Saturday, December 13, 2003
(12:32 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
I've Got the Bonhoeffer Blues
Don't get me wrong -- I'm excited about my final Bonhoeffer paper. I believe I have adequate secondary support for my thesis, and I'm even going to squeeze in a few quotes from Hegel. I'm fairly sure that my particular topic has not been tried before, and I believe that it might be a genuine, if small, contribution to theology.
The problem is the actual physical writing of the paper: flipping through books to find quotes, forcing myself to sit there and type, watching as the pages don't fill up quite fast enough. As regular readers can tell, writing as such is not difficult for me -- in fact, I really enjoy writing. The problem is writing things when I know in advance what they're going to look like. For instance, even the most innovative academic paper is going to have to contain some workaday, merely functional prose: close textual analysis, dull exposition of past scholarly positions, etc. I tend to view writing as a process of discovery and creation, and if I already have the idea in my head, especially if it's close to being already formulated, it takes me longer to write simply due to my own internal resistance -- I already know this stuff! I don't need to see it written out!
Last night's History of Christian Thought take-home final was truly the worst in that respect. I didn't even need to have taken the class in order to answer her question, not really. I just needed to write out, in a very boring and straightforward way, the facts at hand, with a little perfunctory interpretation. The professor in that class, partially due to the huge size of the class, demands very close adherence to the letter of her assignment and, for the purposes of this class at least, discourages much creative argument or daring interpretation. As such, the easiest assignment in the world took me about four hours to do.
That's about it for now. I need to get back to writing out the paper that I have largely already formulated in my head and that I don't feel like I need to put down on paper (or silicon, I suppose) in order to prove to myself that I know it. Perhaps the academic life isn't for me after all.
Until next time, I'm taking suggestions for a "winter break project." Leafing through Hegel's Phenomenology last night, it occurred to me that I might use this time to Actually Read Phenomenology of Spirit -- for real, complete with underlining and question marks in the margins. at about five hundred pages for the text of the book itself (not including the "analysis of the text" in the Oxford edition), that would be roughly 80-100 pages of pure Hegel each week. Since I'm taking a course on Derrida next semester, as well as a course on globalization that might include Hardt and Negri's Empire, this project might prove to be great preparation. It would also help me to approach that copy of Derrida's Glas that I now, quite mysteriously, somehow own. If I can read the whole Faerie Queene, I can do this.
Before last night, my default option was to spend the break working through my German book, but I don't think that the Hegel option would exclude that. Another possibility was to read Barth's Romans, although I believe Ted might be offering his Romans course next year, in which case I will have to read it anyway. On a completely different track, I could try to read a "Big Thick Novel," probably Don DeLillo's Underworld. Finally, I could just fritter away my time on the Internet and enter my next semester of graduate education full of self-loathing and bitterness. Let me know if you have any thoughts on my existing suggestions or any other ideas.
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(2:49 AM) | Anthony Paul Smith:
The Middle Period of Get Your War On
Adam, Robb and I have split over the hilarity of the middle period in the wonderfully hopeless comic strip Get Your War On(declared as Adam to be roughly sections 16-24). Adam claims, and Robb stands by him, that "[d]uring that period, it seemed to be needlessly obscure and often just plain stupid [...]." They are both wrong! Instead of the usual fight to the death I thought we could spare the loss of valuable Weblog contributors if I gave a needless and short of short analysis of sections 16-24 to settle the manner. I included links to each section and I highly recommend reading the comic in another window in tandem with my comments. Just to make me feel good.
Section 16 - Ok, so this one is not that funny, or funny at all, and by the looks of the second strip the author is seriously lacking in material. Adam and Robb win that round. Although one has to admit that the crossed out computers and the monocle merit a chuckle.
Section 17 - Making fun of Henry Kissinger, the murderous bastard, is always funny. Making fun of him using shitty clip art, funnier.
Section 18 - The use of North Korea as a head, and as a singularity that can talk as one, GENIUS! I also think the critique of National Sanctity of Life day, while not that funny, is perfectly lucid and smart.
Section 19 - This one passes as great for one reason, but I think it is a good reason, the line "Grown-up's did that. Never forget that." in relation to the naming of the Patriot Act.
Section 20 - Ok, not funny. Still it's the one sign of hope, albeit maybe not sincere, in the whole comic series.
Section 21 - This section is full of good stuff. Not as funny as early or later GYWO but smart nonetheless. It's dead on concerning Bush's "Press Conference" before the Iraq War, it echoes my own "crisis" of faith with the "pray harder" comment, and it portrayed the exact feeling I had coming up to St. Patrick's day which also happened to be the scheduled day of war. What kind of country do we live in that we schedule fucking wars? Especially on the day of a major saint for God's sake? At least we were drunk.
Section 22 - I laughed at this one. The "long speech" about being called a hippie over not supporting sanctions and imploring demand that the Iraqi's burn their oil fields and "piss off the right people" gave me a sudden fit of nihilistic joy. Kind of like Sept 11th itself. Or so Jean Baudrillard would say.
Section 23 - Tell me you aren't laughing at this!
Section 24 - I think this was pretty biting concerning the indiscretions of William J. Bennett, the man who wrote The Book of Virtues. Maybe this was only funny to me because I listened to a lot of talk radio when this story broke and I remember the right-wingers, mainly Rush, making a huge deal out of it not being a huge deal.
Well, I think they are funny. And smart. Good God. I'm writing like Josh Marshall now.
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Friday, December 12, 2003
(9:55 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
New Features
I have added the wishlists of the three current contributors. I don't expect to receive anything as a result, but it never hurts to have it out there. I have also added a feature that tracks referrers to this page. I will take it down if it proves to be too depressing.
My post below is much too long, and I apologize.
UPDATE: I further altered the template by adding a couple new people to the blogroll: John and Belle Have a Blog and Invisible Adjunct. I highly recommend John and Belle's newest post (as of this writing), which is about whether philosophy should be clear and touches on the issue of whether Heidegger sucks or not. I can think of a few regular readers and/or writers of this blog who could contribute to the discussion there.
(If one of my life partners would like to have a blog added to the blogroll, let me know.)
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(8:08 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
I can't find my brittle youth
Growing up, I usually had a dog. Our first dog was named Candy. A vicious hell-spawn, she destroyed everything she touched. She barked uncontrollably at everyone and sought out things to chew up -- the worst was one of my dad's CCM's, which I later came to understand contained an interview with Steve Taylor. Seeing that magazine in shreds was sickening; what she did to the kitchen cabinents was inexcusable. We took her to the vet to be "released," in the euphemistic terms made famous by The Giver.
Our second dog was named Pumpkin, although she was most frequently called Punky or Punker. She was a dark colored "yorkey-poo," or Yorkshire Poodle, and she was perhaps our best dog. When my dad was on worker's comp for a brief period, he bonded deeply with Punky. We had her for years, and we came to trust her too much to stay in our unfenced yard when we let her out. One night we left her outside for too long, and she was hit by a car. My sister, believing it was her fault, was for a time unconsolable. We kept her collar and other memorobilia and believed that we were not "ready" for another dog, so deeply did we lover her.
Within weeks, my mom was at the barber shop and overheard someone discussing a thoroughbred Lhasa Apso that a disgruntled husband had to give away in order to please his wife. Although Hannah and I didn't realize it at the time, the loss of Punky had hit my dad really hard, and my mom felt like we needed to get the new dog as soon as possible. She was already named Chloe when we got her, and she was and remains one of the dumbest dogs in history. At first she seemed like a bizarre interloper -- too "already-trained," too thoroughbred for our family -- but after my parents moved into their new house while I was at college, she was the rock of stability our family needed to get through that difficult time. She now has my family trained to give her a treat on command, and she occasionally expresses her displeasure at me and my sister's absense by urinating in the house. Her nickname is "Cloafy," a take-off on an old Saturday morning cartoon interlude featuring a dog named Loafy. I am the only person who is still conscious of that etymology -- my little cousins (sadly, not so little anymore) almost certainly believe that "Chloe" is a nickname for "Cloafy."
A word about my little cousins, the sons of my mother's sister. The older is named Tyler and the younger Tanner. They are approximately 12 and 10 years old. Tyler is just like me at that age, painfully so: awkward, easily embarrassed. His brother Tanner helps to bring him out of that shell, however, in a way that Hannah couldn't do for me -- he is outgoing, hilarious, and clinically insane. He looks just like my dad, which at times leads to awkward jokes when people realize that he's not technically in their gene pool. He loves to play board games, and even when he's obviously going to win by a landslide, he will do whatever it takes to make the game last longer, making disadvantageous deals in Monopoly with reckless abandon. At Thanksgiving, the ladies and children of my family (a group that includes me and my dad -- basically the people who don't watch football) played dominoes, and in the version we played, the double blank domino was the kiss of death. Tanner stacked the deck so that my dad would get the double blank one, in a fairly obvious way, and as we all laughed over it, he announced, calmly and unembarassedly, that he had wet his pants. If we brought it up again to him in the future, he wouldn't be embarassed -- he would laugh with us. The only problem was the exact process he should follow in cleaning his pants.
I said much more about Tanner than about Tyler, which is completely unfair, but from their infancy, they were paired off -- Hannah got Tyler, and I got Tanner. Tyler is the more athletic one, like Hannah, and Tanner is the one people just don't know what to make of, like me. From a very early age, everyone in the family had noticed a special bond between me and Tanner. When I was in late high school, going through every imaginable kind of struggle with my family, he was the only one I could relate to.
He and Chloe. I still maintain that I was Chloe's favorite. Just like now, I was a homebody in high school -- while mom and Hannah were off at a dozen athletic events and dad was working twelve hours a day with an hour commute each way, I was sitting at home with Chloe. We had our rough days, a few times when my neglect could easily have led to a replay of Punky's demise, but by and large, we remained close. Then during the summers and breaks, the same situation obtained, when everyone else would be running around with their "busy lifestyles," leaving me and the dog at home.
There's a new dog in my life now, named Wrigley. He will be leaving soon, and I feel slightly sad about it. I feel like there's something I should have done -- he's horribly misbehaved and barks uncontrollably at new people and jumps up on everyone, but over the weekends when (again) it was just me and him and the cats, he was manageable. He's not even my dog, but a "surprise" Richard launched into our life on a caprice, yet I still feel like I've failed him in some way. I think that I'm still responsible for the other, even when I never asked to meet the other -- isn't that what Levinas/Derrida are talking about, anyway?
That I can only think this way in terms of a dog says something about me -- after all these years, during which it should have become clear that not everyone is like me, I still feel like they should be. A dog or cat represents "the other" as Levinas describes it -- vulnerable, saying "thou shalt not kill." A self-reliant American adult is not "the other." They should be able to take care of themselves, damn it. They should be able to fall into a job like I did, and pay their bills on time, and keep the house spotlessly clean, and remember to put the dishes in the dishwasher, and get their assignments done, and write their own stupid papers.
I have a high degree of self-reliance. That might be why I am becoming a cat person. Wrigley aside, the life of a cat has long appealled to me, and in point of fact, my small female dogs were always more like cats than dogs, functionally: jumping up to cuddle occasionally, but mainly just hanging out. They would enjoy the occasional game of fetch, but they didn't need it in the same way that Wrigley needs it, just like he needs a daily walk. Aside from a brief spell of pooping throughout the house, which was really my fault, Soren has been a wonderful cat, and our new temporary cat Toby has been good, too.
I will miss Toby when she's gone, and I think I need Soren -- so that I won't ever really be home alone. I can handle being by myself for long periods of time, generally, but I start to break down when I'm physically alone -- when I've had no physical contact of any kind with anyone for a while. Having a cat to sit on my lap occasionally is no replacement for a real human person, but it's good enough. That's why spinsters get so many cats, and I don't think it's pathetic, not really. They can handle life alone, maybe even prefer it deep down, but sometimes they just need to touch someone, and a cat can be good enough -- just barely, but good enough. I'm sure Soren looks at me in the same way.
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(5:21 PM) | Anthony Paul Smith:
We will hang the rich from their houses
There is an old man running around Kankakee with that as a tattoo on his arm. He calls himself a "Bomb-Throwing Anarchist". Hayley's seen him once when he came into PetCo to buy some stuff for a sound garden. My friend Jessie, who comments sometimes here at The Weblog, had a conversation with him at The Chicago Dough Company. I, however, have not met him.
Still I think that tattoo is pretty bad-ass and I want to hang the rich from their houses just as much as he does. That is, as long as the rich aren't really people and then it gets pretty fuzzy. Still, I'll admit it, I think that sniper rifle kicks ass! I don't know, maybe if I had a Lenin to lead me... Does anyone agree with me when I think it is very odd that this man is always seen in some marketplace or other?
The term Anarchist is very odd. I know many people who hold that it is more of a libertarian (ie. stupid) political ideology and then there is organizations like Crimethinc. that basically runs itself on Communist/Christian principles. Of course, they are super into deconstruction so they look really fluid and you can't quite get a bead on them (Good for them!). I know Emma Goldman, the most famous American Anarchist, didn't like Marxism and Marxist didn't like the Anarchist of his day but they seem to be a lot like the proletariat that Marx hoped for.
If you feel like being angry you should watch this video, but it is relatively disturbing albeit not the most graphic. Afterwards you should read this comic, it will make you feel better.
I've mainly babbled in this post, which is odd considering my most eloquent posts are done at 3 am and it's only 5 pm. Oh yeah, and there are now only 6 days of Birthday shopping before I turn 21 and remember Jesus and I are only 7 days apart which has to mean something good! Oh and support Adam as well, though he is much too shy to ask on his own behalf. I would say support Robb, but he is actually a nice guy and I can't find an Amazon wishlist.
Seriously though you think it is easy to write on this thing everyday? We aren't paid in comments! And by the looks of the job market for PhD's Adam and I both will be working in some God-forsaken office until we go crazy (Robb will have then sold his soul to Satan and be the overlord of the history department at Olivet), renounce our pacifism, and go on a shooting spree the likes of a Bush Christmas in an Alaskan wildlife reserve! Which brings me back to the original title of the post, we need to hang the rich so I can have their money, now that I see that I don't need a Lenin I just need that kick-ass sniper rifle.
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Thursday, December 11, 2003
(11:46 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Love me
Happy preemptive birthday to Anthony -- although I'm ashamed of him, since I would never use this space to encourage people to buy me stuff.
Today, through Zizka (a frequent commenter at Matthew Yglesias and other sites), I found a nice new blog that caters to my own specific paranoia: Invisible Adjunct, written by an adjunct professor of history. He or she writes posts discussing his or her ambivalence about grad school and academia, and there are often over a hundred comments on a given post. Since I have so much schoolwork to do, I definitely did not spend way too much time reading all of those stories.
All of this harkens back to a post by contributor emeritus Michael Schaefer, in which he questions the wisdom of continued graduate education, and my response, in which I basically accuse him of being a sell-out. Now I'm not sure.
One of the commenters at Invisible Adjunct mentioned something about doing dual-degree programs in which one could get the impractical PhD in Comparative Cultural and Cross-Critical Studies together with a practical MA or even (gasp!) an MBA. PhD/JD programs also exist, and in my periodic attempts to skim through the secondary literature on a given topic in order to get token quotations (such as tonight), I have frequently noticed that attorneys are publishing in academic journals -- not on "law and literature" or something, but just as though they were specialists in that field. I know that Jared Woodard hates lawyers, with good reason, and I know that I hate schmoozy businessmen, but man -- why not? How authentic am I really trying to be here?
If I could work somewhere for only forty or fifty hours a week, be satisfied with my work (i.e., that I'm doing a good job, not necessarily that it's important -- I've felt very satisfied mowing lawns and crunching numbers in the past, when I know full well it doesn't matter "in the grand scheme of things," whereas I guess an analysis of Benjamin's theory of drama as it relates to the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar does matter "in the grand scheme of things), and have sufficient leisure time to pursue my academic interests as an avocation, maybe I could be happy. But hell, if I could make a career out of it, I would work at a university run by Satan himself. SATAN HIMSELF!
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(2:48 PM) | Anthony Paul Smith:
Jesus would.
I turn 21 in 7 days.
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(9:32 AM) | Anthony Paul Smith:
Satan himself v. George W.
Adam's comment to my Dismissive comments post got me thinking, "Would I vote for Satan himself if that was the choice were between George W. or Satan himself?"
The answer came back, "What's so bad with Satan himself?"
If you look at it the guy is just a really slimy lawyer type. He condemns Job, but that could have been a good Socialist move to curtail Job's massive wealth. He tempts Jesus, but we all know Jesus should have taken that world leader job which is why we are waiting for him to come back and get on with what we know he really came here for. In Revelation, shit, what does he do in Revelation that is so bad? We all know Christians are harming the fabric of a stable society, so he kills him. Good for him! That's a good policy decision!
To be quite honest, I'd vote for Satan himself, Triumph, the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man, Jerry Springer, Castro, that one dude at the homeless shelter that always talks about the "end times", anyfuckingbody.
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(1:30 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Body Functions are Body Functions
Kari and I are having trouble with our pets' body functions. The dog (which I count as Kari's pet) just pissed on her pants, and the cats (which I count as my pets) have spent the whole weekend pooping on every available surface. Soon the dog will be moving out, along with Kari, but the cats will remain my problem. If anyone wants to keep a kitten until May, let me know. Because the people who own the kitten are apparently mentally retarded, they think they're going to find someone willing to take in the cat for five months, then give it up. (I don't mean to be offensive to any mentally challenged readers of this page, or any of my readers who know and love those who are mentally challenged -- in fact, I believe that a genuinely mentally challenged person would probably still be able to figure out that that is not an effective method for taking care of a cat, and indeed would probably not attempt to keep a cat in an on-campus apartment in which cats are not allowed.)
All of those concerns fade into the background, however, when I consider my joy at the prospect of not having to go back to CTS until February. I'm glad I will be going back. I'm glad for the opportunity to work with outstanding scholars and to move seamlessly to other schools to take classes that interest me. I'm glad that I could potentially be taking only one theology course out of four while being enrolled at a theological seminary. I'm thankful for the new friends I've met in the course of the semester. At this moment, however, at 1:21 AM, I am equally thankful that this semester is over. I've done enough deconstructing of homophobia for now. Especially after finishing the final paper I still have to finish, I will have had quite enough of Bonhoeffer. I've had more than enough of half-informed lectures about the history of Christian thought, especially given that I already know about the history of Christian thought. I'm glad that I won't have to read two or three books of the Old Testament a week.
I'm ready to move on, probably to Derrida, globalization, Karl Barth, and Marion's take on Heidegger. Hopefully by next year, I will have phased out theology altogether. I will graduate in the spring of 2005 with a Master of Arts in Whatever the Hell Classes I Wanted to Take. Thank you, CTS.
This is probably the best post you're going to get out of me until Monday evening, when I will have completed and turned in my paper on Bonhoeffer's use of the concept of objective spirit in Sanctorum Communio, Cost of Discipleship, and Letters and Papers from Prison. If I don't post until then, don't be surprised. I'm sure my loving co-bloggers will be able to stand in the gap for me as necessary. Also, since part of my "technique" of writing papers includes spending hours upon hours with Word open in the background while I browse the Internet, I may very well produce some of my greatest blogging achievements to date. It's really hard to say.
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Wednesday, December 10, 2003
(5:17 PM) | Anthony Paul Smith:
Dismissive comments about nine Democratic wraith candidates
Last night after my usual late night posting I linked around to some other blogs and caught word that the Democratic candidates for President had a debate. So I linked over to the Washington Post's copy of the transcript and read the whole pathetic thing. Regardless of the nature of my religious posts, I am a staunch leftist and if it weren't for Jesus I would have tried to shot a rich person long ago. Still, these candidates suck and as such I thought you should know just how much they suck. I have complied a list of dismissive comments in list format to aid you in your disdain for the only viable opposition to George W. Bush. Perhaps the most annoying part, they all have titles that they seem to want to go by.
Gen. Wesley Clark - I can't take a man seriously who only wants to talk about terrorism, opposes war, and got an endorsement from the Hipster Handbook. He seems to be just another Clinton Democrat, that is, another smooth-talking sell-out liberal.
Former Governor Howard Dean - Seems to be the big frontrunner and in the debate Koppel repeatedly asked Kerry questions about Dean as if Kerry was his bitch. I don't understand why everyone thinks he is an example of the radical left wing of the Democratic party, just another example of Centrist Clinton tactics. Still, he may win because he mainly wants to focus on the economy.
U.S. Senator John Edwards - This man has the same name as a Puritan. By the looks of his statements he also has the same personality. 'Nuff said.
U.S. Representative Richard Gephardt - A Representative?!? Running for the President?!?! Please!
U.S. Senator John Kerry - To be honest I like this man for one reason; he said "fuck" during an interview with Rolling Stone. But he looks really weird and he is obviously Dean's bitch. My guess, if Dean gets the nomination Kerry will be begging him for the V.P. spot.
U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich - The fact that this man is actually a Socialist and the one person who stands up for all the issues I care about really makes me like him. The fact that he is really cartoonish when it comes to his looks, his personal life, his chances for election and his name means he is unelectable. This is really too bad. Now if I could do a "What If?" scenario to create the most interesting campaign, I would link this peacenik up with the General and see what would happen, they could call themselves "The Odd Couple Candidate."
U.S. Senator Joe Libererman - This man is a Republican. I am glad Gore stabbed the mother fucker in the back. And his voice! Oi vey!
Former U.S. Senator Carol Moseley Braun - I meet her once, at a military ball that my dad made the whole family go to. She had some nasty ballroom gown on. Besides that, she seems nice but in a grandma sort of way and therefore completely incapable of running the country. Still, she is funny so the debates between her and Bush would be entertaining.
The Reverend Al Sharpton - Just drop the fuck out already!
What pissed me off the most was that no one raised their hand when Koppel asked if they thought Howard Dean could win the election. Come on now! I think Atrios has this right outlook on this subject. Though I don't share his optimisim for the inevitable victory of whoever faces off against Bush, the stupidity of the American people and the mediocrity of the Democratic party kills all optimism in this little Socialist's heart.
With that said, I will vote for whoever gets the nomination as a faithful member of "Vote the Fucking Antichrist out of Office" movement. If that means I have to be a part of Generation Dean, so be it but I will bitch like hell after he is elected becasue that is the way I roll.
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(12:04 PM) | Robb Schuneman:
For Shame
I exaggerate often. I speak in grandizing, lyrical sentiments a lot of the time. I'm not doing that now when I say that today is the first day I am actually completely ashamed to be an American.
The Coalition Provisional Authority, which is the governing body from the US and her allies in Iraq, has ordered Iraq's health ministry to stop the official count of civillians who were killed during the war and subsequent occupation of Iraq and to destroy the figures gathered thus far.
For those keeping count, the closest we've been able to get so far was an AP count of 3,240 civillians who were killed between March 20 and April 20, but that only surveryed about half of the hospitals, and the totals were supposed to be much higher. This count would have been the accurate one, as it would have surveyed all hospitals.
How hypocritical can we be? We are exhuming the mass graves of Sadaam's terrible and unhumane killings to catalog each death for future prosecution...while at the same time halting a record of the deaths we have caused ourselves, one which would be unbiased by either the US Military or anti-war sentiments. It makes one wonder how high it was going if it garnered this sort of reaction.
I'm literally sick.
PS: I'd post a link, as I originally read this earlier, but now every time I attempt to go to any of the sources with this story, IE crashes due to some sort of stack error. It's strange because the rest of the web is working no problem, even the rest of the AP site and the ABC site and the Yahoo! News site..I've visited 10 sites total..everything works except this story. Conspiracy theorists feel free to ponder.
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(1:22 AM) | Anthony Paul Smith:
Call for papers
I am going to try my hand in the world of print publishing. A friend and I are going to publish something in 'zine format on the topic of "Neverlution." If you are interested in writing a short essay for it drop me a line at asmith36@students.depaul.edu. If you are confused as to exactly what this topic means, I'll be finished with my essay soon and I'll try and post it here at adamkotsko.com.
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(1:00 AM) | Anthony Paul Smith:
The church does not happen everywhere
Those of us who study theology or know Church history and care about the doctrine of the Trinity recognize two main heresies that plague the Church even today. Ariainsim, the heresy that brought the Nicene council together to proclaim that Christ was equal and of the same ousia as the Father, and Modalism, which has, from time to time, been official Church dogma that stated that there was some hidden God behind the appearances of God as revealed in the Creator, Son and Spirit. Jurgen Moltmann argues that both of these heresies support "monarchy" and the subjection of human freedom by an absolute subject. This is also, I think, the kind of thing that Derrida argues against with his idea of "Religion without Religion"; Derrida wants to free religion from the violence done in it's name or in God's name. Both of them are right and I think most of my friends are comfortable saying that the emperor must always be clothed with royal robes while Christ must be naked and bleeding and these two things cannot be reconciled. Clearly this is true and we need look no further than our own Christian President but it may be helpful to look at Hitler and Constantine as well.
There is another heresy I find to be troubling, that is the idea that the Church happens everywhere. I don't even know if this heresy has a name (or if I am the only one that wants to call it a heresy) but I feel it is as large a threat as Constantine and has arisen as a direct result of the Church’s lack of relevance in the world today.
The reason I hate this kind of thinking is not because it gives the emperor more power in the name of God directly, but rather because it gives him more power through the apathy of the people of God. The kind of people I grew up with fall into this way of thinking constantly, I have sympathy with it because of the way I grew up but something about it really bothers me. It seems to come from the anarchistic thinking that many of us who wanted to rebel against the kind of Church that gave the emperor "holy" robes but it does so at the expense of giving the Church a voice or a hand. By making Christ's body (the Church) everywhere we have taken away Christ's singularity in a vain attempt to subsume the Many into the One again. As if salvation existed in order for us to be subsumed!
What confuses me is that the very people who say this would never want to admit that the Church happens in a KKK meeting (though let us pray and weep for the coming of Christ even there!) but by their very language it must mean that. By remaining silent in hopes of letting everyone be Christian (or at least religious) we are forced to say "Amen" when the Empire becomes the Church catholic.
So where has this come from? The Church, for far too long, has let itself become a tool of the secular Nation-State and has become irrelevant in the face of massive oppression. It can’t very well bite the hand that feeds it (though it should!). People who have become disgusted with this, people like myself and I am sure like many of The Weblog’s faithful readers, and have jumped ship. We haven’t wanted to deny Christ, after all we still believe in Hell, kinda, sort of and so we find salvation everywhere.
I think I’m advocating a kind of battered wife 'ought' to stay with her husband position. As we are to submit to the government, we must also submit to the Church (since the two have such a strange alliance) and that submission means turning the other cheek every time we are slapped for speaking up. I love my Church and it saddens me that it doesn’t happen everywhere but divorce isn’t an option in this case. This, by no means, advocates a real battered wife stay with her husband, though that may sometimes be her calling and other times her calling is to cut his penis off and throw it out a car window. That's the nature of undecidability.
I know, you are sick of the Jesus posts. Next time I promise I’ll write something about Howard Dean.
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Tuesday, December 09, 2003
(12:30 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
New Blogs: The Search is Over
Adam Robinson has a blog. Read it. Cherish it in your heart. Post it above your doorways and on your clothes.
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(3:02 AM) | Anthony Paul Smith:
Leading with bodies: Or a bodily confession
This was supposed to be a response to Adam's Happy Immaculate Conception post, but I am not sure what it turned into. Regardless, Adam's post is incredible and you need to read it.
I have no home. At least in the ecclesial sense I have no home. I grew up in an atheist household (I hear my father, Craig Anthony Smith, is still an atheist) during my early childhood, attended a Presbyterian church during the transition from childhood to adolescent and finished up in the Nazarene church during my teenage years. It was in this church that I became a very passionate Evangelical and I even earned the name "Preacher" in my gym class. Before that time I had been a very weak, weepy child and it was this evangelical spirit that gave me strength to stand for something. I traded in my tears for the Book, my Nirvana tapes for Carmen (My God why did you forsake me?). I had always been picked on, I was always a bit too eager to learn at such a young age, I am sure a bit know-it-all and becoming an Evangelical allowed me to see my persecution as part of being a Christian though it was merely mean spirited bullying.
My mother, during my thirteenth year became a pastor which is also the year I remember first becoming conscious of my guilt concerning my sexuality. I spent so many nights masturbating (I had few friends besides my computer) and so many Sundays at the altar trying to pray away my sexuality. The resentment I had with God that he would not give me control over my body and the resentment I had with those around me, especially girls, that I could not have control of their body (the singular "girl") led me to become even more entrenched in my efforts to save souls, to conquer their spirits and eventually control their bodies so they would feel as I did. Please don't misunderstand me, I didn't want to have sex with them, I wanted them to never have sex as I would never have sex (so it seemed to a confused, angry thirteen year-old). To make them feel the same self-hatred at wanting to fuck and not being able to that I did.
God saved me from that. Sort of.
I discovered punk rock. I began to repeat these beautiful lyrics of God and God's love over and over again as I would dance alone in my room, pretending to be a rock star, or as I would dance with other people when I worshiped at the foot of real rock stars. I began to feel that this was the real church. It wasn't dead like our Sunday services were, though I am sure if you ask anyone besides me the "Spirit moved" there all the time. I looked weird, I did discover punk rock afterall, and the looks these old men and their boring wives gave me made me feel as if this couldn't be the church that God wanted and more importantly it wasn’t the church I wanted. I felt that I was a stain on their beautiful church building (though it really wasn't very beautiful, it was Protestant afterall). So I fought against that church trying to get them to become more open, that is to become more like me, to be open to me. Still, I knew that I could do it better. I would have a church of the same. I would make it so I would never have to hear my mother weep over the rumors spread about what she did with her body and the senior pastor’s body, merely because she was a woman pastor. Though, admittedly, I would never know if anything actually did happen.
I gave up on fighting the Nazarene church when I came to college. I had attempted to lead a church the way I would do it after my family took a new church. My mother let me build the youth group in my own image and I failed so miserably that I knew I couldn't fight anymore, what would I do after I won? Craig Keen (partially my father's name) impacted me as he has impacted all those who have studied under him and I loved God deeply. His teachings lead me to put down my sword (the Bible?) and to wait on the Lord. Even though my vulgarly tattooed body was a stumbling block to many of my fellow students, I kept quiet most of the time. I let people say what they will about God and the church and Nietzsche and Arabs and so on and so forth. I had, realistically, given up hope for the Nazarene people and I could only wait even in moments when I didn’t want to.
I did have one moment of hope. After the infamous "movie chapel" I felt like the school would have to respond and would respond intelligently and carefully. I felt revolution in the air, the wait was over. I was crushed when there was no revolution but instead the machinery of the conservative administration moved silently to silence the few good professors at the school and the student body, who are not as deaf as they put on airs about being, sat by and did nothing. There was no revolution. Nothing got better at all, no things got worse. Craig (my fatherly repetition) took his body and moved it to California and I only have his specter in my memory; what a pale specter I have. The one thing standing between my Fr. Craig's atheism and myself was Craig’s fatherly body standing behind his phallic podium, speaking in his deep voice about the Christ's crucifixion/circumcision/castration and the advent of his coming. All the while that image of the crucified one was hanging behind my father and I imagined it crying out, "Father, why have you forsaken me?"
I had no Oedipus complex; I wanted to weep at my father's feet, to serve him only and to have him carry me to the Promised Land. I had been in the Promised Land once, when I first believed in God. At the age of six I jumped out of my mother’s car to give my only dollar to a homeless man walking through the parking lot. I was going to buy candy with it but when I saw God walking there I believed in the Kingdom and I didn't want candy, I wanted him to have my only possession. I have a lot more possession now and Craig didn't lead me back, instead, he left. So I wept at my own feet, by myself, which is to say without a church.
Something about losing Craig's body, losing my father a second time (repetition again) made me long for a church. I needed God (did I need a Father? I hope that’s not all this is!) and if I had to go to a church to be with him, so be it. I wanted to become Catholic, but I couldn't. I felt as if I would be betraying my mother (and maybe my God) and the loving tears she has shed over my faith. So I became Episcopal without actually becoming Episcopal (my membership is still listed in Princeton, IL at my mother's church). I drink blood and eat flesh with people I don't know very well but who are very excited to have my young wife and I in their church. I say thanks to the Virgin Mary. I try to pray the prayer book, though it goes against my anarchistic tendencies. I proclaim the mystery of our faith, and I still shudder sometimes at it. I sing the hymns off pitch because they are too high, and I love how irreverent it makes Hayley and I when we laugh at my poor voice during service. It's not the Promised Land but my body is somewhere besides alone, my tears feel as if they are shed with the church everytime it prays "Lord have mercy" during supplication.
I miss my father though, I miss his body. I wish, desperately, that everyone else did as well. I say all of this, and I apologize for the autobiography, to add one thing to Adam's post. We repeat these prayers (which, as Christians, is always a prayer begging God to come) in our heads, we put our bodies places (which, as Christians, is always in hopes that we run into hers) in hopes that the rest will follow and that rest is God.
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Monday, December 08, 2003
(9:14 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Happy Immaculate Conception
Tonight there was a mass for the feast of the Immaculate Conception. It commemorates the day when Mary was conceived and by God's grace was free of original sin from the first moment of her existence -- that is to say, she was always-already saved. It's a doctrine that's basically indefensible on accepted Protestant grounds -- no one can reasonably say it appears (or is even implied) in the Bible, and it receives mixed reviews in the tradition. It was promulgated by the same pope who declared that the pope is capable of infallibly declaring doctrine without the explicit consent of a council. It also rests on some ideas of original sin that are not shared with the Orthodox. In any event, I kind of like it, even if I'm not quite sure what it actually means.
Immaculate Conception is a holy day of obligation in the United States, but holy days that fall on Mondays are not obligatory, since we were of course just in church the previous day. I went because I enjoy going to mass in the evening. I most frequently go to mass on Saturday evenings, and while I was at Oxford, there was a church that had an evening mass every day, and I attended probably four days a week. I like going to mass. I like Catholic worship music, at least more than I like most other worship music -- the stuff that came out of the sixties seems to me to be more meaningfully "contemporary" than anything that I ever heard in evangelical "contemporary" services. I like how the priest and his entourage walk in in a big procession. I like the fact that priests have little kids picking up their dishes and bringing them their books -- it's a rather literalistic approach to Jesus' command to "suffer the little children to come unto me." When the priest first says, "Let us pray," I always say, "Okay... now!" and watch the kid walk across the stage with her white robe and the jeans and tennis shoes underneath. I like the understated, written out prayers, and I like that the homily is usually short. I like reciting long memorized things in unison with everyone else. You can fill in the rest, I'm sure.
One day when I was talking to my pastor, Fr. Jack, he said that he was amazed at what a huge change I had made. I had gone from a highly pietistic strain of evangelical Christianity, where there is constant anxiety about whether one "really means it," to the Catholic Church, where the ritual really is the thing. I'm coming to understand that better. The problem isn't that Catholics are just itching to become pietists, but no one has taught them how, but that the problem of whether one "really believes" just occurs at a completely different level in the two faiths. It isn't a question of finding the ways in which Catholics and evangelicals are both secretly doing the same thing -- these are two very different ways of approaching God in worship.
I think part of the difference can be described in the way that each approaches the unconscious. In evangelicalism, the problem becomes mining one's unconscious until every doubt and sin is pulled out into the light. This is rooted in the problematic that Luther confronted in the confessional, since pietism originates in Lutheranism. The Catholic Church focusses on the conscious mind -- go to communion as long as you're not conscious of mortal sin, confess serious sins of which you are conscious, do what you're supposed to do on the obvious level and just let the unconscious level take care of itself. In the Catholic Church, how does one pray, by and large? Recite memorized prayers repetitively. Say the divine office -- literally just read out loud from the liturgy of hours for whatever time you happen to be praying. If you have specific, obvious needs at a given moment, then by all means tell God about them, but everything else is probably covered in the prayers that the church gives to you. If meditative, "impromptu" prayer comes out of that, then fine. If not, then just keep objectively praying and hope that the unconscious stuff takes care of itself.
That's what I was getting at in my long comment on Anthony's post in which I advocated reading the Bible. That's all I was advocating -- reading. Mechanically running through the words in your head. I don't expect anyone to think about those words later in the day or focus on the nugget of truth that "God has for you today" or any of that crap. It's not about you. The Bible obviously was not written with your specific needs in mind, dumbass, just like the prayers of the mass and the liturgy of hours and all the memorized prayers were not developed with your specific needs in mind. If it proves to be an amazingly rewarding experience, then fine. If (like me tonight) you realize that your mind wandered so much that you're surprised that it's already time for communion because you don't remember him consecrating the hosts, then fine -- you were there, right? Stop worrying about yourself and your petty motivations.
This is my experience of Catholicism, and it is liberating for me after the tyrrany of pietism. (Maybe I just traded in one tyrrany for another, but still.) I don't remember 90% of the time what the psalms or the scripture reading for morning prayer were. From week to week, I rarely remember what the readings were or what the homily was about. I am not alone in this -- Catholics are notorious for that kind of thing. The key is just to put it in your head, to put your body through those motions, and hope (though not consciously) that the rest will follow. Maybe some combination of the Catholic and pietistic methods would be possible and even "better" than either on its own, but if I were given a choice, I would choose the Catholic method.
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(3:14 AM) | Robb Schuneman:
Jonesy vs. The Apocalypse
In an unheard of second straight post, I'd like to point out one of the best parodies I've ever seen, I believe, except for the Somethingawful.com photoshop of children's books two years ago. It's a nice rip on Jack Chick, the tract guy with the horribly paranoid and bigoted comics that you've all been handed "in the name of Jesus" at some time or another.
Anyways, it features what it might be like if Jack worked for the Elder Gods of H.P. Lovecrafts stories instead of for the Christian God.
If you need an example of Chick's stuff to counteract it with...here's the latest one. Letting the world know that every muslim person in the world desires nothing more than an exploding child! Thank you Jack Chick, what the world needs now is more hatred and unreasonable racism.
Thought I'd pass it along, and that's all.
UPDATE
I changed the title so that you might pay me some attention. And, The Vines are sooooooo mainstream, where as The Webb Brothers are not.
This isn't really in much of a way related to the Chick thing, except it also involves Jesus, and is also not worthy of a post devoted solely to it, so I bunched them together. Namely, it's my new favorite Family Guy quote, ever:
"Good evening. I'm playing the role of Jesus; a man once played on the big screen by Jeffery Hunter. You may remember him as the actor who was replaced by William Shatner on Star Trek. Apparently Mr. Hunter was good enough to die for our sins, but not quite up to the task of seducing green women.
"Anywho. The perennial dictum is to spread good will towards all men. The irony, of course, is that this is contrary to our nature. So why do we do it? Because we are being watched. And so, we unselfishly think of others, assured that our good behavior will be rewarded with love...and plutonium."
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(1:07 AM) | Robb Schuneman:
Stop That Pigeon!
Because I have trouble knowing exactly what the heck is supposed to be capitalized, I'm going with ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME. I think this will also help identify the author of a post - Adam will be the one with proper MLA styled titles, Anthony is the one with sentence-styled titles, me, I just don't care, and capitalize all willy-nilly up in here.
A month back or so, I delivered a ton of fliers to this place called World of Wings. Apparently they are a rather large home for racing pigeons. The fliers were all for this race. It was interesting that there's this whole subculture..people everywhere across our great land are breeding pigeons by the thousands to race. Then they send them off to whatever place, like Oklahoma City, and the people at World of Wings train the pigeons for 3-4 months. Then they release them in some God-forsaken place 300 miles from the destination, and the first one home wins their "fancier" (breeder) a truck. Then all the birds are auctioned off, because the owners, who have 20,000 other birds, don't really care about that one.
It was strangely hilarious to walk in this building with thousands of caged birds, each of the birds with little identifying helmets or, in at least two cases, capes. Also, they had this huge section of "Pigeon Literature" which made me laugh in my immaturity as I pictured one of those caped pigeons sitting down with "Remembrance of Things Past". There's also a disturbing picture of some little girl suffocating a pigeon on their home page. If you can't be troubled to go to the actual site, at least check out this picture..it's good stuff, especially the caption: "Kids of all ages can love pigeons!" It nearly sounds like an offshoot of NAMBLA.
I don't know..this is pretty funny to me. I love the fact that such things as this consume some other people's lives. Someone on your street or apartment complex could probably write me with 100 things I got wrong about the sport of Pigeon Racing in the above paragraph. To some extent it's like that movie Love Liza, which features Philip Seymour Hoffman growing into the world of Gasoline huffing and Competitive Remote Control Boat racing after the suicide of his wife. Really, I guess it's really nothing like that except that both feature worlds outsiders don't normally see, and I have just huffed an entire gallon of gasoline.
Yeah, I like viewing what other people devote their lives to. I'm a perfect candidate to become some sort of voyeur. Just last night this girl, Christine, IMed me, obviously meaning to IM someone else, probably Chalkeater1 or something. I ended up talking to her for an hour as this other person, whose name I could never deduce. But I did figure out that our friends Ricky and Jon-Marc had gone to see Honey without us. I also told her to come on over because Ricky and Jon-Marc were coming over after they got their Jessica Alba fix. I thought that should all add up to a crazy situation for whoever she was actually trying to talk to.
And speaking of people devoting their lives to strange things, there's a new RAP from MC Mirrors & Tinsel out. It will soon be on garageband at The MC M&T WEBOCITY but you can catch a sneak peek here. The song is devoted to Adam's "Gay Bath House" post, even though it ended up not really dealing with much that he mentioned there, and instead dealt a lot with the pain I face living with a superfluous nipple. I'm attempting to do something along the lines of MC Paul Barman, MC Frontalot, or MC Chris eventually, however, I obviously suck a lot worse than them right now. A lot worse. All the same, it might be fun for some who have dealt with Community Shower-phobia. It is entitled "Community Shower - Community POWER".
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Sunday, December 07, 2003
(5:59 PM) | Anthony Paul Smith:
Forget the bible... almost
The dwindling number of us who still read the Bible are likely familiar with what is commonly referred to as "the Law." Those wonderful passages that demand a woman be kept separate from the community while she has her period (of what, we never shall know), or that we should kill a man who is caught sleeping with another man. This demanding tone even appears in the writings of Saint Paul, although it is of less severity or authority than the judges had. Paul was not a higher up in the government afterall.
This is, if you are a Christian, our scripture. It is filled with petty, resentful and downright hateful commands and I fear many become Christians not for the sake of salvation but for the power they weild with permission of scripture. Yes, I know there are plenty of verses that demand we love and do good to the poor and so on and so forth but these other commands are given much more respect in contemporary Christianity. That is why most Christians are right-wingers or apathetic to the moves in politics (I confess, I can't make up my mind as to which one is worse).
I used to hold to the idea if a proper understanding of scripture (which mean my understanding of scripture, of course) could just be attained then everything would fall into place. This, I can see now, is complete bull-shit. As long as people hold to the idea that the Bible is our ultimate source of revelation or is the way in which Christians create their "world-view" or even as the description of the way in which the Church ought to be run (to where?) then the Church will be completely inrelevant. I have had too many arguments, mainly on Decapolis which I was kicked off of, about woman in ministry where the other side would claim, "If it was up to me I'd let woman be ministers, but the Bible says they can't." The same argument works for homosexuality and, if we take the bible's commands really seriously, fat people.
So what do we do with this book that has caused so much violence (and certainly so much love as well)? I can't throw it away, it is what the Church reads afterall. I don't want to say we believe some of it or that we pick and choose the good stuff because we do that anyway and it hasn't helped. It seems we must convince the Church to read scripture as if Jesus were the ultimate source of revelation and if anything doesn't match up with him then it is shit.
How do we do this without committing violence again? I must confess that I do not know if we can.
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(4:51 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Josh Marshall Writes Like a Financial Services Advertisement
The dwindling number of us who still read print magazines are likely familiar with the distinctive writing style of financial services advertisements. "Spender and Rob is everything you expect from a financial service provider. Reliable. Honest. Profitable. And Ethical." "Here at First Financial Whatever, we know that you want a financial service that will ease your mind. And increase your bottom line. That's why...." It's as though there's some kind of tax on commas. Or sentences that don't begin with conjunctions. Or complete sentences.
Josh Marshall, one of the guiding lights of the blogging revolution, writes like that. For instance, in this post, he writes, "My point isn't that there's anything hidden or conspiratorial about it per se. It's just that cutting the deals surrounding the debt issue is central to much of what happens in Iraq next year. And much of what happens in Iraq period." Do you notice that that last sentence is technically a fragment? I understand that he wants to emphasize the "and," but most web browsers support italics: "It's just that cutting the deals surrounding the debt issue is central to much of what happens in Iraq next year and much of what happens in Iraq period." Overuse of italics is annoying. And I know I'm one of the primary perpetrators. But putting every idea into a separate sentence for "emphasis" is annoying. And ineffective.
Here's another one: "So many articles get published every day. And it's a struggle to know which are the must-reads and which can be safely ignored." In this case, the new sentence obscures the direct connection between the two clauses. They are independent clauses on a literal, grammatical level, but they clearly belong together in a single sentence. Why not replace that unnecessary period with a comma and a humbler, lower-case "and"?
A particularly egregious example is found here: "I had lunch today with someone who is not a politician but a fairly prominent Washington Democrat -- certainly not someone from the party's liberal wing. And in the course of answering a question, I said 'If it [i.e. the nominee] ends up being Dean ...' At which point, with the rest of my sentence still on deck down in my throat, my friend shot back : 'It's Dean.'" First of all, the "And" in the second sentence isn't even necessary. Had it been removed, the connection between the two sentences would have remained clear. In the third sentence, the use of a new sentence is somewhat justified in that Marshall is evoking an interruption, but the long phrase about "the rest of the sentence still on deck in my throat" (the literary merits of which are certainly debatable) robs the fragment of its impact. What we have here is basically one long sentence awkwardly chopped into three. Ideally, the entire passage could have been recast: "I was talking to this prominent Democrat guy, and I was saying, 'If the nominee ends up being Dean....' He interrupted: 'It's Dean.'" I realize my version doesn't have a lot of flair, but I think it's better structured. He could even sandwich in the "on deck in my throat" thing if he wanted.
To be fair, blogs are by nature first drafts. And our rhetorical tics, which might be edited out in more formal settings, are bound to show up more often. But attentive readers might note that I was able to pick out these particular gaffes from within the top five entries on the page.
Also, to be fair, I have (at minimum) the following rhetorical tics:
- Overuse of dashes
- Overuse of "Also"
- Overuse of adverbs and adverbial phrases
- Overly long sentences
- Over use of parenthetical clauses
But I think my faults are more difficult to imitate.
And that's what's really important here.
Endnote
I originally wanted to entitle this essay "Josh Marshall Writes Like a Woman," but the only examples I could cite are a frequent contributor to Dennis Bratcher's discussion board and a columnist from the Flint (MI) Journal. I truly believe that women are more prone to sentence fragments than men. And this is something that really needs to be investigated. But I'm too lazy to do so.
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