A little perspective...

Leave it to Bizarro's sunday comic to address the history of religious intolerance so eloquently...




...and yes, I'm a southpaw... I guess that means I'm an abomination...

School's out already?

Cinco de Mayo today... and the last day of finals week for UT. Tomorrow is the big graduation day for many families, and many students have already moved back home for summer jobs.

Just when the weather started to turn nice.

Welcome to the Semester System.

Back around 1998 the University of Toledo converted from the Quarter System to the current semester System. Rather than have three 10-week terms, Fall, Winter, and Spring (and Summer if ya watned) during the academic year, now there are 2 15-week terms, Fall and Spring (yeah yeah yeah summer too).

But here's the big difference: under the semester term, classes start around Labor Day and End in early May. In the quarter system, classes started around the middle of September and ended in the middle of June.

That's right, the middle of June. Sure, that meant everyone else has a head-start on you for summer employment (missed many a summer-opportunity because of this), but it also meant:

warm days on centennial mall
hanging out at the Old West End festival with your college buddies
walking to class through a blizzard of cottonwood snow along the Ottawa river.
Frisbee, outdoor events on a warm day, lounging in shorts & sandals while student government hopefuls went about their busy-ness in hot Oxford shirts, slacks, and ties.
Outdoor classes out under a shade tree
outdoor lab exercises collecting measurements of the campus
sneaking onto the roof of the Student Union to enjoy a day of sun.

...I'm a year-round UT employee now, so I still get to experience the season on campus. Just wish everyone else still did.

Star Lords: Where's Jimmy Castor when you need him?

Well, the inevitable has happened: someone has combined Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. The montage of rearranged and edited clips starts off rather slow and boring, but then...

It goes funkadelic. Wayyyy DiscoFunk.



Unashamedly, over the top disco, complete with cleverly back-and-forth edited dance scenes by all our favorite characters.

Even the cantina band joins in the fun while Gandalf does the "Curly Shuffle".


It's worth a look (or cringe)... but those of you who know me well know that when things get this cheesy I just can't turn away!

Brought to you by MisShapenFeatures

And that music: "It's Just Begun" by Jimmy Castor, circa 1972

Republican's Scheme to Bribe Americans

Question: With faltering congressional and presidential approval ratings, a White House cabinet stocked full of Ex-Oil Executives, record profits for Oil Companies, a spike in gas prices, and the 2006 Midterm elections looming... what's a Republican to do?

Answer: Give Americans a $100 "Gas Rebate".

So where is the $100 rebate coming from? Are we taking the money from the Oil Companies' windfall profits?

Nope, it'll come from our TAX Money (or from our deficit, which means they're borrowing the rebate now and our TAX money will be used to pay it back later, with interest.)

I can't help but think of bread and circuses here, folks. People are upset with our Republican "leadership", so instead of addressing the problem (which they can't because they're in bed with the oil companies), they just throw around some Benjamins as a sort of "hush money" or bribe.

But there's a catch (isn't there always)... the proposal also contains a provision to open up ANWR for oil drilling, cause senior Republican Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska (yes, the same Ted Stevens building the alaskan Bridge to Nowhere, and the the same one who brought the Oil Executives to testify then refused to have them sworn in to testify) has a boner for ANWR oil.

So, this is the "solution" the Republican Senate proposes to alleviate our energy crisis: We know you need gas and we've let the price at the pump get out of control, so let us drill in ANWR, and we'll give you $100 of your own tax money as a "rebate". And we'll tie this proposal as an amendment to an emergency spending measure that funds the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina rebuilding, that way if the Democrats vote against it, they don't support our troops and they're "dragging their feet" to help out the Katrina victims.

Tell them we don't need their bribe, and let's send this group of incompetent miscreants packing in November.

From the UT Daily Message System

A friend of mine pointed out this message on our University of Toledo Daily Message Center

3). Praise and Worship Night

Praise & Worship Night

April 25th

7:00 p.m.

Come out for a free concert

-Refreshments will be served

-Please bring canned goods for donations to Katrina victims

-Come Praise the Lord for how good he is!!!!!

...I love the juxtaposition of the last two lines in a sort of cynical way. I know what they mean, but their wording could be better...

You know it's bad when....

...Fox News' Opinion Dynamics Poll puts Bush's approval rating at 33%.

With the poll pegging Bush's disapproval rating at 57%, that's a whopping 44% difference between the two, and very reminiscent of Nixon.

...of course, the spin is for the GOP will be to dump their lame duck president and distance themselves from his political troubles just in time for the 2006 elections and the 2008 Presidential Race.

Eat the Damn Apple!

My tolerance for Churchianity continues to wane. My church, I fear, has become an institution more concerned with its own continued existence rather than follow the mission that bore its creation. Centuries of order, rules, and standards set to most effieciently do God's work have been perverted into a cumbersome system that has lost its way. Rules are to be obeyed, even when unjust, over the extraordinary circumstances that the call of the Holy Spirit calls just. The words of Jesus the Son are lost in the cacophony of theological psychobabble of the "church leaders". What is simple is made complex. What was straightforward in the Gospels is bent and twisted to accomodate the wills of men over the ages. Just War. Love with conditions. Exclusivity in God's Kingdom. Fractured denomiations out of communion when all of them bless the bread and wine in God's name. How is it we humans can make such work out of something practically given to us?

God has given us an apple to spiritually nourish us, and instead of eating it we investigate it for worms, guess it's size, its species, even run DNA tests so we can determine what tree the apple came from. And while we meet and confer in commitee and "take it all in", that apple rots before our very eyes.

Why can't we just eat the damn apple?!

After attending a Vestry meeting today we talked about meeting with our bishop. This is something I dread because I can't think of anything he can do or say that will make me feel much differently about him. Some think I hate him, yet I don't. I just see him as another person. His position as bishop doesn't mean anything to the Baptist in me. Just another fancy title. I fear the problem is that he sees his title as important. That somehow in the grand cosmic scale of things this makes what he says and believes more important in an antiquated patriarchal way. Not that there aren't great spiritual leaders in the world. He just isn't one of them. Anymore, this bishops seems more to represent the CEO of subsidiary nonprofit than the role of a Shepherd for God. Maybe it's because that in this day and age his position is spread so thin that it takes a bishop 2-3 years to visit each church in their diocese, that their jobs are less and less to be shepherds than it is to shuffle paperwork, make "clerical" decisions for the doicese and the other type of day-to-day operations you'd expect more from a business than a church.
I haven't had the chance yet to sit with him face to face, so I don't know if I'm angry with him or with the system in which he is so ingrained.

Some on the vestry told me I should learn to live with it, that this is the way things are. I can't help but believe that we should never be satisfied with how they are and should demand change in the direction towards God. While we squabble on who can and cannot bless the bread and wine, who can and cannot become bishops, or the injustice and twisted theology of Churchianity, I, as R+ once put, fell my inner prophet.

That led me to turn to Isaiah, one of the big prophets. I wanted to read what he was saying. I started at the beginning, and this passage just seems to resonate with me right now.

Isaiah 1 (from The Message//Remix)

11"Why this frenzy of sacrifices?"

GOD's asking.

"Don't you think I've had my fill of burnt sacrifices,

rams and plump grain-fed calves?

Don't you think I've had my fill

of blood from bulls, lambs, and goats?

12When you come before me,

who ever gave you the idea of acting like this,

Running here and there, doing this and that--

all this sheer commotion in the place provided for worship?

13"Quit your worship charades.

I can't stand your trivial religious games:

Monthly conferences, weekly Sabbaths, special meetings--

meetings, meetings, meetings--I can't stand one more!

14Meetings for this, meetings for that. I hate them!

You've worn me out!

I'm sick of your religion, religion, religion,

while you go right on sinning.

15When you put on your next prayer-performance,

I'll be looking the other way.

No matter how long or loud or often you pray,

I'll not be listening.

And do you know why? Because you've been tearing

people to pieces, and your hands are bloody.

Are we just going through the motions of playing 'church'? Saying the right words at the right times like that somehow makes a difference? Perpetuating an institution for the sake of perpetuating the institution? More concerned about the houses men built than for God's house until we can't tell which is which? While I can see the institution's shortcomings, what about my own? At least those I can control. Still, I want my church to become something better. Likewise, I hope that I will become better myself, because I'd be a liar if I said I'm not the same.

I think I need to take another bite of that apple.