Dumpster Treasures

Posted on March 19, 2004 in Roundup

It’s Politics Friday!

You’d be amazed what people throw into the dumpsters sometimes. I know antique collectors who make a livelihood out of roaming the allies of this world checking to see what has been designated “trash” and reselling it as treasure.

The blogging world isn’t that much different from a dumpster. Much of what passes the eye in a cursory reading deserves a closer look: what the mind writes off as garbage may be worth a second look.

Religion

• Debora asks “not ‘is Christianity dying?’ but ‘should Christianity die?'”
  
• Michael Doss contemplated Flexitarianism which, to me, sounds like a philosophy justifying being an omnivore:

  I’m going to be militant about this: If you eat animal parts, you’re not a vegetarian. You may be a flexitarian, and that’s fine. But stay away from the vegetarian label, you’re making it tough for the rest of us to enjoy a meal outside the home.

• Spurred by an article of mine, doug reflected on Christian satisfaction with the misfortune of their opponents:

  I’ll take this to a personal level. Most people who visit this blog know I have Cohn’s disease, severe enough to leave me currently disabled. The medications I take treat the symptoms, but contribute their own noise to everything. Now I don’t think that God is punishing me for some sin. In Christ I am forgiven, in him restored, redeemed, transformed; as are all who live in him. This disease is just a disease, part of life in this world. But it does have a spiritual purpose. In Christ, suffering is not pointless; it serves to draw one deeper into him. That’s been my experience for the past decade.

• I said “yes” when Yule wrote

  It’s balancing to think that there is a vast universe out there that exists according to a much larger tic-toc clockwork than anything human spawn could muster. Thank you, cold full-empty all embracing carefully non-tactile hotly isolating universe for being there, because otherwise I might just go insane.

Politics

• Jack Balkin questions whether the Internet can be blamed for political polarization:

  My guess is that the Internet makes polarization more salient, and also, as we have seen, easier to measure by social scientists. But that is not the same thing as saying, as has been suggested, that Internet speech presents special harms to democracy.

• Joan of Arc voiced her concern about “Machiavellian” electonic voting machines.
  
• Andrew fumed about recent Bush campaign ads paid for by the government that posed as news reports. Rob didn’t like it either.
  
• Jeremy plotted the location of American bases and elsewhere contemplated the future:

  I’m pretty much convinced that we’re really witnessing the onset of this lil’ civilization’s collapse (no ‘end of the world’ apocalypse, most likely– just a slow burn with the occassional flare-up). It’s been said before, but never during an era when *so much* harm is being done to the environment, when *so many* people are sprawling out everywhere. At least when you disagreed with someone five hundred years ago, you could still set off into some wilderness and start yer own thing. Cain’t do that anymore– there’s no escape.

• Kathryn Cramer continues to probe into the Rent-a-Coup. Her work won her a Shameless Agitator Award.
  
• Red Water Lily catalogued the shenanigans of her homophobic state senator.
  
• I got hot in this thread at Gutless Pacifist.

Culture

• Good photos this week at Coup de Vent’s place.
  
• Those new DHL suits are ugly. MacDiva writes:

  when I read articles about what the corporate world puts employees through, particularly those without much power, I remember why nonconformist me left it. My attire on a given day varies from jeans and tee shirt to a suit if I am doing something that makes one appropriate. But, at least, I get to decide. Workers at DHL Worldwide Express don’t. And, they are paying the price, embarrassment, for a choice they never made.

• Bill might not forgive me for reprinting this poem that he couldn’t get out of his head the other day:

  I wandered lonely as a clod,
  
  just gathering old rags and bottles.
  
  When onward on my way I plod
  
  I saw a host of axolotls.
  
  Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
  
  A sight to make a man’s blood freeze.

• Nancy Gandhi wrote about a cricket match she observed in 1984.

Personal

• Jenny and Pen have been stricken with March madness. Pray for them.
  
• Maria is struggling with bronchitis.
  
• Jaybird found himself on the tough road of depression and isn’t sure what to do about it.
  
• Crazy Tracy glows about the aftermath of her breast reduction surgery:

  I got me some perky tits! And I do mean perky, folks. I mean, like, 15-year-old tits. Well, average fifteen. When I was fifteen I’m pretty sure I was busting out of D-cups and spilling cleavage right out of my cheerleading outfit….Before the surgery, I was a 44E (yes, an E). I am now a 36C. It is absolutely AMAZING the colors and styles and fabrics these smaller bra sizes have available! And it is also amazing that while I drool and ooh and ah over hundreds and hundreds of bras in my size in every conceivable color and fabric and style, some with lace, some push-up and underwire, some simple and pastel and others complicated and neon yellow, I cannot find one bra in my size that doesn’t have 3-4 inches of fucking padding.

• Francis is in packing hell.
  
• Kimber went on a little trip:

  We spent the money that we had saved out for “Getting Away” money. So no nice sleeping in with no one climbing on me at 6:00 am. :o( It was ok. We stayed at a Comfort Inn & got 2 rooms. John and I went to Top of the Hub for dinner on Saturday night. I wasn’t terribly impressed. It was a lounge. With a lounge menu. Old dudes playing stale jazz in the corner. There was a young couple who got up and did some great swing dancing and that was pretty cool. I had 2 watered down daqueries. If I don’t even feel it after having not drunk any alcohol in 3 years, they are without a doubt watered down. The food was alright, pretty much upscale lounge fare.

• JJ talks about her woe over a dying cousin.
  
• Victoria failed to have her novel accepted:

  On another front, I did get some poetry accepted to be in the next issue of The American Dissident, a semiannual journal which should be out in a few months!….I submitted a bunch of poetry in hopes of having some “recent publications” to list when I submit my novels. I don’t know that having poetry in this particular journal will help with my next submissions, but it helps my ego a bit anyway.

• Mary Lou took some photos of a place where an eighty year old man fell in the water and vanished.
  
• Mamageek reflects on the Name Game.
  
• Metamanda got admitted to UC Irvine. Which puts her in the neighborhood.
  
• Billy nearly got a client of his arrested due to a typographical error. Whoops.
  
• Andrea faced the last gasp of winter:

  we got five inches of wet snow, so heavy that our snow blower couldn’t toss it. The girls and I ended up shoveling the whole driveway ourselves, finishing by 10:30 AM. I had just enough time to get a quick shower and make it to my 11:00 AM appointment at the styling salon for a haircut and fresh blonde highlights.

• Stu wrote about Ermy. Lynn wants a pet like Ermy.

Odd and Interesting Links

• Be Your Own Knee Surgeon
  
• One Hundred Most Often Mispronounced Words
  
• Check out this comic strip.
  
• Trent Lott said “”I’m a firm believer in feeding people their own words back to them, when it’s appropriate.” Have some of your own, Trent.
  
• Bush wins the Trifecta

And I am having to discipline myself for missing out on a couple of writing dates.