The Disconnected

December 10, 2016 Leave a comment

 

Another day and the same dream:  I am driving a compact car and I’m trying to park in a space meant for compact cars. On each side of the parking space is a monster vehicle – a Sierra Massive Madre and a Himalayan Mountain All Terrain I-Drive-a Ram-cuz-I’m-a-Man-In-Your-Face Pick-up.  I finally park my car and then try to get out. But the vehicle next to me is so space -staking large that I can only open the door but a pinch. That is when I wake up.

The same day and, as usual, I went to the local health club to do my cardio routine.  And, as usual, thunderous testosterone overdosed music was there to assault me.  The large fitness club has two floors. The resistance weights are located upstairs and the cardio, yoga classes, etc. are located on the main floor. The upstairs looks down onto the main floor; the floors are open to each other. This arrangement means that the screaming hellish heavy metal music is inescapable. Not having a toggle switch on the side of my head to turn off outside noise, I put on headphones, and once again, I hear my own blood pumping.

Workout complete, I head to the women’s locker room wishing there was something to take my mind off of the music that comes from the bottomless pit.  Yet, when I enter the women’s locker room there are six large screen TVs blaring out the local news. In Chicago, the local news is mostly about the west and south sides of Chicago and about who is killing whom over gym shoes or for a gang initiation or just because they feel welcomed in Chicago by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and IL Representative (D) Luis Gutierrez. Shooting off guns is what they do to celebrate in third world countries.

To find relief from the harmful drug-like effects of constant and pervasive packaged noise, I choose a locker near the showers, away from the din. Further away, in the sauna, I believe that I can find a quiet place. But that occurs until a young girl in head-to-toe sweats comes in. Bypassing the body, her brain is plugged into a Smartphone which dispenses her self-image – the latest sweet-bad-girl-nymph chirping infantile sexuality. I then move to the shower where there is sure to be a respite from… But wait! What is that I hear?

Lately, on Tuesday, 4:30 AM, a young black girl shows up and uses the shower across from me.  Her ambience is set with the wailing ecstasy of bowel-wrenching R & B music, music which plays out of speakers of some device impervious to shower water and to others.

 

Noise exhaustion cannot break my contract. My contracted membership with this health club cannot be voided except if I die or suffer a physical disability, such as severe stroke. 

Touché!

Filed under Culture Tagged with ,

Intrinsic, Not Extrinsic

December 4, 2016 Leave a comment

 

“God has committed himself, ever since creation, to working through his creatures–in particular, through his image-bearing human beings–but they have all let Him down.”
― N.T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity makes Sense

~~~

The waitress who brought me my order of eggs and bacon this morning at the Sweetened Sacks of Flour caught my attention as did another waitress last Saturday – their arms were covered in graphic cartoon-like black scrawl that seemed to slither up their arms toward some nether region of their bodies. My heart sank again this morning at the sight.

This young waitress – a twentyish woman with a beautiful smile and bright black eyes – had defaced herself and the Lord only knows why. Perhaps it’s the enticing effects of the reality TV culture, aka Pop culture, aka Cartoon Culture that we live in.  Donald Trump was elected president in such a culture – and that makes perfect sense. “Winning” the Presidency has become a cartoon choice award.

Found on many cable channels, reality TV programming reveals people participating in all manner of human folly including the ritual of “inking”.  To a great extent, The Media – the televised “news” programs, the newsfeed websites, the print and blog formatted- is also reality programming meant to arouse consumer’s attention and to provide a common denominator of baseness where one-upmanship is pulling one man’s pants down to use to pull your readers/viewers up out of the same swamp they are all in. Did we really need to be reminded of our broken humanness and subscribe to folly? But then again, watching the latest version of Sodom and Gomorrah in action may cause some to repent – but I doubt it. Just walk away and don’t look back.

Yes, my heart sank again this morning at the sight of this young woman who submitted herself to a pagan ritual. Tattooing is not adornment. That butterfly on the back of your neck is not adornment. You are telling the world that you belong to the ruler of this world and he – the Satan – has been kicked out. Anyone can be The Satan’s hands and feet, just as any Christian can be the hands and feet of the Lord.

At the health club, I see dozens of women who have “adorned” their bodies with graphic comic-like tattoos. Many have knowingly given themselves over to paganism with the “tat” being the sign that they are part of a death-Goth community which exists within a milieu of despair. They have thereby shown their allegiance to the former ruler of this world. As viewers of The Media, these who have dehumanized themselves with tattoos may have thought that God had given up on them and the world. Or, maybe they do not want anything to do with God and do not want to be a human who was created in God’s image. Paganism throughout human history has sought to destroy God’s image in our humanness. It has sought to make a god of man’s own image. Inking injects dye and idolatry into the skin.

Paganism is dehumanization. Paganism converts a person’s thinking so that they only live out their lives at a skin-deep level. Ultimately, paganism’s goal to make their supplicants into the image of The Satan. Before that point, one will look a lot like Gollum.

Paganism’s devotees find all sorts of religious ways to be rid of the indelible image of God. Some paganist’s devotion may be pantheistic in nature (diluting God in a solution of everything, thereby watering down any notion of a personal God) and some devotion may be populist in nature (watching TV), though the two are closely connected at the hip (pun intended).

Paganism’s alter ego is “enlightened Epicureanism. Both “religions” preach the same lie: “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Both “religions” cultivate fools.

A fool will say in his heart “there is no god…and if there was I don’t want him anyway or to reflect his image. I will tattoo myself and shed any claim God may have on me”. In the end, when this fellow stands before God, he will say “I spent my entire life divesting myself of you. Get me out of here now!” And so, God will give him the desire of his heart.

 

Those of us who desire to be in the Kingdom of God, who desire the same true humanity as our Lord put on…we do not need to be in abeyance – the position of being without, or waiting for, an owner or claimant. God laid claim on us when we were sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever” (BCP, 380).

~~~

The DIY short list of how to become less human and deface the image of God (i.e., how to dehumanize yourself and others):

 

Murdering

Aborting

Euthanizing

Committing Adultery

Fornicating

Viewing pornography

Practicing homosexuality

Involving yourself with bestiality

Lying

Stealing

Being unjust

Gossiping

Being sentimental

Worshipping the creature and not the creator

Dishonoring your mother and father

Watching and paying for fantasy-ridden movies and cable shows which glorify the above

Watching cartoonish “animated” movies a la Disney, DreamWorks

Taking drugs

Crucifying someone

~~~~

“When human beings give their heartfelt allegiance to and worship that which is not God, they progressively cease to reflect the image of God. One of the primary laws of human life is that you become like what you worship; what’s more, you reflect what you worship not only to the object itself but also outward to the world around. Those who worship money increasingly define themselves in terms of it and increasingly treat other people as creditors, debtors, partners, or customers rather than as human beings. Those who worship sex define themselves in terms of it (their preferences, their practices, their past histories) and increasingly treat other people as actual or potential sex objects. Those who worship power define themselves in terms of it and treat other people as either collaborators, competitors, or pawns. These and many other forms of idolatry combine in a thousand ways, all of them damaging to the image-bearing quality of the people concerned and of those whose lives they touch.”
― N.T. Wright, Surprised By Hope:  Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

~~~~

Do you want a POV from a well-read prison psychiatrist who’s also an atheist?

“The correspondent asked me: what was wrong with tattooing, if that was how people wanted to adorn themselves?

I asked him whether he would have himself tattooed—whether he would be happy if his teenaged children had themselves tattooed—and if not, why not? After all, if he would not like it, he must have some inner objection to tattooing.

True, he said, but tattooing was not illegal. And since even I, who deprecated it, did not think that it should be illegal, there was nothing further to say about it. If tattooing was legal, it was thus of no social, moral, or cultural significance.

I tried to point out some of the cultural meanings of the vogue for tattooing. First, it was aesthetically worse than worthless. Tattoos were always kitsch, implying not only the absence of taste but the presence of dishonest emotion.

Second, the vogue represented a desperate (and rather sad) attempt on a mass scale to achieve individuality and character by means of mere adornment, which implied both intellectual vacuity and unhealthy self-absorption.

And third, it represented mass downward cultural and social aspiration, since everyone understood that tattooing had a traditional association with low social class and, above all, with aggression and criminality. It was, in effect, a visible symbol of the greatest, though totally ersatz, virtue of our time: an inclusive unwillingness to make judgments of morality or value.”

-Theodore Dalrymple’s Law Isn’t Enough

Filed under Culture, Current Events 2016 Tagged with , ,

Whole Lotta Searchin’ Goin’ On

November 25, 2016 Leave a comment

 

2016 Proverbs (Observations, generally speaking.):

 

Astronomers search the universe for cosmic origins.

Physicists seek to understand the behavior of systems at atomic length scales and smaller using quantum mechanics.

Geneticists, in search of disease prevention and cures, scan the genetic code for the secret of life.

Archeologists search fossil and radiometric dating records for what has gone on before.

Anthropologists search for “missing links” and the ways and means of the past.

Nurses sonogram pregnant bellies for signs of life.

Philosophers search for why there is something rather than nothing.

Nihilists search for meaning in nothing and come up empty-handed and nauseous.

Wise men searched the night sky for kingdom beginnings.

Mathematicians seek solutions in our design-inherent universe.

Social scientists seek to nudge a human’s free will toward a “proper” response.

Capitalists seek value.

Socialists seek other people’s money.

Traders seek to buy low and sell high.

Long term stock and bond holders look for a return on their investment at some point in the future.

Investors seek the highest returns while shouldering prudent risk.

Psychologists, asking “how do you feel about that”, seek to redefine consequences away from morality.

Psychiatrists seek out the next tranquilizer to medicate “the problem.”.

Political scientists seek to define the perfect social order with or without property rights.

Attorneys seek favorable jurors and favorable verdicts.

Politicians seek power.

Progressives seek unicorns with your tax dollars.

The Ruling Class seeks to rule by fiat, making us serfs.

The ignorant seek to be reaffirmed in their ignorance.

Media conglomerates seek to capture our attention and our budget.

Homosexuals seek pride in their love of the creature rather than their Creator.

The transgendered seek to be ‘normalized’.

The lazy, self-absorbed and intolerant, but “diverse,” want something for nothing and call their demand “a right.”

Conservatives seek to preserve longstanding meaning, community and high culture.

Millennials, in this Age of Feelings, seek protectionism in safe spaces.

Blue-collar workers, who have not learned new skills, seek trade protectionism.

College students seek affirmation rather than the meaning of life.

Athletes seek trophies and endorsements.

The Good Shepherd searches for the Lost Sheep.

The son of man came to seek and to save the lost.

A woman searches for a lost coin, finds it, and rejoices.

Joseph and Mary searched for the boy Jesus and find him at the Temple, where God dwelt with men.

Christians seek and find faith as small as a mustard seed.

The House of Islam seeks to bring the whole world under submission to a supreme caliphate by any jihad necessary.

Buddhists seek enlightenment within themselves by numbing their consciousness with mantras.

TV preachers and faith-healers seek to wrench filthy lucre from wrenched bodies and souls.

The addicted seek a “fix” and so share a needle with others.

The contented seek to share life’s bounty with others.

High culture seeks to deepen our common religious/ethical community bonds.

Fiction writers seek to tweak our imaginations with universal questions posed by imaginary beings.

Architects seek to place function before form, denouncing the sublime in the process.

Art, high culture art, seeks to give the viewer laudable content in laudable form, evoking old and new sympathies.

Modern art seeks to give the viewer content in shock form, in order to deny meaning its value.

Climatologists seek anthropocentric fault in weather changes and “find” data to say it’s your fault.

“Enlightened” Epicureans seek godless pleasure and find a “way which seems right”.

Abortionists search the womb for “tissue” to suck out beginnings.

Euthanasians search for a vein to end beginnings.

Atheists, with a God-given consciousness, seek for nothing and find it and then credit themselves.

Fortune tellers search horoscopes, crystal balls and tarot cards for the almighty dollar.

Agnostics and Deists seek for a way around God.

And the search continues…

~~~

 

“At its best our age is an age of searchers and discoverers, and at its worst, an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily.” –Flannery O’Connor

Filed under Culture, Current Events 2016 Tagged with , ,

“Attention Must Be Paid”

August 18, 2016 Leave a comment

Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman and “82,000” has been on my mind lately.

Here is a brief intro video. No comment will be necessary. The video following is where “Attention must be paid” to 63-year-old Willy Loman [2:50]

“We were almost free and clear.” I suggest watching the entire play.

Filed under Culture Tagged with ,

Juxtaposed! News ™ Hot Off the Wire – Safe Spaces

May 26, 2016 Leave a comment

Safe_Space_300

News Anchor:  “Good Evening.  We start tonight’s news with a special report: Campus ‘Safe Spaces.”

Video w/reporter voiceover:   “When Brown University president Christina H. Paxson, announced that the university would hold a simultaneous, competing talk to provide “research and facts” about “the role of culture in sexual assault” student volunteers put up posters advertising that a “safe space” would be available for anyone who found the debate too upsetting.

Katherine Byron, a senior at Brown University and a member of its Sexual Assault Task Force, considers it her duty to make Brown a safe place for rape victims.”

Byron:  “A “safe space” is intended to give people who might find comments “troubling” or “triggering,” a place to recuperate. I provide a room equipped with cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies, as well as students and staff members trained to deal with trauma.

Emma Hall, a junior, rape survivor and “sexual assault peer educator” who helped set up the room and worked in it during the debate, estimates that a couple of dozen people used it. At one point she went to the lecture hall to listen in but feeling overwhelmed, she returned to the safe space.

Hall:  “I was feeling bombarded by a lot of viewpoints that really go against my dearly and closely held beliefs.”

Reporter:  “Now the safe space concept seems to be growing and encompassing larger ground on many campuses.  Last fall the president of Smith College, Kathleen McCartney, apologized for causing students and faculty to be “hurt” when she failed to object to a racial epithet uttered by a fellow panel member at an alumnae event in New York.

“The offender was the free-speech advocate Wendy Kaminer, who had been arguing against the use of the euphemism “the n-word” when teaching American history or “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” In the uproar that followed, the Student Government Association wrote a letter declaring that “if Smith is unsafe for one student, it is unsafe for all students.”

Kraminer:  “It’s amazing to me that they can’t distinguish between racist speech and speech about racist speech, between racism and discussions of racism.”

 

After we come back… “Taking the fear out of bathrooms.”

locker room

….

News Anchor:  “A leading North Carolina newspaper issued an editorial last week telling girls to attempt “overcoming discomfort” at the sight of “male genitalia,” should transgender bathroom laws be enacted.

Video w/reporter voiceover:   “In a defense of President Obama’s order compelling schools to allow access to restrooms on the basis of gender identity, the Charlotte Observer editorial board compared the discomfort of school-aged girls seeing male genitalia in locker rooms to the discomfort of white people being around black people in post-segregation America.”

Here is what The Charlotte Observer May 13th editorial had to say:  Quote:”This is what the Obama administration nudged the rest of the country toward Friday. Yes, the thought of male genitalia in girls’ locker rooms – and vice versa – might be distressing to some. But the battle for equality has always been in part about overcoming discomfort – with blacks sharing facilities, with gays sharing marriage – then realizing that it was not nearly so awful as some people imagined” .End quote.

While admitting that exposure to male genitalia is a possible outcome of transgender bathroom laws, the editorial went on to say that the notion that such laws constitute a threat to the privacy and safety of women and children is a “political fiction” pushed by Republicans.”

safe space 2

News Anchor:  “Join us later tonight for our special report ‘Possession is nine tenths of the law.’”

Thank you for watching.  Good night.”

…

Here are Your Juxtaposed! News™ Top Stories”

In College and Hiding from Scary Ideas

Charlotte Observer: Girls Must Overcome ‘Discomfort’ of Seeing ‘Male Genitalia’ in Locker Rooms, Taking the fear out of bathrooms

Filed under Culture, Current Events 2016 Tagged with , , ,

Just Juxtaposing! 5-24-2016

May 24, 2016 Leave a comment

bernie-sanders-supports-factor-campaign-r

“Good evening.  From our National News Desk, our top story tonight…”

“The Bernieverse:  Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign:”

Video w/voiceover:   “.  On Sunday night the chant from thousands in the stands was certainly loud, clear and heartfelt: “Bernie, Bernie, Bernie!””

Sanders: “Real freedom includes economic security. That was Roosevelt’s vision 70 years ago. It is my vision today. It is a vision that we have not yet achieved, and it is time we that we did.”

Video w/voiceover: “Sanders went on to speak of Medicare for all, tuition-free public college, a $15 minimum wage –  a host of ideas intended to help America’s poor and middle class. Ideas that define his vision of socialism, a vision he says that will require top down centralized government with him as president to produce the desired outcomes.”

Sanders: “The only way we bring about real change is to create a political revolution where millions of people stand together and say loudly and clearly that this country belongs to all of us.”

 

“And in international news…”

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro

 “Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has placed Venezuela under a “State of Exception and Economic Emergency.”

“Maduro, also president of The United Socialist Party of Venezuela, has blamed capitalism for speculation that is driving high rates of inflation and creating widespread shortages of staples.  He has often said that he was fighting an “economic war”, calling newly enacted economic measures “economic offensives” against political opponents that he and loyalists state are behind an international economic conspiracy.

Video w/voiceover:  On Tuesday, a state-funded news service reported Maduro’s threat to dissolve the national legislature, which the opposition party won in a landslide election last December. “The National Assembly has lost political validity,” Maduro told reporters. “It’s a matter of time before it disappears.”

But Maduro is probably beyond saving. At this point, only 15 percent of his fellow citizens approve of his government. Political protests roil the streets, and normally law-abiding citizens have resorted to looting to get their hands on basic necessities. The government has responded with force.

Venezuela’s hospitals lack not only medicine but even soap, and cannot keep patients — especially at-risk infants — alive amid constant blackouts. Infant mortality rose by a hundredfold in 2015 from its 2012 levels, and five times as many women now die in childbirth. When his political opponents passed a law allowing foreign aid to prop up Venezuela’s hospital system, Maduro blocked it, calling Venezuela’s healthcare system the envy of the world.

Government agencies are now open only two days a week, as a cost-saving measure. The economy is in collapse, in the midst of its second straight year of double-digit contraction. Everyday items, including food, have long been difficult to buy in Venezuela, but they are now becoming impossible to find. Government-imposed price controls, combined with an astounding 700 percent inflation rate, have made toilet paper so scarce that it’s more valuable by the square inch than the Venezuelan currency one must use to buy it.

“Venezuela has been ranked as the top spot globally with the highest misery index score in 2013, 2014 and 2015. In 2014, Venezuela’s economy entered a recession.”

 

“After the commercial break, we take a look at this country whose future you won’t believe.”

Supermarket staff work next to partially empty shelves of toilet paper in Caracas May 16, 2013. Supplies of food and other basic products have been patchy in recent months, with long queues forming at supermarkets and rushes occurring when there is news of a new stock arrival. The situation has spawned jokes among Venezuelans, particularly over the lack of toilet paper. The government announced this week it was importing 50 million rolls to compensate for "over-demand due to nervous buying." REUTERS/Jorge Silva (VENEZUELA - Tags: POLITICS BUSINESS) - RTXZPIP

Supermarket staff work next to partially empty shelves of toilet paper in Caracas May 16, 2013. Supplies of food and other basic products have been patchy in recent months, with long queues forming at supermarkets and rushes occurring when there is news of a new stock arrival. The situation has spawned jokes among Venezuelans, particularly over the lack of toilet paper. The government announced this week it was importing 50 million rolls to compensate for “over-demand due to nervous buying.” REUTERS/Jorge Silva (VENEZUELA – Tags: POLITICS BUSINESS) – RTXZPIP

Video w/Voiceover: “Venezuela Reaches the Final Stage of Socialism: No Toilet Paper””

“And at ten o’clock, our special report “Soda-less Socialism.””

Video w/Voiceover: “Sugar shortage forces Venezuela to stop producing Coca Cola as country struggles to fight crippling recession. Venezuelans struggle to get food, toilet paper, medicines.”

…

Your Security News Headlines:

Bernie-mania spreads to Texas as Sanders’ speech draws crowd of 5,000

Venezuela is ‘democratic socialism’ in action

Venezuela Reaches the Final Stage of Socialism: No Toilet Paper

Now Coca Cola! Sugar shortage forces Venezuela to stop producing soda as country struggles to fight crippling recession

Europe’s unemployment crisis is much worse than you thought

Breaking – Small Democratic Socialist town in middle of nowhere 8th most expensive to raise family

Filed under Culture, Current Events 2016, Economics, Political Commentary, Politics Tagged with , , , ,

Just Juxtaposing

May 20, 2016 Leave a comment

 

“Good evening.  From our National News Desk, our top story tonight…”kindergartner-suspended-bubble-soap-gun-b

“A 5-year-old girl was suspended from kindergarten on Monday for bringing a bubble gun, a popular plastic toy sold at stores across Colorado, to Southeast Elementary School.”

“The girl’s mother said she was shocked when she got a call from the school telling her she needed to pick up her daughter and take her home.”  “It blows bubbles,” she told Security News.

Live report: “The school is sticking to its guns, calling the toy a safety concern and a classroom distraction.  In a statement released by the school, the school noted its zero tolerance policy to ensure safety:

“The bringing of weapons, real or facsimile, to our schools by students can not only create a potential safety concern but also cause a distraction for our students in the learning process.””

 

 

“And in local news…”ross store

 

“A grown man in blue jeans and tee-shirt and with a five-o’clock shadow was not removed from Ross Clothing Store Monday for bringing himself into a woman’s and girl’s dressing room.”

Live report w/voiceover: “I was in the dressing room, when we heard a man’s voice,” said Lisa Stickles, who says she quickly told a manager.

“She went inside the dressing room, came right back out and called me to the side and told me… he was representing himself as a woman today,” Stickles said.

Reporter:   “A customer service representative with Ross would not comment on the alleged incident but said they do not discriminate against the transgender community; adding, customers may use changing rooms that apply to their gender identity.

Video: “What about me? Or my feelings?” said Sickles. “The manager told me that if I felt uncomfortable in the dressing room with him there… I’d have to wait until he’s finished.”

Reporter: “Sickles said she waited, and was shocked when she watched the man walk out.”

Video: “He was in no way dressed as a woman,” Sickles said. “He had on jeans, a t-shirt, 5 o’clock shadow, very deep voice. He was a man.”’

 

“And now for the weather…

Tonight’s weather is brought to you by MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences and its Global Studies and Language Institute.

GSL provides cutting-edge research on international cultures and cultural globalization and to prepare students to be engaged global citizens, ready to live and work in an increasingly globalized and multicultural world.

After the commercial break weatherman Ghassan Hage, a Future Generation Professor in the School of Philosophy, Anthropology and Social Inquiry at the University of Melbourne, will give you the full weather forecast.”

Voiceover: “Is ISLAMOPHOBIA accelerating global warming? “

 

 …

Your Security News Headlines:

 

Kindergartner suspended for bringing bubble gun to class

Shopper Upset Man Allowed to Use Women’s Dressing Room In Ross

Is ISLAMOPHOBIA accelerating global warming? 

Filed under Culture, Current Events 2016 Tagged with , , , , , ,

The Attack of the 50 Foot Manned-Woman

May 13, 2016 Leave a comment

 

… coming to a bathroom near you. attackgif1

 

“There are eight million stories in the naked city; this has been one of them.”

Nancy Fowler Marcher, Alias: The Fifty Foot Manned-Woman

Nancy was in turmoil because everyone publically knew her business, even the news would report on her choice of bathroom.

attack_of_the_50_foot_woman_5_

…

Narrator: “It seems Ms. Marcher was always having some type of drama going on.  She was tormented about which bathroom to use.  Her face was always gripped in some emotional state.  The only time this wasn’t true was when she was sedated with therapy.”

 

Doctor Flushing: “I’ve known Nancy since she was born.  Those days she was a beautiful child.  Fresh, young, full of the joys of life.  But in the last few years, after her coming out, she changed.  Her health seemed to rise and fall with the tide of her emotions.”

Nurse Fess: “A very sad case.  A case not infrequent in this super ego age we live in.”Attack_50ft_Woman-nurse2

Doctor Flushing: “I’m afraid I was unwise in advising her about the different plumbing available.”

Nurse Fess: “Who knows, doctor?  She’ll go to the bathroom one way or the other. Time is on our side.”

 Doctor Flushing: “When kids reach the age of maturity, mother nature sometimes overworks their frustrations to the point of irrationalism.”

 

Mr. Harry Marcher (Nancy’s dad): “What made my Jim grow like that? “

Doctor Flushing:  Besides the psychological instability which has led to the bathroom fixation…I don’t know.  I sent her, err, I mean him, to a specialist – Dr. Victor Lowdown.

 

Mr. Harry Marcher: “Dr. Lowdown, you mentioned that Jim began growing like that when he got angry. Clearly it is stress related.  And, your blood tests show that his confusion levels are abnormally high.”

Dr. Victor Lowdown: “Yah.  A high confusion level in the blood stream has a way of growing things way out of proportion.”

Mr. Harry Marcher: “Congratulations, Doctor. Now you’ve confused me.”

attack_of_the_50_foot_woman_6_

Nancy Marcher: “The world is my doll house, Dr. Flushing.”

Nancy Marcher: “Dr. Lowdown, I’m not saying the old Jim isn’t there.  I can still hear him inside me, stumbling in the dark, always lifting the seat, always apologizing.  But less and less. Less and less.

 

Airman #1: “It doesn’t seem right to fire an air-to-ground missile at a woman.”

Airman #2: “No woman will be harmed.  A few sacred cows will be, though.   Think of your target as a man marking out his territory in the ladies room. That’s what I do.”

Nancy Marcher: “I’m going to pop your heads like a Concord grape!”

People always called Nancy a man…They’ll never do that again!

People always called Nancy a man…They’ll never do that again!

 

Narrator:  Nancy’s booming voice never changed.   It could be heard echoing in women’s bathrooms, locker rooms and showers across the naked city.  As the 50 Foot Manned-Woman, Nancy was aloof and aggressive, always pissing on the ones she wanted revenge on.

 

Coming to a theater near you!

The Attack of the Safe Spaces

Forbidden Toilet

Obama to Order Public Schools: Allow Transgender Students Access to Bathrooms

Obama to Order Public Schools: Allow Transgender Students Access to Bathrooms

 

…

Obama to Order Public Schools: Allow Transgender Students Access to Bathrooms

Filed under Culture, Current Events 2016 Tagged with , , , ,

Good to the Last Drop?

May 10, 2016 Leave a comment

 

That Terry thought he was a vampire didn’t seem to faze Teresa.  It did faze his parents and friends.

…

A mother tugged a small boy through the outside door.  A teenage girl came out the inner door, crossed the room and left behind the mother and son.  A therapist stuck his head out of the inner door and looked around the room and saw his next client, a thirteen year-old boy.  “Hi, come on in.”  The boy dutifully followed the therapist.  A fiftyish woman came in the outside door and proceeded over to the glass window to check in with the clinic’s receptionist. Terry no longer paid attention to the ebb and flow of people in the clinic’s lobby.  Waiting for psychologist Teresa to claim him, Terry sat in the lobby as he had ninety-nine times before and always dressed in black.

“Hi, Terry, come on in.”

Carrying his dog-eared Virtual Gamer magazine Terry shuffled through the held door.

At the beginning Teresa was made aware of his parent’s concerns, their disbelief. When Terry had started to cut his arms and stomach to collect and consume his own fluids, they called N.B. Clinic.  They hoped for some reparative therapy that would bring back their child from the “grave.”  So, Terry’s parents sat down with Teresa.

They wanted to know what triggered Terry’s transformation:  “Was it us?  And what makes Terry sleep walk every night?  And why did he only want play outside at night?”

Terry’s parents related how they would wake in the middle of the night, every night now, to find that Terry had left the house.  He would roam the neighborhood in his black pajamas hissing.  It had to be more than simple parasomnia.

When they did find Terry his face would be covered in blood and the remains of dead cats and dogs were scattered about. The sight and smell of blood gagged them. Terrified by Terry’s manifestation, Terry’ parents wanted to do anything to bring their son back to from this state. He used to play so gently with his stuffed animals.

But after ninety-nine sessions, Terry’s parents were now told to accept their son’s “vampirism”.  As Teresa had explained it on the phone, vampirism was becoming an accepted behavior and that Terry’s self-image and his dignity depended on his being a vampire.  “It is something that he cannot control and it makes him feel human.  Besides,” she said, “it’s likely genetic – Terry’s need for plasma.  He believes that has the ability to extract some kind of energy from living things to strengthen him. I see this kind of thing all the time at N.B. Clinic.”

 

“I wish my parents would accept me the way I am.”

“They are trying, Terry. I met with them recently.  Give them time.”

“I wish everyone would accept me the way I am.  I was born this way, you know, and it’s not what they think.  I know who I am now.  You can see that.   Why can’t others?”

“Well, Terry, the world is not always friendly to minorities.  But there are social justice warriors who are advocating for you right now.  They are making a difference.  Still, there are so many fundamentalists who reject the notion of nocturnal plasma-sucking activities that it is an uphill fight.  Give it time.”

Teresa continued, “But you need to be secure in yourself, Terry.  Last week I gave you information about a local Vampire Community support meeting.  Did you go?”

“Yeah, it was alright.  I got to be myself without having to hide my feelings.  A lot of the kids said they came out of their coffins to their parents.  I just wish my parents and friends… I just wish the whole world was a safe place for me and my friends.”

“You and I both wish that Terry.”

 

 

 

© Sally Paradise, 2016, All Rights Reserved

…

“And what we must not do, what we must never do, is turn on our neighbors, our family members, our fellow Americans for something that they cannot control and deny what makes them human,” Attorney General Loretta Lynch

“This is about the dignity and the respect that we accord our fellow citizens and the laws that we as a people and as a country have enacted to protect them, indeed, to protect all of us,” Lynch said

Filed under Culture, short story, social justice Tagged with , , ,

Authoritarians at the Gate

April 29, 2016 Leave a comment

Obama finger gun

Authoritarian Fundamentalist

The honoring of power over reason is that which makes one an authoritarian.

For the Authoritarian, power is more important than laws. Laws become whatever Authoritarians impose on others.

Authoritarians are far more likely to exhibit “sloppy reasoning, highly-compartmentalized beliefs, double standards, hypocrisy, self-blindness, a profound ethnocentrism, and — to top it all off — a ferocious dogmatism that makes it unlikely anyone could ever change their minds with evidence or logic.” The Authoritarians, p75; Dr. Bob Altemeyer, University of Manitoba

Dr. Altemeyer proposes that Authoritarians are products of strict parenting, “strict fundamentalist parenting”.  His non-scientific proposal, used as a form of projection, targets Christians and Christian homes. But strict fundamentalism is native to the Authoritarians at the Gate.

These Authoritarians are the Ruling Class and their minions on steroids.  As such, they will lecture you to death with their Authoritarian Fundamentalism.

Consider the authoritarian lecturing of “the science is settled” and “you are a denier if you don’t agree with our confident knowledge.”  The “settled science” fundamentalists are dogmatic, believing that they have all knowledge.  So they will impose climate change on you.  In authoritarian Ruling Class minds, their might makes it “right.”

Truly, it is the “settled science” Authoritarian Fundamentalists who employ “sloppy reasoning, highly-compartmentalized beliefs, double standards, hypocrisy, self-blindness, a profound ethnocentrism, and — to top it all off — a ferocious dogmatism that makes it unlikely anyone could ever change their minds with evidence or logic.”

Consider also, the settled social science dogmatism of the teeny-tiny LGBTQ+ cabal.  These Authoritarian Fundamentalists demand that you submit to their belief system:   “We of LGBTQ+ convictions determine what is right and wrong. Christians should not.” “We have rights.” “Christian rights are to be subordinated to our rights.” “Christian convictions are too rigid, too fundamentalist.” And so again, we see the “highly-compartmentalized beliefs, double standards, hypocrisy, self-blindness,” and profound egocentrism that characterizes Authoritarian Fundamentalists.

 

To wit, recent Authoritarian Fundamentalism case history:

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Filed under Culture, Current Events 2016 Tagged with , , , , , ,

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