i recently had a long involved discussion with someone over the “secularisation” of the holidays, and the knee-jerk reaction of christians to what they perceive as a threat to their celebration of christmas. his point was, essentially, that freedom of religious expression is protected by the first amendment, and that “banning” public nativity displays and the like is evangelism by secularists, since it doesn’t violate anyone’s rights.

he’s missing the point, big time.

see, rulings by the supreme court have reaffirmed time and again that (other than the historical use of religious symbols, such as “in god we trust” on the coinage) the government cannot be seen to be implicitly endorsing any one religion over another. avoiding the appearance of promotion/favouritism/endorsement is not the same thing as “banning” religious expression. therefore, displays which exhibit a variety of symbols or religions are fine. However, once you open it up to Christians, Jews and Muslims, you also have to allow for zoroastrians, satanists, scientologists, etc. Everyone’s all for inclusive displays, until people want to start putting up satanic symbols – suddenly it’s not quite so okay any more. So really, it’s an impossible situation for the state.

and my argument is that you can’t possibly please everyone and their religion, so why try to please anyone? Just do away with it altogether. No muss, no fuss. What does the gov’t. care about religion anyway? Why get involved in such a personal matter?

private organisations and their property are free to do whatever they want, and i can’t stop them. but don’t force me to look at your creche on my town common (which I pay taxes to help upkeep), as if it somehow represents my beliefs as well. Otherwise, I’d rather have nothing. As my mom used to say, “If you can’t play nice and share, I’ll take it away, and no one can have it.”

And if it matters to you enogh to fight for your right to a nativity, then I am also going to fight for my right to have *MY* religious symbols displayed – which you shouldn’t feel threatened by, because it’s just my expression of religious freedom. So where’s the beef?

Secularism of public life is the wave of the future – hop on for the ride.

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so while i was home last time, i was going through a bunch of old stuff – letters, memorabilia, etc. and wow, i have a lot of old (mostly bad) poetry. i used to write a lot – but then again, i was also very depressed from like,17 – 27. somehow it’s easier to get the creative juices flowing when you’re all full of angst. i miss it (not the depression, mind, but the bug). i’ve tried writing recently, but it’s just not the same. I wrote a poem for my wedding vows, and a few other momentous occasions which stirred me to wax profound. but for the most part, it’s difficult to tap into that vein on demand.

in the meantime, i have these poems. reading them from the vantage point of emotional stability is a strange sensation – as though they were written by someone else. which, in a sense, I suppose they were, but it’s a very detached feeling, like an out-of-body experience. i suppose this is what they call objectivity. i don’t want to get rid of them, so i guess I want to create a repository somewhere. most of them are heavily autobiographical so it needs to be somewhere relatively private. I am considering making a separate, password protected page for them. Not sure.

anyway, here’s a non-bio one that’s not entirely cringeworthy (it’s untitled):

Pictures spill like rain
flooding the gutters of memory
pages stick to fingertips
and the acrid odor of dead leaves wafts up
stinging my eyes blurring
I hear the rustle echo
as the taste of old copper
settles on my tongue
the taste of blood.
My eyes will not listen further
into that summer of Brooklyn and Bobby
I see clearly.
It wasn’t what I wanted
Skanky, sweaty, swollen
his lips made me lie
black as a rotted tooth
slick knife of falsity that cuts to the truth
like an overripe fruit.
Bobby brought down the rain
while she prayed
one day she would understand what she was praying for
desperate absolution paid in hot tears
la vie, la mort, la resurrection
the trees cried out
their pain written on the wind

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y’all already know my stance on the death penalty. it’s hypocritical and expensive and inhumane, and in a system fraught with human error, the liklihood of taking an innocent human’s life by mistake is unavoidable, and it’s inconceivable that we should allow that to happen at the hands of the state. a civilised people should be exemplified by a civilised government. and when we can’t guarantee our citizens a fair trial, we have no business executing them. case in point: the 1000th man scheduled to die in the u.s. since the re-institution of the death penalty.

we have a right to deprive people of their liberty, but not their life. that’s what makes the death penalty cold-blooded public vengeance, plain and simple. but vengeance is not the remit or right of the government, and that’s what makes these killings no better than the crimes we so loudly decry.

if i was home right now, i’d be protesting with all my heart and might. because i honestly think that the u.s. has the power (and therefore the obligation) to be better. to lead by example. i think the death penalty debases us as a nation, and dehumanises our society. and we deserve better than that.

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death penalty

because when i was freaking out earlier this evening thinking the database from whence my website springs was corrupted and lost, and he tried to reassure me, but i just bit his head off… he didn’t even hold it against me.

that’s love.

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i love puzzles, and one of the downsides to no longer receiving an actual physical newspaper is not getting the crossword. yeah, I know, i know – you can get crossword puzzles online, but somehow it’s just not the same. I used to love to get the ny times sunday crossword and spend a whole week doing it. i’d do it during commercials, or whenever i had some down time on the train, and took particular pride in using a pen. i also love logic puzzles – as a kid i’d do elimination word problems and i loved playing “Mastermind” and “clue”. i think that’s why i love chess and scrabble as well – they stretch your brain a bit by forcing you to think of multiple permutations for different scenarios. not nearly enough brain stretching going on lately, i must admit.

and i know everyone is nuts over sudoku lately, but somehow i just can’t get into it. little numbers in little boxes does ring my bell. but in any case, i’ve run across a few fun sites, so in case you need a little mental exercise on a monday (and you know you do!), here you go:

the package

brain teaser central

random mindbenders

no cheating!

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So saturday was thanksgiving in out household. i cooked up all the traditional fixin’s: turkey and stuffing, gravy and biscuits, sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes, butternut squash, pumpkin and apple pie. for the veggies in the group, there was quorn roast with meatless stuffing and gravy. there were meant to be some greenbeans along with all that, but in all the running back and forth between our kitchen and the neighbours’ (where the squash was roasting due to a severe oven space shortage), somehow the beans got overlooked! oh well. kerryn, tracey, penny, kim, andy, alex, chris, tonia, jude, jonno and myself, all gorged ourselves silly, and imbibed quite a bit of tipple to wash it down with. friends, food, conversation – a wonderful, warm evening, and really just the essence of what the holiday should be all about.

however getting up bright and early on sunday to head out to bicester for our quarterly visit with aunt muriel was a bit of a chore. i was feeling a little rough around the edges, and it was a long drive out. as usual, we had a formal sunday dinner with muriel and her son andrew, with lots of travel talk, family photos and sherry to round out the afternoon. all very pleasantly civilised, until the drive home, where the bicester shopping outlets congestion combined with traffic lights at a major roundabout to produce a solid hour of chockablock traffic. and also, as usual, we missed a turnoff on the route home, which required some quick map-work by myself to get us back on track. i love my husband dearly, but the running joke between us is that i have a broken internal thermometer and he has a broken internal compass. the poor boy hasn’t the foggiest sense of direction, and despite travelling the same route dozens of times previous, would be unable to remember how to get from point a to point b if his life depended on it. i am, therefore, the designated navigator – which also means that whenever i take my eyes off the road (or, as in the case this evening, unintentionally fall asleep) we are bound to go astray. j is a highly intelligent and skilled man, but if left to his own devices, couldn’t navigate his way out of a paper sack, bless him. but perhaps that’s why we’re such a good pairing. i cook, he cleans. i navigate, he drives.

as far as my internal thermometer goes – what can i say, except that i’m just naturally cold-blooded. i spend more time whinging about being cold… and it’s a constant battle in the house over just what, objectively speaking, constitutes an optimal temperature. growing up in new england, in a house which was heated almost exclusively by wood-burning stove, the prevailing message was always “put on a sweater”. I swear, I was born cold. J is incredulous at just how cold I am, amazed that *I* ever survived winters in Montreal. hell, i can be cold in the dog days of august, if a breeze catches me in the shade. and i am constantly cold here, because it’s always a damp cold – the kind that seeps into your bones. yet the other day, it was 0c, but crisp and sunny – and i was running around saying how lovely it was. dry and brisk and everything looks a bit sharper, more defined. that kind of cold doesn’t bother me in the slightest. and ordinarily, j is continually trying to open windows to get “fresh air”, while i’m yelling about seeing my breath indoors. yet the past week, when it’s been nearly freezing, i’m happy as a clam and he’s been complaining of chill, bundled to the ears. he swears i just do it to be contrary. and maybe i do.

in any case, he’s just gone to put the heating on.

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thanksgiving

when will we stop killing people to prove that killing people is wrong?!?

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death penalty

in keeping with the american tradition, here’s what i am thankful for this year:

– my husband, who puts up with my crap and makes me laugh every day
– my family – as insane as they all are (and they are!) they love me unconditionally
– my friends, who are really just family in disguise
– a roof over my head and food in my belly
– that, in the grand scheme of things, my problems are insignificant

an embarrassment of riches, really. gratitude.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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thanksgiving

tomorrow is thanksgiving in the u.s., but t-day doesn’t arrive here until saturday, when I am once again putting on a traditional dinner for my expat (and brit!) friends. i’m trying (in spite of my innate tendency to go over the top with everything) to keep it pretty simple, but I really do enjoy entertaining, and with 10 peeps, and plenty of alcohol, it’s bound to be fun.

i’ll miss the fams at home of course, but we had a bit of a “pre-Thanksgiving” whilst J and I were visiting, so I feel a bit better. for me, the worst is having no holiday off in the leadup to xmas, since it really kickstarts the whole season.

still and all, i have a lot to be grateful for. and that’s what matters.

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expat, thanksgiving

I’ve said it before – good ol’ terrorist tooting. good thing I read the vol abroad, who keeps me abreast of the crazies in the neighbourhood.

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terrorists

****melodia****




MP3 playlist (M3U)

here’s the podcast feed

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podcast

for someone who goes on and on about freedom so fucking much, bush has a funny way of showing it. like wanting to bomb al-jazeera, the only semi-free media in the entire middle east. how back-assward is that? yet, given the types of constraints, manipulation, and gag rules he regularly tries to impose on the u.s. media, it’s hardly surprising. the feds spent $7.2 billion dollars classifying documents to prevent their release last year and uses state-secret priviledge 33 ties more often today than during the cold war. i swear to god, if we get out of the next 3 years of this administration alive, without an accidental or intentional nuclear holocaust, i will consider it a holy miracle. i wish i was being sarcastic there.

waiting on a miracle: the 40 million people living with hiv. it’s nearly world aids day, and with 25 million already gone, people continue to die of this virus at an unconscionable rate. world targets fall by the wayside, infection rates are nearly 1-in-4 in some places. yet the bird flu scare gets more press coverage. what does that say about society? that people who die quietly are forgotten, but people who die of a bizarre and exotic disease make us sit up and take notice. bush has called for $7.1 billion in spending from the u.s. alone, to prevent a disease which may kill an unknown number between 2 and 50 million people. yet current *global* spending on hiv research is a paltry $3 billion. it’s a fucking sin.

and finally, people see the Virgin of guadaloupe in tree bark. I would ridicule it… but in a world so full of craziness, horror and despair, the fact that people still believe in *something* is a miracle unto itself.

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bush, bird flu, hiv, classified documents

This is easily the *stupidest* thing I have ever seen in my life. Upside-down Christmas trees. Those of you in the states have probably already heard about this ridiculous “trend”, but as they say here in jolly ol’, i was gobsmacked to hear about this.

Now I’ve seen everything. I understand reinventing products to capture a niche of a market, but who the fuck turns a tree upside down?!? They say it has to do with some 12th century tradition of hanging a tree from a ceiling. The reason they stopped doing it in the 12th century? Because it was d-u-m-b.

Trees are (despite the fact that we dress them up) not in-and-of-themselves, a product. They’re trees. They grow that way. This reminds me of the “square tomato” idea. Just flat out moronic.

Part of me thinks this whole idea started as a joke to see if they could prove p.t. barnum’s assertion that “there’s a sucker born every minute”.

Americans really are dumb as a bunch of rocks, sometimes. And yes: apparently, we *will* buy anything. And pay a lot for it.

In case you haven’t seen this lemming-like phenomenon…

in other dumb news, the big news story of the day here in london:

Severe wintry weather is being forecast for the UK, with as much as 20cm of snow ……
Snow, sleet and hail will be coupled with gale force icy winds and wind chill temperatures as low as -10C.

for those of you in boston, 20cm is a little less than 8 inches, and -10C is 14F. here’s what i think of snow in london.

Go on, you can laugh now…

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upside-down xmas tree

so i made the great leap and did a clean reinstall on my pc. apparently the fact that i’ve not yet done that in the 3 years i’ve had my laptop is some sort of big computing faux pas. eh, whaddo i know? < *shrug*>

so after backing everything up thrice, j talked me through the big wipe, and talked me down off the ledge when my registration wouldn’t go through initially. it seems almost a sin to put windoze back on it, but i’m prolly not quite savvy enough to deal with using only linux. i will, however, be using open source software wherever possible. i am also really keen to keep as much crap as possible off my hard drive. it’s like a new car – you don’t want to mess it up.

oh, and more than a gig of music is prolly too much for little ol’ me.

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is he cute or is he british?

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british

new category, to include any posts with playlists.

to kick it off, a new one:

****what the funk****




MP3 playlist (M3U)

here’s the podcast feed

and an oldie which never got it’s own post…

****nostalgia central****

MP3 playlist (M3U)

and the podcast feed

meanwhile, don’t forget the rotation waaaay over in the sidebar…

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mp3 , webjay

u.s. admits use of white phosphorous

cheney takes aim at iraq critics

see, now this is the kind of shit which makes me hoppin’ mad: the government lying about stuff, until the truth is uncovered independently, and then accusing Americans who lack faith in the system, of being unpatriotic. When really, given the piss poor track record, you’d have to be completely out of touch with reality to blindly believe anything which is issued from their collective mouth.

Where does it stop? If they commit torture and use toxic chemical weapons and lie about that, how on earth are we really to believe they didn’t lie about evidence in Iraq? When, exactly, are we supposed to suspend disbelief? As a kid, parents tell you when they catch you in a lie, that you have to earn their trust back. Didn’t Cheney’s parents tell him the same thing? Such a simple lesson, yet such a hard one for this administration to learn. I can’t imagine why.

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cheney, white phosphorous, iraq

So yesterday J and i took a little road trip up to Manchester to see Bob Dylan.

Now first of all, what I describe as a “little road trip”, 186 miles london to manchester, brits would describe as a toturous and insane odyssey. They just don’t get that you can actually drive more than 3 hours at a streth in one day. Whereas for americans, anything under 6 hours is a short jaunt. Over 6 hours only counts as an official journey if it takes you across the state lines. OTherwise, it’s strictly local.

So we took the day off of work, and headed up in the early afternoon for the 7:30 show, and while it was a bit tiresome, we arrived in good spirits, thanks to liberal doses of sugar laden snacks.

The arena holds 21,000 people, and I would venture to guess last night’s attendance was not too far off that mark. It was a capacity crowd, with hardly an empty space to be seen, even in the cheap seats. Our own seats were side-view seats, nearly horizontal with the stage, but ended up being a great view, given the fact that Bob was positioned sideways, and so faced us almost all evening.

In short, it was great. Bob continues to do his “man in black” outfit, which makes him look not unlike a cowboy crossed with a hasidic rabbi. Not a fan of the look. His whole set had a distinct rockabilly theme to it, so even the classics were given a bit of a different treatment. This is only a personal pet-peeve of mine because it means I can’t sing along, but that’s *my* problem, not Bob’s. In fact, he did do a decent number of classics, and not necessarily the standard ones at that. Not being as familiar with his more recent work, I can advise this: if you don’t already know the lyrics, don’t expect to figure them out live, cause with Bob’s typical indistinct mumbling (what I like to call the “cat in heat yawl”) you’re definitely out of luck. My only other disappointment was that he did not once pick up a guitar, but rather spent the whole evening behind the keyboard. Boo to that. But anyway.

Otherwise, it was a pretty energetic show, and Bob can still rock out when he wants to. the set list was:

1. Maggie’s Farm
2. She Belongs To Me
3. Cry A While
4. Lay, Lady, Lay
5. Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)
6. Million Miles
7. Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again
8. I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight
9. Man In The Long Black Coat
10. Down Along The Cove
11. Girl Of The North Country (acoustic)
12. Highway 61 Revisited
13. A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
14. Summer Days

(encore)
15. Like A Rolling Stone
16. All Along The Watchtower

“Highway 61″ and “Girl of the North Country” were standouts – passionate, soulful songs, and “All Along the Watchtower” was a wonderful suprise ending. But “Rolling Stone” brought the house down, as I’m sure it always does. Remember that time in college when you heard that song and finally *got* it? When the loneliness and uncertaintly he was singing about really resonated, and you came to the sudden understanding that there was nothing but your own two feet to stand on, and it was the scariest and saddest feeling you’d ever known, and you thought no one could ever have put that into words, but somehow bob did? Remember that? well I’ll tell you that hearing it live is like hearing it for the first time all over again.

Moving.

here’s a little ode to bob:

MP3 playlist (M3U)

podcast feed

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bob dylan, mp3

let me count the ways…

How depressing, corrupt, unlawful and tragically absurd the administration’s world view actually is…how low the moral bar has been lowered…and (though I know I’m capable of intellectually lazy notions of collective guilt) how complicit our silence as citizens is…Nixon, a true fiend, looks like a paragon of virtue next to the criminally incompetent robber barons now raiding the present and future.

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john cusack, anti-bush

i’m still shattered, having only had 6 hours sleep since saturday night, and therefore far t tired to work up a proper rant. so here’s a hodgepodge of things which i find more irritating than inner-thigh chafing.

surprise, surprise: the fda’s rejection of the morning after pill was politically motivated, and it bent its own rules to do so. shocker. i swear to god, one of these days, women are just going to get too fucking fed up and stop taking this shit off rich white men who think they know best. then they’ll be sorry.

lordy, lordy: first, sony installed malware on your computer, then it turns out their removal kit opens up a massive security breach.

The consequences of the flaw are severe. It allows any web page you visit to download, install, and run any code it likes on your computer. Any web page can seize control of your computer; then it can do anything it likes. That’s about as serious as a security flaw can get.

so they screw you up front, and then they fuck you in the backdoor. sweet.

pathetically obnoxious bill o’reilly baitingly encourages terrorists to target san francisco after voters urged a ban on on-campus military recruitment. because god forbid *democracy* should rule the land! then the numbskull chalks it all up to some malicious smear campaign by the evil lefties. Oy vey – that man makes my ass cramp. It must be very tiring to be the sole defender of all that’s right and good in the world. Whatever.

and finally, a little feel-good hit: cheney gets heckled. and it’s not even christmas yet.

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sooo very tired. I’ve been up for 36 hours straight now, but i’m so tired i can’t even register it anymore. blah. jetlag fucking bites.

anyway, here’s the photos. warning: massive quanities of incredibly cute baby photos here. i’m gonna miss a whole year’s worth, so i was trying to make up for it in advance. nothing very exciting, really – just chilling with the family. and, babies, babies, babies of course.

back to work tomorrow, then off on wednesday for the dylan concert… hooray!

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