for the record

i think i understand the difference between an agnostic and an atheist.

the atheist disbelieves the existence of god. that is, he believes there is not a god. the agnostic ("the divine is unknowable") believes that there might be a god, but we can neither prove that he exists nor prove he does NOT exist.

agnosticism seems kind of wimpy. i remember i used to think of atheists as bitter people - like they'd given up on god so threw out the whole idea of his existence. but that's not atheism - that's turning one's back on a god one believes in. and i'm not bitter.

i think it's easier on the psyche to be atheist as well. one isn't waiting for someone "up there" to intercede on one's behalf. therefore one is forced to take matters into one's hand and accept things one cannot change and take full responsibility for one's actions. is that not a "family value?"

indoctrination

1. gee, surfer friend, in high school i never woulda' thought YOU would be the one converting ME.

2. the bible belt has begun to claim my sister as its own. she is dating this guy whose family is super duper bible thumpin' xtians. she owns a bible. she goes to sunday school. which is all fine, i guess, since it's her life and it's up to her and as her big (and more enlightened, i hope) sister i should not judge her. i can only hope she comes out of it with less psychic struggle than with which i did.

but i can already see the seeds of indoctrination. every once in a while she will say something that doesn't sound like her, or that sounds like my own reasoning and thoughts at the time of MY indoctrination.

the other day she said something about wanting to cut her hair because she loved it too much. she spends too much time looking at it and just likes it too damn much, so she should cut it off [so she isn't tempted to love it so much, i guess?].

when i accused her of having fallen victim to indoctrination, she said that thought had nothing to do with the church or her boyfriend's influence. easily bought by an outsider, but not by someone who has used that same reasoning in the past. why is it a symptom of indoctrination? the bible says you're not to love the world or anything of it - her hair is "of the world" - therefore she shouldn't love it - since she loves it a lot she should cut it so she doesn't love it so much. my problem with it: it's her hair! it's part of her! if you want to believe in god, he put it on her! he could have given her thin mousy straight hair if he wanted, but instead he gave her this gorgeous curly thick blonde hair that ought to be shown off! my own secular argument: WHAT? it's her hair, it's part of her. she should not feel bad for loving it, if loving it is how she naturally feels about it. there is nothing WRONG with loving her hair, so long as she keeps herself from following the example of narcissus and drowning for love of looking at it. she should not feel guilty about how she feels about her hair because loving it doesn't harm anyone as she is not one to brag or look down on her mousy-haired compatriots. it's quite a pleasure to behold. so for the pleasure of the rest of the world she should keep her hair where it belongs, on her head. (i know, my secular reasoning needs work but that's the challenge of secularism - no one moral authority).

3. we were driving to our grandparents' house when boyfriend mentions that he would like to get some starbucks coffee. my sister begins to chat about how she loves starbucks but does not want to become dependent on it - she doesn't want to NEED to drop five bucks for a coffee drink. i suppose this is a valid concern for any coffee drinker - symptoms of deviation from your daily coffee habit can be quite uncomfortable; not to mention that a daily starbucks cold-frouffy-drink habit could end up being quite expensive. symptom of indoctrination? maybe. for me, definitely because i've used that thought process before. here it goes: the bible says we're to give 10% of our income to god - therefore i shouldn't waste my money on frivolous things - coffee isn't something i need so it's a frivolous thing. therefore i shouldn't make a habit of it. my secular argument to her: first, starbucks isn't expensive if you buy regular coffee drinks or even a short cappuccino, like i buy. second, i wouldn't want to have a daily coffee habit either; that's why i say, EVERYTHING IN MODERATION.

new challenge

so i've taken on another post: local coordinator for a high school exchange program. which means i have to recruit host families and interview them and match students with them. it's kind of sales-ish-y but it should be fun.

the only problem i have with this program is this: they have a special group of kids who receive grants to study here - kids from primarily muslim countries. the person who places them has to make sure host families fulfill certain requirements, such as no pets or something like that. i agree with richard dawkins in his questioning of why religion is given such an out-of-bounds-for-compromise status; if a student is interested in getting to know the real US then he should accept whatever host family he's placed with. the family shouldn't have to conform to his culture, but the other way around. that's all.

parakeet nation

the girl over there at the desk has just said christmas doesn't mean as much to her as it did before.

the other girl thinks (maybe not at this moment but with some frequency)ok, in church they say to be a witness for christ... and, subconsciously, hmmmm.... let's try to work that in somehow for the pagan over there.
she begins to speak about her son.
i'm looking for a montessori school; i think it would be best for my son's personality. because if we're going to bring about christ's kingdom i think he needs opportunities to learn while he can still be himself
pagan girl rolls her eyes. i KNOW she slipped that in intentionally because I'VE BEEN THERE! trying to work an anything to "witness" to some person who (i have judged to be) falling away. maybe somebody who'd never been in that opposite position wouldn't have rolled his eyes, but i know EXACTLY what she's doing because i've done it myself.

seasons greetings (BLECH!)

friday i told somebody that i was "one of the foot soldiers in the war against christmas." i'm not really. i just feel like vomiting if i'm in a mall or store too long with loud xmas music. no, it doesn't put me in the "holiday spirit." it makes me crabby.

i plan on giving gifts on the 21st and participating in "global ****** day" on the 22nd. some things just mean more to me than celebrations based on a religion to which i no longer belong. (no connection between my choice of the 21st and what's going to be attempted on the 22nd, but both fit here as alternatives to xmas)

plus, not celebrating christmas would open me up to choosing flights on the 25th, which are cheaper, right?

this isn't saying i'm an atheist or a buddhist or a fill-in-the-blank. although more than once i've thought "i'm a science-minded person," which means that religion does not often enter my thoughts.

it's highly likely that i still hold some bitterness and cynicism and disillusionment, remnants of my involvement with the cult and of politicians profaning religion.

wel, in a few hours i'm off to take the gre. blech.

anti-partisanship!

i promised i wouldn't get so emotionally involved in political issues, but i just read something that made me nauseous.

well, technically i have not experienced an emotional reaction but rather a physical one. so i'm not getting emotionally involved.

religion should stay out of government. i don't care if we were founded by quakers/puritans/etc. if we're all about religious freedom i don't understand why some religious groups complain make issues about certain things that are legal that don't flow with their certain beliefs. and relax - freedom of speech is not going anywhere so cover the back of your minivan with jesus fishes for all i care.

good lawd, in the article to which i linked above, the author calls abortion in the inner city as GENOCIDE against inner-city blacks. (the first thought in my head: so will you be the first to sign up to adopt one of those inner-city babies to keep the mother from having an abortion? will you donate your money to fund universally useful things instead of to fund your mega-churches?)

let's face it people (and let us not get all hypocritical on right-to-life issues and say state-sanctioned murder is ok) if you don't believe in abortion, it's very simple: don't get an abortion.


oh, and let's stop talking about bipartisanship. how about NO partisanship? (yes, yes, insert arguments detailing why there need to be political parties) politics is profane.

i feel old.

realized this today: christmas no longer means anything to me. or maybe better said, it no longer means what it used to.

1. my family is fractured. any traditions we had are long gone (they were last year too, as i was in buenos aires and everyone else was at home)... namely, christmas tree decorating, exchange of presents, waking up to huge piles of presents and then getting dressed and the extended family comes over and leaves even more huge piles of presents in the living room.

2. i am not religious. if i have anything to do with any god i am agnostic - the divine is not knowable.

i prefer to celebrate something that means something to me. the winter solstice means that from that darkest point the days will only get longer (i missed it last year and instead got to have TWO summer solstices! if only every year could be so bright.) my birthday, conveniently two weeks (three weeks?) after xmas, would be a much better present day because it is all about ME and nobody has to feel bad about commercializing my birthday because i promise not to ask for a PS3 or a ntndo wii.

and am i the only one who takes her ear away from the phone in disgust when, while waiting on hold, i hear xmas music on the other end?

i also feel old because, well, i kind of am old. here we are again dealing with priorities and stuff - did i have the most fun as an early twenty something? i have to admit it's going to be hard to beat - my early twenties were all about traveling and living in other places (ANYwhere but HERE!) and now, am i too old to do it again, would i ever want to try it again, this time in french with english subtitles? it would be nice, but i don't think it would be feasible to do it again. maybe working on my masters degree will open up a whole other world for me.

and i am cynical, cynical CYNICAL! i hate poor people!

ok that's not true, i just prefer to look the other way and pretend they don't exist (which includes covering all the mirrors because i myself am poor at this point (but there are so many dimensios of poor...)

maybe i should buck up and be a spanish teacher.

wait, WHO are you?

so here i am doing sudoku, drinking my tea and paying my amex bill... and steven frikkin baldwin is on the god damn today show telling matt about being born again.

jesus f*cking chr!st!

but is he only famous because of his name? come to think of it, i can't think of any movie the he has been in. or either (any?) of his brothers.

ok so help me connect the dots... the pope is in (germany? italy?) europe and he quotes something that says (a certain religion) is barbaric. consequently we see footage of (people of offended religion) boycotting (boycotting what? the pope? i didn't think he had anything to do with their religion) and burning the US flag and some other flag (that of the vatican? no, germany) can someone please help me connect the dots! what is the connection between the US and the pope?

honestly if they were a political party they would be shooting themselves in the foot... getting offended so easily (ie, cartoons, the pope) and then boycotting/protesting/flag-burning... what the hell? anyway, if the pope says something negative about your beliefs while quoting someone, you go back and read who the pope was quoting, find what he was talking about, then compare it with what you know. THEN you decide what to do. but reacting BEFORE sorting out the facts/texts only seems to reinforce what was said to begin with...

but what do i know?

anyway i have to check my email (still jobless) and send out some more resumes...

i'm a little dismayed.

the therapist assigned to me took straight to the xtianity question. i am afraid that she might be coming from that perspective. today she sounded kind of like what i think a self-help book would sound like if it could talk. she suggested that part of the problem maybe was that in those years everyone goes through more or less the same things and maybe what my problem was was that the ones in the cult (my word) failed to live up to the high standard set by the teachings of the faith.

i had not thought of this before. then she went on to give an example of how she had seen some cases where there were kids isolated from the group, and other cases where a core member of the group tried to reach out to the fringe kids. i told her i didn't think that the cult members' inability to live up to their own standards was the problem. it was the insincerity - even in groups that work, reaching out to the outcast is still insincere if you're doing it because it's what you're supposed to do.

i'm not sure we got anywhere on the goal of trying to come to terms with my experiences with the cult.




on an unrelated note, i love trees.

(i'm looking out the window of the library onto a large courtyard with a fountain in the middle, and a sculpture in the middle of that of two eagles flying in opposite directions. on either side of the fountain, there are these trees with white flower bunches. they're very pretty)

a few weeks ago i was contacted via myspace by a girl with whom i'd gone to high school. WHAT A TOTAL CHANGE! it's like she's been brainwashed.

let's get the backstory though - her locker was right next to mine senior year and i ignored her for the duration of my five month depression (she was the girl who got asked to homecoming by the guy who told me he would be out of town that weekend). but by the start of the summer, we ended up hanging out a bit. she used to be so interesting and cool. now, from what she's written on her "about me" space, it's like she is a completely different person.

instead of bashing her apparent brainwashing, i guess what i would like to know is what does she think now of the person she was when she started college? what caused such a seemingly drastic change?

i suppose she could say the exact same thing to me. only i changed in the opposite direction. not that either direction is good or bad - they just are. what i would say about the person I was when i started college... naive, content to follow, manifesting my obsessive tendencies in organized religion, hoping for my Mrs degree right after college (preferably to an engineer); very ignorant of the very person i am now.

what caused this drastic change? life caused it. my higher-order thinking skills caused it. depression caused it. discovering the rest of the world outside of my bubble caused it.

so i wonder what caused an apparent change in the other direction for my friend?


*************
my dad keeps saying all these morbid things. i was looking through the endless stacks of books for anne rice's interview with the vampire (started it via audiobook while i was in NC but *someone special* wouldn't let me finish it!) i notice that on these shelves are many of the same books i encountered on the shelves downstairs, where my mom puts her books.
"dad, did you realize that a lot of the books up here are downstairs too?"
"that's 'cause your mother hasn't spoken to me for thirty years."
-potential awkward pause-
"OH, THAT would explain it!"

and then he's talking about "oh this could be the last time we ever eat dinner together as a family, all of us together!" or "should we open the pool this summer? for one last season?"

so today i suggested he tell these morbid things to a psychologist instead of to us because i don't like to hear my dad talk like that. it's a little scary. i just want them to keep the house "in the family" - i need somewhere to store all my books, track and cross country medals, horse show ribbons, etc.

thirty-THREE!

haha eat that Mr. AntiChrist! a new low!

anyway.

I AGREE WITH RANDI!

when i was in college (and was unfortunately under the spell of evangelical christianity), there was a campaign at my university run by the evangelical groups on campus called "i agree with mark." members of these groups wore for the week light blue tee shirts with dark letters that said "i agree with mark." monday of that week, a page-size "manifesto" appeared, authored by Mark himself (a student at the university), "sharing the gospel." i don't have a copy of it but i'm sure someone who went to U of Illinois, champaign, in the 2000's probably does. anyway as i was a part of one of these groups, i also had one of those baby blue shirts. except, it was a size XL and i am a size XS so i never wore it (under the pretext of "it was too big" but i suspect it was becase deep down i didn't really agree with Mark.) and oddly enough it was one of the first things i gave away to charity at the end of the school year.

so i was reminded of that experience when i heard your show today (friday 21 april 2006) and listened to your discussion on Paula Zahn last night.

thank you for not being a media whore!!!!! we need more people like you in the media to wake up this country from our trance - to keep us from following all the other dumb sheep off the cliff! anyway you should have "i agree with Randi" shirts made (of course, available in XS for people like me who would actually wear them!)

keep up the good work! i love your show! i hope to see you on conan eventually!

miss e.

"the forces of secularism"

interesting article in the washington post linked on ms rhode's blog.

ok, the fact that tom delay was a speaker at this thing should set off alarm bells in your head if it isn't already up your ass (ha! kidding, sort of, but i couldn't resist throwing that in!)

and, HOLY SHIT!, look at this.

ok, that little tidbit has me quite flustered. we'll just sidestep the FELONY indictment and compare him to JE5US!

*and i know these articles are a tad out dated (as in like more than three hours old) but i was on vacation last week!

two double takes

1. glanced into my purse this morning to see that i had a voicemail and a missed call from my mother. it did not seem urgent so i left it for the end of the day. when i finally listened to it, the message was merely to inform me that "oh my god kiddo, the owner of the polo club where we're staying is this argentine and he is adorable! oh you will fall head over heels!" my mom has a habit of doing things like that. after i got back from argentina the first time she kept introducing me to the mexican barn guys and telling me to "talk spanish" with them, assuming that since they spoke spanish they must know where to find argentina on a map. i would say perdón, es que mi mamá está loca y le fascina que hable español. the first thought in my head after hearing that message: didn't you get the memo, mom? I AM THROUGH WITH ARGENTINES and my tastes have moved a bit closer to the equator! but given the fact that i haven't spoken to her for like two weeks i don't blame her for being unfamiliar with the recent developments in my personal life.

2. received a set of copies for this after school club. i glanced over what they were about, something called "the good news club." ha i should have known. anyway i noticed that one side was written in english and the other side was... blank. hmmmmmmm. so i made the instantaneous decision not to give them much importance, given that whoever wrote those little notes did not give much importance to the majority of kids that attend our school. later this afternoon when i had the chance to look at them a bit closer, i paid more attention to the words that were actually printed on the page. my volunteer was with me, and we were listening to liberal talk radio. i closed the door (i feel like there's a high xtian population among the staff) and put on my character voice. my enthusiastic brainwashed character voice, that is. yes, the GNC as they have abbreviated it, is AN AFTER SCHOOL BIBLE STUDY for kids!

CAN YOU F*CKING BELIEVE THIS? i said, Volunteer, what should i do? IS THIS LEGAL? i'm calling ED SCHULTZ (the host of the show on at the time).

so i have narrowed my reaction down to two options: one, make a flyer for an imaginary after school koran study group; two, make a stink about it with the principal.

i used to think that people who made a big deal about people exercising their freedom of religion were a bit ridiculous because what was the point? but look what's going on in so many other places in the name of various religions or sects of religions. for that precise reason we have a secular society. for PUBLIC SCHOOL FACILITIES to be used for a bible study just... makes me upset... sure it's an hour after school, but that's another hour that the secretary has to be there, that's another hour somebody in charge has to be there to supervise. it makes me mad. why not do something cultural instead? my students LOVE poetry. why not do a poetry reading/writing group? why not ask for an art program??? those can be benificial to EVERYONE and will allow for MORE CREATIVE THOUGHT, the exact opposite of which occurs with bible study groups. and it would benefit the students, because they learn how to think and create on their own; they learn more how to express THEIR OWN IDEAS.

oooooooooooooh i'd better stop or i'll get so worked up i won't be able to sleep! tomorrow i'll talk to the principal about it.

anybody out there in blogland have any advice?

ooh it's thunderstorming!

GOSSIP!

OOH I FORGOT!

NEW GOSSIP!

ok like so remember when i wrote about the time when one of my friend's exes well they broke up and not six months later he was married? well while i was in buenos aires he made the announcement that he was getting a divorce and not six months has passed and he's going out with my other friend who also happens to be an ex of this guy. AND has the same name as his ex-wife.

convoluted, weird, incestuous and gross? i think so.

either they are both very desperate or they both want to have sex because both have been deflowered so why not?

and who might be the four horsemen of the apocalypse?



can you believe they banned abortion in south dakota, even in cases of rape and incest?

did anyone think of the social and economic consequences of that? for me it's not about "a woman's right to choose." hopefully i'll never have to be faced with such a situation, but if i were i'd probably keep it - "this may be my only chance" mentality. to me it's about what happens to the women who become pregnant without wanting to that don't have insurance? is the state going to pay for all the care necessary to bring a baby to term?

before i wanted to leave this country given the ridiculousness of what's going on here. but now i feel that more and more people are standing up to this retard so i'd like to stay for the "revolution." in other words, i would like for the us public to stand up and stop bending over for the "bush crime family" to f*ck us up the ass!

ok so before i reduce all the feel-good hormones i released while working out to nothing, i'll stop, spray some lavendar, brush my teeth, read, and go to bed. i don't want to get all worked up so close to bedtime.

a demain mon cher. (qui?)

ten things about which i could write ten things:

1. ten things you might use to explain to yourself why he stopped calling
2. the next ten random thoughts that come into your mind
3. ten crushes you've had
4. ten scandalous things they did on amarte asi this week
5. ten behaviors that really get on my nerves
6. ten sad thoughts i've had today
7. ten pet peeves
8. ten things that would make me feel better right now
9. ten (more) silly things i did today
10. my ten most frequently used words.

i kind of just stick to one new/overused word per week.

last week was incestuous.

this week ... we'll find out. i need to remember. it might be retarded.


there's this church they built not too far from my house a few years ago. they built it so that as you're driving on this main road west to get to my house, their cross-spurting phallus is right in the center of your field of vision for at least a mile. hm you think that was an accident? fuckers.

(if you've not noticed, am in a shitty mood. i'm too tired to do my french homework. i blame the fact that i semi-gorged myself on tacos that my mom made - which means i had TWO instead of the normal ONE. - plus the avocado which "i totally heart." plus DCB1 left today. i'm a little sad, but mostly because the last time i saw him i didn't feel the same. but i guess feelings are like plants - they have to be cared for to grow or else they shrivel up. i'm glad now though that i have the clarity to see this and not continue obsessing. am so glad to have wiped the space between my brain and the inside of my skull - with dysthymia it was always like there was a kind of fog in that "space." being fog-free means that i am mostly obsession-free as well!)