more nonsense from the world-wide leader of christianity regarding gay marriage.
This is not a simple social convention, but rather the fundamental cell of every society. Consequently, policies which undermine the family threaten human dignity and the future of humanity itself.
-Pope Benedict in his New Year address to Diplomatic Corp
i have no idea how christians sleep at night with these sort of statements being made in their name.
Every day of his declining life he demonstrated the falsehood of that most squalid of Christian lies: that there are no atheists in foxholes. Hitch was in a foxhole, and he dealt with it with a courage, an honesty and a dignity that any of us would be, and should be, proud to be able to muster. And in the process, he showed himself to be even more deserving of our admiration, respect, and love.
Farewell, great voice. Great voice of reason, of humanity, of humour. Great voice against cant, against hypocrisy, against obscurantism and pretension, against all tyrants including God. –Richard Dawkins
flickr is this awful-wonderful-vault-of-memories that does much too good of a job at chronicalling one’s life.
my first random flickr post was in july of 2003 and the past 8 years of casual photos have been uploaded to their cloud for safe keeping.
they have done a very good job at the aforementioned safe-keeping.
at this point, flickr’s memory of my past 8 years of life is better than my own.
i feel really good about this.
the fact that flickr has 8 years of my life coded-away in some rack-mounted-server-in-bumfuck-nowhere makes me feel immortal…like a superhero….like a public-figure…vulnerable…all there for anyone to see.
in my 34th year, mortality means something very different than it did for 26year-old-me…i wish i could talk to 2003-me.
i’ve always known that Buster the Dog was smarter than his owner.
so it started like this a few months ago…
Buster disappears into the bathroom for a few minutes and all of sudden comes busting out, paws flared & nearly tripping over his own awesomeness.
grasped tightly in his mouth is a giant white piece of plastic…it’s the cover to the bolt that secures our toilet to the floor…you’ve got one too…go ahead and go check.
“Drop. Leave it…”
Buster responds appropriately and receives a delicious treat for his prompt obedience.
Fast-forward a few months later and we’ve done this little exercise about 100x…Buster now has me very well trained.
These days when he wants a treat he runs to the bathroom, pulls off the white-plastic-bolt-cap and drops it gently at my feet.
so i have these really old playlists that clutter up iTunes.
every now and then i peruse them with the intent of cleaning house; without fail i spend most of my time wondering what the hell i was thinking including song x, y & z in any sort of playlist.
still, i always leave them untouched; like a bird’s nest…like driven-snow…like hallowed ground.
each one is a perfect-little-time-capsule-of-awesome filled with so many questions: “who was this made for? did i really think a playlist would change her mind? really, did i ever think a goddamn playlist would change her mind?”
so they are my breadcrumbs to a life-long-past…as horrendous as many of them are they lead me back and remind me of where i am….and where i’ve been.
so i’ve been doing this new thing where i go to sleep while listening to npr. for the past year i’ve banished tv from the bedroom and when i turn off the lights it’s sleepy time, unless of course, it’s business time…ladies.
the no tv in the bedroom has been great; falling asleep in a pitch black room is much easier than its artificially-lit-counterpart. if you’re a tv-in-the-bedroom-person give it a try for a week and see how you feel.
tomorrow i’ll tell you all about how incorporating fiber into my diet has kept me more regular and how i love watching the weather channel on mute.
so my calendar refused to cooperate and I missed out on the “one-night-only” vendetta red reunion show at seattle’s ‘el corazon‘ this weekend.
fortunately for me, i live in the future and youtube is replete with shaky-cam-style-video-coverage. as promised, the band played ‘sisters of the red death‘ in it’s entirety followed by an hour-long encore of favorites.
the seattle PI had an article regarding all the controversy surrounding the reunion show—specifically the absence of founding VR member Erik Chapman.
when asked about the lineup for the reunion show lead singer/frontman zach davidson said:
“The thing with Vendetta Red — it was, kinda like whoever I could get to play with me at the time,” he says. “Throughout the years, some people stuck around for longer than others, and I did it until it stopped being fun. And all I know is that it’s fun right now.”
notably for those of us from bakersfield, ca the absence of VR drummer, joseph childres. a quick google search reveals that we’ve lost joseph to christianity and the xtian music scene…fingers crossed we get him back soon.
here are a few highlight clips from saturday’s show from some rad dude who lives in georgia and made the flight to seattle for the show…you’re a better man than me, brother.
opera music played as the band made their way to the stage and played track one: ‘vendetta red cried rape on their date with destiny’
‘a joyless euphoria’
classic VR from 2002 with the ‘original’ bandmates playing “seconds away” into their mainstream hit “shatterday”
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