Politically Incorrect Lesbians

"There are 6 admonishments in the Bible concerning homosexual activity and our enemies are always throwing them up to us usually in a vicious way and very much out of context. What they don't want us to remember is that there are 362 admonishments in the Bible concerning heterosexual activity. I don't mean to imply by this that God doesn't love straight people, only that they seem to require a great deal more supervision." –Lynn Lavner

Hysterical Justice

The soldier that raped a 14-year old girl, then killed her and burned her body, and killed her entire family to conceal the crime, was sentenced today to 90 years in prison.

Justice has been served, then. He is up for parole in 20 years, though, which is a typical glimpse into how our legal system “works” here. But, whatever, that machine is so broken, who knows if it can ever be fixed.

Most chilling, perhaps is the part of the confession of James P. Baker that outlines how his platoon spotted this girl weeks before on a patrol, and actually plotted, pre-meditatively, the entire event. They actually planned on killing everyone who was in the house when they got into costumes, cut through some fence and went to the house, just so they could rape some girl. How fucking sick can you get?

Anyone who plots this kind of thing has got to be sick in the head.

But, a whole group of people, because of happen-stance, being placed together and then plotting to do something like this...what is that, mass hysteria? It is almost an impossibility that a group of cuckoos just happened to have been stationed together. What is much more likely, then, is that the war in Iraq is turning normal, young soldiers into killer wackos.

The example above is not an isolated event, people. Are we not creating an entire generation of mental cases who will then need to be re-integrated into our society when the war is over? Bush has a hell of a lot of accounting to do, not just for the thousands of Iraqis and Americans killed but for the even greater number of people who have survived and will end up having their entire lives tainted by this conflict. A whole generation of the poor (Kerry was right, they are mostly from poor, uneducated families) went off to serve because it was their only chance of escape. They didn't deserve this, though, did they?

We have done them a terrible injustice by allowing Bush to do what he did.

Oh my God, I'm a bigot!

I was so stunned this morning as I was reading an article about the new Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Born poor made good, climbing the proverbial political ladder from small town lawyer to Representative to Senator, he is definitely an inspiring story, and is a soft-spoken yet resilient politician. Then there came this line:

"He also opposes abortion rights, a position derived from his Mormon religion, which has put him at odds with many other Democrats."

Ok, so he's pro-life. That I can accept to a certain extent. It is a bitter pill, yes, but none the less...

But, he's a MORMON???

Ok, I am seriously not some kind of conspiracy theorist. I usually laugh at those people. But, the Mormons are really something to worry about. I have spent a couple of Summers in Utah amongst the Momos and they are some of the sweetest people on the face of the Earth. But, there is another side to this story. They are also some of the most arch-conservative, unforgiving people I have ever known. And, they are expanding in numbers like you wouldn't believe. A couple of years ago was the first year that there were more foreign-born Mormons in the world than American ones. And, they've got big money, too. And, now, they're getting more and more political power. Ok, this is starting to sound pretty silly, I guess. It sounds like some bigot complaining about how the Jews run everything in America--ridiculous.

But, did you know some of the lesser-known tenets of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints?

1. They believe that only a small number of people will actually make it to the Celestial Kingdom (Heaven.)

2. They believe that when the Bible says that when one gets to Heaven, he will be like God...they take that one step further to mean that they will become Gods themselves, ruling over their own planets like God does ours. Religioustolerance.org say "The highest levels of the Celestial Kingdom are reserved for Mormon couples who have been married in a Mormon temple and thus have had their marriage sealed for eternity. The couples can eventually become a God and Goddess." This is perhaps why Mormons are much more likely to believe in aliens than normal Christians are... :)

3. They believe that Joseph Smith, an uneducated teenager living in upstate New York was approached by an angel who showed him where some ancient golden tablets were to be found and subsequently translated for him the Golden Plates, written in some kind of ancient Egyptian-like language. This translation became the Book of Mormon, a book that they hold in as high esteem as the Bible itself.

4. They believe that Jesus Christ, after having died on the cross, came to minister to the American Indians.

5. This extremely American-Centrist religion believes that the Garden of Eden was somewhere in America.

6. Mormons wear special underwear they call "garments" that are meant to keep their bodies holy.

7. Mormons believe that graves of the dead can be baptized and then made Mormon. This is why the genealogical library in Salt Lake is one of the largest and best-funded in the world. Typically, Mormons, when converting, go through their list of relatives, and go to baptize them in their graves.

8. Mormons believe that they will be re-united in Heaven as the family that they have here on Earth. This is one of the big draws of this religion to its converts, the notion that they will never be separated from their family.

9. God has a wife.

And, you know what, these are things that I have only gleaned from my Mormon friends by asking lot of questions and being generally interested. I think, though, that most people do not know this stuff. They only know that Mormons are "nice young men" who come calling on their doorstep to politely ask if they have ever been converted. (As a side note, becoming a missionary is a rite of passage of sorts for a young Mormon man, not unlike a bar mitzvah. Girls are not aloud. And, as a crazy side note, the best-looking of the new missionaries are used for domestic missionary work. Funny.)

So, now that you know all of this, do you think Harry Reid should be running the Senate?

Bloggy Appraisals

Well, interested in what my friend Lemuel called an “hilarious” movie now in theatres, I have looked on YouTube to find some excerpts of this “Borat” character. I saw him take his pants off in an interview with Jay Leno as Martha Stewart was trying to show him how to make a bed.

At first, I didn’t know if this guy was “for real” or not. Perhaps it could have been a pretty funny thing if he WERE actually from Kazakhstan, and was just simple-minded and got himself into trouble because of cultural differences. It’s pretty obvious, though, at some point, that this was a character played by an actor. Silly me. Chris had to tell me that Ali G plays the character of “Borat” before I realized what was what.

Hmmm. Ok. Knowing that it is not at all real makes it so much less funny. You would think it might even make it funnier (I insist that this is a word.) It doesn’t. But, I feel I may be missing the boat here. Yet another thing that I don’t get. I guess I’ll just stick to my “Are you being served?” reruns with some Peter Sellars on the side, even if that means I am so last week.


On a different note, my blog, if sold is worth $1,693.62, according to http://www.business-opportunities.biz/projects/how-much-is-your-blog-worth/. I, at first, thought this a fantastic amount. Imagine that, a thing that I use to vent and for pure fun being worth that! Huh. Then, things steadily went downhill as I learned that almost all of the blogs that I read are worth far more than mine:

http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com/, a blog that shows pictures of people on the street of various cities of the world, supposedly showing that some people really know how to dress = $757,612.68

http://thekilowatthour.blogspot.com/, a personal blog of an old friend of mine which features lots of mindless memes, silly pictures of dogs, articles of her own clothing and an occasional side comment from her husband. I like to read it to see what she is up to and she DOES live, at least at the moment, in a cool place, NYC. It’s worth $9,032.64. God!

As far as “content” goes, I would have to say that Monica wins out (http://ottavina.livejournal.com/.) Unfortunately, though, the heart to heart style of frankness must not make for good reading for most. Hers is worth $564.54. Sorry, Moni. I’ll keep reading it, though, all the same.

Perhaps the most disgruntling of all are a couple of blogs that I stopped reading long ago because they seemed “too commercial” and “fake”. At some point, when blogs start to take on a real, honest-to-goodness size readership, their writers start to get full of themselves, thinking that they should make their entire living off of their blogs.

http://www.dadgonemad.com/ is written by some middle-aged former fratboy type turned family guy who makes up fictional stories about his own family. It is funny, until you realize that this guy actually sees himself as a “writer” of sorts. Knowing that and reading that almost every entry he makes gets upwards of 500 comments like “way to go dude” and “dude, you’re so funny” turned me off long ago. But, as I had suspected, dadgonemad’s latent desire to quit his job and just blog for a living may be a reality. He’s worth $255,736.62!

Dooce is one that I had to stop reading on some sort of principle I had. She actually DOES make her living from her blog. She’s got all the material in the world, though, living in Salt Lake City and having a family. (The family thing seems to be important for readership...lots of Mormon moms click their empathetic cursors to Dooce everyday to see wheat her cute little daughter is up to...guess their isn’t much of a readership for a gay, obviously cynical, opera singer living in Germany...damn you world.) http://www.dooce.com/ is worth a whopping $3,219,007.08. Can you believe that? Whatever. She IS a good writer, and IS funny, though. She isn’t crabby like me and seems to be original albeit totally commercial in a way that middle-class suburbia can be sometimes. It’s just so fucking vanilla, you know? I just have to remember, vanilla, continues to be the world’s most-popular flavor.

Mallorca

Finally, a slideshow from our trip to Mallorca! Now, complete with music!

A gay band names themselves after a lesbian sex act?

Um, Germans are absolutely obsessed with the Scossor Sisters. Well, and, um, I have to admit that, because of constantly hearing them and seeing their videos, I like them, too. Does that mean I am a big fag?

As a side note, my friend from Wales was just here visiting and informed me that Charlotte Church of pre-pubescent “opera” fame is now a huge pop star in Britain. Skeptical, my friend told me that she is actually very good. Huh? Well, I listened to part of her album, and even I have to admit that she is really good! Weird.

Ok, I'll sign off on the death warrant.

I have been on cloud nine since the elections, as many of you may have guessed. Yay, America. Finally some justice. Finally, some hope for our future.

It will be interesting to see just what the Democrats will do with their new power. Don't forget that Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives after they won big in the elections of 1998. He was impeached in the House in December of that year, 3 months after the elections. The actual impeachment fell short, as you probably remember, of its 2/3 majority in the Senate.

Clinton's impeachment never really turned out to be what its namesake promised: he was only censured for having lied about a question under oath (a question that never should have been asked, but I will not digress to that point...) Republicans felt, in spite of not being able to actually oust Clinton from office, that they had been vindicated and that the symbolic meaning of censure had worked. Analysts say, though, that there was a backlash from the Republicans for abusing their new-found power in that they ended up losing seats in the next election. I am not sure about that, but history does have a way of giving perspective.

At any rate, the point of this rambling is to point out that the impeachment proceedings could backfire, in spite of my ardent desire to see Bush punished for the bad track that he has led us on--bringing us into a war with no end in site simply because he had a personal bone to pick with Saddam (Saddam planned an assassination attempt of Bush Sr.)

Ok, what am I saying? It would totally be worth it to see the self-proclaimed 'decider' on the stand stuttering before the court of the people.

Majorca

Ok, I'm not done with my Mallorca pictures yet, but, to tide you over, watch this:

Start Spreading the Peeyus

Ok, Chris caught me playing with his hedgehog hand puppet. He can dance AND sing, wow!



I'm off to Mallorca for 5 days. Sun, beaches, mountains, good food. Yayyyyyyy! I just hope I can get a tan.