Dr_Evil_Mouse

Sadly, church bashing has become an accepted form of dialogue but hate speech is still hate speech regardless whether we are talking about gays or Catholics.

Very true. At the same time, there is the question of who's been able to abuse their power for longer, in harsh contradiction to basic tenets at the heart of their own tradition. There's that old newspaper credo, that the real job to be done is to comfort the afflicted, and to afflict the comfortable; that seems like a handy yardstick. Might even get around the problem of hate, too.

Well, if they ban breathing alcohol in, I guess people could always try alternate means...

Eww. Did they get the idea watching Trainspotting?

Would you like to see the pope on the end of a rope?

Do you think he's a fool?

- "After Forever" by Black Sabbath

I did, when I was 12, at a cheesy gift shop in the Vatican. Remember Soap on a Rope? Sure enough, there was JPII, ready for the shower to clean and/or lubricate all the body's nooks and crannies, even the ones they're not supposed to be thinking about. Seriously! I've always wondered what the hell they were thinking.

Looked kinda like this:

http://www.asos.com/images/prods/BGINO6087/image1xl.JPG

It's no wonder why Queen's has one, if not the best theology programs in the country.

No doubt - it doesn't seem to have the same sorts of problems (or at least not as exaggeratedly so, from what I understand) in distinguishing between academic and theological approaches to religion; of course, its being affiliated with the United Church, arguably the most progressive denomination in Canada, doesn't hurt either. But yeah, some great people on faculty. Tensions between academic and confessional study of religion seem to run higher at Toronto; chairs have literally been broken over heads. And Western, from what I hear, is just ugly (no offense to people from London or anything!) - something about the Anglican Huron diocese in general, apparently. Where else can you hear people publicly griping about reparations to First Nations over residential schools?

A lot of people believe in god, but not all the stupid-assed biases, societal rules, organizations, and irrational beliefs/fears/hatreds created by the interpretaional writings of the bible.. I figured most gay folk would be less of a traditional follower to begin with.. . Spiritual and realistic? I guess i am generalizing now.

There are a few churches that serve gays and lesbians who want to hang on to their theology along with their sexual identity - the Metropolitan Community Church and the United Church are the first that come to mind (the Anglicans notoriously embroiled in all sorts of sectarian controversy over it). Power to them, I figure - it can be great ritual, poetic outlet and source for community.

What gets me about all this is the way that conservative churches - Catholics, evangelicals, and so on (not to mention the non-Christians who have jumped into the fray - Sikhs, Jews, Muslims, etc.) - have seized the opportunity to claim marriage as their own proper domain, when historically, it just isn't. Check out the piece about Pamela Dickey-Young (Queen's U.) in last week's Globe and Mail. She should be put on the back of a pickup with a megaphone and driven all over the country with this.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20050212.SAMETHEOLOG12/TPStory

Ah, Ratzinger. It's his office that they had to rename when "Inquisition" started to sound distasteful to sensitive ears. Another reason why I love the word "disingenuous" so much.

Hear hear! I wish I could add to all this; all I can say is that while I'm still fresh to the scene, you've made me feel totally welcome, and I look forward to getting to know you still better - your passion for music is contagious and inspiring (and you're damn funny to boot :. Huzzah!

Too cool! Now I just wish I had my headphones and a few hours of totally quiet time. Our elder daughter's a Beatles freak - maybe we can do a daddy-daughter thing - "Hey, did you just catch Ringo there?" - "Shut up dad, I'm trying to listen!"

Touche - though I think there's a thread back there dealing with all this stuff, and I'm still struck by the sight of the cops at the Pepper Jack last weekend completely focussed on that club next door, where, let's be frank (or whoever), there's just way more chance of violence breaking out (and I am glad that's where their interests lay).

Still - "there but for the grace of God go I" and all that - my head still feels that tug. And it's all a bit like trying to stop the US going to war with somebody. Not like it shouldn't be tried, mind you....

Deb and I are both charged to go - question now is babysitting (is there such a thing as "good babysitting vibes"?).

What also sucks is all the lost revenue to the CBC, which means that their documentary budget for 2005-6 is going to get brutally slashed as well.

Come Sail Away - Eric Cartman

Right on!

GTB's Rivoli Set (that should stir some pot!)

I'm not going near that one....

I like the idea of the big orgy, but the mix of sex and war just doesn't look too good in the historical record (thinking even just of the last 100 years). But maybe on that point, what can be done to stop men from being such a$$holes (assuming the "convert military bases into monasteries" angle doesn't work out)? I mean, why need I hang my head in shame for my gender when I walk past a dance club late on a Saturday night?

(And bearing in mind too Zappa's "ladies you can be an a$$hole too" - let's be fair, after all.)

Many thanks for having done this - and very nice recording. So, they were playing as fast as I thought they were; no wonder I'm still sore!

Thanks again, everybody, and thanks from Amanda and Neil - wish I could have stayed longer and heard more Big Jam. Got my eyes pried open right now as it is. Thanks also for putting up with me and my caterwauling - y'all let me know if I start hogging .

It's true. As long as this planet is going to have homo sapiens walking around on it, it would make sense that we'd want the conscious sort, and not just leave it the lunkheads that are sucking the life out of it. I always think of R.D. Laing -

"... if nothing else, each time a new baby is born there is a possibility of reprieve. Each child is a new being, a potential prophet, a new spiritual prince, a new spark of light, precipitated into the outer darkness. Who are we to decide that it is hopeless?"

I think a lot of those folks just lose (if they ever had) the ability to distinguish between the fictional and non-fictional. Maybe it's because they spend so much time trying to burn the former into their kids' heads as if it were the latter.

Totally intriguing. Reminds me of Oliver Sacks' book "An Anthropologist on Mars" - so much to be gained from just working with what's given. There's an interesting chapter in that book (kinda tragic, actually) is the guy who developed a brain cyst around 1970, which entailed all his long-term memories coming to an end roughly with the last Dead show he ever saw - he could rhyme off lyrics, describe the mood of each of the guys in the band, everything, but would be at a total loss if you asked him what he'd had for lunch the day before. He ended up being roped into a new age outfit who treated him as if he'd achieved enlightenment, when in fact he had few options besides being totally blissed out (never hurts, I suppose, if you're completely unable to hold on to grudges and so on). He might have even been able to partially recover, had they not refused his family access for the longest time.

What weird brains (and cultures) we have.

I think that these focus groups are also idiots for freaking out over gay tolerance themes and swear words, yet say nothing about the show upon show that kill women every freakin week. I cant believe how popular these csi's and law and order shows are. Every time one crosses my path i get to see another bloody woman.

No doubt. Law & Order SVU seems pretty much based on that.

I remember Jello Biafra pointing out the contradiction of the government and the recording industry attacking rap (et al.) wholesale (thus foreclosing on the socially conscious types who use "unsavoury" language to get their point across), while leaving alone all the "whiskey-soaked honky tonk that praises guns and men who beat their wives" (roughly those words), to avoid pissing off the powers-that-be in Nashville.

ok. i'm stupid. whats an expletive?

In grammar-speak, an expletive is a grammatical placeholder: in "There is some food on the table," "There is" is the expletive, to provide the sentence with a subject and verb. I've always figured that the bad-word connotation shares that much in common. Malcolm X talks in his autobiography about getting chewed out by someone for all the swearing he did, since, as he's told, someone with a big enough vocabulary would be able to come up with the words necessary to get out exactly what's on his mind, instead of relying on stereotyped language that at best suggests that he's got some vigorous emotion to deal with.

Seems the Republicans don't quite think that way, though, and seem content to keep using their own stereotyped expletives ("freedom", "love", etc.) to gloss over what it is that they're really thinking, and the violence that they're actually engaged in. That way too they can crack down on the ability of people with real grievances and frustrations to communicate in public.

Now, that doesn't quite speak to the kind of violence on TV that is genuinely troubling (and I'm with you, Bokonon, lose the TV); if we as a society really did start thinking about how to deal with violence per se, well, actually, I can't imagine what that would look like (Indo-Tibetan scholar Robert Thurman has suggested, tongue firmly in cheek, that we could start by converting military bases into Buddhist monasteries, to help begin the process of turning the US into a proper civilisation). It's hard to get past the "If you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the pavement" problem. I think it's that that allows both the crap on TV on the one hand and the ham-fisted repression of it on the other. We're such a scared and scary animal. Fox and Focus on the Family each know how to exploit that.

Yay! Something to make all the snow irrelevant!

Btw, did anyone happen to have found a capo floating around after the jam last week?

The other night when I come in, so drunk I couldn't see

I hooked my toe in the old doormat and fell as flat as I could be

I had me a little old bottle o' booze (and I didn't have no more)

When I fell down - the cork flew outta the bottle (Plop!-glug glug glug....hic) - 'n spilled it

There's a little old rat in his hidin' place, he got that whiskey scent

He slipped right up 'n he got him a sssshrlp, 'n back to his hole he went

Says back to his hole he went, back to his hole he went

He slipped right up 'n he got him a sssshrlp (he's drinkin' it all) 'n back to his hole he

went

He slipped right up to my puddle o' gin and he lapped up more and more

He says "Doggone, my red-eyed soul, I'm a-gonna get drunk once more"

"I gonna get drunk once more, I'm a-gonna get drunk once more

He says "Doggone, my red-eyed soul, I'm a-gonna get drunk once more"

He washed his face with his front paws and on his hind leg he sat

And he's a-gettin' pretty high when he winked one eye and he says "(hic) Hey, where's that

old tom-cat?"

"Now where's that old tom-cat? I said where's that old tom-cat?

He's a-gettin' high when he winked one eye and he says "(hic) Hey, buddy, where's

that old tom-cat? (I can lick him and his brother)"

The old tom-cat come a-slippin' in, dashed over to the middle o' the floor

The cat jumped over and the rat got sober and he never got drunk no more

He didn' get drunk no more, no he never got drunk no more

The cat jumped over and the rat got sober (poor little feller) and he never got drunk no more

(Doc Watson)

Bill Frisell - Nashville

There's a fine album. Learned just last week that that first vocal track (One of These Days) is a Neil Young tune. Shame on me....

Thanks for the very great show last night - Deb and I hadn't been to Pepper Jack's before (nice to see the cops preoccupied with the dance club next door, leaving the heads to their own devices), and the Fatties are always a treat (though regrettably without Josh - whaaaaaa, more B3!). Many thanks to the Good Rev for having us back afterwards, with many good munchies and good people. More soon!!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to download some live Fat Cats and hope it fits on what's left of our hard drive....

Ecstasy is a dumb downed drug and has nowhere near the efficacy of LSD

neat lttle read.

Agreed. I'm inclined to think, whatever the substance, that so much has to do with the quality of the people around, which has, in those gatherings I've been lucky enough to participate in recently, been wonderful. Maybe it's a question of scale, too. I think of how the Dead scene coming out of the 80s was getting increasingly tainted by yahoo-ism, which for me hit a peak at that Deer Creek run in '95 when the show was stormed by drunken frat boys looking for all intents and purposes like invading marines (America, I decided then and there, is the drunken frat boy of the world). And people were seriously complaining about that kind of thing already by '68.

Says a lot for simple principles like basic human decency, respect, and curiosity. That alone makes dosing - while enjoyable, and maybe even enlightening (I'd like to think so) - redundant, in the broader scheme of things. This Bush-era seems marked above all else by a spiking of self-indulgence and the complete indifference to the experience of strangers (I blame right-wing evangelicalism in part for this, but I'm sure that's for another thread). I think awareness of that is what has continually to be pulled out of the ashes of the '60s.