and sontag died of the luekima she has had since the 70s--this is what i wrote somewhere else about her...


i hated her notes on camp, but her book on fotos (her two books really) changed completely how i viewed art and the image, it completely rewired me--what pisses me off is how closeted she was, till her dying day, so closeted that i have seen rare mention of her long term and emotionally/aesthically/critically rewarding realtionship w. the wonderful annie lebowitz. which is why i think her notes on camp is so wrong (so deeply deeply wrong) because camp is a series of processes for queer folk to mitigate a hostile exterior landscape, and she was so safe that the mitigation was not nessc. (and also why illness, which was (obliquely)about her cancer, was better, more real, more honest and more wounding then aids which was held at a distance, happening to other people, so she could become colder--i find it strange considering her history, and her critical heratiage(sp) she didnt consider the nature of identity more--for critical heraitige(sp) read barthes

(brilliant critic, brilliant writer, hero of mine, should have come out)

the time list of top ten comix of the year is absurd, with the usual cocksucking of indie fucks, failing to realize when the work fails to potential (clowes latest issue of eightball) or has a musty, dull as dishwater, idelogical nostaligia (and by extension sort of white privelge sheen ) (ie seth's clyde fans) or loving those badly xeroxed mid80s, i was young and hip in ny reissues (amy and jordan) while lambasting one of the hardest, most haunting works as "unreadable" -- jimbo in purgatory.

fuck em.

and speaking of fucking em:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0801065100/artandlies-20/002-9705777-1340053

(bak to seth--i hate seths work, loathe it--i hate how sad it is, not sad in the depressed sense but sad in the deeply pathetic sense, and how it tries to construct a historical narrative that never really existed--how he wants the 50s, but doesnt want to deal with the socio political implications of the 50s--not that everything has to be so deep but this indie hermeticism, this my pain is more legitmate then your pain, exhaustion---this cratedigger obsession about finding things b/c of there obscurity and not b/c of joy...

fuck seth. )

also
i may move this week, to a place that is more expenisve but in the annex, walking distance to work and other interesting things--far away from vic park and peter (who went thru the garbage a couple of days ago, peice by peice, anal about recycling)

one per cent of the entire population of sri lanka has died in the earth qaukes and resulting tsunamis, there were deaths from somalia to japan.

what do we say about this, except noting it ?

notes on some submissions

for a gallery on church street
15 fotos of b raymond neilson (exactly what it sounds like, the pictures i have taken of raymond in various guises, and various media) artists statement notes:

• reclaim buddy
• the politics of the male gaze as they relate to hetro/homonormativeness
• creation of new families
• ubquity of presence
• making once hostile dictomies (sp) safe for each other, but not nessc. others
• sheer practical nesscity of camera sharing
• post queer similarites of mcginley/dissimilarities to goldin
• snapshots
• raymond as hottie

For Spacing

An Anarchists Practical and Aesthetic Guide to the Subways of Toronto. (title; the article is 25 wor d blurbs on every subway station, practical shit--how good is the art, how easy is it to sneak on, do you see your breath waiting for the subway, what of interest is close to the station, what does the neighbourhood nearby consist of, how labryinthine is the station, what ammenities foes it have, et. al)

Toronto Ducks (cf venturi)

For The United Church Observer, or some other leftie jesus rag

sola scriptura and how it relates to the anglican windsor descion (sp)

tomorrow is xmas, and i wonder if i should go to midnite mass tonight, its always a pain to find a church, and sometimes to walk, but always a joy when i am there, a centering complex calmness comes into me, like snow on the wheat feilds, when my soul lies fallow...

but my soul is not fallow and my body is tired.

i dont know if i can stay till midnite.

being aware that everything is a mannifestion of normative socializing, and doing something about the normative socialaztion are two different things--namely, i am unsentimental about xmas, but the silly things make me miss home.

these things are then unsilly

pats off to london
d's in edmonton
raymond will follow soon
sundar and sean and company are all gone
im lonely.

im s cared of how homesick i am right now
homesick and broke

agnes martin died today, at the age of 95, in her nursing home at taos.
i cannot underestimate the spirtual power this womans work has had on me, she became my francis, my bernard, my anthony of padua.

she became my hardnosed sask. farm woman, united church dinner zazen.

im sad.
really sad.

today is the last day of a 40 hr week, retail at toys r us...and i like it--its busy, chaotic, and i still dont understand why so much is spent on so little (35 bucks for 45 yuo gi o cards comes to mind)

working on the floor in electronics, show up 15 minutes early, and go home half an hour late--its exhausting, and sort of fun too, and it feels good to be able to tell the world t hat i can actually do retail (they seem to like me, cross fingers and toes it works after jan.)

wednesday i went out w. sundar to a country/avant garde imrpov concert and met a pretty pretty banjo/uke player named jayme...we think he was flirting, so after i finish yiddish lessons, im going to pick up banjo ones.

there is more, but right now im almost out of time.

and a thot about the bible:

there is no one way to follow christ, christ and the christian church demands, from the begining a radical kind of plurailty

it demands it in the most literal way (galatians, the ethopian eunuch, the woman caught in adultery, etc)

but it also demands it in the most subtle of ways, by calling all of those who follow him to no longer follow old ways of capital for example, or to deny family for another....

and sometimes it becomes metacontextual.
the text of the bible is not the rigourous narrative expected out of tradtional religous sagas (its not the rig veda) and its also not the sayings of the prophets, that are also expected (its not any of the sutras)

it is a collection of dozens of narratives, all fractured, all complicated--some playing off each other, some in conflict and some dovetailing perfectly---and it demands a intertextual reading(s)--it is the reason why it is so easy for people to call each other bad xians or to deny xianity in there fellow believers--let me offer an example:

a radical anarcho-libertarian can look in matthew for proof texts, and he can tie those to the idea of debt forgiveness found in the numbers sections on jubillees, and tie that all into the distrust of secular states in the apocloyptic tradtions and have a pretty solid theology (if he ignores the idea of giving to ceaser what is ceasers) (sp)

a homophobe can skip over christ altogther, make bridgings b/w the mosiac laws of levticus, and pauls hatred in romans.

a feminst can link phoebe and ruth

one who objects to the idea of women in leadership can link unclean menses with women subjecting to there husbands.

(these are only the ones that are within the text themselves--there are others, for example the sumarian hymn to inanna featuring almost line by line cribs of the song of songs; isaacs struggle w ith abraham and the politics of moloch; paul's history as a roman before being an xian)

the canon was formed by comittees (who inspired the committees?), its lacunae (literally--the lack of cohesion b.w the hebrew and xian scripture; the 100s of deturocannonical texts, some of which are used as legitmate scripture (ie apocrpahya for the catholics, the maccabes for the orthodox) and some of which remain legitmate.), and since luther, an obsession w. scriptura wrong phrase).

so this text, with its genres, with its contexts--what do we do w. it ?
how do we play sola crpiptura w. a library that contains in it, prohecy and letters and poetry and eoritca and historical narrative and political propgranda (agitprop) and and and and...

anyways, im off to work (!!), this post was mostly for jeff, but andrew/drew put yr nose in.

im happy and there is much excitement.
i could write, or i could live.

writing to come later.
money still a concern.

jackson mac low died, at 82. i wish i could talk more about his poetry, the little i read touched me immensely, but itwas mostly about the thorny unworking and reworking of meaning and language...or something like that, and so words kind of fail. chris p would know more...(chris p taught me about poemsy) http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/lmaclow1.htm read it here.

not texas swing, honky t onk

also c/w him and gretchen wilson, also he played mama tried for me, and signed the setlist.

jason mccoy, at the hardrock--shitty venue, but brilliant show, that moves past the tension i have felt in his work, b/w old fashioned honky tonk and morew friendly cmt/radio pop.

this one, though marred by suburban assholes, was energetic, tight, fun, playful and v. much oreinteted towards the higher energy honky tonk and texas swing (in fact he used the word texas swing)

played haggard f or me, and signed a set list.

im also v. drunk.

kinsey--oh kinsey.

the movie has haunted me since i saw it on monday--its a hard movie to watch, a complicted, morally ambigous, deeply moving, deeply erotic, deeply funny movie.

its one thats well acted, thats solid, that moves and that does not manipulate.

it points out what mr kinsey taught us, that sexuality was not a binary, not a distinct set of idenities, but a series of practices--and these practices can be made into patterns that resmeble others patterns

that love is not evasive, that love (and consent and respect and desire and mutual entwining) is the great intangible, but really the only thing that matters.

it showed a man destroyed by his work, destroyed by the processes he put into place, destroyed by others ambitions and others hatred and his own immutable curiousity...and it was also the most queer film of the year...

(kinsey and his grad asst cylde are in a hotel room in chicago, getting ready for bed, when clyde asks him where on the scale he is--this conversation leads to clyde seducing kinsey, and thn seducing kinseys wife--and the three of them get together and fall apart w/o any catacylsms.)

(chris o donnell suggests a tumble at the end of a garden party---this tumble results in a jeslousy that almost splits apart the team)

(kinsey gives his father a questionarre after his mothers funeral, and kinseys father admits to having to wear a chasity belt)

(kinsey's son is deeply prudishly embarrassed at the frank dinner table talks)

(kinsey punctures his penis w. a straight pin, attenmpting to understand masochism, it just hurts, and kinseys wife cradles him, begging him to end the pain)

(kinsey and chris o donnel interview a man who has had sex with everything, and o donnell is so offended that he storms out of the room--the subject says he thot that kinsey was supposed to be non judgemental, that he was more sqaure then he imagined---kinsey replies, that anything can be done, b/w adults, with consent--a morality devolps.)

(kinsey becomes a preacher)

there is so much more...people need to see this film.

my father told me that kinsey was one of his heros, and i think he is mine as well

That sand into which we bury ourselves in order not to see, is formed of words...” –Georges Bataille, Inner Experience


saudi arabia and iraqi terrorists have managed homocide bombs in hte last two days killing dozens of people, but not v. many americans.

i have a job.

http://michaelpaulus.com/gallery/character-Skeletons

these are amazing, in craft and concept.

big day

the cyborg vs human collection was me, ray, two transhumanists, a lecturer and a bunch of little old ladies w. there husband, who said things like a robot cant love.

opening for fruit, with some of the pretty japanese girls in full gothic lolita regalia, and some fat ugly girls dressing in carnivals, as a way towards worship--asked a question talked to the artist, ate lots of good sushi

met w. rays dnc buddy, over a really good country band, who played squeeze box and sounded like death (good death, the way r

the budy is policiy wonk gone policy whore, playing the tune in which ever way the piper wants, wankish and wonkish--he was condescending, called me stupid-- and ray was at his yes sir no sir how high sir best, working hard at working me over (the buddy paid for rays drinks, ray paid by being monkey)

made me hate party politics even more.

think i got the toys r us job.
think i got a new house.

-----Original Message----- From: [redacted] Sent: Wednesday, December 01, 2004
To: [redacted] Subject: My not so best friend Jessica.......
So the night
started out great. She arrived at 2:00, I met all her peeps, manager, publicist,
yadda, yadda. Shmoozed with her mother (very nice). A tad stupid in that down
home Texas way. And constantly chewing gum. It was a little gross. Anyway,
Jessica arrives (without Nick) but with Cacee. Surprisingly Cacee lost about
20lbs grew her hair and obviously goes to the same colorist as Jessica because
there hair color is identical. Anyway, she did her rehearsal and we all went
upstairs. Nick then arrives. So cute and sooooo nice. He's a tad slimmer and
less muscle than expected and a little clueless but still very nice and VERY
cute.
So we went through a dress rehearsal right before the show. As we were
walking from dressing room to stage I would say 100 people asked her for a
picture, a wave, a smile, ANYTHING. Stone cold all night. Not one facial
expression did I see. It was actually really sad. Nick and Jessica were in 2
different dressing rooms. Not uncommon for talent but they never even entered
eachothers room! It was a tad uncomfortable. His manager never spoke to hers,
his publicist never spoke to hers, weird. He came out of the dressing room with
this all black outfit on and a gray coat and asked me if I thought he needed a
scarf and gloves. Being to good girl that I am I ran down to J.Crew (in the
middle of the lighting the tree party) and begged them to let me in to buy a
scarf and gloves! Got him a red scarf and black gloves. He loved it. But why
wouldn't he walk into his wife's room and ask her opinion? So weird.
Back to
her.. She is beautiful. Although you can't see the natural beauty because of the
makeup. So much makeup that you would want to itch it off your face. Horrible.
She is pretty short and VERY thin. No fat on that body. Her boobs are MASSIVE.
And def. real because they were sagging a bit. Her jewels are like nothing I
have ever seen before. So basically all around perfection.
The entire night
her tour manager kept asking me for things, more credentials, pizza, drinks,
everything. He said in exchange for that he would get me a picture with her.
Never happened. She refused to stop and take pictures with anyone. I heard him
asking her about a quick pictureas we were walking down the hall, she flat out
said NO. NO pictures with anyone. It was very sad for me as you all would know.
She never stopped for anyone. Complete BIATCH.
End of the night Nick leaves
and gets into his car without so much as a wave goodbye. NOTHING. She wouldn't
come downstairs unless 3 SUV's were already there. Picture 6th ave after tree
lighting and waiting for car service. A nightmare.
So no pictures at all but
memories. Also, the MTV crew got my approval to be on Newlyweds. They will
probably cut me out but who knows maybe I'll be in the back somewhere. Also, the
dressing rooms were on the floor of Saturday Night Live. That was pretty cool.
Oh and her mother went shopping arount 3 to Bergdorff and bought her 11 pairs of
shoes...
I've saved the best for last...
As much as I love them and the
show, I truly don't think it's going to last. She is way too protected by her
parents who were all over her all night. He never had a chance to wish her well
or give her a kiss. She looked miserable and sad. And she was a raging biatch.
To tell you the truth Cacee the annoying assistant was sooooo nice. Talked to me
the whole night like I was her best friend. As did the sister in law. She just
wanted no part of anyone but her parents. I think the both of them are good
actors and are putting on a serious front. Nick assistant is adorable. Maybe
there is something going on there.
Much better for way last......
My boss
and I were talking to Nick about exteneding his intro for Jessica by 30 secs. We
asked him what he wanted to say about her.
These are [Nick’s] exact
words...
"Let's see what could I say.......Do you really want me to tell
you...... Not too many nice things to say about her (this is [we] started
sweating and getting uncomfortable)... How about she was the best stocking I
ever stuffed?" He then proceeded to say, "She was the best Chimney I've ever
come down on."
What scared me about those comments, besides the obvious, is
that he was dead serious. His manager didn't even laugh. It wasn't said as a
joke. It was almost like he was pissed off. There was def. an edge to it. And
the talking in past tense really threw me off.
Bottom line is that her
parents have ruined her into this celebrity robot and because of that her
marriage sucks.
Can't say that I'm much of a fan anymore

via gawker

one of the record stores we saw in leslieville today had 100s of examples of music hall, cabaret, irish drinking songs, venacular folk, rerecorded and feild collected songs--and deitrich--plus blues and country.

it was all words and no music, want to go back.

& one more thing, the new mos def--is he in black face, a vv review of a new collection of minsterel music claimed he was...(i have a complicated aesthetic desire/political revulsion towards blackface--i appericate what it gave birth to, i even like the sounds sometimes, but of course isnt that like saying the nazis made the jews play good harmonica---or is it more sticky, b/c of the intergrated/segrated pushpullkickkill that occured w/i american music)

i have way too many odd puncations in that sentence.

http://www.stickershockmusic.com/

and i think this is sf/j music blog--which has hot new anglo/sri lankan hiphopper/electronica artist mashed up w. super mario brothers one week and the father of the hawaiian guitar (which sounds like ledbelly, and lomax--but that might be a chickenegg thing) in the same week.

my favourite part of tosches on minselstry is how he talked about hawaii, and how the guitar managed to come over v. early to america, and how easy it intergrated into african american r/b and country.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=495&e=1&u=/ap/20041204/ap_en_mu/tabernacle_choir

apparently god does not protect planes that go from slc to wales...god hates wales.
(mormon tabernacle choir refuses to fly there)

forgot where i got this

more about funk.

the problem w. the left is that they cannot deal w. the weirdness of miracles, and seek to destroy it w. logic.

the problem w. the right is that they are so dependent on literalism that any metaphorical reading, even in historical context, even w. proof texts become a threat.

andrew refused to even engage w. funk & jeff deigned to talk to me, only to point out the problem w. scienceism (postmans word)

and i want to believe funk, b/c metaphors and moabites are easier to handle then the idea of zombiejesus.

Konono No. 1"Ditshe Tshiekutala" (i hope the link works)
from this african mp3 blog: http://www.christopherporter.com/

contains:
tumb piano
rythym block
human voices
tamboruines
synth(s)
fuzzbox
drum machine
some other electronics i cannot id
djumbo
congas
tom toms
key boards
panpipes
saxophone
electronic guitar
electronic bass
standard western drum set, w. brushes
tin whistles
xylophone
steel drums
glass bottles


and it goes from quiet to louder and louder, simple to more and more complex, an almost logical narrative, each instrument layered, each one being able to be heard, like a pile of plexiglass boxes --it does go into a sort of frantic ecsatscy, but in that frenzy nothing is lost, everything remains with much delibrate care. (also acoustic to electronic)

its amazing

sasha free jones (brilliant pop journo for the new yorker) links to poet buddy dave motherfucking popshots who links to me.

i keep forgetting how small the web is.

(i should post about more serious things, more substantiol things--but weird gossip is more fun)

speaking of weird gossip--
pay attention to the ukraine tomorrow, the first province who might split has a vote.

alright its been a crazy busy last couple of days, so lets do this quickly

• moved from a shitty rooming house near bloor and dufferin to an even more shitty tenemant hotel in parkdale--more money, better neighbourhood. (the room has only a skylite, looks like an obulette, and is above an all hours muslim disco)
• lost 40 bux, room ransacked b/c all of the keys work on the same lock
• telemarket interview for globe and mail, w/i five seconds i was employeed and then not...emailed 5 resumes yesterday, 3 today (plus 4 phone calls)--one interview from crap tire master cards but the meeting is tomorrow in missiauga.
• light a candle for d's grandmother, who passed in saint catherines on friday.
• went out w. ray and colleen to leslieville, design stores mostly but an insane box of a vintage store, with 100s of hats (including a shiners fez) and dozens of vintage cameras
• the one gallery we saw had these tiny lovely voluminous cloudscapes that were painted with a black fields
• skyview diner has the best blts, red leatherette booths and eggnog milkshakes
• spent the night deriving w. rachel a couple of days ago, talking contemplating, slept over at her place.
• the guy at spin gallery promised to call fab on my behalf wrt to a writing gig (columinsit.)
• im scared.
• hungry again.
• tired.
• can someone pray for me!

i think i stole a loot bag from an opening today---just this odd feeling that the bags were intended for the elite, and i wasnt one of them.
but it had some really cool things: a stuffed crocodile, a plastic pig, a shiny silver capgun, a bad comic, a dvd of welcome to mooseport and it was in this bag that had a screen print of missy elliot
so im not feeling too bad

one of the provisions hidden in the 670 page no child left behind act, allows (ie forces) miltary recuriters into schools, with no recourse from the schools themselves.

this coming a week after the courts forbid this kind of activities on college campuses---interesting paradox, there...what is not allowed in colleges is allowed in jr/sr high schools.

(this info comes from mother jones, grain of salt.)

new ashlee simpson song lala (lala means fuck) features references to hardcore bdsm, roleplaying in costume, and fellatio--also allycats (cf the buddy holly like a one eyed cat looking in a sea food store)

it also sounds like baz luhrman, its all cacaphony.

http://www.westarinstitute.org/Periodicals/4R_Articles/Funk_Theses/funk_theses.html

by recentering christ away from an abusive church, and onto the reponsibilty of smaller communities, and by stripping the useless baggage of theology, and returning to politics of people in a spec. geographic space, funk has made christ alive again.

discuss?

and ruscha sent a wedding announcement once, where he was in the middle of a threesome.

oh and the tom cruise fotos in the new gq make him a suburban, normal, dad like house husband, good to slaughter the ego, an attempt to make him "fun" as opposed to scary as fuck...sexy too.

leslieville is worth checking out, most likely next week. (anyone want to come?)

eight houses in 9 hours,

two in finch (too far)
one in don mills (too far)
one in leslieville (too expenisve)
one in the beaches (not nearly close enough to anything, tiny, smelled awful)
one downtown near king (no door to the bedroom)
one near christie(no floor (literally, it was plywood))
one near bloor and yonge (taken 15 min. before i got there)

looking at one in an hour, near bloor and gladstone.

some links:
http://www.dilettantepress.com/articles/masonicArt/masonicgallery1.htm
great exhibit of masonic art
http://www.jpluther.com/index.html
masonic catalog
http://olympics.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6945283
germans are prosceuting americans for warcrimes

glenys will be here more, as she is most likely going to the philipines
ukraine might be in two before the end of the week.

tired.

So jd and christine got there way, they got me out of the house—and I like the house, and I like the company, and I don’t want to move, and well, they got me out, which means someone else is moving in, and which means that he wont complain, b/c hes jds friend (which is why jd never wanted me in the first place), so none of the repairs are going to be done, the house will be a disaster and everything will be fucked up. But I wont be there. Apparently I was going to move in dec.---but I cannot move, I cannot afford to move, and keval said he was going ot move in nov. and hes still fucking there. This may be a natural consquence of me calling the housing inspector who called the fire inspector who will still come on dec. 6th , but it is also about the landlords wife lying to me about her moving (and the landlord moving more people in), about the lack of grout in the bath tub and the lack of a proper bathroom door. , the casements falling out of my bedroom windows, the cracks in the basement and wall, the raditor cover missing, the heat not being on, the hole in the kitchen wall covered by the stove, which also fails to work and the landlord being too (lazy/poor/bored/unable/unwilling) to fix what he needs to fix.

jd and christine (esp.) don’t want me there- Christine feels threatened, everytime we fight, she mentions me as a fag, as a fuck up , as rich, as someone who reads too much, who only reads, who has no other life but reading, she must have mentioned this to me dozens of times, and she must have mentioned my supposed wealth more—they forget that I have phone bills, groceries, insurance, medical costs, and rent…and she shouldn’t be there anyways—she is supposed to be in house arrest in missiauga.

(she also thinks im selfish, the fun thing is that I offered immediately to move out, w/o much forethought to move out immediately, and any attempts that keval said that he would help me work it out went down the tubes. )

the long and the short of it, is that I need to find a 400 dollar place w/i two weeks and I don’t think that’s going to happen.

out in the cold. nyc is shot

edmund white talked about gay mens realtionships being banyan trees, with roots popping out, from the same source, miles apart...i was reminded of that, and the diversity that surrounded the table when we took glenys out for dinner last night. (dinner at mt everest, nepalese--worth it, glenys bought)

9 people, could ahve easily been 12, people i have known for 2 months and people i have known for 7 years (sundar, rachel, raymond, glenys, danielle, sean, eileen, patrick.)

we talked about gossip, weirdness, anecdote, theory, history, politics, careers, food, art, sex, books, each other.

before christine and jd called me selfish, but around that table, talking and gossipping, and feeling so much love, i thot--i can be careless, and rough, and my life can be complicated by eris's certain fondness, but im not selfish. (christine and jd called me selfish b/c i called the housing insepctor on the place im living, after not being able to see the landlord, or get him to return my calls...35 violations, 5 structrual in the house, and the place has b/w 13 and 15 people living there, each person paying ca 400/mo. (400x13=5200) the landlord is claiming broke, and telling us that we will be evicted, how can he be broke at 5k a month)

after dinner, dominons (EGGNOG!:)!), spadina to dundas west to deliver glenys home, to gladstone and buying pat a beer, to galaxy donuts and there amazing double toasted cocanut (sp) to dufferin to the 29 home--where the door was off the bathroom and the place was lit like a vegas wedding chapel.

christine thinks im rich, btw.

glenys and i hung out, we looked at homoerotic art (the gay body at hart house...brillant, amazing, revelatory, hard on inducing, adam fisting god, celestial, naughty, low and dark...see it now!!!!)

then tried to find xrista, no luck, went to crux and looked at discount theology books at crux (the actual name, a tiny little tucked away place)

dinner @ mt everest a nice nepalese place on bloor st west, in the annex

i feel vapid and vain next to glenys, w. my love of finery and my dislike of jesus.

pat and i are talking again, i think that we are in s ome kind of post verbal settling...hes looking over my shoulder.

dinner at pastis tomorrow, maybe.

(pat is so fuckable in his new haircut, all the ladies love him, now he is making obscene gestues @ me w. his modified phallus)

alright... the head of fuller university, the largest evangelical protestant seminary in the united states (and the oldest and the most influential) has spoken in the tabernacle in slat lake, begging for forgiveness, because of the sins (lying, poaching) that the evangelicals have committed against the lds.

links:

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/156/story_15656.html
http://www.standingtogether.org/
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,595105580,00.html

(i would argue that the this is the triumph of politics over theology, and that b/c of a variety of details, the morg are not xians--esp. the corperality of god (which is really weird and fucked up), and the refutiation of the trinity)

today

i went into the anglican cathedral of st james--the biggest one in to, just for some quiet time, and there was some amazing organ playing, and i sat and listened for a good hour--w/o him noticing mePinkMoosePearl: and then i walked out, to get to my next interview, and i saw a huge stained glass window near the back, commerating george the 6th cornation (sp), and the glories of empire

i dont think i got the caban job, assumed too much
more resumes, more interviews.

(take note that st james is on the corner of king and church)

I have “basketbrawl” issues for precisely that reason, and I’m relieved to see someone else voicing it. Admittedly: in the end I just have a leftover childish conviction that sports fans are very often dicks, and some small part of me enjoys seeing the worst ones get punched. But this whole thing exposes the wrongness of a crowd paying black men to perform a spectacle and then treating them with all the respect offered to animals, from the first things thrown to the gleeful dumping of beer over Artest’s head as he was led off. Really: if someone came into David Stern’s office and threw shit at him while he was working, the reactions and results would play quite differently. And the sight of at least one fan happily stepping out onto the court and taunting a player—visibly asking for a fight, clearly wanting it—is a lot more disgusting to me than the idea that a person having shit thrown at him might possibly take off after the folks doing the throwing.
All this is above and beyond, of course, the normal caveat that no, nobody should hit anybody, blah blah blah, players get paid to work under pressure and should control themselves, blah blah blah, but still. More moral outrage is being directed toward players (who basically gave certain fans what they were looking for) than toward a big brewing bag-of-dicks of fans and people who are meant to be controlling them.

nitsuh on ilx today, wrt to the detroit pistons...still the best news footage of the year.

good news, thanks be to god. (how ironic am i using this.)

• coffee and derive w. dave morris, who is funny and sexy and brilliant and wise (also straight, v. v. straight, and rather shy) he had this amazing story about charlie mingus offering edward wilson rough anal; and wilson saying no.
• interview for seminary at emmanuel college
• interview for work, wed. at cabana. (please let me have this, i want this)
• uk educational option in june and july of this year, if it all works out.
• drs appointment for the fall down and go boom, in the new year, a week after my bday
• some time with colleen, we felt comfortable, and she walked w. me round the islands, claiming it was like a bergman movie, and it reminded me of the west coast, the slick sad greyness of the waters...we also did the distillery district, and front street.
• making much progress on the book.

half an hour fall down at no frills, and when i woke up 10 people were watching me, cops, secuirty gaurds, etc

find it funny.

The 500 word book proposal (first draft)


The book that I want to write is about America and Jesus. I know that this book has been written a million times in a million ways—as history, sociology, theology, theory, propaganda, and erotica. It has been written as poetry, non fiction and fiction, it has been written from the beginning of America, and it will be written at the end of America. It is written because there seems to be a common idea that religion is the microcosm of the American ideal, and to understand it is to understand all of her complexities. Each writer has come with there own ideas, and there own solutions.
As a writer, although I do agree with the idea about Jesus being a metonymy for larger ideas of America; I do not believe that there is a solution to American Jesus, because I do not Him as a problem to be solved. It is a matrix threaded with half a millennia of history, a matrix so thin and gnarled that to pull one string means the whole web hums. Then, there needs to be a new way of writing about this matrix—away from the old narratologies and the dead hermeneutics—resurrect it like Ezekiel’s old bones (the ones reflected in the African American Spiritual dry bones—the knee bone is connected to the thigh bone and Thomas Merton is connected to James Dobson.)
Continuing with the other connections between Merton, Dobson and the African American Spirituals, I want this to be a book that works through the common and the found. I want this to be a book about how 300 million Americans think, and not the current trend at Harvard Divinity School is. I want to treat those who are usually held in contempt, with an intellectual rigor. To examine, is not nessciarly to judge, and if judging takes place, it must be in the spirit of inquiry.
To reflect this means there is a need to make the text closer to the matrices of American faith, finding a form that allows gaps and spaces have equal space to everything else. I think that the best way of showing this is a dictionary—a great American form, and one that allows for easy complexities. Not a dictionary in the traditional sense, because it is impossible for something so empirical to be reflected in the dry authority of Noah Webster—think of it then as more like The Devil’s Dictionary—witty, sharp, ready to reflect conflict.
But in opposition to Bierce’s angry and conviction about everything, I do not want to be an authority, I want to be an entry into discourse. I want people who are low key, liberal, mainline protestants to go to Baptist Mega-Churches, I want the loud dancing and glossilalia of the Assemblies of God to hear the quietness of qauker meeting hours. I want, in this age of god being used as a cynical pawn of the powers-that-be and hated by those who think they know, a large and wide ranging, amusing, and trenchant invitation to the nature of American Vernacular Christianity.

(pages next)

More Books to Read
The Politics of American Religious Identity Kathleen Flake (unfortunate name)
Mormon America: The Power and the Promise by Richard Ostling
End-Time Visions: The Road to Armageddon--Abanes (avoid his lds book, standard right wing xian hack and slash)
Religion in America (4th Edition)by Julia Corbett Hemeyer, Julia Mitchell Corbett
Religion and American Culture: A Readerby David Hackett

Also, for you Raymond:
http://www.ldsromances.com/?tid=122
http://www.justpillows.com/product_info.php?products_id=2490
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1590382404/qid=1101109740/sr=8-3/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i3_xgl14/104-0380757-2419102?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

http://www.gschindler.com/2004_05_01_x.htm

"The advanced societies of the future will not be governed by reason. They will be driven by irrationality, by competing systems of psychopathology."
jg ballard

a small jesus poem and an erotic ode to a canadian tv icon.
(nothing but the best)


for two months of weekday afternoons
I walk to the corner of bloor and ossington

Into st anthonys, up to the altar;
stare at the corpus, eye to eye,

hoping for once he’ll answer

(as I stare neighborhood grandmothers, from old Europe,
look at me askance, as they kneel, crawling the stations.)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


6:30 in the morning, Seamus O Reagan is hosting Canada AM
& I watch him on a 70s era black and white philco just before I go to bed.

I’m in love w. mr o Reagan, he has a clear, concise face—
Safe, banal and made for television.

Its not the face that gets me, it’s the furtive gestures, i'm truly in lust w., the
Ones he makes despite the suit jacket and tie (or maybe because of)

(for example, when he pretends to be superman on Halloween—
not actually superman, just hands on his hips--or once he accidently rolls his sleeve up
thinking the pretty girl would take his hear rate—when she didn’t.)

sometimes when i’m sleep deprived my heart does its own special revalieres

he’s the librarian bending over for books, that I see everyday at bloor gladstone
he’s the severe Jesuit in a gabardine cassock who scratches his his nose when I take host at st micheals.
hes the dozen men in the bathroom at the yonge subway station
hes the waiter at the end of a long shift, im ordering coffee and desert and hes ready to go home
he works at my local internet café, and gives me an extra hour for ½ price
he sells me a sasuage when im coming out of a late movie at the paramount, in the entertainment district.

that’s it
seamus o reagon is my own personal entertainment district
(me and every middle aged stay at home mother, from esqamailt to gander)

To Read
Junichiro Tanizaki's "In Praise of Shadows
Isabelle Carruthers
McDiarmid
Louis McNeice
Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia
said's culture and imperialism
hannah arendt's eichmann
Sanders, Brown, Koester, Ehrman, Crossan
Behan
O Brian

Mis nonsense.
When an editor at The New Yorker said ten lines needed to be cut from a story that used the word "butter" 132 times, Barthelme replied that "the word butter must appear 132 times, you can cut out any other butter after that." The story, "Eugénie Grandet," was collected in Sixty Stories, Barthelme's own selection of his best. Looking at it today, it's hard to see how the paragraph consisting entirely of the word "butter" repeated 86 times makes much difference at all.
An ilx thread—no memory of which one

"It might be fun today to dress up like a little girl -- kids think it's cute and things like that. And you start playing around with it and, like drugs, you do a little here and there (and) eventually it gets you," Davies told reporters. AP
concerning turning drag day to camo day in a Houston area high school

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/11/18/arts/MOMA.583,0.jpg
the new moma--
see how the Pollock is distanced from the krasner, the gap between the two of them (the mental and physical and aesthetic gap) is bridged by the newman….clever and beautiful.
(it’s a great krasner and an even better newman) (almost worth the 20 bucks)

http://artgallery.yale.edu/images/landing/yaleartgallery_015.jpg
(reminding me of the 100 african masks on a wall of mdf particle board in an African store called Ashanti, on bloor street west, in the back were dozens of colourful kente cloths, none of the the commercial (as in popish, full of images of mass produced goods) that I have been looking for (seen in pictures of Zimbabwe)


An Austrian artist, Muhammad Muller, has begun a long-term cultural project - digging a 42-mile tunnel. He estimates it will take two people with shovels about 5,600 years.AP

http://blog.ivanpope.com/photos/uncategorized/dsc02312.JPG
whitechapel, the place in question is across the street from jack the ripper pub.
That is all.
Via http://blog.ivanpope.com/

Daily show, had a joke about hilary saying her husbands presidential library is v. similar to her husband, and steward added, leans somewhat to the left, a rather good double entendre, matching Clintons sex and politics in an efficient and lowkey way, and then he said, yep I just made a dick joke (his exact words)—so a good tension was ruined in crudity

when I was at sjsa, I always told my parents they should have sent aj to notre dame, all I knew about it was that it featured a large, convent run boarding school in the remoteset of sask. Prarie, and that would make it sweet revenge, catholics I imagined being much much harsher then Anglicans…I didn’t know that they had some of the more amazing, earliest and best illustrated rare books in Canada…
http://www.walrusmagazine.com/article.pl?sid=04/11/03/2043209

To Read
Junichiro Tanizaki's "In Praise of Shadows
Isabelle Carruthers
McDiarmid
Louis McNeice
Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia
said's culture and imperialism
hannah arendt's eichmann
Sanders, Brown, Koester, Ehrman, Crossan
Behan
O Brian

Mis nonsense.
When an editor at The New Yorker said ten lines needed to be cut from a story that used the word "butter" 132 times, Barthelme replied that "the word butter must appear 132 times, you can cut out any other butter after that." The story, "Eugénie Grandet," was collected in Sixty Stories, Barthelme's own selection of his best. Looking at it today, it's hard to see how the paragraph consisting entirely of the word "butter" repeated 86 times makes much difference at all.
An ilx thread—no memory of which one

"It might be fun today to dress up like a little girl -- kids think it's cute and things like that. And you start playing around with it and, like drugs, you do a little here and there (and) eventually it gets you," Davies told reporters. AP
concerning turning drag day to camo day in a Houston area high school

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/11/18/arts/MOMA.583,0.jpg
the new moma--
see how the Pollock is distanced from the krasner, the gap between the two of them (the mental and physical and aesthetic gap) is bridged by the newman….clever and beautiful.
(it’s a great krasner and an even better newman) (almost worth the 20 bucks)

http://artgallery.yale.edu/images/landing/yaleartgallery_015.jpg
(reminding me of the 100 african masks on a wall of mdf particle board in an African store called Ashanti, on bloor street west, in the back were dozens of colourful kente cloths, none of the the commercial (as in popish, full of images of mass produced goods) that I have been looking for (seen in pictures of Zimbabwe)


An Austrian artist, Muhammad Muller, has begun a long-term cultural project - digging a 42-mile tunnel. He estimates it will take two people with shovels about 5,600 years.AP

http://blog.ivanpope.com/photos/uncategorized/dsc02312.JPG
whitechapel, the place in question is across the street from jack the ripper pub.
That is all.
Via http://blog.ivanpope.com/

Daily show, had a joke about hilary saying her husbands presidential library is v. similar to her husband, and steward added, leans somewhat to the left, a rather good double entendre, matching Clintons sex and politics in an efficient and lowkey way, and then he said, yep I just made a dick joke (his exact words)—so a good tension was ruined in crudity

when I was at sjsa, I always told my parents they should have sent aj to notre dame, all I knew about it was that it featured a large, convent run boarding school in the remoteset of sask. Prarie, and that would make it sweet revenge, catholics I imagined being much much harsher then Anglicans…I didn’t know that they had some of the more amazing, earliest and best illustrated rare books in Canada…
http://www.walrusmagazine.com/article.pl?sid=04/11/03/2043209

ON CERTAIN WITS
who amused themselves over the simplicity ofBarnett Newman's paintings shown at BenningtonCollege in May of 1958

When Moses in Horeb struck the rock,
And water came forth out of the rock,
Some of the people were annoyed with Moses
And said he should have used a fancier stick.

And when Elijah on Mount Carmel brought the rain,
Where the prophets of Baal could not bring rain,
Some of the people said that the rituals of the prophets of Baal
Were aesthetically significant, while Elijah's were very plain.
--Howard Nemerov

via modern kicks

andrew has been quoting wendell berry over on his blog, so i have a story in response.

when i was in kentucky, and i had decided i just wanted to go home, i spent the last few days in silence--fasting and praying.

one of those days, i meditated on berry, read him and thot about him--it was may, in a place an hour and one half from the nearest town, on a comfortable chair, underneath a wide green sycamore. it was a place of quietness, with rolling green lawns, and tall stone fences.

and while reading him--and thinking about him, and hungry because i was fasting, i kept being interupted by the pickup trucks coming from bardstown to ohio, as there was a two lane blacktop just outside that wall.

and that exact day, i went to father luke, and i said i wanted to go home--that i didnt belive in god, and i took the high way, past the distelleries, the go go bars, the churches in double wides and log cabins, the thousands of cars and thousands of people, because the road from bardstown to louisville is a major interstate...and i felt peace.

we do not need god in private spaces, god is easy to find there.
we need god in public spaces, (the loud, noisy, dirt)

some artists to look at more

anna yuschuk "stills" lonely, romantic images of seas and still lives, done in a painterly recreation of found and semi found digital fotos

brian burke weirdly phrased portraits of men and women in obv. distress

Howard Jasper--Canadian Folk CArver, mostly known for uncanny and haunting birds, his storks and herrings look like ibis and his crows look like death.

Hugh Martin--Swiss fotog, the absorbtion of natural matter over manmade, and the aesthetics of decay--but swiss so clean and pretty (brilliantly composed, and good sense of graditation of colour, not sure if i really like him (hes at the gallery at yorkville, you guys know it, the one w. the big farfard cow in the front, and an series of wonderfully coloured abex drawings)

Jack Bush's Early Canvases look like every Canadian Painter ca 12-20.

some openings, lectures, etc
design tonite, at ocads main hall

something wed. which i have forgotten. (meomry dont fail me now)

rachel's and lynn cohen lecture thurs. (you will want to see the lynn cohen--raymond, she does these great c prints or empty and venucalur spaces) (maybe kinsey though, if i win tickets)

and a good modern art blog (contemparary, etc)
http://modernkicks.typepad.com/modern_kicks/

badger minor is a minor god (the south on the link list)

http://fallujapictures.blogspot.com/
links to ap fotos/copies of fotos that havent found print

also when morrison writes jla there apparently is a cannibalistic gorrila garood (sp) in the offing (does he eat other super intelligent mass apes ?)--i need to ammend the ape essay, btw

some random newsing:

• i bet ray 5 bux that gonzales wouldnt make it thru.
• two videos on my screen right now: anna nicole smith drunk at the ama and a handsome marine shooting a wounded iraqi in the head (reminding me of the vietnam foto that hawks have apologized for, because of the question of uniforms, cant wait for the spin.) they shot him in a motherfucking mosque breaking two ancient rules of engagement
• fox news and the washington post are putting even money on condi as powells replacement. (talk left, for the video and the condi news)
• kansas has voted down a .0038 per cent increase in property taxes to pay for arts funding. (taxes are user fees for services)
• apparently one of the reasons why daschle lost was because of prarie dog control (he apparently wasnt hard enough)
• the us border control is using biometrics for the first time
• talking more and more lds theology w. pat, and i realise how little i know and how much i forget
• big episode tonite, (4 today--one where i bashed my head in a pyschoanalytic bookstore, bashed it until it bled) one that lasted almost two hours and had 21 parts, had to go home in a cab
• lost the house, to sue shep will cost 50k
• going to emmanuel college, if god is willing (me as a seminarian, discuss)
• (i am doing a series of brief vingettes on art irl on brown wedge, sol lewitts underwear is next)
• happier ?

the main and purpose only main difference b/w sex positive queer radicals and sex negitaive conserative xian reactionaries is how they conceptualize the function of mutalibity. (yes i will explain this)

: job-47003639@craigslist.org
ic@lush.com
: deborahe@intergate.ca
Christian at 543 Yonge Street
Reply to: hr@sunriserecords.com

American Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, and Education Secretary Rod Paige and Colin Powell have all resigned today. Which brings the total up to 6, with 2 more being in the wings

alright, here are some things:

• found a brilliant house two blocks from my place, open plan, edwardian brownstone, w. 4 bedrooms and 2 baths, trying to find people to come and look at it, on wednesday--email me with all the info needed.
• lunch w. luis, i think that it turned out okay, but im never sure.
• keep trying to balance bills, to juggle, not going well
• handed out 20 resumes in the last two days, mostly to retail establishments on qsw and the annex (including a place that only sell sox and underwear, note irony) (also a travel agent and some other of that nonesense)
• the cermaics gallery near ocad wouldnt give me any supporting material on one of the artists b/c i didnt look like a buyer, the greener pastures gallery sent me this email:....Nice to make your acquaintance while you were at the gallery.
  
  Attached are jpgs of Elizabeth's two most recent paintings. Each are approx. 78 x 96 inches. Both works are 2004 and are still available. so answer me this--do i look like a buyer or not ? (i should find a way to post those Elizabeth McIntosh paintings, they are amazing)
• Working on an article about queer discourse in the ex-gay, born again virgin markets, and also the book (agent wants pages the first, aargh) --am making progress, and i have to remember how young i am.
• met wendy dennis at parkdale library, she gave me some leads, b/c i paid her fines (wendy dennis writes about culture and politics for a bunch of famous canadian rags)
• my erotic obsession with seamus o reagon goes unabated, this time leading me to write a long o haraesque (sp) ode to his ordinaryness
• i have been exchanging emails with a gentleman called ruggerbugger69. ("special emails")
• richard estes, if i like him does that continue to prove that my tastes in art have gone retrograde.
• i am so fucking horny--all i want is a rub and a tug, and i am going to have to start cruising soon (i would go to the tubs, but i dont have the 25 bux--which reminds me, st marks is hiring)
• speaking of saints, the woman who i was subbing for at st clares has come back from vacation so no more lectionary.

i dont think that i am xian anymore. but i do think that i follow christ.
(koan for the day)

i think that i am a hypocrite, but then i think everyone is a hypocrite--and i think that by harshly destroying peoples beliefs, is not paying attention to your own. (one of anthonys rules of living--clean up the shit in yr own backyard before you clean up the shit in other peoples.)

i appreciate the love of christ and christians, but some times its used to stymie debate, to push a homogeonzing, non thinking agenda, to refuse anger and the exhaust dissent.

sometimes its a passive agressive attempt at destruction.

sometimes its love.
(i thot a couple of days ago, that i was glad that i wasnt a xian anymore, b/c it allowed me to hate(if you are reading this thomas, its not you i hate)---not a nice thot, but nothing really allows me to hate--pomo thinks hate isnt fluid enough, pacifism denies its violence, xianity denies it period.)

another thot about pomo--i rose the question of evil to pat the other night, walking past the warm red brick sfds of marlee street--if one is a moral realtivist (which i am, which is why i made such a shitty catholic) and if one believes in give and take, push and pull, then how can one label things evil--how does a postmodernist define evil (how does a postmodernist define good)

when does moral realtivism end.
(i told drew that you can be good w/o god, and that evil was refusing to help humanity, to violate the essential diginity of men and women (and others)--i wonder if i believe this or if this is the easy answer.

hungry w/o work
god helps those who help themselves.
(am i still a theist--its monday, then yes.)
(have i always been an agnostic--the idea of a universal larger power making it easier to hide the essential swamp of theology--thinking of brerer(sp) rabbit who knew is way thru the thicket patch and brer bear who kept getting stuck but kept going in. (do i have the right names ?)

god alone--
not as in there is only one god, and god is the only god
not lord king of the omnis
but a sam peckinpah god,
a gunslinger, a lone wolf.

god as james dean in rebel w/o a cause.

here, order this for me for xmas.
http://www.jonessoda.com/files/turkey04.html
or this:
http://www.gethsemanifarms.org/fruitcake.asp
http://www.gethsemanifarms.org/fudge.asp
http://www.gethsemanifarms.org/cheese.asp

i think that i might have a job at a custom glass shop, which is much better then wal mart. the cheque i was expecting today hasnt come, but sometimes the mail is late.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3974179.stm

in holland, theo van gogh has been murdered for making a documentary about abused islamic female immigrants.

parkdale/qsw gallery haunt.
(mostly aborted, as the runs are wed to sat.)

things i saw:
magic pony--japanese and american indie toys and stuff (you knows kaws, ugly dolls, etc)--the guy who does the beguilings mini comics had some awesome wolf stickers, and there were clever, sweet and inexpesive drawings and mixed media peices by hutsul, leighton, manale, and wilson (i forgot my motherfucking notebook, so im going to have trouble figuring out who did what) but the show is really worth seeing !

brad phillips post card is boring and porny, but his show is at greener pastures and is called silver springs--arcadian poetics mean that im going to the opening (the 12th, 7-10)

melissa levin does things w. puzzles, opening at the 19th at zsa zsa

laura letinsky is at the always brilliant, and always kind stephen bulger (today they let me go behind the velvet rope, they talked to me for almost an hour about a english bresson, whose name i have forgotten--but he had this foto of two london school boys looking at a stripshow sign that was qauint and happy and wonderful, and tiny (also b&w--and no real creepy voyuerism either); we also saw queer, hiv+, indian, sunil gupta, who does this dirty (not sexual, as in full of dirt) diptychs one foto of i ndia and one foto of north america, that are rally sad and intimate and almost alone, or fully alone (w/o people)...anyways lettinsky is on the 6th, v. v. early 2-5 (but its a sat.)

at ryerson is stuart macmillion doing a canlit version of decay in an urban center, well composed w. a solid colour sense, opening on the fourth--going to help a kid out. (good qoute on the invite--"i would like my pictures to look as if a human being had passed between them, like a snail, leaving a trace of the human presence and memory of the past events as the snail leaves its slime"--francis bacon (which should have been on the front of the invite card, as a sort of bait and switch thing)

strip show, based around the theme of naughty girls of hollywood, performed by the scandelles at buddies at bad times, also on the 6th, tickets are 15 bux, which means im not going--the card desccribes itself as "striptease, performance, modern dance, live music and 0riginal film"

also some art on the walls--near the office space at edward day were two fotos by akari of the fruit, japanese st fashion show--which showed me that he was more of an athropologist, he was basically an artist and a brilliant photog---prelude to a show in dec, artist in attendence. in additon, above the akari, was a tiny tiny (like the size of my palm), v. dark, portrait of a swarthy man in a lovely pink suit--sort of dangerous, v. sexy---a good indication of the rise of well painted unironic, figuritive(sp), painting--d i have a catalog, you should look at this guy. ---guys name is daniel hughes

(looking at the buttons at macfab, just looking, a middle aged, upper c lass english woman was holding a swatch of baby blue and gold lame ball fabric from the 50s, for a custom made jacket, with a matching chiffon skirt--she called it hideous, but it wasnt, it was sumptous and goregous, and i spent 15 minutes enraptured, suggesting buttons and looking for the perfect pair, eventually yalking her into a set of mother of pearl sqaures...she asked if i was a designer, and said you could tell if someone was an e xpert by how close they looked phyiscally, i didnt have the heart to tell her that im just a near sighted derlict. )

kerry will lose tonite.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/31/magazine/31FAITH.html

for those w/o a subscription, realvent qoutes below:

And so it remains. Chuck Ripka is a moneylender -- that is to say, a mortgage banker -- and his institution, the Riverview Community Bank in Otsego, Minn., is a way station for Christ. When he's not approving mortgages, or rather especially when he is, Ripka lays his hands on customers and colleagues, bows his head and prays: ''Lord, I pray that you will bring Matt and Jaimie the best buyer for their house so that they have the money to purchase the new home they feel called to. And I pray, Lord, that you grant me the wisdom to give them the best advice to meet their financial needs.''

The bank opened 18 months ago as a ''Christian financial institution,'' with a Bible buried in the foundation and the words ''In God We Trust'' engraved in the cornerstone. In that time, deposits have jumped from $5 million to more than $75 millio

Chuck Ripka says he sometimes slips and says to people, ''Come on over to the church -- I mean the bank.''

George Gallup Jr. is an evangelical Christian who has called his work ''a kind of ministry''

One tenet listed in the Riverview Community Bank's first annual report is to ''use the bank's Christian principles to expand Christianity.'' If that wasn't clear enough, Ripka put it in even starker terms for me: ''We use the bank as a front to do full-time ministry.'' Ken Beaudry, a marketplace pastor whose heating-oil company is just down the road from the Riverview bank, takes the same view. ''It's all about understanding that your business has a cause,'' he says. ''It's about recognizing that we exist as a company not just to make profits, but to change society. And our employees are on board with that.''

He says he has performed more than 60 faith healings in the bank and has ''saved'' another 60 people on bank premises

He worked odd jobs after high school and was born again when he was 21, during an Amway meeting.

Praying with customers is one thing Riverview has become known for. Gloria Oshima, a teller, was hired because of her previous experience at the nearby First National Bank of Elk River, but her faith, which she describes as ''bold,'' was also apparent in the job interview. ''When Gloria came applying for a job, I had a vision of her praying with customers,'' Ripka says. Referring to the bank's drive-up window, Oshima says: ''The Holy Spirit speaks to me when certain people drive up. A young lady pulled up one day. I looked at her, and she had tears in her eyes. I said: 'Are you O.K.? Would you mind if I prayed for you?' She said O.K. I said, 'Inside the bank, or right here?' She said, 'This is fine here.' So we prayed. I asked the Lord to remove the hurts within her and bless her day. She came again later, into the lobby this time, and she said, 'I'm doing so good, and I just wanted to thank you for your prayer

When I asked Ripka if a Jew or Muslim had ever applied for a job at the bank, his choice of language was a bit odd: ''We don't really have that in our community at this point.''

At Intel, the Muslim, Jewish and Christian groups , receive the same resources as the Parents Group and the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Group.

and to google
''God@Work,'' ''Believers in Business'' and ''Loving Monday.''

b/c it was raining, and b/c i was killing time, i helped two elders move a member into her house on lansdowne, a few blocks from my own house.

i did it because i always help (homeless money, kids food, eldery taxis, foreigners directions--all yesterday) and i did it b/c i always stop to talk to elders, and i did it b/c i wanted to see the indoors of someone elses house and i did it b/c young men in shirt sleeves and nothing else, there sacred garments making rymans around too pure necks, is one of the sexiest things in the world, and i did it b/c i get a little thrill when they ask me which ward im in i tell them im not and they tell me im a good man (nice guy vs good man, compare and contrast) and i think also if i do enough good deeds, maybe they will forget the whole kgl incident and make a member in full standing again, not that i ever wanted to be in the first place...thats my erotic lust, sacred desire, banal guilt and pseduo boredom all moving into one place.

i want to be forgiven--like what the masterbater said to clarice in silence of the lambs---just before hannibal lector made him swallow his tounge (paraphrased from memory--"i want to be near jesus/i want to be near christ/maybe this can happen/if i act real nice")

review from the superdanish craft show on brown wedge, still thinking about i heart huckabees, which i saw w. pat.

alright some thots:

i want pat to invite his work buddy jason to this thing on the third, but he seems both a little shy, and wondering about the proper context of these things--this is complicated by the fact that jason is a sexually ambigous hottie who i would like to engage in mutual discourse w.; which means i am going to be ending up inviting him.

ray and i had another fite about the word problematize, which i view as legitimate, and he views as a symbol of hermeticism, cult language and all sorts of other unclarity--i want a langague that reflects the slippages, subntexts, hidden thickets of meanings and organic decay/growth--which might prevent clarity but would allow for more things to be said in more interesting ways (reading delanys motion of light on water, and he talks of taking a train trip w. marylin hasker, his then wife, and finding out how to get the most information in the least amount of space, and he decided a new form where t he phonome(sp) would indicate a word, not even the sylabble, but the phonome (sp)--that strange effiency i admire)

thinking of the langauge debate, i am thinking more of photos, and realizing that what i think i want is a photographic discussion similar to delany, namely, i want one foto to reflect time, place, history, form, politics, and other nitpick content. i am attracted to fotos b/c they seem to be closest to reflecting both the strange effeincey(sp) and the slippage i require in texts.

the thing that i need to know more about is the techincal rather then formal aspects of fotos, what makes a c print, the chemistry of the poloroid, b&w/colour's scientific processes, why daugetrtypes disappear in 100 years and digitial prints rarely last 5.

this would mean that i need to know more about sci. in general, biology, chemisty,physics, etc...pat said that he would teach me about phyisics. (!!) i still think that it is too self contained, does not seek mystery, does not problematize its texts, assumes that it will have its answers, seeks truth where truth might not be held, its a kind of theology, and its followers do not seem to realize the god they are worshipping (popper)

when i say slippage do i mean lacunae, c/c them b oth, i think.

alright some thots:

i want pat to invite his work buddy jason to this thing on the third, but he seems both a little shy, and wondering about the proper context of these things--this is complicated by the fact that jason is a sexually ambigous hottie who i would like to engage in mutual discourse w.; which means i am going to be ending up inviting him.

ray and i had another fite about the word problematize, which i view as legitimate, and he views as a symbol of hermeticism, cult language and all sorts of other unclarity--i want a langague that reflects the slippages, subntexts, hidden thickets of meanings and organic decay/growth--which might prevent clarity but would allow for more things to be said in more interesting ways (reading delanys motion of light on water, and he talks of taking a train trip w. marylin hasker, his then wife, and finding out how to get the most information in the least amount of space, and he decided a new form where t he phonome(sp) would indicate a word, not even the sylabble, but the phonome (sp)--that strange effiency i admire)

thinking of the langauge debate, i am thinking more of photos, and realizing that what i think i want is a photographic discussion similar to delany, namely, i want one foto to reflect time, place, history, form, politics, and other nitpick content. i am attracted to fotos b/c they seem to be closest to reflecting both the strange effeincey(sp) and the slippage i require in texts.

the thing that i need to know more about is the techincal rather then formal aspects of fotos, what makes a c print, the chemistry of the poloroid, b&w/colour's scientific processes, why daugetrtypes disappear in 100 years and digitial prints rarely last 5.

this would mean that i need to know more about sci. in general, biology, chemisty,physics, etc...pat said that he would teach me about phyisics. (!!) i still think that it is too self contained, does not seek mystery, does not problematize its texts, assumes that it will have its answers, seeks truth where truth might not be held, its a kind of theology, and its followers do not seem to realize the god they are worshipping (popper)

when i say slippage do i mean lacunae, c/c them b oth, i think.

http://www.talicor.com/cgi-bin/app/shop?command=pub_view_item&itemid=8209

i want this now !

new blog on the side bar...a trenchant, embittered, faithful, well thot out and almost poetic first person discussion of working in xian retail.

its perhaps the funniest thing ive read in a long time.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3960679.stm

no comment.

• 26 gas stations
• some los angles apartments
• every building on the sunset strip
• thirty four parking lots in los angeles
• nine swimming pools and a broken glass
• real estate oppurtunities (sp)

titles of ed ruscha photo books

"i dont even look at it as photography, they are just images to fill a book. "
"they are a collection of facts; a collection of readymades" -
two ed ruscha koans, qouted by hal foster lrb 9/21

some other thots:
the 20 foot by 10 feet rosenquist murrals, the ugly supertech ones (oh to have a picture) compared to the tiny, hidden collages, that work as better and more effiecnet socio--poltical critque ? (hidden because they were ephemreal, dirty, small, studies. recovered as an academic look and see excercise in the guise of a big catalouge, and a big show--whitney, mid 90s, as a reward for living in obscurity.) (ruscha in fact is getting the exact same treatment)

anon. fotos, found fotos, news fotos and porn fotos and underground comicy fotos, crawling out of the woodwork as a mark of authenticity, ignoring the sex and blood and concenrating on the art of the thing...fotos as a touchstone of paraphillia, the twinning of paraphillia and paralitertures (sp) (ie weegee as high art, in musuems, being published as high art; means that what he had to say about news is lost, and we forget how he composed his shots)

whats the aesthetic and moral (ethical) difference b/w eagleston and a family snap (eagleston was used as a family snap to illustrate a seadris essay in gq, b/c to see seadrises actual family would make things too authentic)

im sorry, im rambling, im just t rying to work out an essay

and john peel died, peel was a hero of mine, like he was a hero of everyone elses, because he was difficult, and obscure, and one of those saddos that made a life being a saddo...(being paid for having the biggest record collection must be like being paid to write about buffy.) he was a gatekeeper, a man who liked the noisy, the dirty, the simple and the raw as much as he liked the well composed, the clean, the complex and the artifical. i have his sessions for the slits, which are so muddy that they are almost unlistenable (i like this) and i have a girl group collection from the 60s where he wrote the linear notes, i remember listening to his program via the net 10 yrs ago and hearing wire snuggle closely to belle and sebastion.

leave it to sinker to start a obit on peel w. a discurssion on text (ray and pat--this is how i use the word text, not as object but process--is anything object in my life?)

ok big couple of last days...

• my money came in,
• i still havent gotten packages from a few people,
• london i can get to for 500,
• toronto feels small and delicate, so has a desperate desire to hire radical architechts to make them look cosmopolitian, however b/c these superstars have legions of designers behind them toronto gets goodwill bulidings for chanel prices (cf leibskinds crystal conceived on a cocktail napkin, gehrys swoopy nonesense (even old for gehry, now he is melting whole cities and painting them in colours more suitable to smurfs) (exception being the functional, joyus, public space encouraging, disability happy, well lit ocad...it took me a long time to get this)
• you can never really get a radical modernist building, b/c the idea of culling is impossible, the pyschogeography of cities is too large (i was there bitching about 2nd rate fosters, and the guy next after me was bitching that things were too new, too radical)
• (all of this comes from a lecture that i saw w. hume--the toronto star critic)
• ominum gatherum reflected a multipcity of discourses surrounding 9/11 in a way that seemed accurate, honest, and philosophical--somewhere b/w sartes no exit and the notebooks of samuel butler--but i missed the first half hour, and pat/kim hated it.
• published one essay and sent off some book reviews and writing samples to (semi) academic journals.
• worried about next month, but one step at a time.
• never eat the bananarama at spring roll
• one of the most powerful things for me is to see human intervention in modern cleaness, the staff washroom at springroll filled with everything you can fill, b/c there was no room anywhere else reminding me of noise of objects that interupts the sterile curtain of modernist balconied highrise.
• some reading--the new authur has a comic about magic and place w. some of the best pannelling in a while, the lrb of 9/21 has a hal foster review of ruscha that foregrounded some of my thinking on photos (one that i will write on more extensively--rachel called my photos easy to look at but she didnt think they were distinct...they arent.
• d is one of the best cooks, and one who follows the aesthics of classic japanese/french new wave w/o really nowing it (fresh ingredients, made w. sparing interference) --we had leeks, potatos, blue fish, im sorry i didnt eat more.
• read at her place, talked a bit, ate too many cooks, relaxed...
• in 1973 the nebula could have gone to either clarke or pynchon--they chose pynchon;lethem thinks that this is the death of sf. i agree w. lethem. (lethem is isaac bashevis singer, but w. geeks not jews, which means he wont win the nobel.)
• ive been in a lot of pain lately: back, shoulders, knees. i have lost memory, and i have been having one or two lacunae a day. (zebras)
• im thirsty more then im hungry
• always thirsty.

ok big couple of last days...

• my money came in,
• i still havent gotten packages from a few people,
• london i can get to for 500,
• toronto feels small and delicate, so has a desperate desire to hire radical architechts to make them look cosmopolitian, however b/c these superstars have legions of designers behind them toronto gets goodwill bulidings for chanel prices (cf leibskinds crystal conceived on a cocktail napkin, gehrys swoopy nonesense (even old for gehry, now he is melting whole cities and painting them in colours more suitable to smurfs) (exception being the functional, joyus, public space encouraging, disability happy, well lit ocad...it took me a long time to get this)
• you can never really get a radical modernist building, b/c the idea of culling is impossible, the pyschogeography of cities is too large (i was there bitching about 2nd rate fosters, and the guy next after me was bitching that things were too new, too radical)
• (all of this comes from a lecture that i saw w. hume--the toronto star critic)
• ominum gatherum reflected a multipcity of discourses surrounding 9/11 in a way that seemed accurate, honest, and philosophical--somewhere b/w sartes no exit and the notebooks of samuel butler--but i missed the first half hour, and pat/kim hated it.
• published one essay and sent off some book reviews and writing samples to (semi) academic journals.
• worried about next month, but one step at a time.
• never eat the bananarama at spring roll
• one of the most powerful things for me is to see human intervention in modern cleaness, the staff washroom at springroll filled with everything you can fill, b/c there was no room anywhere else reminding me of noise of objects that interupts the sterile curtain of modernist balconied highrise.
• some reading--the new authur has a comic about magic and place w. some of the best pannelling in a while, the lrb of 9/21 has a hal foster review of ruscha that foregrounded some of my thinking on photos (one that i will write on more extensively--rachel called my photos easy to look at but she didnt think they were distinct...they arent.
• d is one of the best cooks, and one who follows the aesthics of classic japanese/french new wave w/o really nowing it (fresh ingredients, made w. sparing interference) --we had leeks, potatos, blue fish, im sorry i didnt eat more.
• read at her place, talked a bit, ate too many cooks, relaxed...
• in 1973 the nebula could have gone to either clarke or pynchon--they chose pynchon;lethem thinks that this is the death of sf. i agree w. lethem. (lethem is isaac bashevis singer, but w. geeks not jews, which means he wont win the nobel.)
• ive been in a lot of pain lately: back, shoulders, knees. i have lost memory, and i have been having one or two lacunae a day. (zebras)
• im thirsty more then im hungry
• always thirsty.

ok big couple of last days...

• my money came in,
• i still havent gotten packages from a few people,
• london i can get to for 500,
• toronto feels small and delicate, so has a desperate desire to hire radical architechts to make them look cosmopolitian, however b/c these superstars have legions of designers behind them toronto gets goodwill bulidings for chanel prices (cf leibskinds crystal conceived on a cocktail napkin, gehrys swoopy nonesense (even old for gehry, now he is melting whole cities and painting them in colours more suitable to smurfs) (exception being the functional, joyus, public space encouraging, disability happy, well lit ocad...it took me a long time to get this)
• you can never really get a radical modernist building, b/c the idea of culling is impossible, the pyschogeography of cities is too large (i was there bitching about 2nd rate fosters, and the guy next after me was bitching that things were too new, too radical)
• (all of this comes from a lecture that i saw w. hume--the toronto star critic)
• ominum gatherum reflected a multipcity of discourses surrounding 9/11 in a way that seemed accurate, honest, and philosophical--somewhere b/w sartes no exit and the notebooks of samuel butler--but i missed the first half hour, and pat/kim hated it.
• published one essay and sent off some book reviews and writing samples to (semi) academic journals.
• worried about next month, but one step at a time.
• never eat the bananarama at spring roll
• one of the most powerful things for me is to see human intervention in modern cleaness, the staff washroom at springroll filled with everything you can fill, b/c there was no room anywhere else reminding me of noise of objects that interupts the sterile curtain of modernist balconied highrise.
• some reading--the new authur has a comic about magic and place w. some of the best pannelling in a while, the lrb of 9/21 has a hal foster review of ruscha that foregrounded some of my thinking on photos (one that i will write on more extensively--rachel called my photos easy to look at but she didnt think they were distinct...they arent.
• d is one of the best cooks, and one who follows the aesthics of classic japanese/french new wave w/o really nowing it (fresh ingredients, made w. sparing interference) --we had leeks, potatos, blue fish, im sorry i didnt eat more.
• read at her place, talked a bit, ate too many cooks, relaxed...
• in 1973 the nebula could have gone to either clarke or pynchon--they chose pynchon;lethem thinks that this is the death of sf. i agree w. lethem. (lethem is isaac bashevis singer, but w. geeks not jews, which means he wont win the nobel.)
• ive been in a lot of pain lately: back, shoulders, knees. i have lost memory, and i have been having one or two lacunae a day. (zebras)
• im thirsty more then im hungry
• always thirsty.

big pause, so big i only remember waking in toronto western hospital, w. the dr telling me that the doctor told me that it could still be seizures, cause unless i have an episode on eeg then its as useless as catscans and mri (i've had both of those) so the only thing they have ruled out is tumours and dieabetes (sp)

i dont know what to do.

SALT LAKE CITY — The First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has issued the following statement:
"We of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reach out with understanding and respect for individuals who are attracted to those of the same gender.
Aside from their odd defintion of respect (mine does not include excommunication, disfellowship, isolation and encouraging dishonesty w. ones self and ones community) they keep conflating sex w. gender—what they are really saying is that gender category one (fully functioning penis, no desire to deconstruct gender) should not interact w. gender category one and gender category two (more complicated, lets say vagina, and no desire to deconstruct gender) should not interact w. gender category two…and they are also assuming that gender category one and two are essential sexual categories, so for example, gender category 3 (FTM, Post-op) or gender category 37 (nevillests, with lemon gelato nipples) can never exist.
We realize there may be great loneliness in their lives but there must also be recognition of what is right before the Lord.
This is the other assumption—most of the queer folks I know who are depressed are not depressed because of there desire to interact w. similar gender categories, but are lonely because they spend at least 2 days a week (Sundays and scout or young womens meetings ) that there desires for love, companionship, sex or contact are sinful and against god. The only reason why they are lonely is the isolation caused by salt lake. Blaming the victim is what slimy defense lawyers do to rape cases. (Another thot…xians are a lonely people, from adam and eve falling from the grace of god, to Christ alone in the tomb, from the mystic desert fathers, to joseph smith in the grove, on his knees begging for answers,,,a desire for company, for a life partner, to end lonlieness is one of the few solutions, and really, the only solution to the lds, b/c they have no monastic tradition.

As a doctrinal principle, based on sacred scripture, we affirm that marriage between a man and a woman is essential to the Creator's plan for the eternal destiny of His children.
Last time I checked, there were many families in the Holy Scriptures, and the idea of family was more diverse and more weird then people give credit for…haggar and abram and sara were a family, david and johnathon were family, Christ and his disciples, Christ and Mary of Magdala were family, the stripling warriors away from there mothers and fathers were family, brother brigham and his sister wives were family. There is more then one kind of family, and the sacred scriptures tell us this.
The powers of procreation
For 90 years Sara was Barren, and she laughed at the miracle of conception. Did the Marriage of Sara and Abram mean less for the years he was Barren, then when he wasn’t ? Christ didn’t marry or have children—he sent parents against the children and mothers against sons. He did not have the sentimental nature for childrearing, there was more important work to be done. For that matter neither did Paul (who claimed that marriage was for the weak, that it was a crutch for those who could not be celibate.)
are to be exercised only between a man and a woman lawfully wedded as husband and wife.
give unto ceasers, what is ceasers…why is marriage one of those things that we are giving to ceaser ? (honest question, one I would like an answer to.)
"Any other sexual relations, including those between persons of the same gender, undermine the divinely created institution of the family.
As I pointed above, there is no divinely created instituion of family…if you really want to do the numbers game, the most common structure of families in the xian bible is (now I know that we could also look to the bom, and the pearl of great price, but both of those were revealed (careful wording) in an era where sexual radicalism was conflicting w. sexual conservatives, and for most of the time sexual radicals won. Also, polygamy is still one the books, you can get married twice in the temple, w, widows and widowers, when everyone gets to the kingdom of heaven, the family unit (more then one mother or father, more then wife and family, will live together in harmony. ) god is more patient towards diversity, weirdness, then we give him credit for.
The Church accordingly favors measures that define marriage as the union of a man and a woman and that do not confer legal status on any other sexual relationship."
The church has always been to sell out its ethics in order to get either power or safety (the kind of raw pragimatism that saw the dissulotion of sister wives when utah was at stake, and the forbidding of blacks in the priesthood when missionary work in latin America and Africa found it too difficult to define exactly who was black. I think that the measure they favour is a continued protestant mainstreaming (one you can see in the Knight Initiave in California, or the censure of Sunstone)

qauker meeting (the regular one was at 6, this was the buisness meeting.)
its hard to describe but some things stuck w. me (there was a speaker called rick, and he talked a bit about unity, and we sat in silence, then the community talked about unity.

he talked about unity as a conintuing(sp) 3 part process: union, disunity, reunion--these things that we go thru daily, things that are required for personal and community growth

he talked about the three things that lead to disunity
1) pride
2) aggrandizement (sp) a old friends mystic talked about this as desiring more then one needs, having the wants, and not noticing exactly what yr fill is--the idea that we get x no. of gifts from god, and anymore then that is greedy, a violation of the divine other--a sort of xian "each according to his needs" hundreds of years before marx. a bitter slashing away of health and wealth. a comfort.
3) (i have forgotten the third, fuck...it will come to me)

(the second one was the more impt one)

also, its an old victorian house, with rooms above, a wide kitchen, a big library where jane brought me in and offered to introduce me to the libriaian on sunday... got lots of reading material anyways.

i am happy there, happy there b/c they are not so sure, happy there because there is discussion b/w christ-o-centric friends and universal friends, happy there because of english eccentric women who like their tea, happy there b/c its gethsmani w/o the noise and the structure.

i thot of qauker long and hard before my sojurn into catholicism, why did i not choose it ?

qauker meeting (the regular one was at 6, this was the buisness meeting.)
its hard to describe but some things stuck w. me (there was a speaker called rick, and he talked a bit about unity, and we sat in silence, then the community talked about unity.

he talked about unity as a conintuing(sp) 3 part process: union, disunity, reunion--these things that we go thru daily, things that are required for personal and community growth

he talked about the three things that lead to disunity
1) pride
2) aggrandizement (sp) a old friends mystic talked about this as desiring more then one needs, having the wants, and not noticing exactly what yr fill is--the idea that we get x no. of gifts from god, and anymore then that is greedy, a violation of the divine other--a sort of xian "each according to his needs" hundreds of years before marx. a bitter slashing away of health and wealth. a comfort.
3) (i have forgotten the third, fuck...it will come to me)

(the second one was the more impt one)

also, its an old victorian house, with rooms above, a wide kitchen, a big library where jane brought me in and offered to introduce me on sunday...

i am happy there, happy there b/c they are not so sure, happy there because there is discussion b/w christ-o-centric friends and universal friends, happy there because of english eccentric women who like their tea, happy there b/c its gethsmani w/o the noise and the structure.

i thot of qauker long and hard before my sojurn into catholicism, why did i not choose it ?

in the debates bush holds the microphone like aarons rod ( i know that the rod was placed on an altar,i know to continue that metaphor to its logical conclusion means that i think bush is appointed by god--i think bush thinks hes appointed by god, his faithtalk is v. much in that sense, what i think barely matters) and curls his way around the stge, as his words curl around a point--like every lowkey, trying to be hip, overhead on the wall next to the chrome cross, baptist preacher i know--the media in the east, which dictates these things (ie nytimes, washington post, new republic, nation, etc) has yet to pick up enough semiotics to read religous phrasing, making it subliminal makes it harder (but then bush is not elected by those people--letter in ew today calls owen glieberman to task for saying nice things about the new kerry doc, suggesting it as proper agit prop for the democratic cause.--essay for the future, ew vs people vs us vs the proper tabs)

anglicans have released a document, which i havent read, but is non binding (i dont remember christ doing many of those); which basically states that the newwestminster bishop stop marrying queers and gene robinsonh to stop being so public. it also asked for apologies. the american (primate?) told cbs news that "it is a typical anglican fudge". someone one qouted an amusing t shirt, and i kept back thinking the africans, indians and most latin americans will nto take a typically facile apology from the west; the west will continue to treat queers as the stereotyped "to be libreated next, aren't we special" and the africans and indians w. a colonial disdain; any attempt to be civil or go to the traditions will be lost, and that this document (and i might/will revise this when i get my hands on the fucking thing) is a declaration of war. im angry that it had to come to this, im saddened at the lack of love; im exhausted at how queer issues are treated as a pawn towards larger things; and i feel like i need to stick to this, as a queer xian (or at least my birth gave me the tension b/w jesus and sex, i might as well stick around to see how it turns out). glenys is happier, overjoyed that people care enough for us that they would break apart the church, she admires devotion more then i do.

ed koch is a strict huntigton, clash of civilisations, "islamists seek to destroy us" type, and is working on bushes campaign--even though he "cannot find a domestic issue that they agree on" according to his interview w. john stewart.