Category: Uncategorized

Chris wonders about the line:

OK, I have a question, or maybe more of an issue that I think is somewhat worth addressing…I love Vox’s irreverence, however I sometimes wonder if it crosses the line into unwholesome talk. I’ve witnessed it in the posts of others claiming to be Christians, and I’ve been guilty of it myself, both here and in the daily verbal conversations I have….

I’m just wondering out loud what is the line, for a Christian, between healthy irreverence and unwholseome talk. Do we do damage to our credibility when we cross the line?

I’m sure it does cross that line from time to time. It’s not something that I do intentionally, and I definitely find it annoying when my chance use of a vulgarism immediately inspires ten or twelve comments remniscent of elementary schoolkids thinking that they’re getting away with something. Everyone draws their line in different places, mine tends to involve literal curses – evil maledictions and wishing ill on others – and not taking certain names in vain.

As for the question of credibility, that bothers me not at all. The reason is that when I consider those that the Christian community finds credible, I’d just as soon remain without it. If you believe that George Bush is a fine, upstanding leader, anointed by God, that Me So and the Littlest Chickenhawk are the leading voices of a new political revival and that Rick Warren is doing God’s work by leading the Christian community into battle against a dire threat to the planet, well, there’s almost nothing that I’m going to write that you’ll find credible, the occasional crassness notwithstanding.

Ironically, the leaders of the Bible were seldom the sort of men that we consider fine and upstanding citizens today, who provide a clean and credible example to the casual observer. Jesus Christ himself was remarkably sharp-tongued and critical; as a child I always wondered who the Sunday School leaders were talking about when they would laud how nice and meek he was. It made me wonder if they’d ever read the words in red.

Is it worse to describe someone as a “son of a bitch” than a “son of a viper”? I don’t think so. Is there something about the word “fuck” that is inherently awful? I rather doubt it. All I know that when I’m harboring great contempt for someone I am addressing, I am not the least bit crass but extremely polite instead.

From the New Oxford Review:

…why waste thousands of dollars on books that no one was going to buy? It was clear from the large “on sale” section that only a pitifully small number of books were ever purchased at their original price. The owners of Lobo’s were apparently wasting a lot of money on gay novels and works of gay history, when all the real money was in pornography. But the money spent on books wasn’t wasted. It was used to purchase a commodity that is more precious than gold to the gay rights establishment. Respectability. Respectability and the appearance of normalcy. Without that investment, we would not now be engaged in a serious debate about the legalization of same-sex “marriage.” By the time I lived in Austin, I had been thinking of myself as a gay man for almost 20 years. Based on the experience acquired during those years, I recognized in Lobo’s a metaphor for the strategy used to sell gay rights to the American people, and for the sordid reality that strategy concealed.

After spending two years in the music industry signed to a record label run by a gay couple and often working out Friday nights in a downtown gym prior to hitting the night clubs, I am probably a little more familiar with gay culture than most straight Christians. The VQPF are no doubt more informed on the issue, but I suspect they will likely agree with me that the portrait painted by Ronald Lee is, by and large, an accurate one.

The problem of the Christian is how to meet this challenge. I suspect it is easier for many Christians to accept a repentant murderer or an adulterer than a thief or a homosexual, because the first two sins speak more of a momentary action while the latter two tend to be seen as states of being. But if homosexuality is viewed as a specific temptation towards which an individual harbors a prediliction rather than an identity, it is perhaps easier for both the tempted and the one who does not endure that temptation to understand and deal with.

Of course, the problem does not solely lie with the Church. Unrepentant sinners are neither asking for forgiveness and acceptance, nor do they merit it. This is as true for queers as it is for thieves or adulterers. But this necessary refusal to condone behavior does not require hate or even dislike, indeed, I find it much more reasonable to loathe those forms of sin which destroy others than those which are predominantly self-destructive.

As Camille Paglia points out in Sexual Personae, the world of the male homosexual is a coldly Apollonian one, cruel and proud in its devotion to youth and beauty. Those subject to its harsh chains may deserve our disapprobation, but they merit our pity as well.

The recently departed, unlamented Soup attempts to comment post-ban:

“It’s a bit amusing that you would attempt to ban me from your blog simply for being honest.”

I’m not attempting anything. As Scintan correctly predicted, I’m doing it. The mysteries of dynamic IP are not beyond me, but rather than deleting comments that are made using a different IP address, I prefer to line them out in order to bear witness how one is attempting to patronize a place where it has been made abundantly clear that one is unwanted.

Soup’s fevered imagination notwithstanding, he was not banned for being honest. He was banned for being boorish and boring, for repeatedly ignoring warnings about cross-posting and for repeatedly insulting Spacebunny.

Spacebunny: We don’t do Valentine’s Day in the Day household. Vox probably would, but I just can’t bring myself to care.

Pan-Gargler: uh huh… I bet he did something special for his Treo.

Spacebunny: I’m not saying he wouldn’t have, but alas, the poor Treo is still in the shop. I don’t know what special thing he could do for it anyway, since I already bought him all the accessories for it for Christmas.

Pan-Gargler: It’s sad ya know.. the poor guy’s idea of a menage a’ trois involves his Treo and his Dana.

Spacebunny: I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Spacebunny is nice and pretty and all that, but does she store a gig’s worth of ebooks AND emulate an Intellivision? I don’t think so. A man has his needs, you know.

The NYT upsets a gravy train:

The [CBT] therapy dwells exclusively in the present. Unlike traditional psychoanalytic or psychodynamic therapy, it does not typically require a long course of treatment, usually 10 to 15 sessions. When cognitive therapy was introduced, it met significant resistance to the notion that people could be cured without understanding the sources of the problems. Many therapists said that without working through the underlying problems change would be superficial and that the basic problems would simply express themselves in other ways.

Cognitive advocates convinced colleagues by using a tool that had not been systematically used in mental health, randomized controlled clinical trials.

I took three things away from this article:

1. Conventional psychoanalysis is about as scientific as Magic: the Gathering and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, and about as likely to cure mental illness.

2. Therapists are going to actively oppose cognitive therapy as it hypothetically poses a serious threat to significantly reduce their ability to parasitize treat their hosts patients.

3. My suspicions about traditional psychotherapy being a useless con game were correct from the start.

The money quote: “Although randomized controlled trials are the gold standard of scientific research, for most of the 20th century such research was not used to test the effectiveness of psychotherapeutic methods, in part because psychoanalysis, at the time the most popular form of talk therapy, was actively hostile to empirical validation.”

Still, those charlatans needn’t worry overmuch. I’d guess that at least two-thirds of those in therapy are there because they are more than willing to shell out for a captive audience. And they’ll continue to do so. No one ever went broke by encouraging people to talk about their favorite subject.

The New York Times interviews a linguistics expert:

Q. Many of the women you’ve interviewed for your new book complain of mothers who criticize their appearance. Are they right to be annoyed?

A. “Right” and “wrong” aren’t words a linguist uses. My job is to analyze conversations and discover why communications fail. The biggest complaint I hear from daughters is: “My mother’s always criticizing me.” And the mother counters, “I can’t open my mouth; my daughter takes everything as criticism.”

But sometimes caring and criticism are found in the same words. When mothers talk about their daughters’ appearance, they are often doing it because they feel obligated to tell their daughter something that no one else will.

The mother feels she’s caring. The daughter feels criticized. They are both right.

What I try to do is point out each side to each other. So, the mother needs to acknowledge the criticism part, and the daughter needs to acknowledge the caring part. It’s tough because each sees only one.

I find this sort of thing very amusing, as there seems to be more than a little overlap between the people who deny that women are overly critical in a male-female context, and those who readily accept that women are overly critical in various female-female relationships.

Here’s a basic rule of thumb. If someone doesn’t ask you for your opinion, keep your trap shut, barring the possibility of your criticism of an action that involves a high probability of a) danger to life and limb, b) losing a job, or c) making a lifelong commitment. Sure, everyone is going to accidentally offer unwanted criticism from time to time, but there’s no excuse for making a habit of it, especially when the criticized party has expressed a wish that you stop it.

The “caring” excuse if bogus. If you want to tell someone that you care, then tell them so. That’s a positive message everyone can appreciate. Otherwise, mind your own business. When someone wants your opinion, they’ll ask for it.

Of course, if you’re so desperate for maternal approval that you’re calling Mommy up everyday to tell her what you ate for lunch, you need to give serious consideration to getting a life.

The Telegraph on the EU’s latest legal atrocity:

The islanders’ revolt has been brewing for some time. First, this community of Swedish-speaking Finns lost the right to fish at sea with traditional nets. Then Alanders saw their beloved spring duck hunting virtually abolished. To the Alanders’ final outrage, local laws on consuming “snus” or Swedish chewing tobacco, are about to be quashed by the European Court of Justice….

Snus, a form of chewing tobacco, has been outlawed by EU fiat in every nation except Sweden, which secured a -special opt-out as a condition of its joining the EU, and in every region – except Aland. The Commission recently took Finland to court to quash Aland’s snus law. But Finland has no power to change that law. Finland does not control laws covering health in Aland; Aland does.

Aland is not allowed to defend its law before the justices in Luxembourg because the court recognises only nations. So the court is set to convict and fine Aland, without allowing the island’s government to plead its case.

In case you’re wondering why I am so contemptuous of people, this situation pretty much sums it up. Everywhere around the world, those seeking power over others dangle the supposed benefits of centralized government. It will make the trains run on time. It will be more efficient. There’s no need to have ten different villages/cities/states/nations replicating the work that can be done in one central office. Promises are made about how money will flow into the little village/city/state/nation and the bold new era of prosperity that will ensue. The matter is put to a vote.

And nine times out of ten, the idiots voluntarily stick their heads in the lion’s mouth. Only then do they discover that the naysayers – who have been dismissed as ultraconservatives too stuck in the past to see the benefits of this brave new future – weren’t anywhere nearly pessimistic enough.

I’ve seen this happen everywhere. I’ve seen it happen in the States and in England, I’ve seen it happen in local organizations and in supranational organizations, I’ve seen it in Italy and I’ve seen it in Japan. The same thing happens every single time: the newly centralized operation ends up costing more, taking money out of its new member and significantly interfering with even the pettiest actions of what used to be the local authority.

And in the end, the fools who voted for it are left lamenting their fate, like Aland’s Tomas Grunér. “I thought the EU was a good idea, but now I think it sucks.”

Note, by the way, that the EU Constitution is scheduled for its first attempt at revival later this year, as I correctly predicted when it was “killed” by the French and Dutch votes.

Somewhere in Tennessee, the Pan-Galactic one is laughing himself sick:

he players—one capped several times for England— were caught on camera cavorting with a pal well known in the music industry in a homosexual orgy that will shock soccer. The three men—who cannot be identified for legal reasons—are pictured wearing just vests and boxer shorts as they tackle each other in ways fans never expected.

This is going to be a much bigger story in Europe than the Danish cartoons – it’s already cracked the Italian papers – and should lead to some amusing appalling chants at the World Cup in Germany this summer.

I’m just hoping Manchester United is involved somehow.

Somewhere, the White Buffalo is chuckling:

Fans of No. 5 Gonzaga have been asked to stop yelling “Brokeback Mountain” at opposing players. The reference to the recent movie about homosexual cowboys was chanted by some fans during Monday’s game against Saint Mary’s, and is apparently intended to suggest an opposing player is gay.

The chants were the subject of several classroom discussions over the past week, and the faculty advisers for the Kennel Club booster group urged students this week to avoid “inappropriate chants” during the Bulldogs’ Saturday game against Stanford, which was nationally televised on ESPN.

First, it’s a movie about homosexual shepherds. Although I suppose it’s asking a bit much to hope the Brokeback enthusiasts in the media to get it straight. Anyhow, this confirms my theory about the utter pointlessness of political correctness. Since the insult is in the content, not the label, changing the label doesn’t make any difference with regards to the contempt expressed and perceived.

And it’s strange that the chant should be interpreted as an insult, or even a reference to homosexuality, considering how we were all repeatedly informed that the movie was not about gays, but was merely a love story. And since, we are informed, gay is good, then how can anyone object to publicly celebrating a basketball player’s lifestyle choice?

Anyhow, I’m amused that the PC crew at Gonzaga – “senior Callie Monroe wrote a column calling the chants a case of ‘outright discrimination.'” – has seen fit to bring this most excellent slur to the nation’s attention. Because I guarantee you’re going to be hearing it at high schools, NFL games and at March Madness from now on.

Broke-back Moun-tain, clap, clap, clap-clap-clap, Broke-back Moun-tain. As the Sports Guy would say, good times.

And while we’re on the topic of college basketball, beware the Bison!

From the Nihilist in Golf Pants:

11. Whittington bears a remarkable resemblance to a quail

10. Just to watch him die

9. Whittington had just filled his SUV and Cheney wanted the oil

8. Cheney tired of Jesse Ventura’s taunts about him for never having hunted man

7. Cheney thought Wittington was a major league a-hole, big time

6. Iraq war bloodlust no longer satisfies the Vice President

Oh yes, there’s more….