Friday, June 03, 2011
You might not believe me
but I actually do feel kinda bad for John Edwards. Don't ask me why. So I feel a little lacking in integrity by posting this...
CyberF**king
No, nothing to do with naked men.
I wish.
My laptop was getting sluggish, so I went to CNET and downloaded their highly rated and very popular PC cleaning utility, Advanced SystemCare 4. Things ran much better after that.
But this morning I discover that I cannot send email.
On checking, I find that Advanced SystemCare 4 removes files that Windows Live Mail needs to function properly.
Sigh. More repairs. Cyberlife.
I wish.
My laptop was getting sluggish, so I went to CNET and downloaded their highly rated and very popular PC cleaning utility, Advanced SystemCare 4. Things ran much better after that.
But this morning I discover that I cannot send email.
On checking, I find that Advanced SystemCare 4 removes files that Windows Live Mail needs to function properly.
Sigh. More repairs. Cyberlife.
the rules of the game, continued
Reading an article at American Thinker, I head to the linked book review and someone reminds us of the following: that while the sin of Washington and Jefferson as slave-owners is a regular part of the current moral autopsy so beloved of progressives, it is not cool to point out that Muhammad was a slave owner.
Slavery remains an uncontested and traditional part of Sharia law. Some Islamic sources encourage (but do not require) manumission. St Paul had the same attitude (see the Epistle to Philemon). But Sharia is divine law and Muhammad, who owned slaves, (including Black ones), traded them and okayed their owners having sex with them even if the women were married, remains the perfect example of humanity.
If I ever own a car again, perhaps a bumper sticker?
Slavery remains an uncontested and traditional part of Sharia law. Some Islamic sources encourage (but do not require) manumission. St Paul had the same attitude (see the Epistle to Philemon). But Sharia is divine law and Muhammad, who owned slaves, (including Black ones), traded them and okayed their owners having sex with them even if the women were married, remains the perfect example of humanity.
If I ever own a car again, perhaps a bumper sticker?
Thursday, June 02, 2011
President Romney?
Mitt Romney threw his hat into the 2012 ring today. I saw his interview with Sean Hannity and he did well. Better than I expected. Fiscal realism and Federalism at home, American self-respect and interest abroad. Sounds like a good start. As he said, agreeing with Ex Cathedra, Obama's policy has basically been to want America to become Europe. He sends his regrets. A good start.
As for his religion, not a problem for me. Mormons can apparently disagree on matters of government: Harry Reid is a Mormon. But I would like him to address it directly --as he did with Hannity's questions on RomneyCare and ObamaCare-- rather than, as previously, playing the victim game. It's unbecoming to a believer.
Decline and fall
A note on the fraying of the American Lutherans.
Perhaps the adoption of secular progressivism's obsessions with race and gender and ethnicity, etc. was not the cause, but it is a symptom of losing your center of gravity, losing your ground in real, as opposed to "social justice" theology and wanting to please Caesar, even when Caesar is a Democrat.
Every ELCA board, church assembly, and what-not beyond the congregation must be composed of ten percent “people of color or whose primary language is other than English,” fifty percent female, fifty percent male, sixty percent laity, and forty percent clergy (the same fifty-fifty male/female ratio works for clergy representation too).
So take a committee of, oh, ten people. Four are clergy and two of them are female. It would help in the formulation if one of the clergy females was a black woman who was raised speaking a language other than English, but you can’t have everything.
Perhaps the adoption of secular progressivism's obsessions with race and gender and ethnicity, etc. was not the cause, but it is a symptom of losing your center of gravity, losing your ground in real, as opposed to "social justice" theology and wanting to please Caesar, even when Caesar is a Democrat.
Men with men, again
This is a set of comments I left at Gay Patriot. I like sharing the wealth :) and Ex Cathedra readers get illustrations as well. For free!
(Later note: I realize I have posted on this issue before, here.)
A global/historical survey shows several different styles of male/male sexual interaction: initiatory, or age-graded (older w younger)…Greece seems to a combo of both…
transvestic, with a masculine-status top and a feminine-status bottom (I call this “heteroid” because it mimics male/female structure: everything from the “rough trade” and “queen” style of preStonewall days, and the “berdache” of the AmerIndians).
Tiny minority of military couplings (Theban band, some samurai).
What all these have in common (Thebans perhaps excepted) is a hierarchy of top/bottom, so that the male/male coupling, rather than undermining or subverting the masculine culture, supports it. Tops did not lose masculine status; bottoms had feminized status (which they outgrew if based on age). All these formats reflect the fundamental concern about gender identity and gender opposition in the service of maintaining a patriarchal gender order. Exceptions were very rare indeed.
What is (or was) unusual, even revolutionary, about the modern “gay” construct is that the distinction of masculine tops and femininine bottoms was submerged into a commonly embraced identity based on the gender of the partner, not the role; and that this was proclaimed as an enduring and important marker of personal and group identity, like race; and that all “gays” either laid claim to full status as men OR used their difference, drawing from feminism, to deconstruct (aka attack) the idea of masculinity for all males, not just themselves.
The current sexual Yugoslavia known as LGBT follows that last stream. IMHO, same-sex attracted men who wish to assert their share in the male tribe are a minority, while the public face of gaydom is dominated by the gender-deconstruction ideology. It had two novel possibilities: to have men who love men claim their place in the male world, rejecting the historical assignment of tops and bottoms to separate genderized realms OR joining with dissatisfied females to attack the ancient regime of nature as sexually binary: males and females as distinctly different and opposite ways of being human. Especially with the inclusion of the T in LGBT, this agenda is solidified.
For this conservative “gay” man, only the prior novelty is attractive. The LGBT model and its feminist dominated agenda is both personally unappealing and IMHO unsustainable over the long term and therefore culturally suicidal. To put it in Jack Donovan’s typically brusque way: A society dominated by women and effeminates cannot survive.
PS It is perfectly possible for men to develop deep emotional, passionate attachments to each other that are not sexual. Male bonding is a powerful archetypal force. Militaries run on that energy.
My guess is that most friendships of this type were, as advertized, not sexual, even if they sounded, or even were, romantic. (I’ve had some experience of this myself.)
But that having been said, if two males whose sense of themselves is that they are men did or do in fact have a passionate physical connection, it would make sense for them to deny (and to believe it) that they were “queer”.
Because the price of that admission is loss of manhood status. And in any society not in the process of decay, that is a priceless possession, usually gained at a cost. And as any honest homosexual can tell you, that judgment against them, that they are not really men, remains one of their deepest wounds.
(Later note: I realize I have posted on this issue before, here.)
A global/historical survey shows several different styles of male/male sexual interaction: initiatory, or age-graded (older w younger)…Greece seems to a combo of both…
situational (military, prisons, etc.)…
At left, unknown. At right, extremely queeny skater Johnny Weir
What all these have in common (Thebans perhaps excepted) is a hierarchy of top/bottom, so that the male/male coupling, rather than undermining or subverting the masculine culture, supports it. Tops did not lose masculine status; bottoms had feminized status (which they outgrew if based on age). All these formats reflect the fundamental concern about gender identity and gender opposition in the service of maintaining a patriarchal gender order. Exceptions were very rare indeed.
What is (or was) unusual, even revolutionary, about the modern “gay” construct is that the distinction of masculine tops and femininine bottoms was submerged into a commonly embraced identity based on the gender of the partner, not the role; and that this was proclaimed as an enduring and important marker of personal and group identity, like race; and that all “gays” either laid claim to full status as men OR used their difference, drawing from feminism, to deconstruct (aka attack) the idea of masculinity for all males, not just themselves.
The current sexual Yugoslavia known as LGBT follows that last stream. IMHO, same-sex attracted men who wish to assert their share in the male tribe are a minority, while the public face of gaydom is dominated by the gender-deconstruction ideology. It had two novel possibilities: to have men who love men claim their place in the male world, rejecting the historical assignment of tops and bottoms to separate genderized realms OR joining with dissatisfied females to attack the ancient regime of nature as sexually binary: males and females as distinctly different and opposite ways of being human. Especially with the inclusion of the T in LGBT, this agenda is solidified.
For this conservative “gay” man, only the prior novelty is attractive. The LGBT model and its feminist dominated agenda is both personally unappealing and IMHO unsustainable over the long term and therefore culturally suicidal. To put it in Jack Donovan’s typically brusque way: A society dominated by women and effeminates cannot survive.
PS It is perfectly possible for men to develop deep emotional, passionate attachments to each other that are not sexual. Male bonding is a powerful archetypal force. Militaries run on that energy.
My guess is that most friendships of this type were, as advertized, not sexual, even if they sounded, or even were, romantic. (I’ve had some experience of this myself.)
But that having been said, if two males whose sense of themselves is that they are men did or do in fact have a passionate physical connection, it would make sense for them to deny (and to believe it) that they were “queer”.
Because the price of that admission is loss of manhood status. And in any society not in the process of decay, that is a priceless possession, usually gained at a cost. And as any honest homosexual can tell you, that judgment against them, that they are not really men, remains one of their deepest wounds.
Nocturnal transmission
Fell asleep on the couch. Was awakened at 2 AM by what turned out to be Crazy Heart. There was Colin Farrell singing this really fine country song...It was a love I knew couldn't last. Could see that clearly through the whiskey in my glass. And now you're gone, gone, gone.
Colin Farrell. Country music. Me half asleep, half awake. :)
As one of the commentors said at a YouTube video of Farrel, singing the Crazy Heart theme with Jeff Bridges at a Toby Keith concert, "I'm a 100% heterosexual male, and I'd bang him for sure."
Colin Farrell. Country music. Me half asleep, half awake. :)
As one of the commentors said at a YouTube video of Farrel, singing the Crazy Heart theme with Jeff Bridges at a Toby Keith concert, "I'm a 100% heterosexual male, and I'd bang him for sure."
Wednesday, June 01, 2011
Mistake
I don't usually watch TV during the day. But it rained. I had some time at home between patients. And I turned it on and there was...Millionaire Matchmaker.
What messages do I take away from this?
I remain pleased that I am not heterosexual. I do not get the boy-girl thing.
Comfort: even wealthy and successful people, some of whom are young and pretty attractive, have a hard time making a partner connection, so I shouldn't feel so bad about my own failure.
Stress: even wealthy and successful people, some of whom are young and pretty attractive, have a hard time making a partner connection, so I am in big trouble!
Don't watch this program anymore.
What messages do I take away from this?
I remain pleased that I am not heterosexual. I do not get the boy-girl thing.
Comfort: even wealthy and successful people, some of whom are young and pretty attractive, have a hard time making a partner connection, so I shouldn't feel so bad about my own failure.
Stress: even wealthy and successful people, some of whom are young and pretty attractive, have a hard time making a partner connection, so I am in big trouble!
Don't watch this program anymore.
Reciprocity
The Roman Church has set up a structure so that groups of Anglicans can cross over from the Thames to the Tiber and keep their Anglican "ethos", as they like to call it, while they become part of the Roman Church.
I am told that in Peru, the Anglicans there have impishly set up a mirror structure for Romans who want to cross over in groups.
I think this is a great idea.
If you tally up most of the issues that drive the Catholic liberals, the sum of it is The Episcopal Church: serious undogmatic and non-rigid theological diversity; married, female and gay clergy; sacramental and liturgical worship in good English; super-friendly ecumenical policies; no hang-ups about contraception or divorce; democratic structures that include laity, priests and bishops; the correct liberal attitude toward any social question you can think of. I mean really, what's not to like?
I mischievously made this case on a liberal Catholic website a while ago, carefully couching my language so that no one would bridle at a "Rome: love it or leave it" message. It worked. The most regular foot-stamping lover of Vatican II admitted that my case was "unanswerable", but that it was a matter of "blooming where you are planted" and the ties of habit and attachment that kept him and others in the Roman camp.
For the eternally dissatisfied children of the Sixties, the thing they want is already there: so why don't the Episcopals, whose numbers have plummeted, set up a Coetibus Romanorum for folks like these?
I am told that in Peru, the Anglicans there have impishly set up a mirror structure for Romans who want to cross over in groups.
I think this is a great idea.
If you tally up most of the issues that drive the Catholic liberals, the sum of it is The Episcopal Church: serious undogmatic and non-rigid theological diversity; married, female and gay clergy; sacramental and liturgical worship in good English; super-friendly ecumenical policies; no hang-ups about contraception or divorce; democratic structures that include laity, priests and bishops; the correct liberal attitude toward any social question you can think of. I mean really, what's not to like?
I mischievously made this case on a liberal Catholic website a while ago, carefully couching my language so that no one would bridle at a "Rome: love it or leave it" message. It worked. The most regular foot-stamping lover of Vatican II admitted that my case was "unanswerable", but that it was a matter of "blooming where you are planted" and the ties of habit and attachment that kept him and others in the Roman camp.
For the eternally dissatisfied children of the Sixties, the thing they want is already there: so why don't the Episcopals, whose numbers have plummeted, set up a Coetibus Romanorum for folks like these?
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