Archive for June, 2010

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Forward>forward>forward

    I get them at least once a week.    
    Sometimes it’s a nice little prayer, with pictures of sappy, blond angels whose wings flutter. Sometimes it’s pictures of animals or beautiful places. Sometimes it’s a story about plucky young soldiers eating sandwiches on a plane, or a heartwarming tale of a desperate person who was touched by prayer.
    Sometimes (though not so often since I blocked my uncle’s ass) it’s a political message, about how this country used to be a great place, back men were men, women were feminine instead of feminists and kids could pray in school, dag gummit!
     Whatever. As soon as I see that it’s one of those forward>forward>forward messages, before I even read it, I scroll right down to the very end, because it’s usually there: a bribe, a threat, a guilt- whammy.
 
“Forward this to at least 10 people in the next ten minutes and you will receive a blessing by tomorrow morning”
"Do not break this chain! Every one who passes this on will have something wonderful happen in their life!"
“If you believe in American values, send this to everyone in your address book. 93% of the people who receive this message will delete it. Are you one of the 7%  who support our troops enough to pass it on?”
And my personal favorite- “If you’re not ashamed to admit you love God, send this to all your friends.”
 
Dear whoever writes these things:
     Really? You’re so desperate to get your crap passed around like a canker sore that you’ll stoop to strong-arming people into spreading it? You appeal to their greed, to their latent sense of superiority or just their superstition and herd mentality and off you go.  I guess it works: someone sent it to me, after all. But it stops with me.
      See,  I've been stepping on cracks and breaking chains all my life as a matter of principle.  I don’t think that most of my friends actually believe that God really wants us to be rich but He doesn’t have an e-mail account himself, so he pays us to forward stuff for him.  They realize that America is not the least bit strengthened when they clog up their friends’ in-boxes with jingoistic bullshit. They know there are real, concrete ways of supporting the troops, but they take a little more effort than just  forwarding pictures of sparkly flags.
     And most of them know that America was not, in fact, a better place “back in the day”  when kids had to pray in school,  people looked the other way when a man hit his wife, gays who were beaten up just got what they deserved and integration was a dirty word. But say, how’s 1953 working out for ya?
 
Dear everybody who sends me this kind of message:
     I don’t pretend to know your motivation here. It could be you just never read it all the way to the whammy. Maybe you believe in magic and a God who operates this way.. Maybe you think that doing what an anonymous e-mail tells you will somehow help America.  Or, maybe you just thought I really needed more pictures of kittens kissing puppies. Whatever.
     Just know that I WILL Snopes your shit, even the cute story about a bunny rescuing his owners from a fire. And I WILL call you out any time you are passing on lies.  And if what you send me contains any kind of emotional blackmail, no matter how nice the beginning of the message, I will hit the delete button without blinking an eye.
    So if it says “send it back to me” and I don’t send it back to you, it doesn’t mean I don’t think you’re a strong woman or that you're not my friend. It means the only thing I’m embarrassed about is acting like my religious views are any one’s business but my own. It means I don’t respond well to arm-twisting, and I’ve spent a lifetime subverting the dominant paradigm.
     It means I don’t pass around other people’s canker sores.

Posted by Tracy on Jun 23rd 2010 | Filed in The Daily Rant | Comments (2)

Karma

 
Thoughts while inching along in a traffic jam on I-71 between 161 and Morse Road.
 
Dear  Morons-
     The breakdown lane was designed to allow police cars, tow trucks, ambulances, etc. to get around traffic to the scene of an accident and – oh yeah!-  for cars that have broken down to pull off the road and out of the way. It was NOT created so that self-centered, entitled, cell-phone chatting jerks like you could drive around all us regular people who are slowly working our way past the obstacle ahead, because YOU are too god-damned important to wait like the rest of us!
   Have you considered the possibility that what’s slowing us all down might be a car up around the next curve that’s half-into the breakdown lane, which you are about to crash into? Or that so many of your fellow inconsiderate jerks are bailing into the breakdown lane to get to the exit faster that the breakdown lane is now backing up with traffic (there are lights at the end of every exit ramp) thereby making the breakdown lane as slow-moving as the rest of the freeway?
   No, of course you haven’t. You’re too busy merging onto the freeway across the slashed yellow line, nearly smashing into the car ahead of you that tried to merge at the proper time and place. You're too busy trying to scoot around school buses with their "stop" sign out because you don't see any kids getting off yet. You’re too busy leaving your trash all over public parks because after all, they have people who get paid to clean up, right?
   My wish for you, as you go through life jumping people in line, talking on your phone in the library, abusing nervous teenaged store clerks  and using handicapped parking spaces (because you really really don’t want to walk across the parking lot in the rain and you resent the damn government telling you where you can and cannot park) – my wish is that you will one day come to see the error of your ways and recognize that the world does not, in fact, owe you anything.
    Hahaha! Yeah, I was just joking, I know that will never happen. So my actual wish for you is that one day your car will overheat on the freeway and catch on fire, and the firetruck will be unable to reach it in time because some self-absorbed cell-phone gabbing moron will be blocking the breakdown lane.
    Have a nice day, creep!

Posted by Tracy on Jun 22nd 2010 | Filed in General,The Daily Rant | Comments (0)

Summer Storms

 
Thunder clouds and lightning bugs fill the summer night.
The deep twilight smells of roses and rain.
It lingers like a melancholy lover on the threshold of night,
reluctant to depart,
unable to speak its true desire.
The air  drapes across my shoulders, soft and warm .
Everything  feels thick and slow
like the muffled drumming from heaven
punctuated by the fireflies’ messages, chartreuse script across the lawn.

 

Fireflies hold nothing back,
They shout their desire to the summer nights
give it all for love and die with no regrets.
Me, I just rumble like this thunder, keeping my distance
hot air rushing back and forth, accomplishing little.
 
I wait for the storm to break, suspended in time, 
between flash and roll,
between thick and bright,
between storm and stars.
.
A rising breeze twines my nightgown around my legs
and the leaves show their pale bellies
as a breath of cool suggests it’s finally going to rain.
The fireflies still text frantically, ignoring the storm’s last call.
Maybe I should go inside now and call you.
Perhaps I will just stand at the back door
and flash the porch light your way.

Posted by Tracy on Jun 15th 2010 | Filed in Poetry | Comments (0)

Absolute Power

   I've been reading about the Catholic church's latest and and most vile form of spin control in the fallout over the pedophile priest cover-up scandals that have rocked it this year. They've decided to at last do the right thing and- blame the gays.
   And while my feelings of nausea and disbelief and yet total lack of surprise were warring with each other, I found myself indulging in a little "what if" fantasy.
 
   What if the Republican party- or maybe the Democrats- had been in absolute control of this country for a thousand years: Congress, the chief executive and every court in the land. They proposed the laws, passed the laws, judged the laws and decided who had broken them and how they should be punished. You were required to live your life, both publicly and privately, as they and they alone found fitting. If you didn't like their decisions, you could appeal… to them. Heh heh. Good luck with that.
    Except that the revenue stream was really the most important thing to the party. (They wouldn't never admit it, but the top dogs all lived in palaces and even called themselves "princes") So the laws were the most strictly enforced for the ones who paid the least. Send a big enough check to the party and they could be persuaded to look the other way for even the most heinous of crimes. But if you were a nobody with nothing to offer other than your faithful yearly taxes, you were screwed.
    And if the president said something, it was true. Even if your own eyes said it was a lie. Even if he said it was raining on a sunny day. Even if he was senile, or insane, or was just a total dick. Not only that, but you had to kiss his shoes every time he came by!
 
    What if any time anyone tried to challenge the party platform, to suggest even the slightest modification of their laws to keep up with modern thinking about human rights and with scientific advancements in medicine, technology, astronomy, whatever- the challengers were threatened, branded seditious, driven out and even burned at the stake. (You know- like on FOX news.)
 
     Now occasionally one of these traitors had refused to be bullied and went off and started their own new little country with their own rules, and in time maybe some other people thought they made more sense and joined them. Still, millions of people stayed where they were, because their parents and their grandparents had lived there, and the party assured them that those other countries were inferior and unsafe, and anyway, they would end up dead if they changed allegiances.
      Progress is un-American!
      New ideas are treasonous!
      Thinking is punishable by death!
 
    And so it was that in a thousand years the most significant change this country had made was to grudgingly agree to conduct their business and write their laws- the ones you had to follow or die- in a language you could at least read! woo hoo! Of course the party and the nation would never significantly change. Why should they? You don’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
 
.  It is my belief that any church that allows itself to become an exclusive club, that has an cover change and exhorts obedience from members with threats and abuse ceases to be a church and becomes just another institution where absolute power corrupts absolutely.
    The Roman Catholic church is probably, at its core, no worse than many other churches, but it has wielded an absolute power over life and death~ and life after death~ for much longer than most, and so it has become more rigid, and more corrupt, than most.
    Their excuse for this intractability, oppression and murder is that it's all "God's will", despite the fact that rigidness inevitably leads to injustice and cruelty, and the God they claim to worship is all about mercy and justice. But they have accumulated massive wealth and power over the centuries by never giving an inch, and see no reason to mess with a winning formula now, just because it would be the just and loving (and the Christlike) thing to do.
 
   Of course, with this attitude you find yourself defending all manner of ludicrous, contradictory positions, for example, the idea that God loves us all… except the ones who don’t say exactly the right words out of the right translation of the right book. These people, however well meaning and loving to their fellow man will writhe in eternal torment.
    That God wants everyone to partake of the sacramental bread and wine to be redeemed- but if you happen to be dangerously allergic to wheat- too bad. God apparently doesn't love you enough to allow rice bread.
    That all life is sacred except for the life of an ill, pregnant woman.
     And that if priests are molesting children and the church is letting them get away with it- it must be the fault of homosexuals.
 
    Study after study shows us that pedophilia is not about sexual preference, any more than someone who rapes a comotose hospital patient does it because he is sexually attracted to her! Adult men don't molest little boys because they're male- they molest them because they're little, which means they are accessable and easily intimidated into keeping quiet.
   
    A vast majority of molesting priests (as with most pedophiles) self-identify as heterosexual. Most priests molest little boys because, thanks to the continuing institutional chauvinism of the church, boys are the ones they have the most contact with.
 
   So naturally, in the face of all this evidence, (and after decades of hiding their dirty laundry from not just the public but the police) the Bishops Boys club of Catholic church came to the conclusion that the best way to deal with the problem of a church which is protecting and abetting people who rape children… is to carefully screen everyone who tries to enter seminary to make sure none of them have the slightest whiff of homosexual leanings. In fact, they've announced that anyone who even believes in gay rights will not be allowed in. You're welcome, abused children and their traumatized families!
 
     Rooting out all gay and gay-friendly priests in response to a pedophilia cover-up is the moral equivalent of attacking Iraq because of 9/11. Other than ensuring that future priests will not have a flair for fashion or enjoy show-tunes, it accomplishes absolutely nothing. It just perpetuates the church's centuries-old persecution of an entire class of people. (see "God loves us all except" above). And it proves that they fundamentally don't get the nature of the public outrage. People aren't hurt and angry because sometimes priests molest children. that's hideous, but sometimes teachers, and coaches, and IRS agents molest children.
   What has people so angry and ready to question their entire faith tradition is that when priests molest children, the first, last and only thing the Church thinks of is its reputation.
 
    Which leads me to the inescapable conclusion that the Roman Catholic church as an entity (not the members as individuals) is no longer a true church. It's just a corporation run amok, drunk on power, wealth and privelege which does not care who suffers in order to assure that the leaders all get their golden parachutes.
    My reasoning?
    A true church ministers to the people before it takes care of itself. It protects and loves the innocent- even those who are not members- before it protects itself. Damage control is just not part of it's philosophy.
    A true church realizes that absolute morality is an oxymoron, because God is the one who forgives, with a forgiveness cannot be bought, or even earned. God knows that one size does NOT fit all.
    A real church knows that life with a blade at your throat isn’t really living, faith that is required isn't really faith, and forgiveness that is given for a price isn’t really forgiving.
    Because it’s not about the kind of bread, it’s about getting people fed.
    It’s not about enforcing the laws, but about finding a common cause.
 
    A true church does not give its leaders unchecked power over helpless children and then blame the abuse those leaders commit on a class of people it will not even admit as members.   A true church recognizes that all are equally holy and equally profane, and equally prone to temptation- even the princes of the church. It recognizes the danger of power and privilege… and the tyranny of secrets.

Posted by Tracy on Jun 10th 2010 | Filed in The Daily Rant | Comments (0)

Gone

It's a bright and sunny day along Bayou St. Denis,
a perfect day for fishing among the cypress trees
but there's no fish left for catching and the birds have fallen still-
like the bullfrogs and the gators, they've all left or been killed.

There's an oily scent of death carried on the evening tide,
nothing moving on the water or on the land nearby.
A mournful wind sighs through the sick and dieing trees
and at times it seems to whisper that it's all because of me.

   The Gulf is gone… the gulf is gone.
   There is blame enough to share, for the truth's hard to ignore:
   We'd rather lose the bayou than do without the oil.

They tell us we're at war, and the only way to win
is to start up that deep water drilling once again.
Like a drunken child with a rifle in our hands,
we're playing with forces we don't really understand.

We sigh and say we're sorry- but we'll do it all again
'Cause we just don't want to do without the stuff the oil brings.
Sure, we miss the pelicans, the shrimp and oysters too
but are any of us willing to do what we'd have to do
   

(bridge)  …to live without it? Yeah, I doubt it.

There's an island of plastic floating in the sea-
trash we thought we had to have but really didn't need.
It seems we can't be trusted not to break what we've been giv'n.
Go to war with the planet and you're losers if you win.

   The gulf is gone…  the gulf is gone….
   For at least a generation; tainted water, toxic soil
   but we'd rather lose the beaches than learn to use less oil.

Someday our grandchildren may ask us sadly, "Why?"
What was so important that the gulf coast had to die?
Will we answer, "Plastic pop bottles and toxic pesticides,
the A/C running ice cold and aimless Sunday drives…

…exotic foods flown in from half a world away
and Happy Meal toys that they kids just throw away.
We act like we're entitled, don't care about the cost
but now the bill's come due and we see how much we lost.

   The gulf is gone… the gulf is gone…
We're sorry 'bout the dolphins and the beauty we despoiled
but we'd rather maim the planet than give up the oil.
 

The Earth gives us so much, but we keep demanding more.
Is there nothing we won't sacrifice for just a little oil?

Posted by Tracy on Jun 7th 2010 | Filed in The Daily Rant | Comments (0)

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