before I could respond. I read his post on youth empowerment and the sort of "I hate you, now please take me to the mall" (my characterization of his words) vibe he got from national YRUU. I read his post on Saturday and I knew I agreed a little bit, but I disagreed a lot. So I gave it some more thought.

Then yesterday, I was talking about YRUU to someone I go to school with, someone who asked the very question that every YRUU advisor is asked on a regular basis,

"So how do you keep them from fucking?"

I recited the answer I always give "We don't have to, we watch them pretty carefully, but the biggest discipline problems I've had in the years I've been doing this have been a couple of Chinese fire drills and a strip poker game where any kid who got down to underwear started putting clothes back on. That's it. They're good, better than I was at their age."

But this time, I actually thought about that answer and what I meant that I could give it. I thought about the Presby youth group I was a member of when I was a kid. We pretty much had two rules: "Try to show up at the monthly meetings" and "No twosomes wandering off alone together, because we know the sort of bestial acts your inherently sinful natures will..."

We were Calvinists, you see.

I kid, but you see my point. Our advisors spent a hell of a lot of energy trying to keep us showing up and preventing us from having sex.

As a YRUU youth advisor, I've never really had to do either. I do my best to help the kids who don't fit in as well fit into the group. In that sense, I encourage people to show up. But mostly, they come enthusiastically. The wash cars for Beacon House, they plan their worship service, they put on plays for education in El Salvador, they sell totebags for charity, they entertain the families of seriously ill children who are at NIH, they collect canned goods for the hungry. They do retreats. They support each other through first car accidents and dying grandparents.

And yeah, they show up to protest marches and sometimes argue politics. Sometimes they don't argue those politics the way I would. Indeed, one of my youth was nationally fussed over by the UUA for an email she wrote in support of the UUA/UCC petition that I have referred to here as the "fuck the Iraqis who will die when the nation descends into anarchy, just bring the white people home" petition.

So what if her method of doing things and even her goal are not things I agree with?

When I was her age, all people asked of me was to show up and refrain from sex until the lock-in was over.

In a way, Scott Wells' post (and the five days I took to come up with this response) are major, major compliments to the YRUU youth because it shows the crazy standards we hold our youth to. Honestly, I think it was pretty clever to craft a near-immediate response that frames the YRUU issue as one of denominational concern for our youth and asks GA delegates to affirm that concern. I think it's brilliant politics. The delegates will be primed to take the next step, to vote to pay for more things for youth.

But OK, let's accept Scott's logic that the resolution was a bad idea. What are his alternate suggestions for the youth?

Fund raising?

Meetings?

An alternative being organized?

Yes, we expect people whose median age is too young to drive to put together national meetings, fundraisers and an entire alternative organization that they should fund themselves because some UUA (and non-UUA) adults think they've taken an obnoxious approach to their attempts to end racism*. They're "entitled," you see, because they expect adults who are not their parents to fund an organization for young UUs. It's like they think young UUs are the organization's future or something.

Hell, even MENSA doesn't expect its Teen Group to do and pay for everything themselves. And our kids aren't geniuses, they are just regular kids who have been raised UU, but we have so much faith in them, we expect them to have learned the political lessons of the 1960's and adjust their behavior accordingly.

Oh, and pay for their own large organization without help.

And keep their clothes on.

CC

*I also think it's obnoxious. But I think a lot of denominations would kill for youth that committed to fixing the problems of the world.

I’ve been reading a lot about Eliot Spitzer, but I haven’t known what to say. After all, I’ve never been a fan of the guy’s tactics, but there are a lot of prosecutors who behave in ways I wish they wouldn’t, so I hadn’t bothered to complain about that. He always seemed like a smart guy, so I’m really confused why prostitutes were involved. What's wrong with plain old sluts? It’s not like the people of New York care very much when their politicians cheat, even if they steal from the poor to finance doing so.

I keep finding myself thinking about his wife.

It bugs me that so many people are saying that Slida Wall should leave her husband/shouldn’t stand by him/etc.

Honestly, my biggest reaction watching this story is that everyone who has ever been cheated on can feel a little bit better about themselves. Slida is beautiful*, has a law degree from Harvard, gave up a career that was about as prestigious as law careers get to raise his kids and Spitzer lobbies the hookers not to wear condoms because he apparently doesn’t care whether or not he gives her a disease.

I think it’s safe to say that the problem wasn’t her.

CC

*Yesterday at school I overheard a guy announce to his friends that he would be "happy to help her get back at him, you know, any way she wanted." Male law students tend to be fratboyish when they are in large groups. If you’re 51 and twentysomething male law students are willing to announce to their friends that they would sleep with you, that’s really, really impressive.

but it would be tough to beat.

CC

Justice Holmes' frequently quoted aphorism "a page of history is worth a volume of logic" notwithstanding, it would be awesome if I could use logic and common sense a little more, especially in a closed-packet* context.

I've been warned against "deciding what makes sense and making the common law say that" and I'm trying not to. Also, I have an awesome argument that has to do with the subject of the case at bar that I don't think I can use at all because the common law has a different subject. (I'm being evasive here on purpose as I don't want to do anything that could be construed as an honor code violation. If you're at all curious, ask me about this in 72 hours and I can fill you in after the paper is turned in.)

Not a request for help, I can assure you. Just a rant. I'm sure there are ways to sneak my own logic in, I just haven't figured it out yet. I'm sure I will get there with practice. (Pun ignored.)

CC

*We give you the cases you're using and you're not allowed to use any other ones.

Ps. One of the scarier impacts of law school is that I find myself growing a little bit fond of Justice Scalia because honestly, nobody writes a wiseass dissent like that guy.

Luckily, it's easy to sober oneself up.

Recently, I've been writing some stuff about law school and specific people in my life that I don't want generally readable, so I've been putting it on my livejournal readable only by my friends. Feel free to friend "Chalicechick" and I will friend you back.

CC

I had a drag show period of my life when I went to drag shows all the time. Since then, I've tried several times to explain drag shows, why they are cool and how drag queens are way more than just figures of fun and/or men making fun of crossdressers.

Anyway, PB does the same, with great eloquence, here.

CC

I've read a bit of the media and blog coverage of the "stuff white people like" web page and I keep seeing one comment over and over again.

People write "Hey, this is stuff that UPPER MIDDLE CLASS white people like!"

Um, duh?

It's a stereotype?

Y'all don't think the stereotypical white person is a yuppie?

Of course not every white person matches the stereotype, any more than every black person could be a logical addition to a Tyler Perry play

Though I think a lot of the commenters are protesting too much. You don't see a little of yourself in the site's claims that white people love to feel like they are saving the world, love to get graduate degrees and/or love to feel like they are more enlightened than everyone else on cultural issues?

Really?

CC

PG, this blog's official asker of hard questions, asked me what I thought of this article on single-sex public education.

And honestly, I'm torn.

Actually, I'm torn on a lot of things relating to education. For example, I have for a long time been a great supporter of public schools and public education. I went to public schools myself and got a good education there and I have always stuck up for the public schools.

Then I started running a youth group with a girl who goes to Sidwell Friends, a bright, stimulated, thoughtful girl who raves about the education she's getting. Her friends and her kid sister (who also go to Sidwell) are equally confident, articulate and overall impressive. Chelsea Clinton turned out OK, too.

And I've started thinking "Gee, if I had a kid, I would really want to send her to Sidwell."

I'm similarly torn on single-sex elementary education. In this case, it's an issue of fairness to the minority. I believe the studies that the majority of students do well in single sex classes. A majority of boys want to watch snakes eat rats, a majority of girls would rather have more feminine sorts of science classes.

I just know I wouldn't have been happy with that sort of education, at least not socially. I hung out with boys all through elementary school. In gym class, we had a project where we had to make a "workout video." While small groups of girls worked out to Janet Jackson and Paula Abdul, my guy friends and I did a truly hilarious video where we worked out on roller skates to a Weird Al song. By the fifth grade, my best friend was a girl, but her name was Elizabeth and she went by "Lizard."

Would I have talked more in class? Dunno. I always talked a lot in class. Class is really boring if you don't. (This is an impulse I work hard to curb in law school.)

And TheCSO, to put it mildly, did not blend in at his elementary school in Charlotte, North Carolina, which had a large portion of lower-income students who were not culturally equipped to appreciate his sensitive and geeky self. (Ironically, I'm pretty sure he would have been just fine in Northern Virginia. I remember hanging out with a kid named James who was obsessed with disasters. On the swings we pretended we were escaping from the burning hotel in "Towering Inferno" and he knew more about the Titanic than any kid ever. I can totally see a little CSO and James being best pals. Also, in retrospect, James was way cooler than I gave him credit for at the time. I should totally google him.)

But the test scores are better for single sex education overall, and I totally don't want to discount that fact.

So what do y'all think? Is it worth a little extra cultural conditioning if the kids get a better education out of it?

CC
who did google James. He lives in LA now and seems to do something in the film industry. I friended him on Facebook.

“You can learn a lot more from listening than you can from talking. Find someone with whom you don’t agree in the slightest and ask them to explain themselves at length. Then take a seat, shut your mouth, and don’t argue back. It’s physically impossible to listen with your mouth open.”

-John Moe



I like it.

CC

That the hot sauce wall at California Tortilla is a depressing
commentary on capitalism and a demonstration of the paralyzing number
of choices modern life puts in front of us, choices that ultimately
lead to social paralysis.

I think it's awesome.

But you have to be in on the joke.

CC

A response to this extremely popular post

1. Because farmer’s markets that close at 11:30 are open for lots of hours before that. Out of bed, Hippie!

2. Because I am, at heart, an extremely self-centered person. (IMHO, you pretty much have to be to have a blog and write about yourself, your thoughts, what you’re up to, your political views, etc) Going to church on Sunday, even if I don’t attend the service and teach youth group instead, reconnects me back outside myself. I need a time each week to remind myself that it isn’t all about me, and when I get it, there is a corresponding drop in my stress level over little stuff.

3. Because my local BFF goes to the same church and after church we often get burritos together and hang out with her family. No church, no queso and no laugher ringing off the walls as ZombieKid beats up on me.

4. Because when I lived in South Carolina and was depressed and lonely, I drove 60 miles every Sunday to go to church with a minister whose preaching reallysucked. Now that I have my pick of churches within ten miles, I’m so going.

5. Because lots of the people who mean most to me in this world met me through UUism. (Katy-the-Wise, Linguist Friend and Jana-who-Creates, for starters, and lots of other people.)

6. Because I’ve made a commitment to work with the youth, a commitment that has brought me lots of joy and given me a chance to do the most fun thing in the church.

And oddly enough, people think that it is a big sacrifice and fuss over me for it.

(When people say, “You slept in the youth cabin this retreat? You’re so brave!”
My stock response is “Yeah, last night we stayed up until 2:00am listening to Queen and talking about boys. And sometimes I let them do what THEY want to do...”)

7. Because the UUs I’ve known, even the annoying ones, have done so much for other people and the world, I like to keep an eye out for things I can do to help them and help UUism.
Also, church is the one place in my life where people accost me and ask me to make sack lunches for homeless shelters, pay for English classes in Transylvania and donate to canned food drives. Am I happy to do these things? You bet! Would I end up doing them if I wasn't asked? It's unlikely!

8. Because I can sing and pray and talk to people who are making the same spiritual trip I am, though usually by a different route. UUs are often really thoughtful and cool and well-educated and while I’m sure that makes us elitist in some ways, it also means that a high percentage of us are fun to talk to.

9. Because every once in awhile, UUs will peer-pressure me into trying some sort of hippie spiritual practice and I find some real spiritual value in it. I’m thinking specifically of walking a labyrinth and meditating*, which is the sort of thing I would not ever have imagined myself finding helpful. It just is.

10. Because I feel closest to God when I am refining spiritual ideas through reason, weighing them against each other and figuring out new ways to examine spiritual issues. So my big ol' church full of different ideas and groups is perfect.

I think part of the problem is that lots of UU churches are too small. Ironically, my church has lots of stuff geared toward childless adults, I'm just too busy with YRUU to do any of it. I'm sure the petty shit that bothers Ms. Theologian happens in my church, it happens in every church, but I'm not close enough to the base of power to care.

CC

* People, especially Christians, who get snotty about this really irritate me. If you’re upset that the UUs “stole” this practice from the Christians (who presumably “stole” it from the Greeks) you need to get a hobby or something. IMHO, if a practice works for you, you should use it. Don’t pretend you’re using it the same way other groups did if you haven’t done the work to make sure that you are, but yeah, you should do whatever helps you connect with that which is holy. Duh.

Since the last post on the subject was pretty popular, here’s some more examples of my crappy taste in music. Don't have all of them on my phone yet.

1. Avenue Q – “What do you do with a BA in English?”
I think of this song as “it sucks to be me.” Either way, it’s the opening part where Princeton arrives on Avenue Q and meets everyone. I think it would be the greatest act ever for my church’s winter cabaret if it were only a bit more politically correct. But it’s way not.

2. Poe – “Rose is a Rose”
I’m not entirely sure where this song came from as it isn’t on any of her albums and not in Itunes. It just showed up among theCSO’s MP3s one day. But it is most sexy and awesome.

3. The Judds- “Rockin’ with the Rhythm of the Rain”
If it doesn’t make you want to dance and/or learn to play guitar, you must be made of stone. I am not made of stone.

4. Cake-“Short Skirt/Long Jacket” Though I would NEVER trade an MG for a white Chrysler LeBaron

5. Portishead - “Sour Times” Yes, I was a college kid in the 90’s. How did you know?

6. Soul Miner’s Daughter – “Bodies” Ok, this one is hella obscure. It’s from this funky little band it Atlanta that no longer exists. (And it’s not in iTunes) But if I played it for you, you would love it.

7. The Dead Milkmen – “You’ll dance to anything” Depeche Mode had it coming.

8. Radiohead – “My Iron Lung” I loved “Creep,” too, but I love this self-parody even more

9. Amy Winehouse – “Love is a losing game” So much talent in that girl. I hope she gets it together, yet still keeps making amazing music.

10. Yo La Tengo – “Sometimes I don’t get you” For the piano solo and for many better reasons.

But I thought "Stuff White People Like" was fascinating.

I particularly saw myself in their claim that white people judge the authenticity of ethnic restaurants by looking at the skin color of the people inside.

Oops.

CC
who runs about 50/50 on these things, but knows lots of people whose percentage would be higher.

Some pro-life folks were heckling Bill Clinton the other day at a speech in Ohio.

Here is his response:

"We disagree with you. You want to criminalize women and their doctors and we disagree. I reduced abortion. Tell the truth! Tell the truth! If you were really pro-life, if you were really pro-life, you would want to put every doctor and every mother, as an accessory to murder, in prison, and you won't say you wanna do that, because you know that you wouldn't have a lick of political support. Now, the issue is, you can't name me anybody presently in politics that did more to introduce policies that reduce the number of real abortions, instead of the hot air putting out to tear people up and make votes by dividing America. This is not your rally."

Rock on, Bubba. Rock on.

CC
Hat tip to Our Bodies, Our Blog

1. The Eels – I like Birds
The Eels was my favorite band when I was in college and I've always liked this song's laid-back groove.

2. The Dandy Warhols - We Used to be Friends
Because it was Veronica Mars' theme song and for many other reasons.

3. The Dead Milkmen - Punk Rock Girl
Go ahead, listen to this song and TRY not to like it. I dare you.

4. Johnny Cash - Folsom Prison Blues
I developed a taste for country music when I lived in New Orleans and this song has always been a favorite.

5. Melissa Etheridge - Threesome
I have a few quibbles with Melissa's slightly judgmental tone, but I love this:

Now, sometimes at night
after the kids are in bed
I'm changing the channels
And you're surfing the web
I stumble onto that show
With all of those ladies
You know with those things
Acting all crazy

I don't know how they manage
To do all that damage
We barely find enough time to kiss


That’s exactly how I view this sort of show. (And I'd stop to watch for a bit, too)

6. Joan Jett and the Blackhearts’s cover of the Mary Tyler Moore theme.
CC’s theme song. It’s hardcore, yet the adorable goofy optimism shines through.

7. Jill Sobule - Karen by Night
I really like this nifty little ballad. It’s the perfect offbeat addition to any mix.

8. The Butthole Surfers – Dracula from Houston
What can I say? I’m a child of the eighties.

9. The Moldy Peaches – Lazy Confession
It’s probably very predictable that I would be into anti-folk. Oh well.

10. Warren Zevon - Lawyers, Guns and Money
The Zevon connoisseur I know assures me that this is an example of his more popular and crappy stuff, but I still wanted it to be my ringtone.

Mostly because Jana-who-creates and I have vowed to become that little old lady on the "IDK, my BFF Rose?" TV commercial.

From the Washington Post, registration required.

CC

Ps. My next post may be from my new Iphone.