Clever Reverend #4

We Speak in Metaphors About Love

The Poinsettia

She brought this into work a few years ago around the holidays—just a simple, small poinsettia with foil wrapping and full, blossoming leaves. It sat on top the microwave for the longest time and random people would water it from time to time (or it could have been just her and I watering it, I never really knew), keeping it alive well past xmas. I started watering it regularly, and when she was laid off, I took complete control of its care, which consisted of nothing more that giving it water. Sure, I initially did some extra care: I re-potted it, and I trimmed it once so it would stay full, but all I do now is give it water every few days and a little extra water on Fridays. It just grows and grows without any nurturing or attention at all. I recently cut off part of a branch to see if I could get a new plant started, but that hasn’t amounted to much. I’m pretty sure it has outgrown its pot again, and I have a feeling that it may tip over some day, but I’ve gotten rather ambivalent lately about putting forth any extra effort, so whatever happens, happens. It’s common sense that if I don’t re-pot it then it will fail someday, but I’ve made no plans to do much more than water it, and there’s no biting desire within me to start making any more care plans now. It’s there. It gets taller. I water it. Some day it will need more, and that some day is now. And I haven’t decided if I’m willing to do much more.

That goes for the both of us.

Hey Mistah, Spare Any Debit Cards?

Walking across Fleet Street, heading toward the parking garage, thinking about what I am going to do for dinner and how I can't just stop at some fast place because I have no cash on me, I am accosted by a lady asking me if I have any money, she's just trying to get something to eat. Sorry, I have no money whatsoever on me, which is the truth. (Full dislcosure: I did find a crumpled dollar bill in my wallet later on in the evening.) Half the time I'm asked, even if I wanted to give, I can't because I often have no cash on me, even less often is change because it quickly ends up in my change jar. I wonder, in this age of plastic plastic plastic, in the hurtling forth into a newer age of a cashless economy, how many people that once depended on the spare bucks and dimes from street strangers are now either starving, dead, or gainfully employed now that the handouts are fewer.

Bong Hits 4 Jesus

Photo credit: Clay Good

Heading to Supreme Court this week is the case Morse and the Juneau School Board et al. v. Frederick (06-278). Guess who's the guy arguing for the school? Billy Boy Clinton's old nemesis, Kenneth Starr. I'll leave the jokes to someone else on that one. All I can say on this matter is this:

The current neona, uh, conservatives have it in their thick heads that we can export democracy. Look how free we are! read the banners strapped to the heavily armored humvees with machine gun turrets. Throw an election and you too, someday, will be able to tell kids not to paint satirical signs and display them on Olympic parade routes.

John McCain this week said our troops were being wasted in Iraq, then later clarified to say he meant "sacrificed."

If they are over there moving into Baghdad outposts while we sit here and suspend students for this shit, then I say, Mr. McCain, you had it right the first time. And you just lost my vote. Again.

Why do we need to mince words? Fuck it, I'll say it: we are wasting lives over there. Waste. As in throwing away. Anyone with half a cashew in their noggin who thinks I am deriding our troops needs to armor up and ship out. Of course the soldiers believe and want to believe they are fighting for the greater cause. I don't fault them for that. To many of them, to those who do feel they are helping each and every day, it is not a waste to them at all. I am sure that Iraqis can see that we are not the devil after all, at least not all of us, and are smart enough to separate the men from the policy. But the policy is wasting lives. Wasting money. Wasting international goodwill. Wasting the future. Wasting opportunities for balance in the Middle East. Waste.

I wouldn't trust Dick Cheney to run a carwash. I wouldn't trust Donald Rumsfeld to hold my place in line at the checkout. But yet we trusted them to wage war, and they wasted the international support we had after September 11, 2001 (can we please stop saying "9/11"? It's not a fucking decal; it's an historical event. JFK wasn't assassinated on 11/22), they wasted our surplus, they wasted time and resources in Iraq when they could have spent effort in Afghanistan, the battle that no one dares question, and they wasted over 3,000 lives so far, and tens of thousands who will carry, as Bush calls them, "grave wounds."

The whole thing is a waste. Just like it's a waste of the court's time and America's time to be arguing about the sign above. But I guess they figure after installing the pasty white diverse duo on the SC, they've got a shot at going after their little pet projects: namely, eroding all Amendments except one, the Second.

Bong Hits 4 Kenneth!

Assault Rifles 4 the Messiah!