it’s not about you

a snippet from the hours of conversation last night:

“Fiona Apple or Tori Amos?”

“Tori Amos!”

“Oh, I’d totally fuck her!”

Once again, via the New York Times:

These are dismal statistics for a country as well-to-do as the United States. But we don’t hear much about them because hunger is associated with poverty, and poverty is not even close to becoming part of our national conversation. Swift boats, yes. Sex scenes on “Monday Night Football,” most definitely. The struggle of millions of Americans to feed themselves? Oh no. Let’s not go there.

What does that tell you about American values?

and this:

Franklin Roosevelt, in his second Inaugural Address, told a rain-soaked crowd, “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

in lieu of our regularly scheduled movie night, we will be hosting a potluck Thanksgiving dinner. (keyword here is “potluck”) Please bring your favorite vegetarian Thanksgiving dish to share. Also, for our regulars, please invite anyone you think might enjoy an impromptu meal as well. Nothing too fancy, just a good time with some thankful people. Also, please leave a comment about what food you are planning to bring, so we don’t have an overlap. So far, we have:

Mulled wine: Bethany
Cooked Greens: Shanna
Pumpkin pie: Leah
Corn Casserole: Kristen
Bread: Kristen

You are welcome to use our oven and stove-top, if need be, just please let me know beforehand so we can plan space for it.

sorry Paco. I stole your title. i thought this was a really interesting article.

If moral and religious values were truly what people most wanted to see depicted on television, Mr. Moonves said, “I guess we’d be seeing ‘Joan of Arcadia’ doing better than ‘C.S.I.’ ‘’

via the New York Times article, “Many Who Voted for ‘Values’ Still Like Their Television Sin.”

so yesterday i was taking the trash out after lunch, while it was raining, and when i rounded the corner to the back of our duplex, there was a man in the alley, leaning into our trash can and digging around. I stopped, standing there with this bag full of food scraps and God knows what else, wondering what to do.

i decided to go up to the guy. “You looking for anything in particular in there?” I asked him.

He looked up and smiled at me. “No,” he said.

“Well did you find anything?”

He held up a square, Camel-brand ashtray. “I found this,” he said.

“In that trash can?” I asked, pointing to ours.

He pointed at our neighbors’ can, which was standing right next to ours. “No, in that one,” he said.

“Well, I’ve got this bag of trash to throw away, and it’s pretty funky. If you don’t mind, can I toss it in there?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. “I’m done. You know the only thing more embarrassing than going through a trash can is going through a funky one.”

“Well, I can imagine.” We both turned to walk away, him down the street and me back around the corner to the house. He asked if I had a light. I didn’t. We exchanged pleasantries and went our separate ways.

Taylor, please don’t go to Baylor. I have so much respect for you.

Tonight and tomorrow and Saturday at the Dallas Convention Center. Does anyone else find this funny?

note: the old link stopped working, here’s a new one to try.

I entered a picture we took of our pumpkins from our pumpkin carving party at the beginning of October into a Better Homes and Gardens contest. Our photo is one of 25 selected as finalists out of hundreds of entries to receive a $1000 prize! Here’s the link:

click here. this should pull up a photo contest page, click on the drop down menu and select “finalists.” go to page three. or you can search for the photo by its ID number.

Our photo is entry number 554200004, and should be in the middle on the second row on page three — it’s a picture of five pumpkins lined up and stacked on each other.

Go vote for it!

from The New York Times:

All along, Mr. Bush’s political guru, Karl Rove, had argued that if Mr. Bush could turn out millions of conservatives and evangelical Christians who stayed home four years ago, he could win, aided also by population shifts that added electoral votes to the Sun Belt states in which the president ran strong both times.

I’m just going to be real blunt here. I would consider myself an evangelical Christian and I did not vote for President Bush. And I did vote four years ago. I actually voted for the President. But as his presidency has drawn out, I have come to conclusion that nothing about his term in office is Christian. Evangelical Christians are kidding themselves if they think W. is the answer to the country’s “moral dilemma.”

Considering “moral values” was the top issue of the election, per exit polls, I think this is worth some serious investigation. Being an evangelical Christian and being a cultural Christian (something I would not consider myself to be) are two different matters entirely. It would be far more accurate to say that Bush turned out cultural Christians to the polls and not evangelical ones. Evangelical Christians, one would think, would understand that “moral values” doesn’t really mean shit. Cultural Christians would perhaps not. Evangelical Christians would not look to an election and a political party to resolve problems as they see it. Cultural Christians perhaps would. Evangelical Christians are concerned with the Kingdom and seeing God at work in people’s lives. Cultural Christians are perhaps more concerned with preserving their level of comfort than they are about the things of God.

As Christians, we are not promised earthly comfort or safety or wealth; we are not promised a preservation of our way of life. What we are promised is that this life will be hard; we are told to be content in any situation; we are told to look after the orphans and widows of this world (the unwanted) and that that is the religion God accepts as pure and faultless. We are told to expect persecution for our faith, not our culture of church, and that is something American Christians have no concept of whatsoever.

I’m so tired of being lumped into the “evangelical Christian” category (read here as cultural Christian) because I claim the name of Jesus. To the cultural Christian majority in this country, I say to you, “not all who are wandering are lost.” Get your heads out of the sand, search your own hearts, do not accept what you are told because it comes from some so-called authority figure. Jerry Falwell does not speak for me. Paige Patterson does not speak for me. James Dobson does not speak for me. I cannot and will not let fat, white men, who profess Jesus, yet pocket hundreds of thousands of dollars a year while people around the globe are dying of disease and war and famine, speak for me.

You claim the name of Christ, yet I see no evidence of it in you. I see phariseical lifestyles. I see true hypocrisy in two forms — claiming to be something you are not, and claiming not to be something you are. Shame on you.

Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand.

I spent most of yesterday afternoon and evening cooking dinner for my co-ops (I’m now in two dinner co-ops, and I think it’s great!). I left Judah alone in her room where she was happily amusing herself. After a little while, I heard her call out for some attention and I dried my hands and went in to see what she wanted. I had left her on the floor playing with her new dollhouse, and when I found her, she has climbed into her daybed (which was turned around facing the wall to prevent her from such acts) and was trying to wrap her teddy bear up in a blanket. I can’t figure out for the life of me how she got up in her bed.

Then last night, as her tub was running, she somehow managed to climb in, shirt, diaper, and all, all by herself. I’m amazed she hasn’t had to go to ER yet for some incredible catastrophe.

In other news, she’s quite taken with her teddy bear. Yesterday, she was wrapping it in blankets and trying to put a shirt on it. Today, she laid it down on a blanket and put her cup spout up to its mouth. She carries it around, giggling, with its head in the crook of her neck. She curls up with it when she goes to sleep. Not that I mind. Her two previous “lovies” were a nasal spray and her milk cup. This is a step up.