Just Kristin

“The tax card has been played to death. We’re forced to pay taxes to incar­cer­ate indi­vid­u­als who threaten the well-being of the body politic. Should we revert to Wild West vig­i­lan­tism in order not to have to pay taxes for this pur­pose? Now we’re going to be forced to pay taxes in order to (at least try to) cure dis­eases that threaten the well-being of the indi­vid­u­als who com­prise said body politic. Why do we take for granted the legit­i­macy of the for­mer but not of the lat­ter?” — Brett Robbins

As a crazy per­son, do you divulge the mis­giv­ings that haunt you at the risk of admit­ting that you believe in lit­tle green men, or do you keep your lit­tle green men to your­self, risk­ing, of course, some­one see­ing you talk­ing to them?

There was much Frito sweat at junior derby prac­tice this morn­ing. Pics can be found here. I was amazed, hav­ing not attended for a few weeks, how much all of the girls have improved! Way to go, killers! And, for the record, there is noth­ing quite like a derby dance party. Here is Smoo prac­tic­ing that very impor­tant skill:

I just watched my grey­hound, Sache, chew at her itchy spots so vig­or­ously that, once sat­is­fied, her head was low­ered to the sofa with a “thud”: She had worn her­self out scratch­ing at what itched her. After an after­noon of hunt­ing for answers, I get the feel­ing that I have done the same.

Up until a few min­utes ago, this post had con­tained a sec­ond rant against the Wash­ing­ton DC Catholic Arch­dio­cese and their deci­sion to strike out against the help­less in order to make heard their tantrum against those pesky, evil homo­sex­u­als. It was accom­pa­nied by a graphic show­ing my con­ver­sa­tion with a Tweet­ing nun who is vocal in her sup­port of their big­otry. While I am leav­ing a link to that image, I am replac­ing the rant. I do so not because I think any dif­fer­ently, nor because I am any less desirous of a real answer to my ques­tions, but because there was, in the first iter­a­tion of this post, far too much essence of the lit­tle girl who was ever frus­trated to the point of seething over the priests’, nuns’ and CCD teach­ers’ inabil­ity to answer any of her more dif­fi­cult — but infi­nitely and impor­tantly mean­ing­ful — ques­tions about the faith they wanted her to adopt. Her frus­tra­tion had been born in large part out of fear that not believ­ing all things Catholic would dis­ap­point the adults who so wished her to be a good and pious girl.

I do not need that lit­tle girl to speak for me any more. I no longer look for answers to the ques­tions she asked, as I am cer­tain that no one has them. No priest or nun can con­vince me that their insti­tu­tion­al­ized big­otry and sex­ism can bring me to a bet­ter rela­tion­ship with god. Reli­gion, I have come to under­stand, is - at best - a tool used to mea­sure, and to bet­ter, one­self. Wash­ing­ton DC’s Arch­dio­cese lead­ers, and thru her endorse­ment of their actions, Sis­ter Anne, all serve as a per­fect exam­ple of how reli­gion ought not be — but too often is — used: as a thick, barbed yard­stick used first to mea­sure and then to inflict pun­ish­ment upon oth­ers. If the Catholic Arch­dio­cese of Wash­ing­ton DC wants to penal­ize the needy in their com­mu­nity, as well as their own parish mem­bers, over a law made out­side of their orga­ni­za­tion, then let them have their tantrum. In the end, this whole thing will empty their pews and fur­ther define their hypocrisy in the eyes of those who had per­haps wavered in their opin­ions. Sis­ter Anne’s and the Archdiocese’s pathetic attempts to cite legal (read: state-granted) “reli­gious free­dom” as a rea­son or an excuse for their actions sim­ply skirts the real issue here: They are beat­ing their own fam­ily for the sins of the neigh­bor. Inexcusable.

Sis­ter Anne, you are no more equipped to give me a straight answer regard­ing the non-legal, the ethical/moral aspect of the Archdiocese’s actions than were the nuns of my child­hood. Faith is not enough. A call­ing and its implied spe­cial unity with the god­head is not enough. A sim­ple, hon­est answer would be enough, but none of you are capa­ble. Since I no longer desire the run-around, the excuses and vague plat­i­tudes, I beg you: don’t even try. You might strain something.

Here is the invi­ta­tion: Peo­ple out there who think favor­ably the DC Arch­dio­cese’s deci­sion to with­draw char­ity assis­tance from fos­ter chil­dren and other need groups, and also to stop insur­ing their employ­ees’ spouses, all because gay mar­riage became legal: Why do you think this is right? I *know* it is legal. Don’t give me “free­dom of reli­gion” expla­na­tions, because I am aware that the arch­dio­cese is free to help whomever they wish. I am, instead, look­ing for an answer to the ques­tion posed by their choice of dogma over the core teach­ings of Christ. What I am ask­ing for, here, is your expla­na­tion of why you think Jesus, a man who dined with & washed the feet of sin­ners, sup­pos­edly for­gave all, and died for our sins would approve of the with­drawal of Church-based sup­port of the needy over a distasteful(-to-the-church) law. Tell me why Jesus would be fine with the pun­ish­ing of the mem­bers of a third party — and down­trod­den ones at that — over a sin­gle, “sin­ful” legal deci­sion on the part of the gov­ern­ment. You see, I was raised Catholic, and, despite that, even read the bible, but I missed the chap­ter and verse where Jesus denied fish and loaves to the masses because there were money-lenders in the tem­ple. I grew up spend­ing Sun­day morn­ings sit­ting in mass, singing Matthew 25:40 and think­ing that its mes­sage was a great life rule whether one believes in god or not. Its use in masses stands today as fur­ther proof of the DC Arch­dio­cese not prac­tic­ing what they preach. At any rate, please explain. Keep in mind here, that your rebut­tal should cen­ter not around the legal­ity of the Archdiocese’s actions (as your free­dom to sup­port whom you will is just as legally sup­ported in this coun­try as is the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state), but around their applic­a­bil­ity to the Archdiocese’s stand­ing as a Chris­t­ian(?) (here’s a def­i­n­i­tion) orga­ni­za­tion. As far as I can tell, the law is not forc­ing them to aban­don Chris­t­ian val­ues. They have sim­ply picked their bible verse, regard­less of the fact that in doing so they are harm­ing far, far more peo­ple than they might ever be help­ing(?), and are bound and deter­mined to fol­low it straight to heaven(?). So, you with the answers: you have as long as you need. “Jesus would approve of the DC Catholic Archdiocese’s deci­sion because… ” Go on. Discuss.

Things were musi­cally more inter­est­ing back in the day, when DJs actu­ally spun records, when they needed to have actual skill to tran­si­tion between songs and seg­ments, when a knowl­edge of both music and sound equip­ment was required for the job. Sure, lis­ten­ers would hear irri­tat­ing songs as often as they’d learn about some new and excit­ing band or style, but that was the trade-off. I really didn’t want to rant on the death of radio, how­ever, as I have been made happy by turn­ing off my radio and groov­ing instead to Radio Par­adise, SomaFM and Pan­dora. I really wanted to share a dis­cov­ery (read: per­sonal abil­ity to find mean­ing where there is none).

On this blog, I have a list of songs that make me want to pee faster when I hear them when I am in the restroom at work. (Some­one thought it a fine idea to put a radio in our bath­room, osten­si­bly to give us a sound­track to do girls’ room things to.) For some rea­son, occa­sion­ally a song will be play­ing that dis­turbs me mea­sur­ably more than sim­ply hav­ing a sound­track does, and I add it to the list.

Today, how­ever, I had a dif­fer­ent reac­tion to what was play­ing while I peed: Come Sail Away by Styx is a longer-than-average song, and I couldn’t help but think that — at least back before pre-recorded blocks of song — it would have been used to give the DJ the chance to relieve his blad­der. In effect, I felt a kind of kin­ship at the thought of pee­ing while some­one else, briefly escap­ing from their booth (which, in my head will always look like the stu­dio at WKRP), also peed. I look for­ward, now, to hear­ing any of these or these songs and once again bond­ing with my (child­hood mem­ory of a) local DJ.

Today I rec’d one of the best for­tunes I have ever found in a cookie. It reads like some­thing that would be said either by some­one who has been forced to say a kind word about you, or by some­one who knows you bet­ter than any­one else:

I love it! Now my goal will be to be as hon­estly imag­i­na­tive (or as imag­i­na­tively hon­est) as I can. Bwahahaha!

A bird was requested for Bob, and so, although I do not know him, I com­ply out of sym­pa­thy, as well as out of agree­ment with the sen­ti­ment behind the request:

Fuck can­cer, indeed!
And, as long as we’re at it, fuck Utah as well.

Any­one else care to join in?

Smoo chided me the other day for putting two spaces after a period when proof­ing her home­work. She informed me that, while that may have been the rule waaaaay back in the day, it was no longer done, and that one space now suf­fices. The lit­tle grem­lin in my brain that is in charge of mak­ing sure that arbi­trary rules are obeyed was not pleased by this news. How could peri­ods, ques­tion marks, excla­ma­tion points and colons — far more weighty in their import — be given the same berth as com­mas and semi­colons?! It was bad enough when comma rules became less rigid, but now this?

From a rather inter­est­ing (to me) view­point, this change makes sense. The bulk of a person’s port­fo­lio is, from now on, going to be accessed via the web, and web servers do not — unless tediously instructed oth­er­wise — print more than one space in suc­ces­sion. For that rea­son, along with the ubiq­ui­tous nature of variable-width fonts as explained by Gram­mar Girl, Chicago and <a href=“http://www.mla.org/style_faq3>MLA stip­u­late that only a sin­gle space should fol­low end-of-sentence punc­tu­a­tion, while APA went from adopt­ing the sin­gle space rule in APA5, to allow­ing, with the pub­li­ca­tion of APA6, the dou­ble space in drafts but giv­ing printers/publishers final say at the time of imprint. The punctuation/space topic is so con­vo­luted, it seems, that WikiPedia has a whole arti­cle on end-of-sentence spac­ing.

As always, I am amused by the heated nature of the pro and con argu­ments for either side. Pedants in a huff are so cute, aren’t they? Well, they are until you are the one writ­ing the paper, and then the instinct to stran­gle trumps all. Why did these stan­dards come to mean so much? The best teachers/editors/etc. are flex­i­ble in this regard, as well as in all things format-related, as they know that con­tent is king, and that it takes more than an extra space to detract from the sub­stance of a work. The amount of angst caused — for stu­dents, graders, edi­tors and pub­lish­ers — by arbi­trary rules is far less triv­ial than the rules them­selves. As long as some­one has the brain to write good con­tent, they will have the brain to for­mat it in a leg­i­ble way, no? Can we not trust this?

I know. Peo­ple get­ting huffy over things like punc­tu­a­tion rules are just as “cute” as frothy pedants. What can I say. Froth on!

I got home today, stood danc­ing as I watched the mail get sorted, and then, with no trea­sure from the mail fairy, ran to the bath­room. Smoo and I both do this: get home and run for the can. I want to say that I actu­ally have to go that badly when I get home, but there may also be some­thing sug­ges­tive about walk­ing in the front door that makes me have to pee…

At any rate, after return­ing from the loo, I sat down in the liv­ing room and gath­ered my gad­gets to me, only to notice that my right hand and fore­arm were tacky with some clear, vis­cous liq­uid. Where did it come from? I do not know… work? the shrink’s office? the choco­late shop? the car? the bath­room? Really, all I needed to do was wash it off and remove my pants, as it seemed to have trans­ferred itself to the right leg of those as well. I did this and returned to my seat on the sofa, but kept dwelling about the mys­te­ri­ous crap on my arm. The dogs began lick­ing my feet and face, and this did not gross me out, but the unknown sub­stance on my arm sure did.

The prob­lem, it occurred to me, is the same as the prob­lem with pain. The rea­son labor pain was easy was because it was a known pain — the pain of cramps, albeit mul­ti­plied in mag­ni­tude. A pain that turns out to only be a bad sprain is far more wor­ry­ing (if less painful) because it is unknown. There­fore: dog saliva? no prob­lem. Smoo’s spit-up as a baby? piece of cake. Mys­te­ri­ous goop? nervewracking!