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Insert Trite Metaphor about a Corral

Posted on April 23, 2004 in Roundup

I wish l was a mole in the ground.

Yes, I wish I was a mole in the ground:

‘F I’se a mole in the ground, l’d root that mountain down,

And I wish I was a mole in the ground.

square211.gifThe Culture War is in full swing and the bloggers I read are choosing to be on the side of the real people of compassion against the faux people of compassion. As Iraqis fight to push out our boys who really don’t want to be there, bloggers at home fight for them by pointing to the real issues which are state-sponsored violence, the meaning of service to the nation, and how we are going to pay for the fastest produced deficit in the history of our country.

Langston Hughes said “I, too, sing America”. Let that courage to be part of the national consensus against all denials of our worthiness guide all of us in the weeks to come.

Culture

  • Joan of Arc grimaces when she asks a good question:

    I’ve been known to mutter under my breath from time to time about how it is that a Yale-educated child of wealth passes as a regular guy while I, born into poverty and currently a full time mommy who chauffeurs her kid around in a going-on-fourteen-year-old car, somehow ends up in the elite.

  • MacDiva points to Tara McPherson’s essay contained in Race in Cyberspace which critiques the alleged “color-blindness” of the net:

    not allowing discussion of race is in itself a form of racism. Since racism has played such an important role in the development of American society, it is the default setting. When voices that would interrogate racist assumptions are silenced, those assumptions carry the day.

  • Allison says, Hey, the Stone Age didn’t end because they ran out of Stones.
  • Awake at Dawn contemplated women’s poetry and declared:

    feminism itself ended up marginalizing and stereotyping women in a sort of generic, broad-stroke manner. I’m thinking of the way in which, by focusing a lot of the energy of the feminist movement on improving career opportunities for women, the movement ended up marginalizing women who CHOSE to work in the home. In many ways, by trying to create a universal feminine sociopolitical identity, modern feminist movements succeeded only in proving that gender is not a sufficient ground on which to isolate a political or social agenda.

  • Hillary, who is new to Misbehaving.net, asks “how we can avoid stereotyping gender?”
  • Caterina celebrated her life as an artist:

    I found a new studio! And it is only a couple blocks from my old studio, right near where the Blinding Light Cinema used to be. It is bigger than my old studio, and much cleaner, i.e. no more mouse turds. Also, the homeless guy sleeping in the doorway fell asleep over the latest book by Salman Rushdie, whereas the homeless guy sitting in front of my old studio fell asleep over a bottle of Olde English 800.

  • Tracy started working with a personal trainer and catalogued some of the types she saw in the gym, including

    ….the pain sluts. They don’t really work out. They submit. They do whatever they’re told and they don’t stop until they’re told to stop. Most people work out because the ultimate goal is a nice, tight body. Pain sluts work out because it hurts. The burn is the ultimate goal.

  • Kathryn listed several bloggers who were up for Hugo Awards.
  • Robert wasn’t too impressed by the stereotypical formula behind Lost in Translation:

    After all this time the Japanese still know themselves better than the rest of the world does, even frequent whirlwind visitors like Sophia who say they love Japan and this is how it really is. The Japanese are just too polite to criticize.

  • Susan thought about blogging’s impact on the world and asked

    Are we creating a society of writers, or are writers creating a society?

  • Sally was mystified by the “rowdy fan”.
  • Yule pondered the effect of cybersex on our sense of self:

    a big source of this sense of incompetence in one’s offline life is fueled by the endless parade of manufactured, visualised bodies, legions of which are now headed our way via the Internet. And so it goes, everyone dancing virtually and actually in a chain of flowers without scent.

Politics

  • Jeremy makes some dire Earth Day predictions about the future of the planet, like

    In 25 years, you will be waxing nostalgic to your descendants about the days when one could swim in the ocean.

  • Francis says that the talk of day in Sweden is about “American foreign policy fuck-ups”.
  • Mileah caught the Bush minions disparaging John Kerry’s Purple Hearts:

    Hmmm, I still don’t see where the president has posted his military record on his campaign website nor will he show it to anyone in the press. What little of it they did not destroy before the 2000 race.

  • Andrew mocks Fox News for its reporting on the Kerry military records.
  • Jack wryly considers the impact of Second Amendment politics in Iraq:

    One of the interesting features of the new Iraqi Interim Constitution, as I have previously noted, is that it conspicuously does *not* guarantee the right to bear arms: Article 17 states: “It shall not be permitted to possess, bear, buy, or sell arms except on licensure issued in accordance with the law.” That provision makes perfect sense if you are the occupier who wants to stabilize the country.

  • Brian stands up for America:

    The ascendancy of the far right as marked by these milestones is a cancer on the American soul. In word, thought and deed these people have mobilized to undermine the ideals that the men at Lexington and Concord sought to bring to reality.

  • Vic states that she believes that women should be drafted along with men.
  • Mike delivers a Righteous Rant against the Bush Administration from a South African perspective:

    We can always count on Big Dick [Cheney] to continue raping the planet for fun and profit. He does it with the charm of a flesh-eating zombie. And he does it for the good of all mankind. In other words, he does it for us. He does it in our name. Not in my name? It’s a nice slogan but I spit on it. Like it or not, the upending of history as we know it, the trashing of the Cradle of Civilisation, and the desecration of our global future by a gang of red-necked, oil-guzzling thugs and their willing partner, Israel (hotly pursued by out-manoeuvred, European vested interests), is being carried out in your name.

Religion

  • doug dismisses the mythology behind the Left Behind series:

    [I]t perpetuates its own kind of biblical illiteracy, in a way, perhaps the worst kind since it gives the impression of being thoughtful scholarship, but is really a slip-shod reading of texts in question. This is novel exegesis indeed. First century Christians would doubtless wonder where such an understanding came from. Certainly not the texts they were familiar with.

  • Michael castigates State Senator Tom McClintock for dismissing concerns about the words “under God” in the pledge as garbage from “radicals of the left”:

    a good number of my atheist friends are Libertarians, and often side with Libertarians because of the over-religiousness of the Republicans. Plenty of religious groups also want it removed, because they say it cheapens the Almighty to have his name said in vain by those reciting the pledge. He’s taking the standard Republican practice of being a “uniter” to mean one who unites all people who agree with him.

  • Natalie had another way of seeing Spring’s Passion Play:

    Humankind crucifies the innocent, always finding reasons to do so, always justifying the unjustifiable. The Passion is played and replayed on the world stage or in small, intimate venues, non-stop. The longest running show on earth.

  • Steven begins a discourse on the contemplative life:

    What I mean when I say “called to be contemplatives” is that God issues the invitation as a blanket invitation to everyone. Everyone is invited to the party.

Personal

  • Kris wonders if it worth blogging if no one reads it. So does Michael.
  • JJ continues to fight depression as she struggles to find a job.
  • Irene cried after she was reprimanded by her boss.
  • maria sat at her computer late at night, worried that her entry was

    randomly generated words that are the warp and woof of the weave of language, but patternless as they are, signifying nothing….

  • Sinister Sister is back from the dead as Pomelo Juice.
  • Jenny started her day (April 20) with an hour of bulking up in the school gym and then goes on to eat good food at a fancy seminar.
  • Tamara came back while I wasn’t looking and dressed up all geeky for a “prom”.
  • Mary Lou had a visitation:

    THere right on my feeder was a medium sized owl. It was either a very rare spotted owl or a not as rare barred owl. The Spotted Owl is endangered and only nests in old growth timber which we have none of around here. All second or third growth firs and alders. I tend to think Barred Owl. The only difference is that the spots are more dots on spotted owls, and barred owls have a yellow bill. Which I could not see in the dark.

  • Rae discovered that her father “has quite a Machiavellian streak in him….”
  • Desertviking let forth a rant about people who don’t spay and neuter their cats.
  • Gray Bird now has a blue and green parrot named Mel.
  • Jody’s submission to the Project Greenlight screenplay competition came in the top 100.
  • Kynn is now a columnist for The Californian.
  • Artichoke Heart recounted her adventures on the road.
  • Bill slipped into a wilderness in the heart of Dallas.
  • Jay shared a dream.
  • bittersweet reflected on the need for a room of her own.
  • Raven is looking for a new site name.
  • Kimber sees her autistic son progressing.
  • zhaf jumped off my missing list to tell us that he’s been busy studying.
  • Elkit — who is pure female — had this encounter while getting on the bus:

    The woman gestured to me and said: “Ladies first!”, and I thanked her, got on and said back over my shoulder: “I’m not a lady, actually.”


    She stared at me, incredulous, and after a long ten or fifteen seconds she said, “Are you serious?” and it dawned on me that she thought I was implying I was in reality a man.

  • Stu explained to a narcissist how he could prove that the world revolves around You.
  • chari’s gone guerilla against an outbreak of Pink Flamingoes Disease in her neighborhood.

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I’ve concluded that I am a pacifist when it comes to the Culture War. This means I support diversity over the idea that we have to single out noncombative people and lifestyles for regulation and oppression by the fearful.

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