Persecuted? Ummmmm....

Before we begin, A quick disclaimer. I'm not a Christian. I went to church as a kid and for a while as an adult but over time I fell away from it. There were quite a few reasons but we'll get into those below.

There's a film coming out later this year called "Persecuted." Basically it's a tale about ... oh hell I'd explain the plot but I'll let them do it.

Persecuted trailer

And of course being a leftie I'll let these people describe it too.

Right Wing watch on Persecuted

Okay, So, got it. Nice Christian dude, bad government, bad other religions, etc etc. I kind of hate to be flippant but perhaps I've been following the far right wing of the evangelical movement for a little too long. Since about the 1980's when they kept trying to take my music away.

The film and the concept tell us a lot about how the Conservative Evangelical movement sees the world and their place in it. That they are the people with the pure knowledge of the love of God, and all those other people are out to get them. That being Christian in America is a reason to be persecuted.

So if I may make a statement. Not getting what you want all the time does not mean you are being persecuted it means that you are being treated like every other citizen who lives in this country. To those of us watching you flip out when someone says "Happy holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas", or when other religions are allowed a space near yours to have their own place of worship or, when you're beliefs have to share space with others rather than being paramount. Well I tend to think you look like a three year old having a fit of temper.

Freedom is not a zero sum game. Allowing others to experience the same rights as you does not take away any from you. What it does is put you in the same place other beliefs have been for some time, in a free marketplace of ideas. Nows the time for you to do a better job of selling your intellectual product. Not having privilege is not the same as losing rights, it means that now other have them and you have to play at their level.

It's a shock I know, and you'll likely moan about it for a long long time, but frankly this ones been a long time coming. I mean when you were by and large the only game in town it was pretty easy. You went to church or your local community thought you were weird and made you an outsider.

Ahhh the good old days. Which if you were white, male, straight and Christian were pretty awesome. If you were not one of those things well things kind of sucked by various degrees, and lets be honest the reason for a lot of that worldsuck came from religion.

Now you have to exist in a world were the truth about how it is Christianity spread across Europe and America is far easier to find than the myths you spread are. Where you have to coexist with systems of beliefs that do not make people feel bad for being gay, or weird or even for just having sex and linking it. Like I said your gonna have to up your game.

I knew the church and I weren't going to have a long lasting relationship fairly early on. At one of the churches we attended one of the ladies there would look at the books I would bring to catechism class and sniff at names like Joesef Heller, and Robert Heinlein. Telling me I was engaging in sin by reading them. To me though, they were broadening my world. And it was painfully obvious that she was annoyingl rude and probably batshit crazy. Then I looked at the rest of the congregation and saw various permutations on the same theme. People with perpetual blinders on, unwilling and afraid to look past what the preacher was teaching them.

By the time I hit the 7th grade I was pretty much ready to hit the back door on this whole experience. I liked the community but I hated what the teachings often did to the people in it. Limiting their ability to to see the world in a bigger picture.

Now those very people are saying they're being persecuted.

So I sigh and say the following. If you want to know what being persecuted means ask a Shia Muslim in Iraq and A Sunni Muslim in Iran. If you want to what it's like to be persecuted go out and find out what Tibetan Buddhists experience every day just for having a faith, or what it might be like to have to hide a Jewish identity should you live in Saudi Arabia where the penalty for being Jewish is death.

That's real persecution.

What you're going through i growing pains. The other siblings are no longer going to just sit there and take their place as second class citizens. Now that they're grown up it's time to act like an adult, because frankly the way you are acting now is not helping your case any.

For more on the subject I'll let this gentleman speak for me as he's way funnier.

Marcus Brigstocke on the three Abrahamic faiths.

I'm kind of glad I grew up.

Well not entirely. If you some of you know me just through reading this you might get the notion that I might be more mature than I really am. Believe me I have plenty of witnesses that can tell you all about how goofy I can be even now halfway into my forties.

A very wise person and brilliant writer named Travis Heerman once wrote a piece and performed it where he read notes he wanted to send back to his past self. It was amazing, acknowledging mistakes he made that he could now rack up to not knowing any better at the time. I really respected him for laying himself bare like that for us to see.

It reminded me of all the stupid things you "learn" as a kid from the people around you. Mostly other kids, but let's be honest adults create the world children live in.

I grew up during a rather barbaric era in country's culture. Called the late 70's and early 80's.  We had kind of sorted out issues of race by then, but you could still hear kids making nigger jokes whnever they thought they could get away with it. And as I went to primarily white schools as a kid they kind of did it a lot.

Thankfully my parents took a dim view of that sort of thing and discouraged me from picking it up.

Keep in mind that period wasn't exactly kind to the LGBT community. Which was either kept out of the public spotlight or were portrayed as deviants and weirdo's by and large. So to my mind as a high schooler anyone in that group were a bunch of "fags".

The fact that I liked seeing two women making out in magazines and films however did not strike me as ironic at all. Let's be honest we're kind of confusing in our attitudes in those things.

Anyway all that changed when a good friend of mine came out to me not long after my first and not exactly successful attempt at college. Now by the standards we had back then I should have just shunned him and moved on.

On the other hand. For about three years from fifth through seventh grade I was the weird kid who got picked on and bullied all the time. I still have a hard time looking back on that period as it was just one long exercise in isolation. So after that when I started making friends they were really important to me. The notion of actual human contact and being in a crowd of people who got you was refreshing and revitalizing to say the least.

This guy had helped me out in the past, looked after me when i was being a drunken fool, which back then was way too common of an occurrence.

So rather than viewing it through the lens of the lessons I had been "taught" by my peers I saw it through the lens of someone who had been pretty damn good to me. At that moment the notion of looking down on someone because of their sexuality became a moot point.

I kind of think of it as me starting off on the path to the dreaded "M" word. Maturity. Which if I were to be honest usually involves unlearning all the old false hoods you've picked up socially through the years, and learning to overcome a fairly long self possessed streak in my own mind. Looking back on it I kind of mentally groan when I think of my behaviour in the past and am really grateful I got out from under a lot of it.

I do kind of shudder at the notion of how I would be if I held onto a lot of those things, and the incredible amazing people I know now who would not be part of my life if I had just gone with the flow.

There's still plenty of room for work on it, but I do enjoy trying. It gives me the room to learn something new, or to at least listen to view points I had not considered in the past.

Long story short it made my world a much larger place, and a much bigger playground for me to romp in when I'm done working.  Growing up doesn't mean you forget how to play, it means learning how to play better with others. In the end I find that makes it a lot more fun.

Seriously, I hate celebrity culture.

I have a dream. That someday I will be successful in my chosen fields. reasonably wealthy and happy, while at the same time not being famous. It seems as though the current standards of media and the needs of large media companies for content has created a cultural situation in which we are willing to entertain ourselves with any human rain wreck with wash board abs, or a funny accent or who will simply abase  themselves in any way to be on TV.

So please allow me to say, fuck that. I hate that whole business, not only does it lower the cultural bar , it also creates a situation where people who are professionals in the business find it hard to get work. (Writers and directors for example.)

For a brief moment I was excited to see the History channel would be running a show similar to Discovery's Biker Build Off.  The original version of this show had two custom motorcycle builders making an original bike in ten days. from the ground up. Now being a motorcycle fan, and a lover of quality craftsmanship I loved that show. It had enough drama to fill most any given show. Making a motorcycle is anything but easy and doing it in ten days causes plenty of drama.  I loved this show because it featured people actually showing skill and building things.

So I read the description for History channels show and in about three sentences lost interest. Long story short its much like the old discovery show, but you can feel the fingers of the producers adding new elements. Where the builders are sniping each others team members to work for them or sabotaging each other. Long story short, to anyone who knows the business, a whole lot of fake stuff added by the producers to keep things interesting.

It's what they like to call "enhanced reality."

I'm kind of sick of enhanced reality, I have a very profound fear that it, and it's world view are beginning to effect our own. If you think I'm over stating that take a look at "Dude/bro" culture for a while then compare it to the old Jersey shore or a number of other shows.

Maybe it's just me but there used to be a time that to be a celebrity you needed to do something that was worth celebrating. Negotiate a treaty, win a war, cure a disease something that people could actually be impacted by.

Now we have people who are famous for being famous. You know who they are, so no need to drop names. We are in a world surrounded by sex tape diva's, stars famous for punching out their girlfriends, Joe the plumber types who people actually listen to and of course more and more reality show stars who frankly seem to have no other functional skill then showing up on time and being willing to do anything for the camera.

The annoying part about Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame comment is that by and large most famous people these days either can't fill the fifteen minutes or have you praying to see 14:59 on the clock five minutes after being introduced to them.

Meanwhile there are so many people doing amazing things. Working to end hunger, going out to parts of the world and vaccinating people so they don't get or spread diseases, and helping the world to be a better place.

Ya know the sort of folks you're average reality show producer could give a fuck about.  A while back two friends of mine told me they watch "Here comes Honey Boo Boo." because it made them feel better about themselves.  I love them both but seriously I did nothing to hide my world sized level of disappointment at them as people.

Here's what makes me feel better about myself. Going out and doing stuff, and encouraging others to do so. Maybe we should help convince some other folks to do the same. Then we can all smile as this horrible culture of celebrity dies off like the dinosaurs.

If not my biggest fear is we are headed toward this very quickly.

Idiocracy "OW my balls!!"

When did we?

So Im curious, at what point in the greater internet timeline did people simply lose the ability to communicate effectively? I'm genuinely curious because lately more so than ever it seems like the level of debate we see out there in the world of social media looks more and more like a riot sponsored by Jaegermeister and the makers of fresh minty crack.

If I may give a humble opinion part of it can be summed by an image macro I saw on a friends page on the might Facebook. Keep in mind, this is a friend of mine who has the biggest heart in the world, but is fairly conservative. Yet we still talk to each other like people because, ya know, personal respect and all.
The Macro had text that went something like this.

"If someone says you have offended them, GOOD! That means you have stood for what you believed in, keep doing it."

I'm paraphrasing, my memory is a bit dodgy on the specifics but that was the message. Now what this message really does is encourage people to limit the ability to communicate. If you pass along some sort of horrible shocking thing that offends people, you'll get a lot of attention. Some serious flaming, and heat from people who read it and lost the ability to think, but in the end what you won't get is a coherent discussion of whatever the subject of your thing was in the first place.

Communication happens in a area where people feel free to speak to one another on a more or less playing field. That field tilts pretty hard when one of the people is going out of their way to make the other person unreasonably angry, before the conversation even begins.

Lately it seems as though social media is empowering people to have a voice, which would be awesome, except that the first they tend to do with it is announce something really loudly and can't believe when others don't share their views. Then it kind of degenerates into a battle of who can spout what piece of information at the other. And by information I mean "Something I read on an op ed page so it has to be true."

Seriously I have seen three major post fights break out on my Facebook this weekend. Often spurred on by some individual who either has chosen to view their opinion as fact, decided not to notice when someone else posted a refutation of their argument. Or simply jumped in and trolled the posts for the lulz (I know who you are, and you will pay.) But usually by about the third or fourth posts the battlements have been manned and the war is on.

Which in a way would be okay if we could have a war of ideas that was about actual communication than turning a discussion into yet another on line version of a Jerry Springer episode, where one person stands up and acts as dysfunctional as possible  and then everyone else stands watches and replies, finding it hard to believe that anyone would talk like that.

So here, let me give ya some hints as to how to maybe approach a online, social media discussion to keep it interesting but reduce the amount of dysfunction?

Okay first off let's remember a basic thing, somewhere on the other end of the fiber optic line is another person. Maybe you might want to scale your statements with the idea of how you would speak to them in person. The lack of proximity to the people you are talking to often reminds of George Carlin's bit about how much of an asshole a person is based on how far away they are.

If you are about to hit enter and you feel smug about the message you're going to send? Yeah read it again. Most likely you're message is going to make it worse rather than better. Might be time to re edit your comment. Try some wit, watch Stephen Fry, or Eddie Izzard. They could tell me to go fuck myself and I'd likely ask them where they keep the lube. The smug guy just makes me want to paste him in front of his family.

Third if you're trolling just to stir shit up, maybe you should consider growing up. There's room for all sorts of behaviour but when it comes to trolling leave it to the pros. The b/tards have a lock on this behaviour, and do it way better than you. What you think gives you a giggle makes me shrug perhaps groan a little, and then makes me think far far less of you as a human being.

Lastly get out and talk to actual people. From outside you're own little world. go hang out see things and do stuff. I see way too many people in this social world who apparently only hang out with others of their own gib. Trust me life is way more entertaining when you have a broad palette of people to interact with.

Sadly I have a feeling I'll be getting back to this subject.

So as I leave let me part with this.

 George Carlin discusses assholes

That moment

So somewhere in you're life ,if you're lucky, you had a moment where some piece of work hauled off whacked you between your eyes and opened you up to the idea that you wanted to do that. Or something much like it.

I've had a few of those moments so from time to time I'll share. Hopefully someone out there has an experience or two they'd like to share as well.

Let's get something straight, I love music in general, and  I am by and large not a genre snob, but rock and roll will always be the form closest to my heart. As an emerging adolescent it helped to give me a means and path to take all that emerging energy and put it into something mostly positive.  Like playing the guitar.

To me music had always been some sort of mystery, in junior high I played the saxophone, but while I was an okay player I felt no real connection to it. It was a chore like any other. Those people on the radio or TV obviously had some sort of mystical connection to music that I at the time lacked.

Then the local university began doing a series of one dollar movies at their theatre. So each week I would go and get my mind warped by some new film I would never see on broadcast TV. (Remember it was the early 80's people in town had cable but we didn't.) So I would watch foreign films, horror movies and others that broadened my mind.

So during a summer day I plopped down to go see the latest movie in the series. "The Kids Are Alright" which is not the film about Mark Ruffalo and a lesbian couple, but a documentary about the band the Who.

Now we all have bands and music that touch us and shape us, but my love of the Who borders on religious adoration. Their album Quadrophenia to me was the thing that kept me from going completely nuts on way too many stressed out adolescent nights. So to actually see even a film of them performing was an amazing night for me.

The ending of the film was the moment for me. They're playing "Won't Get Fooled Again." And just after the quiet synthesizer part and Keith's drum solo the venue lights in the film come up as Roger screams "YEAAAHHH!!!!" The camera is at the side of the stage and Pete Townshend is sliding on his knees across the stage which on a movie screen looks like he's about to land in your lap.

To borrow a phrase from UK English I was Gob smacked. It had an energy that to this day still makes my skin turn to gooseflesh.

My dad picked me up and I was losing my mind about this movie. He was always cheerful and quite nice about his son's latest obsession. Then I remembered, my dad had an old sears harmony acoustic guitar in the closet which he hadn't touched since the late sixties.

"Dad can I borrow your guitar?"
"Feel free." He said.

He never got it back. This was at the start of the home video boom, and we had a VHS machine. My folks would rent movies, and I'd rent concerts. One day my dad saw me watching a David Gilmour concert and rewinding the tape over and over so I could learn how to play a part in one of the songs.
That's when he figured this was for real, and started shelling out for lessons.

I still play it to this day, pick it up and play, not just to learn songs but simply to blow off some steam. I lay reasonably well, but in my mind I'm Pete Townshend blasting power chords and writing truth in song form.

It also got me started into writing and art but that's a story for another occasion.

So for the moment I spoke of go to this link and just go to the 7 minute 45 second mark on the video below.


Won't Get Fooled again

Misogyny and Slut shaming. Seriously WTF?

So I keep thinking about this subject, especially since Mondays ruling, and every time I do my mind coughs up a mental hairball preventing me from really bringing the full force of my more sarcastic neurons to aim at it.

As much as the ruling from the Supreme court really got on my nerves, it was the reaction from a lot of men and some women that left me sitting there alternating between scratching my head and wanting to buy a skateboard so I could smack a motherfucker in the face with it.

The reactions I saw mostly came down to. "Well if you can't afford birth control maybe you should keep your legs closed." Or some variety there of. Continuing a long running trend of missing the point in the whole hormonal birth control debate. Which among other thing includes notions that it's used to regulate women's cycles, relief from acne, endometriosis and other effects, but because it involves sex the hard core narrow minded tend to  miss that.

No instead we get these sorts of comments, and I kind of wonder why. Excuse me while I show off my self interest but a world full of women with closed legs does seem to me to be hellish at best, and not the sort of thing we should strive for.

I think it shows off a huge dichotomy in the way we view sexual desire and relations based on which gender is having them. Any guy can wander around looking over the women in any club claim he wants them all and he's a stud, but if a woman announces she wants every guy, she's a slut.

Now we all already know this. We've heard that quote millions of times yet somehow we never really examine why this is.

I would love to grab a group of people who are intelligent and articulate and talk this one out sometime. But in the meantime I'll advance some theories.

First off there's the notion that a woman is in some way shape or form a possession. Brought to us by Abrahamic faiths and a few Milena of patriarchy. Clearly a possession has no use for the notion of her own desires or pleasures, and therefore any woman who does is not acting within her God given societal role. Henceforth if she's acting like a man or showing signs of sexual desire like a man she's a slut simply for not playing the game the way we want her too.

Second it could be physical jealousy. Let's be honest here, barring the use of pharmaceuticals even the most physically capable man is gone start flagging after he gets to the fourth or fifth woman in line.  Women on the other hand, if you'll forgive the phrase have a deeper well for the physical aspect of sex and can go much longer and take more partners. Let's face it we as guys tend to be vain creatures with fragile egos, and this is a subject that can hit a guy square in the ole.. well yeah.

From a practical aspect the notion of slut shaming seems to be (At least in this bastion of mid west "values") based upon the idea of a woman admitting she likes sex in general or worse yet has ongoing sexual relations with multiple partners. Something that if a guy said it  would get him slaps on the back and a free pint at the local bar.

Which is why I don't really get it I guess. Maybe I'm just the odd one out but the notion that a woman might enjoy sex doesn't bother me, in fact I find it admirable and I do my best to help out with their enjoyment when I can.

For me it's all about a rather sub conscious system of control for women. Something we should perhaps finally acknowledge, confront, and hopefully move away from. The world is full of problems but the worst ones are the problems we fail to notice as they're "just how things are."

Like what ya read? don't like what you read? Got a comment or suggestion? Get in touch, I'd love to hear from you.
And here's today's fun link.

Professor Elemental. "Fighting Trousers."

MOVING!!!

It's really the sort of fun usually reserved for days when you get kicked in the shins over and over.
Thankfully I have the most awesome friends in the world. Big thanks to Bill Dudley who brought by a truck and a trailer, Tom Peterson who brought his own bad self and a big smile. Ann Myers without whom nothing of any consequence ever gets done. Jon Van Kampen for being younger than all of us and therefore did a lot of work without complaints about his back or knees.

Kurt Lambrecht, who despite missing most of a hand still busts ass like three people, Lani Santos who somehow manages to make any project seem fun by her presence. Jennifer for being the newest of my friends to turn up and doing all this with a smile on her face. Bill Lockwood who had not much to do for a couple of hours, stopped by and arranged all my AV gear, cause he rocks.

To Ephemily and Lilly, who came by the next day and showed my how easy cleaning an apartment is. Ohh and they brought food. Good food. Prosciutto, cheese and tortillas for the win.

Ohh and Ann Myers .. again. Who came by on Monday to help me grab the last of the pesky stuff.

I am amused that I will say I am blessed by amazing people in my life as many of these folks are atheists, but I think they get the point.

Beer's on me folks thanks so much.