Second Hiatus-from-Hiatus

First of all, no, I don't know yet. Sore subject.

Secondly, David Markham at UUA Way of Life asked me to articulate why I plan to vote for Hallman. I wrote up a list of reasons, posted it at his blog, monkeyed with it a bit, and here it is.

If you're in a hurry, just read reason numero tres because it's really the crux of my feelings on the two, though I don't back it up at all. The other reasons go into a little more detail on why I feel that way.

Here's my reasons. Your mileage, of course, may vary:

1. Morales seems to mostly want to carry on Sinkford's legacy and seems more focused on lobbying and other political work. I really don't think that's a great use of our time and I really resent that political statements are so constantly being made in our names. (My husband refuses to join a UUA church until they halt this practice, so he will probably never join.) I suspect Hallman knows that opinion is unpopular and she has not directly said she would rein a lot of that in, but just from hearing her talk about what she will do, my impression is that she will be much less inclined to toss around the words "Oh behalf of the member congregations of the UUA" than Sinkford has been.

2. Hallman's sermons are thoughtful and awesome and suggest that she really looks at things from a lot of different perspectives and has an understanding of the complexities of issues. I get a sense of slickness and of a tendency to oversimplify in a lot of what Morales has written that I fear will lead to more "There are people who see immigration issues the way I do, and then there are racists"-style declarations from the president's office.

(The Morales campaign seems immensely proud of one survey that they answered more carefully than the Hallman campaign did. The answers to that survey certainly make Morales look like a thoughtful guy and Hallman much less so. But that's one survey. When you actually read what the two candidates have written for their home churches, you develop the opposite impression. Or at least I did. Again, YMMV.)

3. I get a much greater sense of the spiritual and a connection to that which is greater than ourselves from Hallman. She does seems to regard this administrative office as somewhat sacred and I really respect that given the nature of the job she's asking for. Morales appears to be running for UUA Director of Marketing and Product Development for the North American Region.

4. I feel like Morales wants to grow the denomination but doesn't know why, while Hallman really has a sense of who we are. I think Hallman's ideas might attract fewer people initially, but those people will stay. Note how for all Morales' talk about growth, he has only added 300 members to his church. Laurel Hallman has doubled the membership of hers to over 1000 people, and growth isn't even her main focus. The man who keeps talking about growth hasn't done as much of it.

5. Various statements of hers suggest that she gets our polity in a way few UUA leaders do.

6. Someone whom I know very well and trust very much knows both Hallman and Morales well and says without reservation that Hallman's the one for the job.

CC

Hiatus from Hiatus

First of all, a few clarifications:

1. It's not the stresses of law school, which are considerable. It's a specific opportunity that would involve people who don't appreciate the blogging art.

2. No, I don't know yet about the opportunity and remain on pins and needles.

3. I miss blogging lots and am looking into options for having a ...gulp... livejournalish private blog that I would then invite 100s of people to read. I will think about it and will put up a post soliciting email addresses for invitations if I decide to go that route. I'm also working on a different blogging project that would be quite different in scope from the Chaliceblog. We will see.

4. I miss blogging lots and see a story and say "Hey, I should write about that" five plus times per day. It is painfully like when I used to be a reporter and then one day wasn't and still found myself following police cars and pulling out my camera at odd times.

5. I mentioned a long time ago that I am voting for Laurel Hallman, though I didn't make a big fuss about it. I can't imagine that you care, but on the offchance, here you go. As far as I can tell Morales shares most of the things I don't like about Sinkford. Hallman seems to have a very good head on her shoulders and I suspect she would focus on more of the things I'm interested in.

Also, I very much agree with Gini Courter when she writes: At this moment of possibility, Unitarian Universalism needs a leader grounded in our polity who knows that real growth will come not from having a thousand congregations listen to one leader, but from the work of a leader who listens to our thousand congregations.

I think Hallman is that listener. Neither of them is perfect, neither would be a disaster, though.




Ok, now the real reason I am posting today: If you have any interest at all in criminal justice issues Check this out and disseminate widely.

Major squick possibilities in the photographs, but people do need to know that forensic experts and medical examiners who just whore for the prosecution are very much a reality and that people sometimes go to jail for a long time on the basis of lies.

A summary of the story, without video, is here.

People, IRL and on this blog, have been known to ask me why I like and respect and listen to Libertarians so much given that some of them are obviously nuts.

Primarily it's because libertarians care about this stuff and work on it while liberals are so afraid of being seen as "soft on crime" that they won't touch it.

Miss you guys,

CC

How many Southern Presbyterians does it take to change a light bulb?

For a variety of reasons relating to a new thing that might be happening in my life*, I might be shutting down the Chaliceblog fairly soon. If I shut down the Chaliceblog, I'm going to disappear from the blogosphere for awhile because I think that's the only way I can deal and I don't want to hang around your blogs like the retired coworker whom nobody wants to eat lunch with. I will still be available over facebook and e-mail and would love to hear from you because like any retired coworker I know I will be lonely. I will probably go back to commenting when I've gotten some distance.

I tested my resolve on this tonight by deleting 20 posts (some that I very much liked and a couple that had taken hours to write) at the request of someone else because that person convinced me it was the right thing to do. It hurt like hell, but I did it. I now know I can do it again.

In reality, the Chaliceblog's days were numbered the day I got into law school.

Mary-who-dances, after having been fired by a prebyterian church because she is a lesbian, once said to me "Not every change is a fabulous new opportunity, some of them just suck"

This change would be both. It would have wonderful aspects, but I would certainly mourn this blog. And it may not work out and a few weeks from now, I may pull a Nirvana and say "Nevermind" and delete this and go on, but I really care about you guys and didn't want to just disappear with no warning. That said, if I decide to do this, I'm going to move quickly.

So there you go.

CC
who is going to take the opportunity to tell the UUA Washington Office that one of your number told somebody that the Chaliceblog drives y'all crazy and told that person not to tell me because it would give me too much satisfaction.

That person did tell me, and it was indeed immensely gratifying. Thinking about that makes a very sad person very happy.

* No, I'm not knocked up, and yes, theCSO and I are still very much married.

Weird.

Just weird.

CC

That's my (best friend's) boy!

Jana-who-creates reports the following conversation as they were walking into church yesterday

JWC: So, who's your favorite Nintendo character?

ZombieKid: I like Luigi, but I also like Wario.

JWC: Wario? Isn't he a bad guy?

ZK: He's really more of an anti-hero

JWC: Really? What's an Antihero like?

ZK: He's a jerk, but he's doing good things anyway and nobody understands that. He's misunderstood.

JWC: Can you give another example, like from Harry Potter?

ZK: Snape!

CC

Ps. We all saw Coraline and liked it a lot. The 3d is especially cool.

Pps. At least every couple of weeks, this same child sends me an email with a blank subject line and only the words "I like cheese" in the body.

These will catch on with hipsters in 3-2-1...

I'm amazed they haven't already.

CC

So what are the rules on clergy dating?

I'm thinking about writing a fiction peice about a minister* and I'm curious.

What exactly are the rules for single ministers? Thanks to UUgirl's blog, I'm used to reading about this from the Clergy Sexual Misconduct angle, so I don't really know how it is done correctly and have the vague impression that meeting a significant other on the internet, maintaining a long-distance courtship and only bringing schnookums to church once the wedding ring is on her finger is the only really safe way to go about it.

Minister-dating seems so much more complicated than other careers with dating restrictions (e.g. Therapists-Don't. Professors-Wait 'till he graduates. Doctor-Don't ask while he's naked and if you date advise him to see somebody else for medical care)

Some questions...

How they met:

1. If Reverend Bob meets Jane at a non-worship event at the church, like she comes to a church bazaar looking for some furniture and they start talking as he helps her load a desk into her car, can they date?

2. If Jane is of the same faith but attends another local church of the same denomination, can they date?

3. If Jane attends Reverend Bob's church, resigns her membership and joins another local church and calls him up a month later, can they date?

4. If Jane is a member of Reverend Bob's church and he moves to a church in another city and they start e-mailing, can they date?


Dating

5. Can she come to the church bazaar and help out?

6. Can she come to church on Sunday? Occaisionally? Regularly?

7. I take it that she shouldn't join?

8. I'm kinda icked out by the idea that the girlfriend would find the guy being a religious leader sexy and probably won't write it that way. But that's probably grounds for dumping, yes? I mean, if she's wanting you to go naked under your robe or do it in the sanctuary?

9. Any other issues I haven't thought of?

*Not even sure it's a UU minister yet, but I'm assuming the rules are pretty much the same.

A famous name

I have never liked songs with my name.

Ok, in high school, a guy whom I thought was cute wrote the lyrics to the chorus of that "Suzy-Q, baby I love you" song, one line at a time, on a bunch of pages of my yearbook in the lower right corner so that one could flip through and read the song line by line.

That was ok. I mean, he didn't love me, he was just being silly, but it was still highly acceptable.

And "Goin' Over to Susan's House ('cuz I can't be alone tonight)" by the Eels is the only song with my name in it I actually like, and the song has very little to do with Susan and is hella depressing.

And then there's "A boy named Sue," and I don't know if that counts or not.

But I'm not a fan of say, "Runaround Sue," "Ol' Suzannah" and, goodness knows, "Wake up litte Suzy"

But they aren't particularly complimentary to the ladies being sung about, and they weren't written about me.

I guess that's the difference between my, at best, ambivalence about Susan songs and the reaction of the real Peggy Sue

CC

I've been there.

Infinite

These solitary hills have always been dear to me.
Seated here, this sweet hedge, which blocks the distant horizon opening inner silences and interminable distances.
I plunge in thought to where my heart, frightened, pulls back.
Like the wind which I hear tossing the trembling plants which surround me, a voice from the inner depths of spirit shakes the certitudes of thought.
Eternity breaks through time, past and present intermingle in her image.
In the inner shadows I lose myself,
drowning in the sea-depths of timeless love.

Giacomo Leopardi

One more on my pet social justice issue

Sorry, I try not to overdo it on the police raids stuff, but one more thing.

If I've said anything that made you interested in this issue and made you want to work to make a difference, the victim of the raid in the Washington Post story has started a facebook group called "Friends of Cheye Calvo" who are working to make some change.

I'm a member, and I'd love to see some of my pals involved.

Thanks.

CC

A news anchor who deserves a promotion

I, for one, could not have just carried on with what I was saying as if nothing had happened.

That lady is in the right job.

CC

My position has always been...

that non-cancer-stricken people should avoid smoking pot because it makes them annoying to be around on several levels, not because it is physically all that bad for them.

I think Michael Phelps is as good a bit of evidence as we're going to get for the second part of that opinion.

CC

See? I told you people she was awesome

Katy-the-Wise gets a shoutout on The Socinian

CC
imagining the weirdness of Fausto showing up for Katy's sermon and wondering how they crammed that much awesomeness into a tiny church.

Quick *ahem* postmortem on the Murder Mystery Dinner Theatre and excursus about my sucky January

I am very slowly learning the lesson that other people just aren't as into mysteries as I am.

This year we had a crime scene that people could examine themselves and there was a trashcan there with some trash and a clue in it*, and as far as I know, nobody ever even looked through the trash.

Last year, two people got whodunnit and why. This year, something like a dozen people got whodunnit, but nobody got why.

Both years that I've written the MMDT, I've gone around for days worrying that the solution to my mystery will be obvious and everyone will get it and I will look stupid, and so far both years the day after the MMDT, I feel sheepish that so few people got it and that I should have left more clues.

Part of it is that I am used to writing mysteries on paper where:
1. All of the clues are literally inches from your nose
2. If you don't get it, you don't mind.

In a murder mystery dinner theatre, people don't actually look very hard for clues or question people very carefully, but it's sort of weird and awkward when only a couple of people figure something out, or when nobody gets it.

I'll probably write it next year, too. So next year I will make it a little easier, but not too much easier. Sigh.

I spent a lot less time on this year's MMDT because my January has completely sucked. I was really sick for a week or so, my work has been really stressful over the last few weeks and school is complicated as well.

I had a really unpleasant experience in class last week where we were doing Hudson v. Michigan and the professor asked about potential consequences to the police no-knocking one's house**. People said the usual answers "Embarassment, property damage, greater chance of violence." I raised my hand and said that the police would likely kill one's dog.

Everybody laughed like either they thought I was kidding or it was just a really stupid answer in general. The professor said something snarky like "That's a new one."

There was only ten minutes left in class at that point and I spend said ten minutes googling and arranging a set of links about police raids where dogs have been killed, often in raids where the police had the wrong house. I assembled ten or so of them, most of them from the last six months. For pure spite reasons, I put the family dogs killed in front of little children on top. Then I sent the links to my professor.

Knowing that I was right about the dogs and that my answer hadn't been stupid, I left the class head held high. Then I got into the car and burst into tears because, hey, 100 people had just laughed at me to my face and my professor had mocked me. I called a friend as I drove home and poured out my tale of unjustified woe.

As she listened to my sniffling, my friend gently pointed out that the professor probably hadn't meant it the way I'd taken it and the rest of the class probably consisted of people who had never had their houses searched by the police, having not grown up with younger brothers who tended to get them into that sort of situation. I thought about it for a moment and conceded that she was correct that the tone of the discussion made it clear that for most of the rest of the class, police raids are something that happen to criminals, not people like them. That's a pretty crucial difference in point of view.

The professor sent out my links to the entire class. In class on Friday, several people said things like "Wow, CC, I had no idea!" and went on about the brutality of some of these raids.

Damn straight.

Now for people who didn't get the point the first time, an innocent person's dogs killed in a police raid are on the cover of the Washington Post Magazine.

I wish I'd been wrong, though.

Anyway, I'm at work at 8am for a reason and have hours to bill before I sleep.

CC

Ps. At noon on Monday, the small-town mayor who was a victim of the police raid that the post wrote about took questions on Washingtonpost.com

*We did California vs. Greenwood in my criminal procedures class like three days ago.

**My theory is that just about every UU has a civil rights or civil liberties issue that they know most people don't care about but that they feel is vitally important and a moral necessity that we deal with. Police raids are mine.

Don't know if it's because I'm hungry or because I'm tired.

But this looks awesome.

CC

In which CC refuses to honor and uphold "honor and uphold"

Steve Caldwell has the new revision of the Seven Principles posted and Robin Edgar has been talking about how one of the changes is that we are going from "affirming and promoting" the seven principles to "honoring and upholding" them.

I think that change is a mistake and will lead people to treating the seven principles even more like a creed. Plus, I'm not sure how you "uphold" reverence or a goal of world community.

Thoughts?

CC
who really doesn't like the seven principles in the first place, but likes them a lot less when people treat them as a creed.

The ChaliceMom

LOVES to tell the story of the time she was in college, at the same place I went to school, FWIW, and the cafeteria food was so bad that a student took his dinner upstairs to a Board of Trustees meeting to show the board what they were served and ask the board if they themselves would want to eat what the students were expected to.

The food on campus improved markedly.

Now somebody has gone and tried to do the same thing to Virgin Airlines CEO Richard Branson and I find the resulting letter very amusing.

CC

Remember when I was rereading The Fountainead?

Life got busy and I haven't re-finished it yet.

But Cerulean just finished Atlas Shrugged.

And Lisa the Foodie wrote about a geometric, yet edible, pie.

My IRL friends. They are so awesome.

CC

Add to the list of strange law school dreams I've had...

A very vivid dream that I got a C minus in civil procedure.

Now dreaming about getting bad grades in classes I'm taking is not terribly unusual. (Cf. Last semester's Corporations dream where the professor wanted to meet with me and told me I was getting a D. When I protested that we hadn't had any tests, quizzes or assignments in the semester so far, he snapped "I just know!") The weird thing here is that I finished my civil procedure class last May. And while I would hardly say I was the Erie Doctrine rockstar, I did significantly better than a C minus.

FortiesGirl's father has been a doctor for decades and still has the occaisional med school nightmare, so I guess I should just accept that this is going to happen every now and again from this point forward...

CC

This is a cool promotion

Jennifer Beautiful, who was a friend of mine like three years ago whom I haven't seen in forever, used to always see every movie that got an Oscar nomination for best picture every year. It was her thing and she had done it every year for like the last twenty.

If you and Jennifer have similar hobbies, you might want to check out this promotion where AMC theaters are doing an all-day film festival of every movie up for "Best Picture" for $30. Unlimited popcorn, too.

CC
who really doesn't have the attention span for something like this, though she does love her popcorn.

A puzzlement

Piercing the ears of cats and selling them on the internet as "gothic kittens" is Animal cruelty

Declawing is not.

Discuss.

CC
who can't really see herself peircing a cat's ears, though she did have an all-black cat in college who wore one of those spiked Johnny Rotten bracelets as a collar. (Vet said that it was ok since it didn't seem to be bothering the cat.)

But is WAY not OK with declawing.

I find this question impossible.

David Markham at UU Way of Life is presenting a series of questions that the new candidates for UUA President were asked, and commenting on their answers. One of those questions really got me:

"What experiences have you had that help you deeply understand the mindset and values of another culture?"

Honestly, I don't feel like I get other cultures*, indeed, I'm not sure I get my own and have learned most of what I know from hearing what other people say about it. I can observe differences from my own as I perceive it, but I think the question assumes a lot. Heck, I'm a Northern Virginian who has lived around "real" southerners quite a bit and married into a North Carolina family and I wouldn't claim to really get Southern Culture.

I don't think my lack of desire comes from a lack of curiosity, just a cognizance that what I see I see through the eyes of someone in my culture and an invitation to claim that you understand another culture's mindset is an invitation to make an ass of yourself.

Markham calls for using the "platinum rule," which is "Do unto others as they would have you do unto them," which he says calls for an understanding of the "values, opinions, beliefs, practices, and preferences of the other." The most straightforward way to find all this out would be to ask them in what promises to be a lengthy interview. If you're not directly asking, you're probably making a lot of assumptions that are based in how you perceive you would feel if you were in their shoes anyway.

For simple things, which really constitute most of human interaction (e.g. "If I were carrying a bunch of packages and I dropped them, I would want someone to help me pick them up," "If I were practicing a presentation in front of a co-worker, I would want them to be diplomatic and encouraging, but to tell me if they saw a mistake before I did the presentation in front of the boss," etc,) the plain old Golden rule is going to have to do.

Also, there's a certain amount of cockiness inherent in saying you follow the platinum rule because in doing so you're claiming to understand someone else's needs and desires well enough to act on them.

Once, a good friend's wife was having a baby, and I encouraged him to call me any time of day or night when she went in to labor. Both husand and wife were effusive that they would love to have me there and they called a few times when she had false labor and theCSO and I went rushing over and sat with them through it. One afternoon, her husband called to say she'd had the baby the previous evening. Later I asked him why he hadn't called and he said:

"Well, it was late at night, and you have such a high-pressure job. My wife knew you wouldn't have wanted to come out here, but I know you would have felt obligated, so we decided not to bother you."

"Umm... Wouldn't you have wanted to come if I were having a baby?"

"Of course!" he said "But I'm not as focused on work as you are and I don't have a high-pressure law job. We knew you would *really* want to get some sleep so you could get lots of work done"**

The platinum rule in action.

I can see where people are coming from with the Platinum rule on a theoretical level, but I would say that it takes a great deal of confidence in your own understanding to pull off, and I don't think that level of confidence would be justified in most people. Indeed, probably the more certain you are that you understand, the less confident I am that you do since the primary think that brings a feeling of confidence on these issues is oversimplification.

I don't think Rabbi Hillel's words "That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow, this is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary, go and learn it," are in any danger of going out of style.

This is the root of my issue with "reaching out" to people of other races and classes. I really don't know how to do that without being insulting. Particularly given the number of gay folks who find the "welcoming congregation" stuff annoying and insulting, and I would think that would be easier.

I think everyone can agree that getting greater diversity in our congregations is a good thing, whether that means reaching out to people of other races or other classes. I just think we're paralyzed by the discomfort people have shown with what we've done already. (I think just about all recognitions of Kwanzaa have making the African-Americans in the congregation feel welcome as at least a partial goal. Ever seen an African-American actually enjoy a UU Kwanzaa recognition? The ones I've seen have always looked vaguely uncomfortable.)

I don't think it's lack of desire. I think this stuff is just next to impossible to do well.

CC

*And when I do feel like I get it intellectually, I still don't feel it, so I don't think I really understand it. For an example "We're a poor and tight-knit community and you were born here and you're 'one of us.' If you study hard and go to college and become a professor like you want to, then you won't be one of us and you will forget your roots and who you are. Indeed, you will be abandoning your community. So every time I see you studying, I'm going to remind you that 'real' members of our culture don't do that and if your friends kick your ass for using big words and acting like you're better than the rest of us by talking about that Shakespeare stuff, I'm going to turn a blind eye to it."

As far as I know, that's not a terribly inaccurate summary of some people's attitudes about kids who are "trying to be white," or "acting too big for their britches." (Indeed, for evidence of this attitude and the impact it has one only needs to look to Faith Hill singing that "A Mississippi girl don't change her ways, just because everybody knows her name, ain't big headed from a little bit of fame" or Jennifer Lopez reminding fans "Don't be fooled by the rocks that I got, I'm still, I'm still, Jenny from the block" to see that fears about success separating one from one's roots are very real.) I think I understand the logic intellectually. But I can't imagine feeling the feelings behind it, and I think one has to do that to truly say one understands a mindset.

**Yes, I've considered the possibility that she and her husband decided they wanted to be alone, but she swears up and down that this isn't the case and they had called a few other times when she thought she was in labor. I honestly think she believed that she was doing what I would really want her to do.

Squee!

Can't wait.

CC

I don't know how typical this is

I hope the answer is "not Very"

We had a far less extreme but still quite unpleasant version of this guy heading up the campus police when I was in college.

CC

LinguistFriend: Simeon in the Temple of Democracy

(We can't get LinguistFriend's blogger account working for whatever reason, so I posted this for him, but he wrote it... CC)


Kit Ketcham has provided us at her blog with the words of Rev. Joseph Lowery's benediction at the end of Obama’s inauguration ceremony. Lowery, as Kit recalls, was cofounder with Martin Luther King Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Lowery’s own words are indeed wonderful, but they reminded me of other words which further illuminate the nature of yesterday's drama for people of his generation. My best Latin teacher, Dr. John Colby of Phillips Andover school, initiated his students to the reading of Latin prose in the form of medieval Latin legends and the Latin Bible. One of these biblical texts was spoken by the elderly Simeon (Luke 2:25-33), to whom it had been foretold that he would see the Messiah before he died. So he waited at the temple in Jerusalem, and when the infant Jesus was brought to the temple, Simeon took him in his arms, and blessed God and spoke the words known as the Song of Simeon: "Now you let go your servant, oh Lord, according to your word in peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel". This text I learned in Latin many years ago; the English version here is a mixture of the NRSV and my version of the Nestle-Aland Greek text.

Obama of course is not the Messiah, and he does not claim to be, although the tasks that await him are worthy of one. But the role of Rev. Lowery at the inauguration was precisely that of Simeon. His text, which Kit has kindly made available, deserves to be read carefully. From another point, of view, Lowery is also a distinguished representative of countless many Africo-American people. I am reminded more than others of the faculty of Hampton University, where my father taught architecture many years ago, and other black professionals for whom such an event as yesterday’s could have been no more than a wild dream. My black adopted youngest son sent me a message from Los Angeles yesterday, expressing that fact well: “ Take time to reflect on how amazing this day is historically!!! WOW!!!” (his emphasis), words that have less dignity than the song of Simeon, but also work.

LinguistFriend

Awesome.

The Obamas, photographed and interviewed the year CC graduated from high school.

I love this sort of thing.

CC

Never ever.

We're at the Chaliceparents' house. TheCSO is fixing their furnace. CC, unqualified in furnace repair, is making conversation.

CC: Hey ma? You've lived in DC all your life. Do you ever remember an event that so filled the mall that people who wanted to attend were turned away?

TheChaliceMom: Never. Never, never, ever. Fourth of Julys are never like this, that big concert on New Years in 2000* wasn't like this. I was taking your brother to the Metro so he could get to work today, and at 5:00 a.m. there was a line of cars all the way down Haycock road as people were trying to park at the Metro station. The Million Man march? Not like this. The march on Washington either. I've never seen anything like this.

Wow.

CC



* Free Will Smith concert.

This blog post previously recorded live

11:45 - Yes, I’m watching from a bar, indeed, a bar with no wifi so I will have to post this later. Intense Elizabeth asks on Facebook why on earth any DC locals wouldn’t be down on the mall.

A few reasons:

1. When I got up this morning, it was eleven fucking degrees down there.
2. They have closed the mall and are turning people away. Meanwhile, on the news they are showing people who took eight hour bus rides to be here. This is my moment as much as is theirs’, but I think the folks from the bus deserve to see it live if they want to more than I do.
3. Everyone down there who’s not a VIP is watching on jumbotrons anyway. I’m watching on a TV, too. In a nice warm bar where I can get a Guinness. As far as I can tell, the primary draw of being down there is getting to watch in a big crowd of enthusiastic people. Not my scene.

11:50 – Rick Warren is doing a decent job. He’s a big shmuck, but he is. I still don’t see this as much of a big deal. I mean, he’s a Hitler-admiring, abused-wife-chastening, homophobic dumbass, but it’s just a prayer, his wasn’t substantially different from what anyone else’s would have been, and I think it makes liberals look petty when they bitch about this essentially meaningless gesture of Obama’s.

11:51 At the same time, he really did say “Malia” and “Sasha” as if they were expensive cheeses that nobody can pronounce.

11:53 –OMG. I have intense love for Aretha Franklin’s hat. And her singing.

11:57 - Biden is taking his oath. Nice tie. When I became a notary public and had to be sworn in, I kinda hoped someone would make me promise to defend the
constitution. No such luck.

12:00 Barack Obama quietly became president in the middle of the musical performance. It doesn’t happen when he’s sworn in, it happens at noon.

12:03 – Nice music BTW. Jana-who-creates’ facebook status notes that the musicians look very happy to be there.

12:04 Chief Justice Roberts still called him "senator". Maybe he hadn't looked at his watch.

12:05 Obama blew the oath slightly. Watch the wacky conservative bloggers claim that he’s not REALLY the president.

12:06 –The whole bar spontaneously broke out in applause.

12:08 – It was gracious of Obama to thank Bush.

12:10 – The Calvinist that remains in me gets a little swoony when Obama starts to talk about hard work and sacrifice and how it will be required of us.

12:13 Yay “Work of remaking America”

12:14- This is a really good speech.

12:15- There’s another TV on across the bar on a channel that has a feed slightly behind this one. I can understand why they felt the need to put politicians on a delay. I hear Cheney likes to work blue.

12:19 I really like “because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation”

12:20 “We will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist” I got chills, kids.

12:22 I’m sure there’s a good reason why some people are watching from behind chain-link fences, but it’s really not a pleasant image. TheCSO points out that they are about as nice as temporary fences get, which is not to say they are a good thing

12:23 Is this the first time atheists have gotten a shoutout in an inaugural speech? Wouldn’t surprise me.

12:28 I do not have a great record of understanding poetry, but this poem seems nice and straightforward. Nobody calls them “boomboxes” anymore, but that’s minor. Good poem.

12:30 There’s a lady who has to be eighty at an adjacent table watching rapt.

12:33 I think I’m pretty much tuning out everybody’s prayers today.

12:35 Malia Obama isn’t paying attention either, but she’s trying to hide it. Poor kid.

12:37 Ok, that prayer got interesting at the end.

12:40 Right in the middle of the star-spangled banner, they showed a woman just screaming with joy and the tears started. Yep, that’s me, crying in a bar, hand over heart.

12:41 Much love for Hillary’s electric blue coat

12:43 Someone on MSNBC just mentioned that Obama is known as “no drama Obama” yet nobody else seems to be able to hold their emotions in check around him. Ayup. I’ve cried with happiness over Obama twice. Unprecedented.

12:50 George W. Bush looks more relaxed than I’ve ever seen him and Cheney older and more pathetic. Godspeed.

1:00 Headed home to crash for a bit and eventually head out for tonight's festivities.

CC's view of the inauguration

Today's XKCD

is pretty funny.

CC

Ps. If you don't get it, you're probably not familiar with this ancient dinosaur of a dirty joke.

Who wants to watch a prayer anyway?

A Chalicesseur e-mailed me yesterday, asking if the Rev. Gene Robinson* were cut from the program for the big inauguration kickoff because she had watched it on TV and hadn't seen the prayer. (The event was exclusively covered by HBO, but HBO made it available to just about everybody and has it viewable for free on the web.)

I poked around and found out a couple of mentions of how the Rev. Robinson did speak, HBO just didn't show it. They are saying the Obama campaign told them not to bother.

Needless to say, some people are treating this as a big conspiracy worthy of the same sort of breathless attention they no doubt gave the government's secret plan to bring down the twin towers and crash airplanes full of innocent people to get at secret stores of gold beneath the world trade center.

Honestly, lots of stuff in Washington starts with opening prayers, and as far as I know those prayers are rarely televised because, honestly, very few people actually give a damn about the prayer. (For what it's worth as far as I can tell nobody actually gives a damn about this prayer, only about the man giving it. This post would not exist had Obama picked a less famous liberal religious figure to give the invocation**. If you do care about the content of the prayer, the text is right here. It's a perfectly nice prayer, but nothing controversial.)

As someone who follows police brutality and poorly-justified-police-raid cases***, I'm no stranger to, say, multiple cameras that mysteriously all stop working at convenient times,but I don't really see a conspiracy behind the show's speaker problems that made Robinson's works inaudible to a portion of the crowd. Also, I don't particularly object to HBO and/or the Obama campaign's decision to not show the prayer. I'm generally all about not making people sit through prayers they don't care about and I'm fairly certain almost everyone who watched the program was there to see Garth Brooks and Tom Hanks.

I will say though, that the signs are piling up that gay rights is not a hill that Obama particularly wants to die on, particularly as a matter of PR. I have mixed feelings on that. I have a lot of sympathy for gay rights and its supporters. I don't have a lot of sympathy for the fact that Obama's actual appointments of gays and lesbians to good jobs seems to be ignored in the face of a bunch of fussing about a symbolic gesture.

And I still don't know what it means that now three ministers have been used to attack Obama and he hasn't taken office yet.

Thoughts?

CC

*He's the gay Episcopal bishop that the conservative Episcopalians have their panties in a twist about. Obama put him on the program after the fuss about featuring Rick Warren broke out.

** Unless he were a UU. But hey, we were good enough for Obama's grandmother's funeral, and that's saying something...

*** Remember? I also have a liberal civil rights issue that I care passionately about that nobody else gives a damn about. (Ironically, the only time I've seen people care about it is in the killing of Oscar Grant in the BART shooting and in that case, the cop involved seems genuinely remorseful and has quit the force. That doesn't sound like much, but just so you know, it pretty much never turns out that way.)

So, what's your take on sin? Institutional sin?

A cheery topic for a Saturday, right?

Don't know why it's on my mind today.

As a kid, my parents were pretty firm on the point that sins weren't a list of specific acts, though certain acts were almost always going to end up that way. They always said that a sin was "that which distances you from God."*

(e.g. If you pull the plug on your aging grandmother to relieve her suffering, then that might not well be a sin. But if you cheat on your taxes and that guilt makes you focus on yourself and making up justifications for your greed and convincing yourself that everyone is as greedy as you are, then your tax cheating becomes a sin and you've probably talked yourself into doing it on a greater scale next year.)

I think you have to be a certain kind of thoughtful person for my folks' view to really work, but I confess I haven't found a better one. They were pretty light on the "sin" point anyway. I think of them as "functional Universalists"** as for them hell sort of existed but was a very empty place.

I had a long talking to from my Great Aunt at one point when I was a kid, and she quite literally "put the fear of God in me," so for awhile I ran around trying to figure out the relative goodness vs. evil of my actions to make sure my soul would balance out OK if I were hit by a truck.

I wonder sometimes if "sin" is even a useful term. I has such gravitas that I find it hard to give up, but like most theological terms, it has vastly different meanings to different people.

For example, though philosophies vary on the rightness of treating corporations as functional humans under the law, I think most of agree that corporations can sin through a sort of collective selfishness and distancing from that which is good and right.*** Indeed, I'd say that any human institution is as capable of sin as any human. Is there any UU that can't rattle off a list of sins they percieve in the UUA? Is there anyone who can't come up with a list of bad things their company does. Not as extreme as the example in my footnote, I'll grant you. But very much there.

For another example, I really hate it when Virginia executes people as (even putting justice concerns, and I do have them, aside) I fundamentally believe it is immoral to cut off someone's chance to find personal redemption. What is Virginia but an organized amalgamation of Virginians? I'm a Virginian. When Virginia kills someone, isn't there a bit of blood on my hands?

In a sense, my post-Aunt-Bert evaluating-and-balancing approach wasn't such a bad thing. Judging the sins of other people really isn't my business, or really doesn't become my business until "sins" become "crimes" or "actionable" and then we have a mechanism for that which removed my opinion from the picture anyway unless I am serving a specialized role in the process. But we all have to evaluate the relative sins of the institutions we're a part of much as we would consider any other bad quality of them.

The UUA and Virginia all do enough good that I can view what sins they commit as something to work on rather than an ender, though I try to keep in mind that my personal affection for an organization does not mean I should give them a pass on the things they do that I think are suboptimal for the world. (Easy to do in the case of the UUA as I don't have much personal affection for that institution. Not so easy for Virginia, a state that I have great personal affection for despite it's many drawbacks that I can totally see.)

Anyway, sorry for the somewhat rambling nature of this post. I'm still thinking a lot of this stuff through and when something makes me think, I get long winded about it.

CC


*I consider this pretty interchangeable with "that which distances us from Good," FWIW.

**"Mom, is there a hell?"
"Oh, I suppose"
"Do bad people go there?"
"Very bad people"
"Like the kid who calls me names at recess?"
"Oh no, more like Hitler or maybe Jack the Ripper. But you have to be very, very bad. No one you know"
-A conversation CC recalls having with her mother when CC was something like seven

*** For an extreme example "Sure, this chemical has been found to cause cancer and is illegal in America, but we have all this stock on hand and it's not illegal in South America yet..."

Is this a "people who have children" thing?

I've noticed an interesting divider between my friends who have kids and those that don't, and I'm wondering if this is a coincidence or if I'm seeing a trend.

If I have plans with a friend who doesn't have children, a group that includes my husband, and someone has to cancel, the request to cancel usually sounds something like

"hey, I'm being flaky here and I'm really sorry. But is there any way we could not go with what we were going to do? I mean, we could do it next week, or something, It is really OK? I mean, if it's really important to you..."

while when a friend who has kids cancels, it's always something like

"Can't make it tonight, turns out my husband wants me to do X instead"

or

"Kids are sick, have to cancel."

Should the person who cancelled something on me today be reading this, I should emphasize that I'm not particularly annoyed about this one time and I get that sick kids happen, I've just observed that the last minute ditching is something that all of my friends with kids do and universally with a certain unapologetic efficiancy, and I'm trying to puzzle out why kids would be what makes the difference.

I've wondered in the past if maybe having kids turns the line between family and friends into a sort of barrier. I totally get how time with one's spouse or taking care of a sick child is really important. But from the childless person's perspective, we have important stuff too, but we don't generally present the issue with the implicit message "Of course you understand that you're less important than the central people in my life, and the minute one of them beckons, I must immediately cancel."

I'm also wondering if this is the social version of the oft-voiced work concern that people who have kids take a lot of time off for kid-related things and bosses are inclined to be cool with it. (FWIW, I have heard that, though my impression is that bosses AREN'T especially inclined to be cool with it.)

Anyway, that's what I'm wondering about today.

CC
ducking and covering, because she rememebers the "little kids in church" fight she started a couple of years ago.

How to make fire when you're stranded on a desert island

A service to any Chaliceblog readers who are currently or might in the future be stranded on a desert island.

For all of these, you're going to want to find an area that's as open as possible, preferably with no trees over it. Mostly, this is to keep the fire from spreading, but it could also help you get rescued.

Try to get some stones and make a fire triangle. The stones help keep the fire from spreading, as well as insulating and protecting it, and the triangle is the international distress symbol.

Now, a few methods for getting the fire started.

1. The "plane crash" method
Get a nine volt battery, some tinder and a bit of steel wool. Put down the tinder. Put the battery on top of the tinder. Put the steel wool on top of the battery, touching both terminals. Stand back.

2. The "nerd" method
Use your glasses to focus some sun against some tinder.

3. The "I was a boy scout" method
Pull the flint and steel you always carry with you out of your pocket. Use.

4. The "McGyver of the Woods" method
Get a sturdy, but bendy stick and some vines or a shoelace. Tie the vines to one end of the bendy stick and then to the other, forming a bow.

OK, I'm boring myself already explaining this. Here's a detailed explanation.

CC

25 things about CC

Answering IntenseElizabeth's meme:

1. Yesterday, I got a splinter on my lip from a chopstick. Grrr. The splinter’s gone now, and the stir-fry and brown rice were almost worth it, though.

2. I have such a bad record of assuming that unreliable and obnoxious people can change that TheCSO likes to say that I should get a job at GE touching hot stoves to make sure they’re still hot.

3. TheCSO and I have a very set pattern when it comes to early adoption of technological things. Before we get it, he says we have to have it, I say we don’t need it. After we get it, he forgets about it and I use it every day.

4. I love elephants and the elephant sanctuary in Tennessee is one of my favorite charities.

5. When I was something like five, I ate shrimp with catsup until I made myself sick. For the next ten years, I could eat neither shrimp nor catsup, though I’m OK with both now.

6. I’ve shaken hands with John McCain and liked him at the time.

7. I had an ok novella published by my college press, and have a mediocre novel gunking up my hard drive. One day, I’d like to write detective novels.

8. Katharine Hepburn was my childhood hero. Robertson Davies is my adulthood hero, though I still have great respect for Kate.

9. When I retire, I want to run a Christmas tree farm. TheCSO does not. Luckily, we have decades to work this out.

10. The only diet soda I can stand is sugar free Red Bull, but I could drink that all day.

11. TheCSO and I are naming our cats in alphabetical order. So far, we’ve had Agatha and Boris, our current cats are Cool Disco Dan, Dr. Frank-n-furter, Esperanto and Ursus. We didn’t name Ursus.

12. I really liked Las Vegas and I look forward to going back.

13. I almost never watch TV without a laptop in front of me.

14. I think “Confederacy of Dunces” is one of the best things ever written. Ditto the “Declaration of Independence”

15. When I’m feeling down, I go to the movies. It helps more often than not.

16. I hated science in school, but I think about it a lot. I like to imagine the forces on things and that I can feel electrons zipping back and forth to balance things out. I’m kind of a nerd.

17. I’m a sucker for homeless people asking me for money and charitable appeals of all types.

18. I’ve been experimenting with carrying only cash rather than a card or checkbook.

19. My favorite word is “lagniappe.” I also like “googled” and “if”

20. I’m mildly claustrophobic.

21. I don’t pay much attention to celebrity romances, usually, but I would be sad if Ellen DeGeneres and Portia DeRossi broke up.

22. I am really looking forward to the biopic about the Notorious B.I.G. and I’m not sure why. I really don’t know anything about rap music at all, though I suspect I can learn a lot from the movie. The preview intrigued me. I suspect I will end up seeing it alone.

23. I tried to read “Twilight” to see what all the fuss was about, and I got bored and didn’t get through it. I should probably try again.

24. I have more than twice as many mutual facebook friends with Jana-who-creates as I do mutual facebook friends with theCSO.

25. I really don’t like Atlanta, but I love Epilonious. So far my dislike of Atlanta has mostly won. Thank goodness for IM.

CC

Best Evah

This, my friends, is the coolest thing on the entire internet.

CC

Bleh.

Feel free to cheer me up.

CC

Feel like beating your head against a wall?

Dennis Prager has a new column on why women should submit to sex they don't want. Oddly enough, he goes out of his way to mention that when your "mood" relates to "childhood trauma," that's not a good reason to refuse sex.

Also, Dennis Prager knows that women only really want sex once a month.

And then there's this part:
The baby boom generation elevated feelings to a status higher than codes of behavior. In determining how one ought to act, feelings, not some code higher than one’s feelings, became decisive: “No shoulds, no oughts.” In the case of sex, therefore, the only right time for a wife to have sex with her husband is when she feels like having it. She never “should” have it. But marriage and life are filled with “shoulds.”

I really imagine I would have trouble having sex with someone for whom having sex with me was a "should" or an "ought."

Apparently our pal Dennis does not share this qualm.

And I think this part:

Many contemporary women have an almost exclusively romantic notion of sex: It should always be mutually desired and equally satisfying or one should not engage in it.

Offers many clues on Prager's multiple marriages and why he believes that women, left to their own devices, only want sex once a month.

You know, dude, if the women in your life aren't disiring sex or finding it satisfying, the problem might not all be them.

CC

Google's Quote of the Day

is from CC's hero Robertson Davies:

Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.

Good news to end a crappy year.

2008 was a really, really sucky year for a lot of people and I've been interested to hear that reflected in the New Years Conversations people are having.

I paid a guy who did some work for me the other day and his e-mailed response was:

Thanks,

Here's to a better 2009 than 2008!

All best wishes,

John

John is not alone in talking this way. For me, a few nice things happened on a personal level, a few really shitty things happened on a personal level. But mostly the overall suck of world events soaked into my life, too.

Obama's election notwithstanding, I think a lot of people are glad this year is over. But it's probably worth noting that in many respects, life is on an upswing.

For example, people's complaints about violent videogames notwithstanding
Violent crime rates continue to be at their lowest in recent history. Sex crimes and crimes against kids are down, too.

I get that whether the average life expectancy hitting a new record is a good thing is a complicated question for those concerned about the population crisis. But I will confess that I'm pleased

Also, teen sex is down, teen pregnancy is down, teen condom use is up. The abortion rate is at its lowest in 30 years*.

Yay us!

CC
Links swiped from one of Radley Balko's columns.

*Arguably, the abortion rate is low partially because there are so few places that will perform them these days. But I would think the condom use and teen pregnancy being down would have a lot to do with it, too, so I'm still calling that a win.

One word meme stolen from facebook.

YOU CAN ONLY ANSWER EACH QUESTION WITH ONE WORD. GOOD LUCK!

1. Where is your cell phone? Desk

2. Your significant other? CSO

3. Your hair? Improving

4. Your mother? Sigh.

5. Your father? Melancholy

6. Your favorite thing? Discussions

7. Your dream last night? Anxious

8. Your favorite drink? Gimlet

9. Your dream/goal? Buffy

10. The room you're in? Office

11. Your fear? Emptiness

12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Courtroom

13. Where were you last night? Home

14. What you're not? Secretary

15. Muffins? Pass

16. One of your wish list items? Purse

17. Where you grew up? Virginia

18. The last thing you did? Sighed

19. What are you wearing? Clothes

20. Your favorite TV show? Bones

21. Your pet? Numerous

23. Your life? Lived

24. Your mood? Restless

25. Missing someone? Indeed.

26. Your car/truck? Conspicuous

27. Something you're not wearing? Makeup

28. Favorite Store? Nordstrom

29. Your summer? Indistinguishable

30. Your favorite color? Blue

31. When is the last time you laughed? Recently

32. Last time you cried? Distant

THREE PEOPLE WHO E-MAIL ME: Linguistfriend, ZombieKid, Kim

THREE PLACES I GO OVER AND OVER: Church, Work, School

THREE OF MY FAVORITE FOODS: BBQ, Thai, Rotisserie

PLACE I WOULD RATHER BE RIGHT NOW: Vegas

WHO I THINK WILL RESPOND: Few

Merry Christmas, y'all

"So, have a merry Christmas, a happy Hanukkah, a kwaazy Kwanza, a tip-top Tet, and a solemn, dignified, Ramadan. And now a word from MY god, our sponsors!"

Krusty the Clown


I'm headed to Charlotte, NC. Random travel pics and posting from there may for may not happen.

Have a great holiday.

Love and Kisses,

CC

Response to the responses on audiobooks.

Harry Potter 6 is available as an audiobook on Itunes, but was fifty bucks. For a book I had read, that just seemed like too much, so I went with Jess' suggestion The Graveyard Book and the lastest non-fiction science book by longtime CC girl crush Natalie Angier.

Tom Robbins is awesomesauce and I went through a phase in college where I read everything he had written. "Jitterbug perfume" was my favorite.

I don't know much Terry Pratchett, but "Good Omens" was pretty good.

CC

Melissa Etheridge is awesome

and I wish more people followed her example.

CC

Another shining example of "traditional marriage"

written by a man who knows all about marriages, having had three of them.


CC

All the little devils must be wearin' ice skates

Because CC is sending you to a Post about Oppression.

It's just that awesome.


CC

CC's latest consumer complaint

Dear Phillips,

If I am looking for Iphone Earbuds and your earbuds say "Not compatible with Iphone" I will buy another company's earbuds and you will make no profit.

HOWEVER

If I am looking for Iphone Earbuds and your earbuds say "Compatible with Ipod" in large lettering and do not say "But not Iphone" anywhere on the package then...

1. I will take said earbuds back to the store

AND

2. I will get a refund

AND

3. The store, unable to sell used Earbuds, will send them back and either you will refund the store or the store will take a bath on your products and be disinclined to re-order

AND

4. I will hate you and not want to buy any of your products again and tell all my friends.

SO...

YOU ARE MUCH WORSE OFF THAN IF YOU HAD JUST BEEN STRAIGHTFORWARD WITH ME IN THE FIRST PLACE.

CC

An obvious point that some other people have trouble getting

Some people are just plain off-limits romantically and sexually.

And I'm not even talking about like fifteen-year-olds who will grow out of being off-limits and whom you could always date later.

I'm talking about off-limits, for life, don't even try it.

For a few examples:

1. Catholic Preists. (Whether or not you are Catholic. And flirting with priests is just plain tacky, which is not to say that those of us who have priests teaching some classes don't see people do it all the time.)

2. Your therapist. (It's not the therapist, it's you. Trust me.)

3. Your mentally ill sister's husband

There. Wasn't that simple?

I honestly think few myths have done as much damage to the world as the idea that we each have one person out there who is "the one" and we could never truly be happy with anyone else so any crazy thing we do "for love" is automatically justified.

CC
who fully expects Nora Ephron to go out and write a romantic, schmaltzy movie about a woman who falls in love with the priest who has been giving her spiritual counsel and is explicably married to her sister. BUT THAT WON'T MAKE IT RIGHT

Another day, another meme

1. Aside from reading, my favorite pastimes are -having long conversations.

2. If I were not a desk driver, I would be -desperately looking for another job. Most of the jobs I like are pretty desk-oriented

3. I am irrationally worried about -Flunking out of law school or getting pregnant at a really inconvenient time*.

4. If I were the opposite sex -I would have one less irrational worry.

5. The thing I miss most about childhood is -umm... err... No! Wait! I got one! No, nevermind. Seriously, I wasn't a particularly happy kid and I wouldn't have any of it back for anything.

6. I like to collect - erotic novels, snowglobes

7. Though I’ve never been there, I feel inexplicably homesick for -Salterton, Canada, where Robertson Davies' Salterton Trilogy is set.

8. I’ve never really liked to eat - marshmellows, though I will sometimes consume them around a campfire just to be a sport.

9. When I have nightmares, they’re usually about -Getting chased by wild dogs and/or hurting someone I love.

10. Magazines subscribed to: Lots of them, but the Economist, the ABA Journal and Entertainment Weekley are the only ones I read with any regularity.

CC
who tags you, yes, you, with this meme. Answer on your blog on in the comments as appropriate.

*Somehow, when I imagine this, it's an inconvenient time for the entire world. Like everybody is pissed off to see my pregnant self as if I'm polluting the gene pool at a time when we particularly don't need that. That's what makes that one irrational. And as far as I can tell, nobody flunks out of law school, not even the kids who appear to be trying.

Book-on-Tape bleg

Hey, I'm leaving on Wednesday afternoon and driving down to Charlotte, NC, which is a seven hour drive minimum even in non-Christmas Eve conditions. I'm going to download a book on tape or two to my iphone and am open to suggestions.

Something beach-read-y would probably be perfect. If I don't get a suggestion I like more, I may get Harry Potter 6 since the movie is coming out, but I'd like to do something I haven't read. At the same time, it needs to be amusing enough to make me not hate life when I'm stuck in traffic.

Suggestions welcome.

I like mysteries, soft sci-fi and contemporary fiction, not so much the romance fan.

For non-fiction it would have to be, like, Freakonomics-level entertaining.

CC

CC grasps the obvious

Obvious lessons I have re-learned in the last 72 hours through unrelated incidents:

1. Giving is better than recieving, and sometimes helping somebody out is the best anti-depressant there is.

2. Sometimes giving one's time is the best gift of all, and the most appreciated.

3. Those who a machinating, particularly young people, should bear in mind that someday, all the scheming and drama will be retrospectively hilarious.

4. Logic is just plan lost on some people.

5. Sleeping in doesn't necessarily cure all, but it does tend to help with symptoms.

CC

Playing Cinderella

Further discussion of my inaugural gown is going on at PB's Beauty Tips for Ministers blog.

CC

CC can't sleep and writes more-or-less stream of consciousness for half an hour.

My annual Christmas blues are upon me.

Also, I had to drop the SmartCar off at the Mercedes dealership where everybody is a complete dick. Now that SmartCars are more well-known (Or maybe because I've only left the DC Metro area once since August) people don't ask me about the car as much as they used to. So now the most annoying thing about owning a SmartCar has become getting it fixed. There's a problem that keeps turning the check engine light on and theCSO thinks that if the car becomes legally a lemon we should have the paperwork to prove it.

And because Mercedes owns Smart and Smart has no repair shops of its own, tonight I dropped the SmartCar off at the Mercedes dealership with a service department that closes at seven in the fastest growing region of the DC metro area, where they don't touch SmartCars on Saturdays, can't fax you a service history and will, eyes gleaming, give you the third degree to make sure you haven't violated your warranty because it would be totally awesome if they didn't have to cover the repair. Oh, and last time they attempted to fix this problem, they freaking LOST my car and Joe-the-Math guy and I awkwardly stood around the service department for like half an hour, calling theCSO to ask him if he was quite certain the guy he had talked to was Jim and that Jim hadn't said anything about, oh, vaporizing the car.

What was weird was that I came home tonight and watched an episode of "Criminal Minds" where there was a serial killer targeting people who drove fancy cars. The juxtaposition might have been funny had it not been the most depressing episode ever. As it was, it was just kinda darkly ironic. Besides, I don't mind people who DRIVE fancy cars, clearly it's the guys who FIX fancy cars in the Tysons Corner area who are complete tools.

My better nature says that probably the root of the problem is that Mercedes customers are, on the whole, complete tools themselves and the Mercedes "customer service" people treat Smart customers like crap as a sort of vacation from the slavish service they give their REAL customers.

Hell, I can understand that. In college, I spent a very unhappy month folding neckties in the men's department of a department store at Christmas time.

This job has exactly two benefits:

1. The long crazy hours keep you out of your house.
2. Everyone who went to high school with you works at the same mall that month, allowing lots of opportunities to sneak off and make out with people whom you shouldn't have dated the first time, either. And now they can talk about economics.

But I digress.

Either because I was really good at folding ties or really bad (I never could tell) I was promoted to running the Coach counter for the last few weeks before Christmas. Thinking back, I'm fairly certain those Mercedes customer service guys all shopped for Coach products that season because half of my customers were exactly like them and talked to me like I was their overpriced-leather-goods-bearing-minion. The other half were annoying rubes who thought that I held the key to the magic status products that they could afford. "Is this wallet on sale? How about this one? Is that the REAL price?"

I longed to someday say "Gee, that wallet is COACH and it's CHRISTMAS EVE. Do YOU think it's on sale?"

But the thing is, I didn't, because I'm not a complete tool.

While we're on the subject of not being a complete tool, a guy in CVS who owed me sixteen dollars in change gave me thirty five because he mistook a twenty for a one. My cognizance of the number of study aids a free nineteen bucks could by a girl notwithstanding, I gave him his nineteen bucks back. In a perfect world, this post would be about how that restored my Christmas spirit.

Ah well.

Perhaps I should be trying to cheer myself up.

Ok, let's think of good things.

For example, thanks to the fact that I celebrate "Epiphany" with my parents and LinguistFriend in January, the first phase of my Christmas shopping is almost done. In contrast to my parents who are impossible to please, theCSO's parents and family in general are easy to shop for. I live out my nonfiction-reading fantasies through my father-in-law, who got, for example, a book about Alfred Hitchcock's relationships with women from us last year along with two other books I wanted to read. He likes insightful biographies and "the complete history of something completely random like flutes or coffee that turn out to have a long and interesting past and a wide-reaching impact on our culture" sorts of books. Also, stuff reviewed favorably in "The Economist."

So basically, smart people books that sound really cool, but are close enough to the type of reading that I do for school that I can't stand to read them when I'm at a semester break and don't have time to any other time.

Which is not to say I didn't buy myself a copy of that Hitchcock book, too. I will have to ask theCSO's dad at Christmas if it was any good.

I have not even done our Christmas card. Sigh. (CC designs her and theCSO's Christmas card every year.)

And I'd really like to throw an open house sort of deal on New Year's Day, but I don't know if anybody would be in town or come.

And work is high-pressure and I'm worried about my grades and... and.. and...

Half an hour is up and I'm going to try again to go to bed.

CC

This is my new favorite website ever.

Because it was exactly what I needed today.

It brought me so much joy that I will even look past the fact that they insulted elephants.

CC
who loves elephants.

Yo.

Sorry I haven't been on the internet much. Finals are over, but work has been really stressful. I will be back soon.

FWIW Peacebang and Kim Hampton have had really cool things to say. Joel Monka, too.

CC

Ps. A muslim woman was arrested after refusing to remove her headscarf as she entered a courthouse. Sigh.

A solid 95 percent of you won't care what my Inaugural Ball dress looks like

But for the rest of you

CC
whose finals are over and who is having a fluff sort of day.

Ps. Shoe and accessory advice welcome.

Alert Carrie Bradshaw

Amazon.com is having amazing deals on shoes.

CC

As promised: CC's Famous UU skit

My church does a celebration of famous UUs every Thanksgiving weekend, complete with famous UU skits acted out by the Sunday School classes.

I wrote YRUU's contribution this year.

It loses something on paper, but oh well.



(Lights come up. VOICEOVER PERSON stands at a mike. As VOICEOVER PERSON talks, ROD, CINDY and the other students are setting up tables and chairs onstage, perpendicular to the audience. Mrs. Denton stands in front of them.)



VOICEOVER PERSON: Portrait of a classroom. The year is 1946 and the place is Binghamton Central High School in Binghamton, New York and it’s a sleepy Friday afternoon in Mrs. Denton’s history class. The assignment was a reading on the wives of Henry the Eighth, a topic fascinating to historians but that has left most of the class daydreaming about tonight’s football game.

One student, however, one special student who would grow up to be a famous UU, has dreams all his own…



(The students take their seats, two or three to a table. CINDY is in the front row. ROD is in the last row. Voiceover can join the students or simply slip offstage. Meanwhile PIANO PLAYER has started to play sci-fi esque music. When everyone has taken his/her seat, Mrs. Denton speaks)

Mrs. Denton: Quiet, class.

(PIANO PLAYER keeps on playing. Students are chattering.)

Mrs. Denton: I said, QUIET!

(Students quiet down. PIANO PLAYER stops, looks nervous)

Mrs. Denton: Good afternoon, class. I hope you’ve done your homework.

(There are general nods. ROD stares off into space.)

Mrs. Denton: Let’s start from the beginning. Can someone tell me what Henry wanted from his wives? Rod?

(Rod jumps up and delivers his lines like a little kid describing a REALLY NEAT MOVIE)

ROD: He wanted to be alone, to read. More than anything. And then one day, he woke up and the palace was totally empty and he ran to his royal library and grabbed a book. But just then, he broke his glasses. He had all the time in the world to read and got only loneliness.

(Pause for a beat. Entire class is staring at ROD. He sits down.)

Mrs. Denton: That’s a very creative answer, Rod. But an incorrect one.

(CINDY waves her hand)

Mrs. Denton: Cindy?

(Cindy stands. For the rest of the show, all students stand when called on and sit back down when they’ve spoken.)

Cindy: The most important thing King Henry wanted from his wives was an heir.

Mrs. Denton (interrupting): Very good, Cindy. Now, Steve, did Henry’s first wife Catharine of Aragon have any children?

Steve: Yes, she had a daughter named Mary. But Mary was raised Catholic and King Henry became a Protestant, so she never got the throne of England.

Mrs. Denton: Excellent, Steve. Sarah, tell us about Catharine of Aragon.

Sarah: She and Henry were married for twenty years, but their only child was Mary.

Mrs. Denton: And?

Sarah: Eventually, Henry really started to want an heir and he thought it was her fault, so he divorced her and married Anne Boelyn.

Mrs. Denton: Very good, Sarah. Rod, what happened to Anne Boelyn?

(Again, Rod stands and delivers his lines in a dramatic manner.)

ROD: She was in a horrible accident and the doctors told her she was horribly disfigured, but when she took off the bandages she looked like a movie star. You see, all the doctors had pig noses, so it was really all about perspective and…

(Cindy jumps up)

CINDY: No! That’s not true at all! Henry got tired of Anne Boelyn and had her beheaded.

(Rod and Cindy sit.)

Mrs. Denton: Cindy? Rod’s answer was not impressive, but that’s no excuse to interrupt.

That said, your answer is correct. Now Anne Boelyn had a child. Who was Anne Boelyn’s child? Steve?

Steve: It was a girl named Elizabeth who grew up to be Elizabeth the first of England.

Mrs. Denton: We will learn a little bit more about her next week. Now, who was Henry’s third child? Sarah?

Sarah: Prince Edward.

(Rod is staring off into space.)

Mrs. Denton: Rod! Tell us about Prince Edward.

(Same line delivery as before)

Rod: He had these creepy powers and he could control the weather and make people disappear into a mysterious cornfield. So the whole palace had to pretend it was his birthday every day and they lived this meaningless, depressing existence and one guy tried to kill him, but…

Mrs. Denton (snaps): Rod Serling? You haven’t studied a BIT of this history. If you don’t start doing your homework, you’re going to grow up to be a big nothing.

ENTIRE CAST suddenly stares at audience and says in unison: OR WOULD HE?

(Piano player plays Twilight Zone theme.)

Voiceover: Greatness does not come only to kings and emporers. Famous Unitarian Universalist Rod Serling wrote television scripts that made people think and consider their values. Because of Rod Serling, Americans considered whether xenophobia might be more dangerous than an alien invasion, that power usually brings new responsibilities, and that sometimes the best way to ruin someone's life is to give them exactly what they think they want. Because of Rod Serling, and because of the Twilight Zone.

CC so would have bought this tote bag

But it is sold out.

Oh well.

CC

A night in the Ranjit

I once spent a very long night in the Ranjit hotel in New Delhi.

It was our first night in India. We weren't staying in the North very long. I'd brought of few old sweaters to wear in the cooler north part of the country, intending to give them away before I went down south.

But I hadn't brought enough sweaters. I wore every sweater I'd brought that night in the Ranjit, trying to get some sleep, but getting up every once in awhile to try to get the heater working. I would doze for awhile in the cold room, my dreams full of the mystical symbolism of neurochemical reactions to my anti-malaria medication, then I would wake up and fiddle with the heater.

Not everyone's heater was broken, but nobody had a great night of sleep in the Ranjit.

After that, we developed a phrase that would stick with us for the rest of the trip and comes back to me now.

"Have you been to the hotel?"

"Yeah. It was OK."

"Like, Ranjit ok?"

"Better than Ranjit OK."

"Whew."

Ranjit OK was the minimum standard for something not worth actively avoiding. Something Ranjit OK was survivable, but not comfortable. Acceptable, but not awesome. Tolerated, but not enjoyed.

Perhaps the best thing about something Ranjit ok was that feeling of the grizzled veteran, of being able to look at one another and mutter "Ranjit OK?" at unpleasant events that weren't exactly tragedies.

My corporations final?

Ranjit OK.

CC

Sigh.

TheCSO and I have been mildly obsessed with Woot.com over the last couple of days.

If you don't know about woot.com, you should. They typically sell one product a day. It's usually a great deal and shipping is only five bucks. Every once in awhile they do a "woot off" where they sell product after product one at a time over a period of days. It's really fun.

Anyway, the very second, they have a decent-looking electric guitar and amp for $89.00.

It's tempting, but I know people who would like an electric guitar and I know people who would not be annoying about having an electric guitar. I don't know anyone who meets both discriptions. (As much as I love ZombieKid and theGnome, who fall solidly into the first category but not the second.)

Oh well.

CC
who bought HERSELF an awesome coffeemaker and has bought a few presents for other people.

In honor of 'CC feels like a cavegirl day,' a special "Links of the Awesome"

CUUMBAYA good.

Torture bad, World of Warcraft good. CC have moral delimma.

Good teachers good, Bad teachers bad.

Woot Off good

Corruption bad.

Sexy Christmas good

Sexy First Couple good too

Snarky apocryphal story about tort law good. Boring local gossip that follows bad.

Sexual Harassment by Captain Hook bad unless Captain Hook played by Patrick Stewart. Then OK.

SCOTUS no listen to crazy people. Good.

CC want to know why they call new automotive chief the "Czar." That title not inspire confidence in solid fiscal management. Joke stolen from CSO.

CC

Guh. Finals week.

My billable hours are behind, my conversation is grunting and my hair is reminiscent of that episode of Buffy where the evil bar owner turns her into a cavegirl.

Corporations bad. Sleep good. CC want gimlet*.

Anyway, Peacebang is writing actual interesting things, so maybe you should check out her blog
because the best I'm going to be able to do is a discussion of the final episode of Boston Legal, which gave the best example of fan service to my baser and stupider desires I've seen since that episode of Bones where there was that scene where David Boreanaz was in the bathtub. (Different base and stupid desire, but still...)

Mmmm... David Boreanaz in the bathtub good.

CC

*What? I'm a sophisticated cavegirl.

Questions that trouble the Chick

Yesterday, I made my facebook status "CC wants unambiguous and substantially correct answers to ambiguous questions, in law and life."

This morning, I had a response from someone saying "No you don't, or you would have asked me already."

So I decided to give him the chance to take a crack at the questions troubling me this week.

And why would I deny you the chance to do the same?

Feel free to "pass" on the questions you don't like. We law students do it all the time.

CC

1. How do I justify loving art and goofing off and creature comforts in a world where so many are suffering and I could feed a kid in Africa for a year on what I spent on a painting on Saturday?

2. What’s the deal with my professor asking vague multiple choice questions but insisting that there’s one right answer when sometimes reasonable arguments could be made for up to three?

3. What duties do I have to the rest of humanity? To my family in particular?

4. Could you summarize the analytical framework that goes along with the federal taxation of a company’s loans to employees and shareholders, with specifics on what gets taxed when, and what gets capitalized when if the employee is working on a long-term capital project?

5. Is that old law school maxim “A’ students become judges and ‘B’ students work for ‘C’ students” really true? Because some of us are counting on it as our backup plan…

6. I am, at heart, quite an eccentric and moody person. But I have seen before how much being an eccentric and moody person that people don’t identify with and don’t understand gets in the way of having things I want and connecting with others. What’s the proper balance between living my life as I please and being someone that other people understand and root for?

7. So what’s the deal with corporate takeovers? In general and with specifics.

8. When I come across and idea or a philosophy I don’t get or don’t agree with, I have this little-kid-with-a-broken-alarm-clock need to take it apart, figure out how it works and see what the problem is. I do this by arguing or at least asking pointed questions. Some people think that’s fun and I can talk to those people for hours. But others tend to see me as stupid or a contrarian (or a racist, or a kneejerk liberal or an elitist or… or…) when I argue with ideas that they hold dear. Right now, my solution is to mostly move that nitpicky nature to the internet, but even there are there times when I should just shut it and let people think what they want without bugging them, and agree to disagree before I’ve gotten their argument down to the premises and pissed them off?

9. Is it actually moral for the government to use taxation to socially engineer as much as they do? To what degree should I accept the argument that what the government taxes, it controls? If I should accept, isn't progressive taxation with a deduction for the personal consumption costs of enough for food, shelter and preventative medical care and no other deductions at all the ideal?

Why did Buddha take forever to vacuum his sofa?

Because he didn't have any attachments.


CC
who heard that from one of the secretaries at her firm this morning.

Saw "Four Christmases"

Despite having devoted a chunk of Thanksgiving weekend to goofing off in hopes of avoiding this, CC is feeling pretty burned out these days, a bad thing in someone who has two law exams in the next eight days.

(But who's counting?)

Desperate to think about something other than my potential career as a hobo with a J.D., I went to the movies with Jana-who-creates last night and saw "Four Christmases."

It was solidly ok without being awesome. Not nearly as good as "Ghost Town," the last thing she and I saw together.

LinguistFriend's longtime crush Mary Steenburgen was in it and did a good job. Actually, the casting was quite impressive. Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon made a very believable couple with an interesting chemistry.

Maybe I just wasn't in the mood.


CC

and people think Washingtonians can't be festive...

Stolen from like every blog I know

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

I love me some Alison Janney, but the Lady going "Obama Nation?" is the best part, IMHO.

CC

CC examines Kwanzaa in the context of other American Cultural Holidays

Valentine’s Day
Historically: Probably originates from the feast of Lupercal, a Greek fertility festival. Swapping Valentines didn't really catch on until the Victorians.
How do we celebrate: By buying more greeting cards than on any other holiday, little kids exchanging candy, drinking alone in shame or ignoring it entirely.

St. Patrick’s Day
Historically: Catholic Religious holiday. Wasn’t even a bank holiday in Ireland until 1903.
How do we celebrate: Get drunk on green beer or ignore it entirely hoping that this will finally be the year that we go the entire day without our brain spontaneously chanting “We’re Here! We’re queer! We’re IRISH! Get used to it!”*

April Fools Day
Historically: The purpose of the holiday was to fuck with people who used the wrong calendar
How do we celebrate: Rubberband your favorite coworker’s chair to his/her desk, disbelieve news stories or ignore it entirely.

Mother’s Day
Historically: Cultural Holiday started in 1912 to celebrate mothers
How do we celebrate: Call Mom and/or take her to lunch. Really good kids buy presents. Bad kids ignore it entirely.

Father’s Day
See above, more or less

4th of July
Historically: Patriotic speeches, parades, picnics. Has been celebrated in some form or another since colonial times, but has only been a federal holiday since 1931
How do we celebrate: Patriotic speeches, parades, picnics. Public drunkenness and the occasional fireworks injury. A very hard holiday to ignore entirely, at least in my hometown.

Halloween
Historically: Celtic harvest festival and the day before All Saints Day
How do we celebrate: Give candy to kids, get drunk in costume or ignore it entirely

Thanksgiving
Historically: Technically started with the Spanish having a mass to celebrate having arrived in Florida safely, but most people focus on some crap about the Pilgrims that mostly isn’t true. Wasn’t celebrated on the third Thursday in November until 1940.
How do we celebrate: Turkey, football, watching the Macy's parade and trying to explain the whole “Smallpox-infected blankets” thing to kids.


And finally…

Kwanzaa:
Historically: Started in 1966 as an African-American cultural holiday.
How do we celebrate: Light candles, read African poetry, have a feast or ignore it entirely.


As far as I can see, almost all American cultural holidays are about:

1. Eating
2. Getting wasted
3. Pandering to little kids
4. Hanging out with your family and/or friends.
5. Smatterings of ritual here and there
6. Ignoring said holiday.

in some combination or another. The American cultural holidays that even existed 100 years ago weren't celebrated at all the same ways with the possible exception of Independence day and maybe Thanksgiving.

As far as I can tell, Kwanzaa is about all of the above excepting possibly getting wasted.

In this context, how the hell is Kwanzaa any phonier than MOST of America's cultural holidays?

CC
who has no plans to celebrate Kwanzaa now or ever, but geez...

*Oh Crud, now it's in my head.

Jana's Mama hearts Obama

I intended to post this like a month ago, but I forgot. Jana-who-Creates' parents were up visiting for Thanksgiving and we had dinner with them and Joe-the-Math-Guy, who came to visit us. It went really well and I even tried giblet gravy because that's the kind of good sport I am.

I had hosted a brunch that morning for their family and my family, which went well enough though I was a total mess for the entire time my brothers and my best friend's parents were in the same house as I was fairly certain Oliver would break out the social views he picked up in prison and I really wanted Jana's parents to think I was OK. Friendship is like dating in a lot of ways, though thank goodness the standards are lower.

They liked me fine, but theCSO was the really big hit, which is often the case.

Anyway, here's Jana's Mama with Obama. (I had to say it again.)

CC

What has CC done with her life?

(Things I've done are in bold. Meme stolen from Earthbound Spirit)

Started my own blog
Slept under the stars
Played in a band
Visited Hawaii
Watched a meteor shower
Given more than I can afford to charity
Been to Disneyland/world
Climbed a mountain
Held a praying mantis
Sung a solo
Bungee jumped
Visited Paris
Watched lightning at sea
Taught myself an art from scratch
Adopted a child
Had food poisoning
Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
Grown my own vegetables
Seen the Mona Lisa in France
Slept on an overnight train
Had a pillow fight
Hitchhiked
Taken a sick day when not ill
Built a snow fort
Held a lamb
Gone skinny dipping
Run a marathon
Ridden in a gondola in Venice
Seen a total eclipse
Watched a sunrise or sunset
Hit a home run
Been on a cruise
Seen Niagara Falls in person
Visited the birthplace of my ancestors
Seen an Amish community
Taught myself a new language
Had enough money to be truly satisfied
Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
Gone rock climbing
Seen Michelangelo's David
Sung karaoke
Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
Visited Africa
Walked on a beach by moonlight
Been transported in an ambulance
Had my portrait painted
Gone deep sea fishing
Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
Kissed in the rain
Played in the mud
Gone to a drive-in theater
Been in a movie
Visited the Great Wall of China
Started a business
Taken a martial arts class
Visited Russia
Served at a soup kitchen
Sold Girl Scout Cookies
Gone whale watching (though I did see some, once)
Gotten flowers for no reason
Donated blood, platelets or plasma
Gone sky diving
Visited a Nazi concentration camp
Bounced a check
Flown in a helicopter
Saved a favorite childhood toy
Visited the Lincoln Memorial
Eaten caviar
Pieced a quilt
Stood in Times Square
Toured the Everglades
Been fired from a job
Seen the Changing of the Guard in London
Broken a bone
Been on a speeding motorcycle
Seen the Grand Canyon in person
Published a book
Visited the Vatican
Bought a brand new car
Walked in Jerusalem
Had my picture in the newspaper
Read the entire Bible
Visited the White House
Killed and prepared an animal for eating
Had chickenpox
Saved someone's life
Sat on a jury
Met someone famous
Joined a book club
Lost a loved one
Had a baby
Seen the Alamo in person
Swam in the Great Salt Lake
Been involved in a law suit and I've been a witness in a criminal trial
Owned a cell phone
Been stung by a bee
Ridden an elephant (I've had the chance many times, but have you ever seen an elephant ride where the elephant didn't look depressed and miserable?)
Read all three volumes of the Lord of the Rings

My additions to the list:

Visited the Taj Mahal
Performed in a dance recital
Been on horseback while the horse jumped over something
Won an athletic competition
Gotten a straight-A report card
Prayed to Zeus
Watched news coverage, rapt, to see what was going to happen
Gotten lost in a building more than 500 years old
Kissed somebody milliseconds before bells started to ring

Joel Monka's additions to the list

Made love in a moving vehicle (For the sake of argument, let's say sailboats count as vehicles)
Created something you know you'll never better
Held a pet while they died
Walked the Promenade Des Anglaises in Nice

Patrick Murfin's Additions to the list:

Graduated from college
Been in Prison (Only in the most technical sense. I spent a night in a newly-built jail one time to help them train gaurds. It was fun.)
Written the Great American Novel
Ridden the rails In the train sense, yes. In the colonial punishment sense, no.
Seen that Alaska
Been booed and/or heckled
Been elected to public office

CC