De Omnibus Disputandum.

As I see it, here’s the gospel truth about god, religion, war, televangelists, xenophobia and American foreign policy all wrapped neatly in a rock ‘n’ roll song. It’s a shame this genius is dead and gone. But, thanks to YouTube, he still lives on.

Frank Zappa was absolutely right (as was George Carlin) in his assertion that the battles over censorship are less about morality and more about words, plain and simple. This is lively stuff, humorous and thought provoking. Long live the memory of this musical and intellectual genius!

What I envision is millions of people, casting their votes for no one, in a real, palpable way. How would the talking heads deal with it? They’d be bungling their way through the election coverage: “…well, the earliest exit polls are in, and well, um… they are saying that 78% of Americans voted for, well, ahem, um, none of the above.”

HA!! I would be thrilled beyond imagining if something like that were to happen! But, sadly, it probably never will.

The two party system is so corrupt, so deeply embedded, and either side’s response to anything is so predictable. I am quite certain that the difficulty of ballot access for “third parties” is by design - even that very term is exclusionary and derogatory. Because, let’s face it, folks - the two party system is a money maker for all those pols and political hustlers, no question about it. Yeah, once in a while you have some independent or Green candidate winning smaller, local or state elections, but it meets with a little fanfare, and then, well, it’s business as usual, and the Green candidate gets a bike path put into some city grid, and then political life gets back to normal. No big deal.

I used to believe very strongly that this is where the spark takes hold and fire of change spreads - in those smaller, local elections. But I’ve slowly lost faith in that idea over the years in which I’ve been old enough to vote, and I think the reason that more than half of those able to vote and don’t aren’t showing up to the polls because they understand this idea - they feel completely downtrodden, disgusted and helpless.

Yes, I’ve said this before: my father did used to say “If you don’t vote, don’t bitch” but I am starting to say that if you put someone on the ballot TRULY worth my vote, then I’ll show up. Obama is singing a really timely tune right now, but who knows what kind of change, if any, he’ll bring?

I’ve not yet made up my mind whether or not I’m voting in November. It’s really eating at me. I realize that by not showing up at all is, essentially, helpful for McSame. Certainly, a McSame White House would be shameful - but would an Obama White House, really, be any more desirable or worthwhile?

So, Dubya has less than 200 days left on the job before retreating to his ranch in relative obscurity and looking over his presidential library plans (what on Earth will they circulate - Ranger Rick magazine??).

I haven’t spoken at all, really, in this forum about the upcoming elections, except for my very enthusiastic support of a NOTA option on the ballot.

Wanna know why? Because ever since the 2000 farcical election in which 5 people elected the American president, I’ve become more and more disillusioned with the whole process. I haven’t yet dropped out of voting entirely, but I’m really damned close.

It’s a shame, too - I used to be one of those annoyingly enthusiastic granolas at the polling stations at EVERY election, signing up new voters, getting signatures for various referendum petition drives, and spreading the good, pie-in-the-sky idealistic news about the right to vote, and how every vote matters. I used to get so angry at people for NOT voting. But in 2000, I traded in my Birkenstocks for a firmer middle finger - and, aside from begrudgingly voting every year, only because I haven’t yet had the heart to completely abandon my highest ideals, I’ve barely looked back since.

Yahoo! news reported today about which candidate dog and cat owners prefer. I mean, really. Who gives a shit? If this is the “depth” of MSM coverage of something as important as electing the person who’s finger is on the world’s biggest trigger, then I’m one mouse-click away from saying “fuck the whole process.”

As far as I can tell, Obama and McCain are both snake oil salesmen - Obama’s only more handsome and a better public speaker. These 2 are the best that the corrupt two-party system could summon? (Perhaps I just answered my own question.)

Someone - anyone - please give me one GOOD reason why I should vote at all this year. I eagerly await your responses.

I think you already have, Mike. A tasty bit of Portishead a la Patton. Enjoy!

Another thing I don’t get - why, in this day and age, are women still changing their last names when they get married?

Historically, women changed their names upon marriage to reflect a change of ownership: women were considered property of their fathers until they became the property of their husbands.  Clearly (or hopefully!) we don’t live in such times any longer, with the exception of some pockets of ultra-conservative religious wing-nuts.

So why do so many women still do this? Without question? Is it because it’s what their mothers did, and they don’t want to seem like some sort of femi-nazi? Is it at the request of their husbands, or parents or in-laws, who require this familial homogeny? Is it because these women won’t know how to name their children? Or, more likely, it’s just another one of those “things that people do” that are never questioned, never held up to any amount of scrutiny or inquiry.

(On a side, trivial note, speaking of names - Frank Zappa and his wife named one of their sons Dweezil, but the hospital refused to put this name on the birth certificate, which instead was issued to read “Ian Donald Calvin Euclid Zappa”. When Dweezil was 7, his parents asked him what he wanted his “real” name to be, at which point, of course, he chose the name he knew - the name his parents chose - and a new birth certificate was legally issued. I highly recommend Zappa by Barry Miles for this and many more fascinating details about Frank’s wild life.)

You can also read an interesting (and old) article by Katie Roiphe about this very topic that you can find here.

As the name of my blog has suggested all along, this topic is one of many on a long list of things which should be doubted, questioned, and reexamined. I’d love to hear from married women who opted for this choice, and to hear their reasoning for it.

My passion for a healthy diet is about as passionate as my atheism, and yet, I’ve barely written of it here.

There is a specific issue I wish to address, and perhaps you faithful readers can offer your opinions on the matter.

First of all, I should say that I am a vegan - no meat, dairy, poultry, fish, eggs. I also do not eat any simple sugars - cane sugar, honey, molasses, maple syrup, etc. etc. (Read Sugar Blues by William Dufty.) No, I don’t listen to Victory Records bands or wear Earth Crisis or PETA hoodies. My philosophy is: I eat what I’m willing to kill. I am willing to pluck a carrot from the ground; I am unwilling to pluck a chicken.

My dilemma, however, is this: I buy organic exclusively. Yes, it does cost more - but I feel that it’s worth it to know that I’m not eating pesticides. I also strongly believe in buying, for example, an organic broccoli from the grocery store, which was trucked to that store from California (I live in New England) rather than buying a “conventionally” grown (sprayed) broccoli from the farm stand down the street.

I’ve taken hell for this from some environmentalists, who say my support of organic farming is actually harming the planet, due to long distances over which the handful of large organic farms need to ship their produce.

I say this: if I continue to support organic farming as fervently as I do and have, and as long as I remain vocal to the local farm stand about my feelings (”you know, if you didn’t spray your food, I’d buy my groceries here”), then demand will only increase for organic foods. And I also say that if I don’t take the best care of my own self - which, in my opinion, includes eating organic foods - then I won’t be able to live a long and healthy life, and that’s gotta count for something.

What d’y'all think?

Some guy, calling himself “Vissarion“, who used to be a traffic cop, is now holed up on a commune in Siberia (and has been, ironically, since the fall of the communist bloc and people were left with a gaping hole in their lives that they needed desperately to fill with some sort of direction and meaning - think there’s a connection?) with a bunch of other Kool-Aid drinking wackos, claiming to be the Messiah.

So, we’ve seen all this sort of megalomania before. (Religion tends to be quite a fertile breeding ground for such nonsense.)

What I’d honestly like to hear from the religious folks is this: Since you all believe that Jesus will, indeed, come again, my question is simply this - how will you know when this has happened? Or how do you know that is hasn’t already happened? These folks in Siberia certainly think he’s the real McCoy. Sure, we may all point and snicker, believers and non-believers alike - but what if it’s all true, and this guy in Siberia really is the Second Coming of Christ? Or, worse yet, what if you already missed Second Coming? What if Jesus already did come back, but was born prematurely and then died, or was stillborn, or was involved in a gruesome car accident when he was a child, or got beaten to death by bullies in grade school? With billions of humans on this planet, it would be easy to miss something.

I did something nice for an old lady the other night, and she turned and said, “Thank you, and god bless you!”

No matter the circumstance - after a sneeze, after a kind word or deed, whatever - I just cringe whenever anybody says these words to me. I can’t help it! It’s an involuntary response. God bless you is just “one of those things you say”, left over from the days of the bubonic plague. But, instead of saying, “Don’t pester me with all that voodoo god believing bullshit”, all I could do was smile and offer a sweet and spineless, “You’re welcome.”

As much as people irritate me with their constant whining and wastefulness and needing to maintain and inflate their precious little egos, I actually have a rather soft spot for my fellow human mammals, and there is this small part of me that believes that, yes, if we could just stand around in a circle and sing Kum Ba Yah, then everything would be just hunky-dory. (I guess some of my highest ideals are still dangling by a thread.)

Don’t worry - I’m not getting all “foo-foo” on you infidels. I am just thinking: Do I really need to be full of dissent and anger all the time? I mean, so what if she believes in a 24/7 surveying celestial father figure who presumably has the power to rid the world of suffering and yet, for all the claims of his benevolence, has repeatedly withheld said power? I held the door for an old lady, she thanked me quite sincerely, it was a nice human Hallmark-card-material moment. In that moment, I could forgive her for being religious and superstitious - she was just being really nice, just as I had been.

**sigh**

Then, moments later, I read an article about “abstinence-only” education in public schools and I got pissed off all over again. Heh. Go figure.

Thanks, Digital Dregs, for this one. Couldn’t say this any better myself. Classic!!