Neither an Atheist Nor a Theist Until I Can Think of Something More Foolish Sounding To Call Myself

So God is dead, but what can be done with his garments and bones? I am continually asked to identify myself according to the binary poles of "theist" and "atheist" as though these are the only two legitimate dialogues through which divinity may be approached. I am, for all practical purposes, an atheist, but I suspect that most atheists turn a worrisome eye on my decor, for instance. Let us suppose that a third option exists, what might it look like? Option 1 [Theism]: Divinity, understood as God or Gods, is independent of and superior to the human imagination. Option 2 [Atheism]: The genesis of God or Gods in the human imagination is always the consequence of either fraud or folly. Option 3: As artifacts of the human imagination, these characters take on their most interesting and relevant forms when treated as just that. I will leave this short post with a question: How many of us, on close examination, actually fall into one of the first two categories? Not that there's anything wrong with that....;-)

[5] Things Satanists Could Use From the Non-Clerical Episco/Papacy of Discordia

*"We Discordians should stick apart!": On a scale of Wicca to drama-free, the votaries of Eris have us beat-hands down. Why could this be? The more closely-knit a community, the more that peer and mentor relationships tend to moderate and maintain homogeneity among its adherents. Both Satanism and its dotty great-aunt Discordianism benefit from the opposite tactic. It is this sound advice that gives rise to the tradition that all Discordian popes undertake as their first papal action the excommunication of all other Discordian popes and momes.

*Although it is very good and wise to hold serious reservations about the existence of Deity, it is equally good and wise to entertain the possibility, especially when faced with the problems of theodicy, that god is a crazy woman. *Both religion and humor are attempts to negotiate the mind-rending alienation and misery of the human condition and are excellent antidotes to the most horrible of life's pains-boredom. Religion and comedy are both born in pain, one seeks to escape or ameliorate that pain through its own means, but comedy approaches what is painful with an intimate smirk.

*The care and keeping of mythology is our responsibility. In the good ole' days, stone idols were dressed and made up continuously, as the ancients understood that devotion literally fed their gods, who would wither and die without it. The story of the Great Snub need not compete with the Illiad.

*Anarchy and advanced bureaucracy are phases of one renewing cycle, and the natural forces of entropy are sufficient to topple any tyrant.

No/But---->Bombshell/Busts

NO GODS, NO MASTERS- these are words that once belonged only to a woman named Emma Goldman...they had a meaning to that woman and have made such sense to such an otherly woman herself that they may one day come to have meant something very much like:


No Redemption to Soulfullness through Piety, No Redeemers to Soulfullness through the Monkly Muckedly Monkeyish practices of earthly so-called "Masters of the Living Game"


No Priests but Shamans, No Priestesses but Oracles


No Pious Women but Authentic Witches, No Pious Men but Authentic Magicians


No Marriage Between Virgins, No Virgins Below their own most appropriate Age of Reason


No Tao But That Greatest Austerity of Greatest Possible Satanity


That Essence Which Must Always Be Unspeakable


Those were words that must always belong to a woman now named whose whole name could only mean something so much like that it must sound at least a little like "That House of Godliness Whose Middle Name is Grace and is Descended from a Long Line of Ferrous Little Men"

People Just Don't Take/Make Jokes Like They Used To...

This fucking story....fuck-wow.

http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1DVCL_enUS441US441&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=cnn


In a more humane society, it would be better understood that the only person with a right to "endanger" their own child is its parents, and parents would be wiser about the dangers they willfully expose their children to, those they tolerate, and those that they abhor. Some parenting advice if your not afraid of the idea of your kids turning out too much "like me:"

*Make them sneak out if they want to drink and intoxicate themselves underage, if you can't learn to hide certain things from people that will always love you more and will always be more lovingly curious and less hatefully suspicious (your parents)...how could you hopefully suspect that you can effectively hide from the Law?

*Expose them to dangerous ideas while they are young, before the world and the public school system has had the chance to shut up their minds into a given box.

*Protect them from dangers that you *know* are too great for them to bear, but NEVER protect them so much that they fail to become "dangerous enough" unto themselves.

*Never permit your child to "mouth off" without "good reasons." They will have to learn someday that they have (only as much and no further) the right to offend people's sensibilities as they have the power to do so artfully.

*Make them attain certain competencies, you're a fucking parent, not a baby-watcher.

Respect the Classics

Despite much difference in our thinking that seems, at least at this point, pretty non-transcendable, I can't say that my mother never offered good advice. Never solicited but hey-if people knew exactly what kind of advice they needed all the time and had the strength of will to follow it all the time then they wouldn't be people-they would be Gods. One of the few things my mother tried very hard to instill in me that I never fought the least bit, but merely assimilated for what I took to be its imminent merit, was this..."Respect the Classics! Your teachers wouldn't encourage you to read them because they are content to keep you as stupid as possible without playing too fast and loose with their funding, their bullet-point curricula, or their absurd "everyone's already essentially good enough" values." Surely the best of maternal intentions are visible here, but I've only recently found an answer for myself to the "why..." of the "respect" that doesn't simply boil down to "My mother's advice is usually good [a faulty premise to be as charitable as possible]" or "Because I just love them so much [a vapid appeal to sentiment when I know that I could somehow 'do better'].

I can't tell you why I despise the thought of a life lived in complete ignorance of "The Classics" without giving some notion of what I think makes a "Classic," because that's gotta be something pretty gnarly if I'm to justify my use of the big "C." To my mind, a classic is a classic not because it is well-regarded by "all the right people" but because it has a certain inherent 'unstop-ability' to it. This is why Freddie Mercury embodies the essence of 'classic' rock and roll to me, everything about his presentation, performance, and composition is un-fucking-stoppable. A book deserving of being called a "Classic" could therefore only be so [to me, anyway] because it has the same quality of requiring absolutely no external promotion and only the smallest modicum of popularity at the time of publishing in order to be a "must-read." And why "must we read them?" You don't have to answer that fully to begin to see where I will be going with this. A small 'c' classic is somebody's ideal example of a given 'class,' and the 'class' that is embodied in a near-perfect form by the "big-C-classics" could easily be labeled: 'That class of artistic and intellectual achievements for which it is possible to suppose that human civilization will never be fully done digesting." By way of an example, I simply must give a link to a number from one of my very favorite musicals, if only to demonstrate that human civilization is no where NEAR "done" with even such a very old "Classic" as Plato's Republic.

There is a purported Chinese curse which goes: "May you live in interesting times!"

But in all seriousness, how lucky are we! If you read or watched V for Vendetta a few years ago and you've been following news of the Anonymous Phenomenon recently, it's difficult not to appreciate the widespread V/Guy Fawkes imagery that seems to have attached itself to the AnonOps image. I post this now because most of the excitement surrounding them seems to have died down. Rather than trying to judge this amorphous body of persons for their collective actions, I'd rather think of them as a sophisticated new breed of trolls we all must learn to deal with. Compare AnonOps to young conservative activist James O'Keefe, who disguised himself and confederates as a pimp and, presumably, a couple of 'ho's. For another conservative example, take Sarah Palin's marvelously absurd invention of "death panels" during fateful eleventh-hour debates on the health care Omnibus bill. I'm not the first to suggest that the Westboro Baptist Church is comprised of "professional" trolls. I offer examples from America's right wing to demonstrate that anyone can employ the meager art of the troll, although its mastery is an outgrowth of 'net and youth culture. The tactics themselves may be as underhanded as you goddamn like, but observe the examples I gave-they work!

Given that it's a helluva lot easier and media-savvy than civil debate, does this mean we can expect the emergence of only greater and more sophisticated trolling operations?

Movies Not To Watch With Your Economist Friend...

This post is dedicated to my father, an industry analyst with the International Trade Commission. In addition to being a career economist, Dad also consumes a painful amount of literature by economic historians, making him vastly more likely to ruin a perfectly good piece of cinema with so many "fascinating factoids" barely relevant to characters or storyline. It should be observed that the average economist is probably so thrilled to be invited anywhere as to prevent this type of behavior. By the way, nothing in quotation marks should be directly attributed to anyone, least of all my father. He uses more words on average to say...anything. That said, on with the list:

1. Amistad: "Hey, did you know that Irish and Cockney textile laborers largely opposed the slave trade because it contributed to unbeatable prices on cotton fabrics?"
(here, "Irish and Cockney" may just as well be rendered as a single word: Irish-and-Cockney)

2. Mary Poppins: "You know sweetheart, that kind of panic is likely to ensue in any bank where enough people attempt to withdraw their entire accounts at once, because banks usually only keep a fraction of what's been invested in them on hand in cash."
"A more realistic portrayal of chimney sweeps in Edwardian England would depict a hopeless alcoholic who hates his life, his job, and the very sight of sunlight."

3. Pirates of the Caribbean: "Pay attention kids, you're actually learning a lot about the politics of mercantilism."

4. The Wizard of Oz: "This entire story is a fascinating allegory for the conflict between advocates of the gold standard and early monetarists."
(if the previous statement includes factual inaccuracies, it's because I was actually paying attention to the movie).

5. Blood Diamond: "Africa is a giant clusterfuck. I had fun there, though. Everyone was really cool when I was explaining the structural complexities of the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Less so if I said that I was voting for McCain."

6. Avatar: I've never sat down and watched this with my father or any other economist, but I just can't help but suspect that they would ruin it.

I'm sure there are more, including just about anything to do with pirates, the Cold War, or knock-on-wood if The Fountainhead ever comes to the big screen.