Dispatches from Nowhere 01.26.06

You know what is nice to hear?

When an executive for a major bank says: (they) will not lend money for projects under eminent domain.

"The idea that a citizen's property can be taken by the government solely for private use is extremely misguided," BB&T Chief Executive John Allison said in a statement. "In fact, it's just plain wrong."

It is almost like there are human beings on the board of BB&T.

I also read that our favorite Rock Star in wraparound shades has announced the formation and launch of "Red", which is being launched as a commercially sustainable enterprise with the goal of keeping economic enterprises in Africa.

What a neat idea. Get large multi-national corporations to agree to stay in Africa and find a way for it to be profitable for them. Shocking.

Next.

I remember a decade ago when the Republicans insisted they were going to "clean house" and "take back the government". Right. I am tired of politicians telling me they have the answers to political corruption in the other party. Instead of convoluted plans that have been advanced by parties on both sides of the aisle, I have a simple solution.

Institute Term Limits.

I know. It is a kooky idea, but if the people in Washington know that they have a limited time there, they might actually attempt to serve the people. Which is a far cry from the current situation of politicians serving themselves.

Just a thought.

Enough of that.

Let us play a game. I'll quote something and you tell me where it is from. Sound good? Good. We will start easy. Here goes.

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

Ok, go.

Dispatches from Nowhere 01.24.06

So, this is a follow up to the 01.19.06 dispatch. Apparently I had more to say than I thought. Last week I said I thought the church should be involved in sex-ed. I don’t know that I can say that what I think applies to all people, Christian or otherwise. Because I was asked, I will try. I don’t know if it is right or wrong. But it is part of what I was thinking about. It got really long, so I choose to post it as a dispatch instead of in the comments. Anyway –

I always thought that if Christians and the Church were serious about raising Christians in a secular world they would openly discuss sex, desire and all the other tangled emotions that emerging adults experience, instead of just referring us to the Song of Solomon or complaining that the school system is teaching promiscuity and homosexuality and opting us out of sex-ed.

Isn't the church in the business of instilling morals and values in young Christians? Shouldn't we be allowed to discuss what is affecting us in a setting that is comforting to us, as well as one that shapes our world-views?

I know. I'm not really expanding on my initial statement. Let me see if I can clarify.

Why I think the church should be involved in teaching sex-ed. Of course this pre-supposes that you are interested in the church and its teachings in your life.

I want the church involved to help emerging adult realize that sex is not dirty. It is wonderful and beautiful and like all gifts from God – it should be cared for and not treated lightly. All that being said, we still need to educate our emerging adults and talk with them about the risks and dangers of sex in a very serious way.

What I remember from public school sex-ed, they taught mechanics and answered some questions about developmental changes. They dealt with the physical actions and consequences of those actions. Where were the emotional and moral consequences of those actions taught? As much as I want to answer the question “either in the home or in church” my guess would be that those consequences were not. I don’t know if that it was because of fear or a reluctance to talk about something considered indecent.

I have a much more liberal attitude on talking about sex because of how frank my mom was/ is. All those sexual health classes and HIV awareness classes that she taught that we kids got taken to sunk in. But all I got from the church was "Don't have sex until you are married and don't masturbate. It's a sin. Oh yeah, Homosexuality is an abomination before God."

OK. That was the answer with no more explanation or discussion. Yeah. That didn't help us or happen. (With me or any of the people I associated with in my youth group or Young Life. Nor did it help my friend/s with his/their emerging homosexuality. )

So where were we supposed to learn? I can tell you where we did learn. I'll be frank - it was not the marriage bed. As with all teenage boys there was a healthy trade in porn, and we talked with other guys – some Christian, some not. Even worse, we learned with girls in our youth group. (Well - I did anyway. And they were as confused as me about what we were doing - not just the mechanics. The whole situation was messed up.)

I had all the knowledge that mom could arm me with. I knew enough to be safe and why I didn't want to have intercourse. Well, let me rephrase - I wanted it, but I restrained from having it when offered (some of the time anyway). Not that it was offered all that regularly but enough.

I couldn't talk to any one. Not my pastor (and be shunned in church? hah!) Not my mom (just. NO.) And all my non-Christian friends didn't understand why I was upset (dude! You are having SEX! SHUT UP.). I know I hurt one young lady because things between us got out of hand and I ended it. I don't think I explained myself or why I felt that things had to end - they just did and so I did.

You end up in unhealthy situations that way.

Christ, I read all that and it sounds to me like we were all having sex all the time. No we were not. Of course it happened. I ran with damaged people and damaged people engage in self destructive behavior a little more openly than the rest of the world. That is not really the point. So sex was offered. So were drugs and alcohol. I stayed away from drugs and alcohol, but not so much with the sex. It was a struggle. How can you live up to an ideal when the people you should be talking to about this – won’t talk about it.

“It is a sin to have sex (any kind of sex) before marriage. It is a sin to masturbate. Don’t talk about it.”

It felt like it was a sin to talk about it.

I don’t mean to be indelicate… but I think that we need candor in a discussion of this sort. If you can’t talk about it, what is the point?

I think my Young Life leader (one of them) was as open and honest about it as he could be. He expressed the same frustrations that we all did and why he struggled with it and how he dealt with it. My first real experience with a Christian mentor and he was honest about that part of his life. We never talked mechanics - but spiritual and emotional consequences were discussed. In retrospect, it gave me hope. I was not abnormal in context.

You know, we all masturbate at some point. We all have fantasies. We all lust. We all make mistakes. We just need to talk about it.

After all of this, I still don’t know how I feel about pre-marital sex. Knowing what I know now, I would rather teenagers were not dipping their toes in that pool. I don’t think they are prepared for the responsibility of it. I am not inclined to tell adults how to live their lives. It’s not my business what they do.
Sexuality and Reproduction -- things that are beautiful, wonderful, inspiring and oh yeah, created by God.

Exactly. So why is it that we won't talk about it? I mean mechanics, consequences (emotional and physical) etc, etc. I'm not trying to be titillating here, but why not have these discussions? I know. I’m on my soapbox again. I’m not advocating a sex tips class for teenagers, but I am advocating an educational class that covers all the same things we covered in sex-ed (at a bare minimum).

Another question I have always had (and this is really for the adults – not the kids) is "If sex if for procreation only - why make it feel so good? Why do I get an electric feeling when my (insert partner here) touches me?" I know it's biological and the reproductive reasoning - but it seems to make sense to me that God gave us a gift that allows us to explore our partner’s body and find pleasure in that. So why deny that it is good in the correct context?

I find it interesting that Islam is having these sorts of debates, but much more openly. I linked to it a few days back - but one of the side articles that came up as a result of the marriage valid/ invalid fatwa was on the topic of what was acceptable between man and wife in the marriage bed. From what I read, the Shi’a Muslim teachers have said essentially - in the marriage bed - anything goes between husband and wife, but some things do not glorify God as highly as others. There is disagreement on that as well, but they are talking about sex in context to religion and marriage.

The kick is that so many teens I know were opted out of sex-ed where they might have received some warnings about the physical consequences - and their parents/ church never talked to them about the emotional consequences. I read it in the news. I hear about it from the Preachers Kids I have met and the ones that were cloistered their whole life.

Shouldn’t we be caring for these people before the fact, not just after? Isn't that our place as parents and as members of the church?

Wow – soapbox. I didn’t mean to ramble on so. It just sort of came out this way. I edited the stuff that seemed irrelevant to the discussion or too personal. It probably still crosses that line.

Dispatches from Nowhere 01.19.06

Just a warning, this might be really crass.

First, I read an article that says "Americans are now more accepting of fat people" (and then goes on to state that it is likely because we are all fat). Next on the agenda was an article talking about the seeming prevalence of anal sex among heterosexual couples and even more so among teenagers.

Wait a second there cowboy. The other day you mentioned wanting to read a book by an ex-sexworker and today you are talking about changing beauty standards and anal sex. We know what is really going on. You are a closet perv aren't you?

Damn it. You have me pegged. Aaaaaannnnddddd (cue reference to funny movie) You know how I know you are gay?

OK, enough of that.

Are beauty standards changing? I hope FASHION is changing. I hadn't really noticed a back lash against curvy women, but then I am widely known as being fairly oblivious to what constitutes "beauty" in American culture. "Beauty" is such a weird ass concept anyway. I mean, take any two people and they will disagree as to what constitutes beauty. Hell, I disagree with myself on a regular basis. Angelina Jolie or Stacy London?
Uma Thurman or Wynona Ryder? Johnny Depp or Ethan Hawke?

Wait.....

ANYWAY.

I can't tell you how a woman or man should be to meet some impossible standard of "Beauty". What I do know is that healthy is attractive. Spirit is attractive, intelligence is attractive. Strength is attractive. Self assuredness is attractive. Knowing that you can age gracefully and not cling to a youth that you no longer have is attractive.

In a completely unrelated tangent, is it 40 virgins that martyrs are promised? What the hell? Who wants 40 virgins? Dude those guys are totally getting the short end of the stick there.

Anyway, to sum up - fuck physical beauty standards. Be strong and healthy and whole. That is beauty.

So, tell me why I’m wrong. You know, I am a man. I am used to society telling me I am worthless.

Now the anal sex.

Apparently the Washington post said that oral sex is up among teenagers?

Really?

Isn't that like, old news? I think they were saying the same thing when I was in High School.

Slate had a different take on it. They criticized the media for being unwilling (or unable) to express some sort of moral opinion on the subject of their kids possibly doing the deed, instead article chides the media for hiding behind statistics of health risk.

OK. I admit that I have mixed feelings on sex ed. I think it is the parent's place to educate their children, with the state as a fall back. (I have some other opinions on sex ed programs and why the church should be involved, but no one wants to hear those.) I don't think the state has the "right" to educate my children on what they see fit. I should be allowed to opt my children out of sex ed. BUT (and there is always a but) I firmly believe that if you are unwilling to let the state teach your children about sex, you have an obligation to discuss it openly and frankly with them. Sending them in to the world with out that knowledge is stupid and dangerous.

If you can't talk about oral, anal, vaginal, masturbation, male and female genetalia, pubic hair, menstruation, (insert topic here) and deal with any question that your child comes up with, sign the form and let them be educated. I vote grow up and take responsibility for raising your children. If that means you sign the form, then sign the form.

Ok, enough standing on my soap box, back to the anal.

As the author points out, in the new study from the CDC, the percentages of males and females reporting consensual anal sex effectively doubled in the last ten years. (I’m paraphrasing - probably poorly). Any why is this important? Consenting adults are free to make their own choices. I agree. Absolutely.

When I was young, we talked about oral as the sure fire way to "have sex" and not get pregnant. Oral has a low rate of transmission of HIV. (I think the transmission rate is 1 per 10000 acts.) Unless you are built VERY wrong, it has a low chance of pregnancy. Vaginal intercourse, of course has a higher pregnancy risk, and the HIV transmission rate is 10 per 10000 acts. Anal intercourse again, lowers pregnancy risk, but the HIV transmission rate is 50 per 10000 acts.

Don't you think that maybe, just maybe, people need to know this?

I know. I’m so frank about it. Mom was a nurse. She taught Sex-ed. I've heard all this for years. I told my friends. Some of them even asked my mom questions. She is cool like that.

Maybe I'm preaching to the choir, (shocking I know) but sometimes it bears repeating. I don't think our cultural taboos on discussing sex and the human body is healthy. When I was young, the taboo was Oral Sex. No one talked about it and now that we are, it is assumed that everyone is doing it -"It is an Epidemic!" Nope. Sorry. Please try again later. The numbers don't support the weight of that supposition. As the survey report notes (data) "suggests that there was little or no change (accounting for sampling error) in the proportion of males 15-19 who had ever had heterosexual oral or anal sex between 1995 and 2002." and as the author of the slate piece nicely points out - "The more interesting numbers are in the next age bracket up—and the next orifice down."

As usual, we are behind the times. Now we are talking about oral sex and the potential dangers it has. Good. I'm glad that we have matured enough that we can talk openly about oral sex. Maybe we should go one step further and not focus on one act. Instead, maybe we should focus on the whole picture. You know, the one that doesn’t make us ashamed to talk about sex and sexuality as dirty thing.

Maybe, just maybe, if we arm our emerging adults with the knowledge they need to protect themselves before they go off to college (you know – the sexual experimentation years), we might find a way to actually save everyone a lot of pain.

Dispatches from Nowhere 01.17.06

I saw this book linked this morning and I think I’d like to read it. I'm fairly sure that it is the complete opposite of the propaganda coming out of the "Adult" industry. I am sort of interested in this - simply to see an alternative view point to the propaganda coming out of the "adult" industry.

So, in my copious free time I'll read this, raise the kids, study Japanese history, write a novel, write more short stories, read more, clean the house, restore a car (or two), compose another album, work with more musicians, run more, train more, eat less, drink more water, sleep more, become a better Go player, receive my graduate degree(s), switch fields (or focus of study) and receive another graduate degree (they are like pokemon - gotta catch'em all!), and drink coffee.

(Hey - I've gotta have my vice. And as vices go - coffee isn't a bad one.)

I think I need fewer interests.

Or, maybe I just need to focus.

In other news,

I went to a gym for the first time ever today. This morning in fact. The Freedom Center has an indoor track and I really, really need to run/ exercise. So I set the alarms for 6.00 and I was off to the gym this morning.

It was a good experience over all. I like the track. I wish I had not forgotten my iPod this morning. Fourteen laps to run one mile with no music was sort of really boring. I dislike the locker room, but it is a necessary evil. I did have my first experience with "group" showers today. Sorry kids, I skipped out on all that "open shower room" stuff in H.S. (of course, when you skip Gym most of the time - you can get away with that) All the stalls were occupied and I was on a schedule. So, my slightly pudgy ass said "fuck it" and stepped into the open room of swinging cod and took my shower.

Modesty be damned, I needed to shower. I survived. There were no blatant Harvey Keitel moments so all is well. (Please don't make me explain that. I still have retinal scarring from The Piano.)

I'm so Victorian. Focus on the task at hand, eyes ahead, don't make eye contact, close your eyes and think of England....

But anyway, I liked the fact that I got to exercise this morning. That makes me happy. What else is there to say?

Not much really.

Dispatches from Nowhere 01.13.06

I am working on getting back into my running schedule. It is way too easy to just stay in bed when it is cold outside. You get to snuggle up to your significant other or your favorite blanky and just go back to sleep.

(And I wonder why I can't get to work on time.)

But I want to run. I want to be healthy. I don't want my hips to hurt because I’ve been stationary for too long. Even with the sinus infections and the cold weather, I want to do it. I just don't always want to do it enough to get out of bed in the morning. It is easier to run in the spring and summer. This whole winter thing sucks. It is cold and my eyes water, my nose runs and the mask I wear fogs up my glasses and blah blah blah.

It was quiet and cold when I went out this morning. I slipped my headphones on over my hood and started running down my street. It was still dark out and other than Pretty Hate Machine in my ears and me running, the world was still. I ran down toward the school, past the 4 way stop and as I turned the corner onto Dublin, I watched the sky lighten as the sun rose.

The whole process has its moments.

An interesting side effect of the weight loss is the people I work with asked what happened. Sometimes I’m snarky and answer "tapeworm" but usually, I'm honest and just tell them I started running. Now, these same people are telling me that they have started running. It's like a virus. One person comes down with it and eventually the whole office is sick.

Now for an ADD moment.

I just heard a clip of Mary J. Blige singing U2's "One".

Damn.

I knew she was good. (And like all true music snobs - I like her earlier work better) She wasn't afraid to play with it and make the verse she sang her own. I think it worked. I guess I'll hunt down the full version.

My current guilty pleasure is a show on A&E called "Inked". It follows the Hart & Huntington tattoo shop and the employees. It is another "reality" show, but I like tattoos and in the last episode I saw, they had Michael Godard on getting his full sleeve done. He came in with a bunch of drawings and left it up to the artist to figure out how to place them and make them all work together. I know it is trash TV and it is edited for "teh drama" and all that crap, but the main artist is insanely talented (if temperamental) and it appeals to me.

Well, it is that or watch Rollergirls.

Shut it.

I know.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Dispatches from Nowhere 01.10.06

How do you explain death to a not quite four year old?

It's harder than you might think.

He told Steph when he woke up that he saw Tika last night. He and Steph talked about it again while I was in the shower. When I got out, he told me that he saw Tika at Hannah's Birthday party, in her room, where she always was. I told him she wasn't coming back, no matter how much we might want her to, she can't.

He told me that she will come back "on the one hundred day!" He was adamant about that.

I don't want to sound like I am upset about this; I just don't know what to do. What's that line from The Crow?

"Childhood is over the moment you know you are going to die."

I don't want that yet, but it think it is a cop-out to tell your kids that "She had to go live on a farm" or some other shit like that. I'd hate it if it was done to me and I think it's a crap way of dealing with death. I don't look forward to explaining the death of my grandparents to him, or the weird and elaborate death rituals we have evolved. (Come on - Dead guy in a box for us to all come and stare at?)

I know I should look for the humor in this. (Shauna will get this: EBOLA) It is a weird line, I don't want to give him nightmares, (and we have had to tell him we are not leaving in the middle of the night, and we will be there when he wakes up.) but .. fuck I don't know. I want him to understand that this is natural and normal, but it hurts like hell when he tells me he saw her.

I know, I'm carrying on about a dog, but really it is more than that. Tika is/ was his first experience with death and she just disappeared in the middle of the night. There are no red carpets and white walls for him. (long story)

In an even larger context, our society's pre-occupation with youth and how we shunt the aged off to homes and let other people deal with the messy parts, I don't know how to not make him neurotic about this. Christ, I'm sort of neurotic about it and I've buried at least one friend and grandparent (In-law). I don't want to shuffle death off to some corner where we can ignore it. I want (for him as well as myself) to be able to face death is a humane way. I'm already mildly anti-hospital (I don't go into them if I can help it) and I don't need to pass that little "trait" on. My children can develop their own anxieties without any help from me. I know. She was a dog. (Fuck you, she was my dog.) Take her out of the equation and replace her with a grandparent or a parent. That's what I am thinking about.

For the record, I do not think that ignoring it while blaming "American attitudes and ideas about death" is healthy or appropriate. However, not being from another culture that handles death in a different way, I am fully unprepared to answer the question of "What do I do then? How am I supposed to deal with this?" You know, I'm half Irish, my joking answer used to be "Drink. Drink heavily" and now that I seriously think about it, I don't know. Same way I do anything I guess. I'll muddle through.

Maybe I should just crack a joke or two and make with the funny. I mean - there has got to be something funny in all of this (Other than my friend offering to National Lampoon's Vacation my remaining dog.) I'm just trying to decide if the funny was when she broke my mother in law's finger(s). (Oh, that black humor. It'll be the death of me.)

See, there is something funny in there. I might be making an observation of the nature of comedy there as opposed to the nature of death. I leave that for you to decide. I apologize for being so disjointed; my mind is sort of all over the place at the moment.

Also, can we stop looking at other dogs and stuff? I'm just not there yet.

Dispatches from Nowhere 01.05.06

What is it about radio that keeps pulling me back?

Maybe it is the myth of it. You know the story. Back in the "golden age" of radio the DJ was king. He found and broke all the good music. Bands lived and died by what he spun. If you couldn't convince the DJ you had nothing. Then the suits got involved. Radio became another commodity. Where there used to be local radio that mattered with a variety of stations for your listening pleasure and driving from zone to zone was an adventure in the musical landscape, now we have corporate play lists dominated by the same acts.

It might be my market that sucks. We just lost another "Modern Rock" station leaving the DC Metro Area with a grand total of ONE "rock" format station. There are lots of hip-hop and country, a couple classical stations, a news/weather/ traffic giant, and a few Spanish language stations. A few years ago I drove north (to Cornell) and on the journey, we listened to the radio. I found that, almost with out exception, the "rock" radio stations I found to listen to were the same format and play lists as the local "Rock" station.

On an interesting note, our remaining "rock" station now sounds much like the late, lamented WHFS in the late 90's. In short, flaccid and with out teeth.

I recently completed another long car ride. Did you know that the further south you go the more variety there is to be found on your radio dial? Between Charlotte and Atlanta I found no less that 4 different rock stations with varying play lists and music I might have programmed myself, were I forced to stay in a particular genre. There were more stations but only 4 that I listened too. I continued to find "modern rock" and "rock" format stations through Alabama and into the Florida Panhandle.

Apparently Rock is not dead. It just went south for the winter.

What Am I getting at? I don't know. The interweb has basically replaced radio as a means of finding new music, iPods, CD players and the like have rendered Radio virtually irrelevant.

You know what though?

That sucks.

Something that used to be cool is dead.

I have heard a lot of you say "Why not XM or Sirrus?” I don't know. Maybe they are the future. The market will dictate if they will survive. Certainly Howard Stern is betting on it. That maybe the answer. If enough people abandon traditional radio for the cable equivalent, the existing beast will need to re-contextualize itself. Here is hoping.

A small solution I see would be allowing the existence of micro-broadcasters or allowing the air waves to be opened up to the public again. Right now the cost of opening a radio station is so prohibitive that it is no wonder the only people in the game are the corporations.

I know. It's not funny. In fact, I think it is just down right sad.

I thought I had a solution. For a while I did. I hope to again. But internet radio for all its promises still isn't radio. It does not have the mystique, the myth that radio had. But it is a start.

Maybe Radio is dead (for the moment). There is some hope. New stations like Jack FM and Dave are popping up, mixing genres and play lists into a muddle that resembles what I want in radio. There is hope.

Dispatches from Nowhere 01.03.06

First dispatch of the New Year. Interesting.

I don't put much stock in resolutions. Either I am going to do a thing or I am not. Take running for example. When I can breathe and am not sick - I run. I like it and I feel better for doing it. I didn't really notice that it had done wonders for me until people commented on it over Christmas. When I quit smoking it was the same deal. I just quit.

Human beings are really wonderful creatures. We possess the ability to decide to do something, and with nothing more than knowledge, willpower, and fortitude, we can and will do it. I think we don't continue to do great things because we get complacent. We quit striving to be more than we are. I don't me or you individually (or maybe I do) but I do mean us as a society. We quit striving to be great. We have settled for mediocre.

We have a president that is trying to convince us to give up some of the same freedoms that helped make America great. We don't have to buy it. We should not buy it. We had a goal once. We have a document that spells out the goals of our country. Maybe we should take the time to read it again. He keeps telling us that America is great, and yet, he keeps trying to remove the things that help make us great.

The government was designed with 3 branches to balance each other out. The executive branch is grabbing for what ever power it can get. I saw Bush on television last night. He was defending his “right” to use torture as an interrogation method. He was insisting that he had the “right” to spy on Americans without Judicial oversight.
Did I miss something?

I’m not hearing the legislative branch say anything more than “Well, we would have liked to have been better consulted” which is a far cry from the statements of “You do not have the authority. You have never had the authority. We made a Mistake with the War Powers act. We made another mistake with the Patriot Act.” that we should be hearing.

Why did we bother to fight a rebellion, to declare independence from what our founding fathers openly called a tyranny - if less than 250 years later we were going to willingly subject ourselves to another?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating rebellion or any other such idea. I am advocating a balanced government, with open and transparent processes that does not tread on the same ideals that it claims to be upholding.

We should not be hampered by some ham-fisted grab for power.

We can do better than this. We should do better than this. Let's talk about it. Let's be great again.

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