the end of ordinary time

At my new Presbyterian church, of which I am an officialized member, they call the whole Epiphany season "Ordinary Time," which I always thought was just for the summer. Of course, it does kind of make the seasons of Lent and Advent more special that everything else is just "ordinary."

I'm going to shave off my beard for Lent. Tom had a great post about beards. I think the most effective Lenten discipline is to do something which inconveniences you everyday. I hate shaving. So, I'm going to shave everyday.

This morning, I was imagining a conversation among George W.'s fellow frat brothers.

BROTHER #1: Dude, what if W. ran for president? Like, his dad is a bigtime politician. Wouldn't that be messed up?
BROTHER #2: Yeah, he'd probably appoint all of us to be his cabinet ministers or something.
BROTHER #1: Yeah, he'd make Rummy Secretary of the Navy or something like that.
BROTHER #2: Or, he'd appoint Larry's cousin Brownie to be in charge of disasters and shit.
BROTHER #1: That administration would totally kick ass. I bet you they'd party so hard.
BROTHER #2: Yeah, like somebody'd get shot or killed at one of their parties, and they'd be like, "Yeah, what's it to you."
BROTHER #1: Totally. They wouldn't give a rat turd what anyone thought of what they did.
BROTHER #2: Yeah, they'd probably end up invading some random country.
BROTHER #1: Ohmigod, they'd totally start some random war with, like, nobody.
BROTHER #2: And they'd be like, "What's it to you, bitches! Bring 'em on."
BROTHER #1: Dude, it'd be totally epic.
BROTHER #2: Maybe we could be the secretaries of partying down. This is going to rock!

Of course, I wasn't really there. But, to have been a fly on that wall.

I'm going to be writing my Cicero paper on metus ("fear"). I think I'll call it "De metu Ciceronis" just to be boring. I care about this because of George W. I think that everyone who reads a text reads it differently, and that a reader can only interpret a text in her own context. This means that every person who reads a work of literature finds a different meaning in that work. I'm curious about your opinions. I know that there are some Ph.ds and aspiring Ph.ds who read this blog. So, let's pile some of that higher and deeper in my direction.

de malorum et bonorum natura

So, I have a theory. The National Rifle Association is secretly
influencing the plots of all the action movies in America. Why, you ask? Because, in every single movie, the bad guys can't shoot strait.


For instance, as I was grading quizzes and watching TV on Sunday afternoon, I switched between the Olympics and Clear and Present Danger, brought to us by Tom Clancy and Harrison Ford.


Clearly, if the bad guys were to just take some shooting lessons, they would no longer be as bad. Then they could fight on the light side of the force. Obviously the stormtroopers from Star Wars are all the rejects that couldn't cut it in the rebellion. By the way, check out this link.



Of course, there's always the one MacGuyver character that doesn't use a gun, but still kicks @$$. By the way, the MacGuyver super-bowl ad was the only one that really got a laugh out of me.

the ugly origins of stereotypes

If you've read Othello, you'll realize that Europeans didn't always consider Africans to be inferior. In fact the myth of African inferiority was created in the 19th century to justify the enslavement of Africans in the Americas and the conquest of Africa by the European powers. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. points out, Africans facilitated their own conquest by selling each other to the Europeans—not that the Europeans were noble colonizers who intended to uplift the human spirit of the colonized. However, Africa's troubles today are due as much to their lack of political openness and their tolerance of corruption as they are to American and European farm subsidies and bad IMF loans.


This is not to suggest that somehow white people are superior to Africans. In fact, what I am trying to suggest is more complex. Certainly, well-run African countries like Ghana, Senegal, Botswana or Mozambique should suggest that Africans are quite capable of putting their own affairs in order. Just because a people, race, ethnicity, or country has had or continues to have trouble in organizing their political or economical situation does not mean that that group is biologically inferior. However, it also does not mean that that group of people's failures cannot be addressed, discussed, or even satirized.

My friend Phil had an interesting post about the problem with stereotypical representations of people in the media. One of the peoples' that he suggested got the short end of the stereotype stick were Southerners, being depicted as lazy and uneducated. However, the Southeastern section of the United States has not invested in the infrastructure of education as heavily as the North. This is mostly due to the unwillingness of an aristocratic class, which still exists, to fund public education, both for poor black students and for poor white students. Now this problem is being exacerbated by the politically and religiously divisive debate about private-school vouchers. Therefore, all Southerners need to shoulder the responsibility for their lack of educational opportunities and need to have this aspect of their polity discussed and satirized.

Phil found himself unable to defend Wes Anderson's use of Filipino, or possibly Indonesian, pirates in the movie The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. However, the fact of the matter is that a stereotypical pirate would have been a man with a peg-leg, a parrot, and a treasure chest, a la Johnny Depp. The fact that there are pirates in the South China Sea should be acknowledged. Secondly, the fact that pirates make their living from killing people and holding them hostage should also be held true. The fact that people make their living doing these things should be held in contempt and derided. However, in my initial analysis of this movie, I saw these pirates as representing the anti-colonial forces of the 20th century.


Representing people without stereotypes means not worrying so much about stereotypes when you represent people. If people create characters for the purpose of contradicting stereotypes it can often leave one with a sour aftertaste. Everyone got sick of the "Magical Black Man" in movies that was so quickly satirized by the character of "Gabriel" in The Simpsons. Making a person of color the villain, hero, victim, or simply the protagonist is a choice that should be made based on the story. In the same way, stereotypes should not keep artists from telling the truth about individual characters. Even Art Spiegelman depicted his Jewish father as being cheap in Maus, his great work about the Holocaust.

If one becomes too dogmatic about seeking out negative stereotypes in art, literature, and film then one will fail to see the infinite tragic complexity of the human story. This tragic complexity means that whatever our genetic patrimony or whatever societal preconceptions with which we were raised, we are all good and bad, beneficent and malignant, sincere and disingenuous, and that there is no piece of artwork that can trap the aching beauty of that truth.

the tragedy of reality

I'm glad that Lindsey Jacobellis chose hot-dogging over winning the medal.

I've been thinking lately that the main goal of education is to give students a taste of the pain of adulthood as children. This serves two functions. First, young people can be vaguely prepared for inevitable dissatisfaction with their lives. Secondly, it allows teachers a somewhat sadistic opportunity to deprive students of their free-time to make them learn the intricacies of the endoplastic reticulum or the unappreciated beauty of the fourth declension.

Hopefully, after all of this, some students will learn that the color of the Olympic medal you're wearing doesn't make you a better or worse person, and that hot-dogging on a swowboard has a tautological justification. Now, spiking the football in the end-zone, that's a different matter.

the state of irony

I hope that my gentle readers have found this very webpage unintentionally funny on more than one occasion. However, thanks to Snotty's recent webcapades—speaking of things ending "-capades," when has "flamboyant" ever meant "very homosexual" more than here—I have found several wonderful websites.







Of course, this respectable looking young lad takes the cake.

Kyle started out hating Christians. He listened to anti-Christian music, played violent video games, and created a website attacking various Christian organizations while praising the work of Chris Harper. Kyle was a troubled boy. However, this all changed when he found Jesus. Since then he has gotten himself cleaned up, has started listening to Christian rock, and is now a respectable looking young lad. His parents - being Jewish - were hesitant to accept his new found faith, but they do consider it better that Kyle is now following Jesus instead of Marilyn Manson. Kyle has recently graduated from Fellowship Christian High School and is now attending Fellowship University. When not studying, he helps maintain our web site.

I don't mean to be mean, but these people can't be serious, can they? Of course, they can't. All this, I have discovered, is a joke. Except for that Chuck Norris video. As far as I can tell, that is actually real. However, for some ironical Chuck Norris fun, go here—

http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com/

When does it become okay use "tsunami" as a metaphor again?

Since my last post was about the freedom to offend, please enjoy the natural disaster metaphor for American politics in Larry Sabato's following political prognostication. (Click the link below for tsunamic fun!)


Of course Sabato did not factor in this man, whose existence was made known to me by Nevsky and his troupe of dancing badgers. Ronald Reagan's Secretary of the Navy is a Democrat? And he writes screenplays? And he's dreamy in the kind of way that could even get Bob Marshall to come out of the closet? And he's running against Preppy McPrettyBoy F.F.V. from right here in Preppyville?

And all this time I thought that Jesus was a Republican. I guess he was just a RINO.

the freedom to offendvirtute non vi

Let's be clear. The U.S. invasion of Iraq was illegal, the United States was the world's greatest financial sponsor of the Taliban—in the name of the war on drugs, and Jimmy Carter himself allowed the CIA to tacitly approve of the Shah's torture rooms. Denmark itself was also complicit in the invasion of Iraq.

However, the fact that the "West" is guilty of crimes against Muslims does not invalidate the first principles of our democracies. If Danish Muslims do not want to live under Western values, no one in the West does or should keep them from emigrating to a country whose norms they find more amenable. In fact, is that not what their grandparents, parents, or the immigrants themselves did? If they are forced to choose between a society with whose values they disagree or a society whose economic opportunities are limited, then, rather than being forced to make a rampantly unfair decision, they are faced with a difficult choice just as all humans are.

Every day that I wake up, I listen to NPR, and I hear how George W. Bush has committed some sacrilege against what I perceive to be my most deeply held values. I choose to maintain my citizenship in this nation although I find myself reacting with violent disgust to some aspects of the culture into which I was born. By maintaining my citizenship, I also tacitly agree to renounce acts of violence against my fellow citizens or guests in my country. If I were to destroy private property or, worse, commit violence against a fellow human being, I would have abrogated my responsibility as a citizen, and should expect to have the privileges of that citizenship curtailed or revoked. Nothing gives me the right to inflict harm or damage upon my fellow citizens, our guests, or their property.

Wherever you go, there you are. One must live peacefully in one's world, wherever or whatever that is. Living peacefully in that world does not mean simply accepting its flaws but being the positive change that one seeks. If one wants to live in a world without blasphemy, one should not blaspheme the values of another. If one wants to live in a world with freedom of speech, one should listen carefully to what others have to say. If one wants to live in a world without autocracy, one should not act as an autocrat. If one wants to live in a world with justice, one should deal justly with one's neighbors. If one wants to live in a world which honors God in all things, one should honor God in all things.

I hope that Westerners do not cease to defend the freedom of the press against those who would dictate the rules of a society in which they do not live. I hope that Muslims do not cease to honor God by living peacefully with each other and their neighbors. If extremism in the defense of God or liberty is the only way, then there is no virtue left. The freedom to offend with words is vital to moderation, because it offers an opportunity for the offense to be made without weapons that tear flesh from bone and children from their parents.

If we truly believe that the Word of God is living and active, then we do not need to put our trust in bombs, mayhem, martyrdom, or death.

blogitationes

I've been up to my elbows in translating. The good news is that you can read it at

http://mattlindatuva.blogspot.com.

The bad news is that you may die of boredom. However, if you're like me and you imagine that we're talking about the "fairness and balance" of FOXNews or Osama bin Catiline, then your imagination will thrill to the possibilities. There may be something of a hiatus on this blog. But, if you like reading passably bad translations of Ciceronian prose, then you're in the money!