Since Christmas, my beloved has developed a syndrome that I understand many people are showing signs of these days: KSA, or "Kindle Separation Anxiety". Symptoms include planning one's wardrobe around being able to secure the Kindle to one's person; panicking at the first sign of malfunction, dashing to get dressed and drive to Staples quick before they close; and an eerie LED glow emanating from under the covers late at night.
The judge threw the Kindle at him.
"Kindle 'em, Dano!"
He was making Kindle on the side, but he wasn't a full time Kindlee.
The crooked accountant was cooking the Kindles- at least, that was no form of Kindlekeeping I'm familiar with.
The acts Kindled for tonight are...
He was clever, but not much for Kindle learning.
The minister read from the Kindle of Common Prayer.
One of the main attractions at Dublin's Trinity University is the Kindle of Kells.
How many Kindleable hours do you have this month?
He's quite the Kindleworm.
Who wrote the Kindle of love?
He does everything strictly by the Kindle.
There were no receipts or certificates; it was a Kindle transaction.
"Waste not, want not," as the good Kindle says.
I've cast the hexagrams; now to consult the Kindle of Changes for their meaning.
At least, I hope this is the kind of clichés we'll be seeing. If Borders beats Amazon despite Amazon's early lead, I'll have to rewrite this list with permutations of "Nooky".
"Plaidshoes" really struck a chord with me with her Tuesday post, Tired of Defense. If you haven't read it, you must- and read the comments also. I was caught from the beginning, "I had a bit of a disturbing parking lot conversation today. I mentioned to a friend that I had seen her friend at my UU church. I thought of it as a positive. Another way that the world is so small that we all seem to run into each other. Well, my friend stated that she was not happy about this. It caught me completely by surprise. She flat out said it like that. I asked her why, and she stated that it would mean her friend was no longer a Christian." It reminded me of my wedding- and my mother.
That may sound strange to you- if it does, the explanation will be stranger still, but it's true. You see, in the months before my wedding there had been disagreement among we four brothers about our mother. She had been deteriorating of recent months, and several doctors had said she had Alzheimer's. We were split, 2-2, on whether she really had Alzheimer's, or whether this was one of her manipulative schemes. (Fred Sanford was a rank amateur in the manipulation business) The question was settled when she came to my wedding- at All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church. Everyone agreed that she had to be genuinely out of it to set foot inside the temple of the Antichrist.
So I understand plaidshoes' irritation at her friend's comment, and why she feels tired of being on the defense. In fact, I have an extra layer she does not- a political one. When I joined All Souls, a friend of mine had said, "I thought you were a Republican." I said yes, I was. His puzzled reply: "But you know they're a communist front organization, don't you?" Mind you, he wasn't trying to be derogatory or insulting; he was simply stating common knowledge- just as plaidshoes' friend had.
Both of these misunderstandings raise a question that plaidshoes does not address in her post: Why did her friend think that UU was not a religion? It would be easy enough to blame Mad Magazine, The Simpsons, Garrison Keillor, but none of their jibes would have stuck had there not been a kernel of truth in them. That's why stereotypes stick- Scandinavians really are often blonde; they really do eat lutefisk. If you tried to create a new stereotype that didn't reflect what people see in their daily lives- oh, like all Scandinavians eat grits and collard greens- it wouldn't stick, and people wouldn't repeat it. So clearly, the general public doesn't see us doing the things that a religion does; the question is, are we just poorly communicating what we do, or is their perception better than ours?
That is the title of an Alternet article by one of my favorite bloggers, Greta Christina. It reminded me of how I explain the difficulty of losing weight to those fortunate few who don't understand.
Have you ever smoked? Did you smoke for a number of years, then quit? If not, run this past one of your friends who did. Imagine cutting down... but never completely quitting. You're not allowed to cold turkey. You have to smoke five cigarettes a day: morning, noon, and night, with two unscheduled "snack" smokes. Never less- five smokes. But never more, either; if you cheat, have too many, you can't make up for it by skipping one the next day- it's not that easy. No, for every one you cheat with, you have to spend a week smoking the same five smokes, but half length cigarettes- just a couple puffs, not enough for satisfaction, then put it out. No matter how much you want one more toke, put it out, try to hold out 'til the next smoke... which will also be too short, until you've worked off that extra one you had.
If you're not a former smoker, ask one- there are tens of millions of us; statistically, I know you know one. Could you do it? Spend the rest of your life smoking five cigarettes a day, never more, never less?
That's what it's like losing weight.
*I wasn't referring to Bernie Sanders, who actually ran as a socialist.
UPDATE: The Congressman defends himself in a CNN interview by comparing the Tea Party to the KKK. His proof? That they speak of wanting to "take the country back"- which, as I pointed out, was the title of a book by Democrat party chairman Howard Dean, and the motto of out-of-power candidates in every election cycle.
This post has been bubbling around in my head for a while now, and recent events and discussions have brought it to the fore. I keep hearing people bemoaning how things are worse than they've ever been, and I think of my childhood and wonder how they can believe it. In the wake of the Tucson shooting, I hear people talking about the vicious, violent political rhetoric of today and I feel like I'm channeling Crocodile Dundee: "That's not vicious, violent political rhetoric- this is vicious, violent political rhetoric..." That's when I remember that I'm older than many UU bloggers, so my perspective is different. I think it's important for us to reflect just how far we've come, just in my lifetime.
I was born two weeks after the lynching of Emmet Till. It was well past the heyday of lynching; there were no box lunches or commemorative postcards sold- still, I would be a teenager before the practice stopped. Call a black man "Mr. President"? They wouldn't even call him mister- I was nine years old before the Supreme Court ordered federal courts to use honorifics when addressing black men and women. But there was no such requirement for newspapers, magazines, state and local government offices, and the general public to do so, and they generally didn't. The man we know as "Mr. President" would back then have been known simply as "Barry". I was twelve years old when Sidney Poitier's delivery of the line, "They call me Mister Tibbs! in the movie "In The Heat Of The Night" became a stand up and shout at the screen moment so big they based a sequel on that one line; I would be old enough to vote before all mainstream newspapers and magazines would routinely use honorifics.
Violent politics? While I don't remember the first, unsuccessful attempt on President Kennedy's life, I certainly remember the second one. I also remember the assassination of his brother Robert, and Martin Luther King, and several civil rights leaders. I remember the assassination attempts on Wallace, Nixon, Ford, and Reagan. I remember the riots the assassination of Rev. King caused- all told, 150+ killed and 2,000+ wounded across the United States, in addition to property damage so great many neighborhoods still haven't recovered.
Think the targets-on-the-map articles by Palin and the DLC are oh, so violent? I remember the SLA filling the hollows of their hollow point bullets with cyanide before attacking a school board meeting. I remember the Weatherman's bomb throwing. Think Code Pink or the Tea Partiers are the ultimate disrupters of public gatherings? I remember the riots at the 1968 Democrat National Convention. I remember how Vietnam war protests routinely turned into disruptions, if not always full fledged riots, until the protesters learned what a dangerous game that was at Kent State.
Oh, by the way- all of the above occurred while the Fairness Doctrine was in full effect.
And it's not just in the US, or the G-8 nations that progress has been made. When I was born, the majority of mankind lived in absolute dictatorships; today, only a handful of absolute, not answerable to the public in any way dictatorships survive. And the whole world is learning that violence doesn't have to be the answer- the peaceful breakup of first the Soviet Bloc, then the Soviet Union itself show that empires don't have to devolve into endless civil wars. And speaking of wars, we've now had the longest period in recorded history in which none of the European powers have gone to war with another!
For all of mankind's history, from the first curious ape to the last few decades, our politics, philosophies, and religious truths have been based on the underlying fact stated so well in "Jesus Christ Superstar": "Surely you're not saying we have the resources to save the poor from their lot? There will be poor always pathetically struggling..." This is no longer true- as George McGovern wrote in the United Nations Chronicle "Here are some other encouraging statistics: the world now produces a quantity of grain that, if distributed evenly, would provide everyone with 3,500 calories per day, more than enough for an optimal diet. This does not even count vegetables, fruits, fish, meat, poultry, edible oils, nuts, root crops, or dairy products." We now have the capacity to feed, clothe, and house every man, woman, and child on Earth- we need only find the political path to do so. And the history of the last couple centuries have shown that once it becomes technically possible to relieve suffering, it will eventually become politically possible as well- if only to allow the powers that be to enjoy their comforts without listening to the rest of us whine.
All this progress has come while simultaneously improving the environment, not making the situation worse. From the Cuyahoga river catching fire, to being able to develop photographic film inn the waters of lake Ontario, to the destruction of the Aral Sea, economic or technical improvement has often meant environmental degradation in the past; but today's technology means that as the Third World catches up with us, they don't have to go through those destructive stages- they can leapfrog to societies that are both modern and clean, while we developed countries continue to work on cleaning up our past.
Wow... 900 words, and I still haven't gotten to advancements in Gay rights, Women's rights, the rights of minority religions, Voting rights, OSHA and workplace safety, product liability laws, any number of things that makes this a better place to live than when I was born. So when you hear worst-evers and never-befores and other such negative superlatives, take a breath and reflect. We've come a long, long way in a very short span of time; don't let impatience and frustration at imperfection blind you to that fact. Remember that exaggeration and hyperbole are an activist's job, to claim things are much worse than they actually are, so that when s/he compromises, s/he'll be getting what he actually wanted. Avoid the greatest trap of the social activist: believing your own propaganda. You'll feel better.
One of the confidential US embassy cables revealed by WikiLeaks reports that Cuba banned Michael Moore's 2007 documentary, Sicko: "...the memo reveals that when the film was shown to a group of Cuban doctors, some became so "disturbed at the blatant misrepresentation of healthcare in Cuba that they left the room".
Castro's government apparently went on to ban the film because, the leaked cable claims, it "knows the film is a myth and does not want to risk a popular backlash by showing to Cubans facilities that are clearly not available to the vast majority of them."
Read more at The Guardian.
UPDATE: Michael Moore response, and my comment, via it's all one thing
Speaker elect John Boehner cried once again in last Sunday's 60 Minutes interview, and is once again being ridiculed for it- the women of The View being particularly nasty about it, worse even than outgoing Speaker Pelosi was previously. I find the different reactions to tears by public figures, especially politicians, puzzling.
Pat Schroeder was roundly criticized for a few seconds of tears during her announcement that she would not be a candidate for President. At the time, many said that the criticism was a double standard- that men like Ronald Reagan were allowed to tear up, but women weren't. But try telling that to Ed Muskie, whose career was destroyed by "melting snowflakes". It has been suggested that the difference is that a Reagan or a McCain has enough macho bona fides that it wasn't a sign of weakness, but I've noticed that even those who ridiculed G. W. Bush's military career didn't make fun of him tearing up at a number of emotional events.
I'm also confused by the fact that women are so much nastier about it than men are. From Muskie to Boehner, you have to do a lot of Googling to find any man as nasty about public tears as the many very public comments from women. Ask Pat Schroder: "She's still catching flak about it today, mostly from women. "Oh, my gosh, I got a devastating e-mail about it from a woman writer just a couple of days ago," Schroeder said in an interview. "I want to say, 'Wait a minute, we are talking 20 years ago.' It's like I ruined their lives, 20 years ago, with three seconds of catching my breath." To paraphrase Scrooge, there is nothing on which women are so hard as coldness; and there is nothing they condemn with such severity as the expression of emotion.
I guess I'd be in trouble if I ever became famous. I've cried during discussions, I've cried at movies, plays- hell, I've even cried at a Star Trek episode. Good thing for me I don't give a good Goddamn what the women of The View think.
Wall Street Journal has been catching flak for publishing a picture of SCOTUS nominee Elena Kagan playing softball: Was it code language (code image?) calling her a lesbian? Yes, says Cathy Renna, a former spokesperson for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamatio- "It clearly is an allusion to her being gay. It's just too easy a punch line." No, says Journal spokeswoman Ashley Huston- "If you turn the photo upside down, reverse the pixilation and simultaneously listen to Abbey Road backwards, while reading Roland Barthes, you will indeed find a very subtle hidden message."
I'll admit to being not qualified to judge. In the first place, I seem to be a bit tone deaf to code language- for example, I didn't get that complimenting a fellow senator for being very articulate was racist code language. My first thought seeing that picture was, "Cool- a Justice who's regular folks, playing softball and drinking beer, (One follows the other, right?), not another martini-sipping relic of earlier times, no more headlines like Supreme Court clueless about pagers, texting and e-mails..." I took it as a play on "stepping up to the plate"; "switch hitter" didn't occur to me. To tell the truth, I still don't quite get a relationship between softball and lesbianism; I've played softball with women that I had very good reason to believe were heterosexual.
My second thought was code language or not, what difference does it make? I was remembering an exchange many years ago with a friend who did not yet understand the difference between a libertarian conservative and the religious right. I had been admiring a K. D. Lang tune, and was asked, "Does it bother you that she's a lesbian?" I said, "Well, it's not like she was going to f*** me, anyway- who cares?" This isn't the 1940's- we have out of the closet elected officials nowadays; does it matter to anyone other than the obituary writer who will someday write, "She is survived by..."?
Is she gay? Or has she just not found a guy she wanted to marry? I don't know, and I don't care. And you know what? I don't think the general public cares, either. The public is often underestimated. I'm remembering a ABC TV segment where actors were sent into a sports bar in New Jersey- a gay couple, and a provocateur couple to make homophobic comments. Much to the surprise of ABC, the regular patrons of the sports bar challenged the nasty comments the provocateurs were making, and demanded that they leave.
I have a novel idea- instead of asking her why she isn't married, how about asking her about her opinions on the extensions of the commerce clause, or her criteria for eminent domain?
Said President Obama at Hampton University, Virginia, Sunday. One such claim he made himself- "With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, -- none of which I know how to work --..." That wasn't the impression I got a couple years ago:
But I'll give him the benefit of the doubt; perhaps he plays his games on his Blackberry; after all, "...information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation,"
That is the first question thrown out by the new UU Salon. "Does it exist before we are born? Does it disappear when we die? It is unchangeable, or capable of growing/shrinking/strengthening? Can you lose your soul, or gain one?" Here is my take, though I'll take the points slightly out of order.
To answer the question, "What is a soul", I need to ask a different question first. Who’s in control of your life? No, I’m not asking if you have an overbearing parent, spouse, or boss, or whether you’ve committed your life to Jesus or to Satan. What I’m asking is, when you speak, who’s talking? If your answer is, "I'm in control of my life," we need to look a little closer.
Do you prefer Ginger or Maryanne? (Or Bob or Steve?) Why? Any healthy body would satisfy instinctive/biological needs. What is your favorite color? Blue? Why? Some have told me it was the color of their favorite flower, but... so what? Why do you like that flower? What is your dream job? What job would you hate to be stuck in? Why? What rational process did you use to choose any of those answers? Odds are, if you keep asking why, your ultimate answer will be, “I don’t know- I just like them.” If you did come up with reasons, I’ll guarantee those reasons won’t bear close examination. All of them will boil down to "I just like that one."
The being who made those decisions- all the important decisions of your life- is the real you, a soul. All those things we think of as "me"- our rational minds, our proud intellects, our conscious selves- are tools the soul uses to manipulate its environment, no different in essence from our hands. The conscious mind does not control our wants, our dreams, our identity- that is why, for example, one cannot decide to be straight or gay. The soul is the "you" who has the answers to all those questions. That soul is who the Divine speaks to.
Some people I've tried to explain this view to have thought that I was saying that the soul is just the instinctive, hard wired, "lizard brain" level of ourselves- but it much more complicated than that. As I mentioned above, there is no biological imperative to preferring Ginger over Maryanne. There is no biological explanation for preferring a red car to a blue one, or the scent of lilac over roses, dogs over cats, rum over (shudder) bourbon, etc.
Does the soul grow? Yes. Although the conscious mind, what we normally call our "self", does not control our behavior, it does influence it. It's a symbiotic relationship; the soul depends upon the mind for its perceptions, its understanding of the world. We are composite creatures, in this respect; we live in two worlds- that which we can see, and the virtual world in our minds. The lowest animals live only in the world they sense around them; higher animals add memory of where they've been, a virtual expansion of their senses. Still higher forms add speculative imagery; they extrapolate what they can expect to find in new but familiar territory. By the time you get to higher mammals, their virtual world is detailed enough to predict cause and effect- anyone who's been around dogs and cats can see them sometimes obviously performing thought experiments, trying to figure a situation out.
But the human virtual world is so complete that we can mistake it for reality. It has been demonstrated that false memories can be implanted by another, or accidentally developed by one's self. Perceptions can be altered deliberately. Take the classic "Is it a vase, or two faces" optical illusion- with practice, one can train one's self to always see it one way, so much so that it now takes an effort of will to see the other. This is how the mind can influence the soul, by changing the perceptions the soul uses to make decisions. I was panicked by a false perception, and countered it with another, in this incident.
It's not just one-time events that perceptions control, but entire lives. People troubled by a conflict between their sexual identity and the instinct to fit in- a powerful instinct; while we were still evolving, it meant life or death- has driven some to deprogrammers, trying to change who they really were. But a change in perceptions- first, that most people don't actually care what one does behind closed doors, and that perhaps it's those who object that are not normal, in that they lack basic human empathy- can help resolve the conflict. Changing one's perceptions of those who disagree with you from enemies or fools to fellow travelers who've had different experiences and perspectives brightens one's spirits and makes one a more persuasive debater in the bargain. Things like this are growth of the soul.
But the opposite can also occur- a bleak outlook can make one ill, physically and emotionally. As I wrote here, "Is life "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.", or is this "the best of all possible worlds", with any hardships being just a foible in a thing of beauty, like getting a flat tire on a Lexus? Both are equally true, for by believing them, you make them so."
"Does it exist before we are born? Does it disappear when we die? These questions beg the question, "Does the soul exist independent of the body?" I don't know that this can be resolved, as the conscious mind that considers such questions is utterly dependent upon the physical shell. How can one have memories from before one had the capacity to form conscious memories? As to surviving after death, one can make a case; we are no more our brains than the word processing program I'm using is the computer- we are software, not hardware, and it's possible that the energy patterns are recorded somehow. I don't spend a lot of time worrying about it. "One reality at a time," is my motto; the Divinity I perceive is not petty or small; if I make myself worthy of this existence, I need not fear the next.
To me, undue concern over an unknowable future in an unknown reality is an abuse of religion. I believe that the proper role of religion is to address the needs of the soul in the here and now... helping one make sense of life's daily absurdities, sharing pain and joy, understanding how to live and how to die.