Lennon as Lenin

Imagine
John Lennon

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
In a brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagination is a key to politics. It is an organ through which we know the transcendent, the foundation upon which the rest of our political order ought to be based. Stories and poems and songs remind us of experiences that we've had and help us to understand and order those experiences. In this song, however, Lennon undermines the imagination and replaces it with gnosticism: he cuts off part of human existence--the transcendent--hoping that this will result in peace. Lennon wants the listener to use imagination to undermine imagination's existence. For if we lived the way that he asks us to, there would no longer be a reason for imagination. For imagination is the way that we learn what it is we ought to be willing to die for and what there is to live for beyond today.

Manliness and Making Out

In Harvey Mansfield's reflection on the hook-up culture (a review of the intriguingly named, "Sex and the Soul"), he notes that while people engage in "hooking up" [sometimes] looking for romance, "romance requires holding back," something that college kids aren't trained to do. I like the understanding of the hook-up culture as a thwarted spiritual urge (if, as the book argues, sex is a yearning of the soul).

Sometimes I have a hesitation with the line that women want relationships while men want sex. I'm sure that this is largely true. But isn't no-strings-attached physical gratification attractive to everyone, regardless of gender (I mean, excepting very virtuous people)? As Woody Allen evidently said, "Sex without love is a meaningless experience, but as far as meaningless experiences go, it's pretty damn good."

Goodness gracious, we live in tragic times: it seems to me that evangelicals' "purity culture" ought to encourage people to get married younger, and yet, people change so much during the college years (and the years afterward) in which they are determining and beginning upon their vocation, that you don't blame them for waiting a bit to marry.

3:10 to Yuma

Believable? I'm not entirely sure. But sympathetic? Absolutely.


Talk about realizing that there are some things worth dying for. And for doing that within the eye of the community (it isn't just that Christian Bale wanted his son to think that he was brave, it was that he wanted to be brave and just in part to serve as an example for his son; what more admirable motivation could one have to be virtuous than to teach others [most especially your child] through that virtue?)

Russell Crowe proved to be an absolutely sympathetic "bad guy." From his very intuitive and insightful psychological observations, to his love for the beautiful (which we see in his drawing--birds, his lover, and Bale [the just]). It is striking to think of the difference between Crowe and the serial murder in No Country for Old Men. He had the capacity for friendship and love, which showed something good in his character. Moreover, in the last scene of the film, he realized that real friendship could only occur within the community and its laws. He could experience that friendship only with Bale, who was turning him over to be "hung in the morning." He could not experience that friendship through his gang, who risked their lives in order to set him free.

Through the picture that he drew of Bale, we see that the Bible (and justice) comes to have another meaning for Crowe than it had in his childhood, in which he associated it with desertion. Bale was the opposite of a deserter--he would not desert his land, nor would he desert justice and the job to which he'd committed.

On Navel Gazing

I'm not sure that navel gazing should be a criticism. Navel gazing involves contemplate one's origins, which are often considered through myths. Considering where one came from can offer important insight into one's tradition and into the future. These myths regarding beginnings point to something true about man (since everything in human nature is present in man at all times).

In Lily Allen's "Littlest Things," she points back to her memories of the beginning of a relationship in order to ask if there is any future there:

Sometimes I find myself sittin' back and reminiscing

Especially when I have to watch other people kissin'

And I remember when you started callin' me your miss's

...

Dreams, Dreams

Of when we had just started things

Dreams of you and me

It seems, It seems

That I can't shake those memories

I wonder if you have the same dreams too.

...

So come on, Tell me

Is this the end?

Quotations from the Evening

Emily: “Do you write letters?”
A certain (aged and holy) priest: “Only to gorgeous young women. What’s your address?”

Yale div grad: “YDS is a hospital where the patients practice on each other.”

On a certain church: “It’s like the clothes with no emperor."

On Death

The last of the Earthsea Trilogy, Ursula LeGuin's The Farthest Shore is perhaps the one that shows the most of her Buddhist theology (is it called theology when its Buddhism?).

Her thoughts on death as conveyed in her novel are very interesting and offer some important insights as well as some questionable ones. So she emphasizes the importance of death and sees the central problem (at least the central problem of the novel) as the effort to overcome death. This involves denying life. Moreover, for LeGuin, it is necessary to realize the connection between the body and the soul as well as between death and life. I think this is absolutely true. We can see this in Spe Salvi, when Pope Benedict writes,

“Perhaps many people reject the faith today simply because they do not find the prospect of eternal life attractive. What they desire is not eternal life at all, but this present life, for which faith in eternal life seems something of an impediment. To continue living forever—endlessly—appears more like a curse than a gift. Death, admittedly, one would wish to postpone for as long as possible. But to live always, without end—this, all things considered, can only be monotonous and ultimately unbearable.”

Death, then, is necessary. We are immortal beings, but also mortal (we don't continue living forever in just the same way we are living now. Rather, we must pass through death (and purgatory!) or some equivalent experience that changes us (here I'm thinking of Enoch and Elijah and those who are still alive when Christ returns).

LeGuin goes wrong when she sees the afterworld as some place in which all of our shadows grow, while our bodies remain forever on earth in the great cycle of life--the sense that death is the end of us and that only the cycle of life can we find our immortality. She gets right, however, the tension that death is both bad and necessary. It is something that we must both avoid and embrace (in the sense that we realize our mortality and do not seek eternal life on earth). This urge to live forever on earth at the expense of everything else leads us to embrace things like stem cell research and to shun things like cigarettes and chocolate milk. Moreover, this belief that life is the ultimate good prevents us from seeing that there are things that are more important than life, things that are worth dying for. I think that only when we love certain things enough to be willing to die for them are we living in any full sense of the word.

LeGuin writes (getting it right and getting it wrong):

"You will die. You will not live forever. Nor will any man nor any thing. Nothing is immortal. But only to us is it given to know that we must die. And that is a great gift: the gift of selfhood. For we have only what we know we must lose, what we are willing to lose. ... That selfhood which is our torment, and our treasure, ad our humanity, does not endure. It changes; it is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease, to save one wave, to save yourself? Would you give up the craft of your hands, and the passion of your heart, and the light of sunrise and sunset, to buy safety for yourself--safety forever?"

What we must lose, we will find again. Granted, we will find it in Christ. But our telos is not only the happiness of the universe, but also our individual happiness (through the community).

Gilead

This book goes a long way in offering an apologia for Calvinism and a deeper understanding of Calvinism and its implications. It is probably the romanticism in me that reacts against the stark realism of Calvinism--the sense that not everything is going to be alright and that we've got to live with that. The book portrays the truth that the love of a parent is deep and can forgive without limits, but that it cannot understand and comprehend everything that it's asked to. The relationship between a father and a son (and various levels of fathers and sons, and spiritual fathers and sons) serves as a metaphor for our relationship to the divine, which Marilyn Robinson sees as an aesthetic relationship (to which she is true by arguing for the aesthetic in the form of a novel). The last section of the book, in particular, stands out as a masterful and artistic representation of theological truths.

Women and Work

In this (very interesting) article on the relationship between home and work, Jennifer Roback Morse rightly points to the connection between the urge to get rid of differences between men and women and the disintegration of the family (when men and women are purportedly no different from women, family is not as the natural outcome of our differences, but rather, at best, a contract made for mutual benefit).

Her use of this quote from Engels is interesting:

"In the old communistic household, which comprised many couples and their children, the task entrusted to women of managing the household was as much a public, a socially necessary, industry as the procuring of food by the men. With the patriarchal family and still more with the single monogamous family, a change came. Household management lost its public character. It no longer concerned society. It became a private service; the wife became the head servant, excluded from all participation in social production."

It seems to me that a household must have both an end in itself and an end in the community. I object not only to the idea that the family is a construction that is simply of use to the state, but also to the idea that the family is an entirely private community that has no relevance to the polity (this is connected to suburbanization, which leads to families that are simply places where all of the members retire to rest, rather than active, living, contributing organisms. Ideally the family will be a producing rather than only consuming institution.) Because the family has been privatized (because producing activities have been taken out of the home), women have left the home (following men) to look for fulfillment and the possibility for creative production.

One problem in her suggestion that women earn advanced degrees later, when they are older, is that it is often a more difficult endeavor when you're older. Goodness gracious, I can't learn a language now for the life of me--I love that I blame this on age rather than excessive laziness.

Also the obvious thing that would strengthen her argument and that she neglects to discuss, is birth control. I'm just not sure why people make arguments like Morse's without dealing with birth control.

Morse ends her essay by writing, "In short, I claim the right to participate in the labor market as women, not as men in skirts. Up until now, we have insisted that women change their fertility in order to accommodate the labor market. I say we should take women’s fertility as given and change the labor market to accommodate our bodies." I really agree with this, but goodness gracious, does she have to go into rights talk? That's irritating. I mean, I think that we do, in fact, already have that right, it's just that we have to choose families over loads of money and "achievement." I also believe in the government structuring its laws in order to encourage and support families, but need we buy into rights talk just because everyone else does?

On Armenian Churches

As a sometime student of the relationship between church and state, I am intrigued by the Armenian Apostolic Church, which was the first national church (founded possibly in 3o1). In honor of the anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, here are some pictures of Armenian churches. They are very old, as you might imagine (many from the 13th century). (The churches, not the pictures.)

On Letters

From the inestimable Fr. Schall's "A Last Lecture: On Essays and Letters" (from the beautifully named, On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs: Teaching, Writing, Playing, Believing, Lecturing, Philosophizing, Singing, Dancing):

"The letter comes unexpectedly some morning or afternoon in the post. It bears that element of surprise, which is almost the deepest of our spiritual concepts."

...

"Letters are part of our wholeness."

...

"The letter and essay will be, for most of us, the only recorded mark or our existence, the only way in which words will be put to our being."

The Cowboy as Monk, Unforgiven

I don't know how to take this film at all. The idea that a man can change (as Clint Eastwood [Bill] repeatedly asserts that he has, but proves that he hasn't, in the end) is undermined with this film. And yet, it is a result of his care for his friend, who was unjustly killed, that Bill reverts to the man that he had been, before he was tamed by a woman. Perhaps the message of the film is that a killer can't be tamed--he doesn't do as a father and a farmer and a sober man. And yet a husband/farmer (Ned), who was once a killer, can't be made into a killer again (Ned can't finish the "killing" and leaves for home and his wife). Yet neither way of being is necessarily intrinsically better--Ned, for instance, sleeps with the prostitute, while Bill stays faithful to his dead wife and honors the woman who was cut.

In one of her essays, Dorothy Sayers (unless I'm mistaken) argues for the return of "single vocations," such as the detective. The cowboy is another one of these. I wonder if these are necessary in a Protestant country in which context celibate religious vocations are hard to make sense of.

If the Others Were a Movie...

Jennifer Aniston for the girl (I'm not sold on this casting--goodness gracious, I had to wikipedia Jennifer Aniston to find out the details on the her and that Ben-guy thing [not kidding--I don't have any idea who her boyfriend was]--I can't believe about the t-shirts!): Fashionable, pretty, independent, capable.





Warren as Jimmy Stewart--the cowboy who can't quite be a cowboy. Jimmy Stewart often plays someone who acts independently and as a loner, but also who retains (or at least gets back in the end) great commitment to the community.
















I only know Tom Everett Scott from That Thing You Do, and, frankly, I can only remember one scene from that movie (which is such a shame, because this was our favorite movie ever, back in the day--those were the days of high school basketball and no PG-13 movies). All that to say, this might not be a good choice, but Scott plays Guy, a drummer, and I'm pretty sure Percy isn't a drummer, but he looks like he could be one.






Feel free to object/offer other suggestions...

The Pope's Pradas

I'm not going to lie: I'm not crazy about red shoes on men. (Women can wear all of the red heels they like.) This comment has earned me the accusation of harboring Protestant sympathies from my dear red-shoe-loving Catholic friends.

Update: Important! Evidently these might not actually be Pradas!

Fabulous Things I Heard on the Radio

"I can honestly say being a Hooters Girl has been a life-changing decision."

I didn't doubt it.

Our Day. Our Dreams. Our Registry. Or On Registries

Disclaimer: [I hate disclaimers! It makes the writer/speaker seem weak and backbone-less and waffle-ly.] All of my best friends have registries. I realize they're almost necessary in this [morally bankrupt] day and age. I'm not asking anyone to get rid of them [that's clearly false], just to acknowledge that they are an atrocity.

As an acquaintance lately reminded me, "It's bridal season." Weddings, bridal showers, bridesmaid dresses and bridal registries are really the only interesting thing in my life at the moment. Several of these things are deeply flawed. One of them I will whine about here/now.

Registries take the interest, thought, and care out of gift giving. In a way, registries are the refusal of a gift. They demand something that is perfectly chosen to match the other things in their house. They demand the specific desired gift. They make the giver uninteresting and unimportant except monetarily. My mother tells me about her wedding gifts--the china set from my great grandmother, the salt and pepper shakers from a friend who said they would be stained in time with use from the oils of our hands (they are), the pottery bowl that holds odds and ends on top of the fridge, the sampler cross stitched by my aunt. What is absolutely uninteresting is the person who bought her the glasses that broke 10 years ago.

Furthermore, registries prevent you from sharing something of yourself with the person you're giving a gift to--you can't pick out the crock pot (gift I'm getting for a May wedding) that you've had great success with over the years (not that I've ever actually used a crock pot, but I might this week), you have to pick the brand that they selected. The Target slogan that I used to title this post is indicative of the self-centeredness that can be involved in registries--we want things our way.

Perhaps this is all connected to paying too much for weddings so that you feel that you must give a really grand [read: expensive] wedding gift. I don't know. And now Target has baby registries. Unbelievable--where is the fun, the spontaneity, the unexpectedness of gifts? A wedding gift, like the eros that it celebrates, should be defined by the surprise involved. Goodness gracious, I've been invited to parties for single friends, which were essentially a chance for them to register for whatever they want and have me buy it for them. It seems to me that this misses the humility with which one ought to receive gifts. And precludes all of the fun in opening them.

On Weather

I have loads of trouble with temperatures--you can tell me that it's going to be 50 degrees, but that doesn't help: I don't know what 50 degrees means. I need to be told in terms of what length of sleeve to wear (do I need a jacket?) or in terms of the previous day's weather (tomorrow is forecast to be nearly the same temperature as today). Fearing my incompetence in their absence, friends have clued me in to these charming websites.

Whitman.3-ish

This, too, was one of the perfect days of spring.

From When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d

Pictures of growing spring, and farms, and homes,
With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the gray smoke lucid and bright,
With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking sun, burning, expanding the air;
With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves of the trees prolific; ...

The violet and purple morn, with just-felt breezes;
The gentle, soft-born, measureless light;

An Email from My [Hilarious] Brother

Maybe mom and dad made the right decision

Here are some interesting google search headlines:

Mobile phones 'more dangerous than smoking'


Cell Phones Dangerous Due To Brain Cancer Risk


Drivers on Cell Phones Kill Thousands, Snarl Traffic


Cell Phones Dangerous to Planes

Cell Phone Use as Dangerous as Drunken Driving


My personal favorite:

Cell Phones To Blame For Deserted Bee Colonies


Before I go to sleep every night I thank God for parents who were smart enough to shield us from the detrimental effects of cell phone usage that only now people are beginning to realize.

Blogging is Stressful

While at home, both my sisters asked me to make shorter posts, as they don't read the long ones.

Another friend threatened to boycott my blog. Which is, I suppose, a compliment, really, that it is even worth boycotting. This is my only friend who boycotts anything. My mom boycotts things--I spent my childhood not eating my favorite cereal, Kix (yum!), because "General Mills supports abortion." Now I no longer eat cereal.

We may now own the only two bottles of Peanut Lolita left in existence. Due to the liqueur's overwhelming whiskey-and-peanut taste and grainy texture -- not to mention its unfortunate name -- it is unlikely to make a comeback anytime soon. A rare Pennsylvania liqueur and an Armenian brandy in one article is a delightful surprise.

If the Boys' House Were a Movie...

Whigwham would be Matt Damon, star of the Bourne Supremacy

...and Ocean's 11.

I've heard Damon also doesn't go to Starbucks.






The one who eats pita bread and humus (like it's his job!) would be (need I even write it?) Tom Hanks, only a potato-loving Tom Hanks (and he's every bit as dapper, especially in his martini pajama pants).





Wendell would be the piemaker from Pushing Daisies. This is appropriate, as Wendell can make a fabulous bourbon manhattan (and other fine foods). Also the piemaker is good and kind. And has an amazingly adorably dressed girlfriend (she wears hats!).



For instance, look how cute in red:














But last, and certainly not least, the one who is confused about his nationality. If Conan O'Brien weren't the obvious choice, then I would chooses Ed Harris.
















Celebrity equivalents of other blog readers available upon request.

The Family that Does Taxes Together...

Dad: "It's like Christmas."

Me: "Christmas in hell!"

Clinging to Guns and Religion

I'm a bit behind the Obama-small-town-PA comment ("You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them...And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.")

For what it's worth, I'm not sure these people are bitter (at least my people). Perhaps conservative, perhaps averse to change, perhaps skeptical of big government and masses of people threatening (in their eyes) not to join but to overtake their community. But I just don't see bitter. Even the people who would rather you kill them than take their gun seem to be impassioned and emboldened by any threats, not hardened and bittered.

On White Hair, Part 3

Because white hair can be rocked (although it's embarrassing that we need to be reminded):




The more the better! And who better to get away with eccentric unkempt white hair than a poet?!

The political philosopher. Streaks of white hair and the cigarette--I love it.

Because white hair lets you wear purple (and really any bright color) sharply.

Corrie Ten Boom--you don't get much holier. The bun is very fitting, and you have to love it with the fur coat. It could have only been improved upon by a hat. My mother said she wouldn't sit by me on Saturday if I wore one of my grandmother's hats to my wedding, although the hats are darling, with little veils attached. And there is even one that my grandfather had made for her out of the feathers from a pheasant that he shot (the ideal agrarian hat)! My grandmother: "I didn't know they're wearing hats again." My mother: "They aren't."

I would adore Harrison Ford even with green hair. And he's dating Kitty! (Okay, so the fact that she's a child compared to him detracts from the fact that he is owning his age.)

What would the Pope even be with dyed brown hair?

And anything can be pulled off with a crown and large jewels, but how regal it all is with white hair!

On White Hair, Part 2

Leviticus 19:32 Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man, and fear thy God: I am the Lord.
Proverbs 16:31 The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness.
Proverbs 20:29 The glory of young men is their strength: and the beauty of old men is the grey head.

Those scriptures are cut and pasted straight from a website, so I can't vouch for their validity (as our high school teachers emphasized continually, not everything you find on the internet is true!). Either way, I know that the Bible speaks positively about gray hair and so I wanted to point out these verses (for the benefit, especially, of my friends who belong to that Church...nevermind).

Anyway, I must keep this short, for I've recently discovered that Ilana only reads short blog posts, but acknowledging one's age is important, and a real mark of maturity. We are all going to die, and we've got to come to terms with that. This is the message of a really lovely book, The Wizard of Earthsea. This book (which describes the way to power over things as through knowing their true names) is chock full of gems like,

The Hardic tongue of the Archipelago, though it has no more magic power in it than any other tongue of men, has its roots in the Old Speech, that language in which things are named with their true names: and the way to the understanding of this speech starts with the Runes that were written when the islands of the world first were raised up from the sea.

On White Hair and Wrinkles Or In Celebration of Capitalism

I really do love capitalism, as is evidenced by my love for these advertisements (although Anne of Green Gables did lead a campaign to rid Avonlea of advertising on fences, which she asserted was degrading to their place, and which I can't help but admire). Anyway, I appreciate the relative permanence of these old advertisements (pronounced ad-vert'-is-ments) especially when compared with the contemporary aversion to a semblance of permanence:

I think I'll conclude the white-hair part of this post another day.

On Homecoming

When I walked into my sweetly smelling house (don't you love going away so that upon your return your can remember the way your home smells?) last night at 2:30 in the morning, my sister and I anticipated slipping quietly to our beds until the morning. But the dog, who gets excited at thunderstorms (and it was thundering), was so happy to see us that she began to pee on the floor. Somehow my mom intuited that this was happening and ran upstairs, half awake, to greet us and take care of the dog. A couple of minutes later, Ilana stumbles out. When I moved to hug her, I suddenly realized that, unlike my last visit home about a month ago, Ilana is taller than me--soundly taller than me! I am now the shortest member of our family, which I resent. Last, but not least, my dad comes up for a few minutes to greet us in his flannel pajamas. I don't ever think I've seen my father in the middle of the night before. All that to say, they made homecoming quite an event, even at unholy hours.

Fabulous Things I Heard on the Radio

"We vote to erase all debt...because democracy starts with you."

A few of the questions that jump into my mind: How does one go about erasing all debt? Where do I vote for that? How does increasing participation in the democratic system decrease debt?

Feminism By Any Other Name

I'm not a fan of Dawn Eden's thoughts on this point. I think that the word "feminism" is fair game for co-option, and I don't understand the urge to run from the word.

Since when has the Church shirked from co-opting terms, songs, holidays, etc. from pagans and appropriating them for its own use? Feminism is, I think, worth co-opting, albeit with [okay, fine, major] changes. But feminism is not without good instincts and significant points of overlap with interests of domestic conservatism--it campaigns intensely against rape, (sometimes)pornography, sexism, prostitution, problematic body image messages, over-sexualization and the belittling of women. And it is passionately interested in these things in a way that I can only compare to right-wing Christian interest. Granted, feminists also often support many things with which I'd disagree and, as Eden points out, are often against the understanding of persons as dependent on which the health of the family relies. But what is there to prevent us from working within feminism by showing feminists where their understanding of the person and the family go awry?

Object to feminism, like Dorothy Sayers did, because you don't like "- ism's," but don't object to feminism as a result of the contingent fact that they applied the framework of liberalism to their attention to women's issues. Rather, applaud their attention to these issues and contradict their ontology. I agree with Eden that the feminism that we ought to support is not the feminism of liberal individualism. Rather, we ought to argue for a complementarian or communitarian feminism. Major issues, however, affecting women have recently undergone drastic changes that need to be answered. The old answer--keep women in the home--is not sufficient anymore. Answering the questions of how women ought to interact in the public sphere and how they are different from men will be questions that we continue to face and that we ought to address. Because women have been relegated to the private sphere for this long, it is essential that we are attentive to this new transition that they/we face.

I wonder why Eden has this averse reaction to the term "feminism" and to the even less problematic "new feminism," which, as far as I know, authors such as Elizabeth Fox Genovese and Jean Bethke Elshtain have already made sound, strong arguments for in ways that would not contradict Eden's anti-individualism.

No Country for Old Men

I promised a "quirky feminist" read of this film to a friend some time ago, but only now finally saw the film and will do my best, given the scarcity of women.

In an obviously poignant scene, Carla Jean refuses to live or die based on the flip of a coin in contrast to an earlier scene in which the serial killer allows a man to live because he happened to choose correctly. Carla Jean chooses a good more important to her than life and that good is her denial to the serial killer that life is an arbitrary occurrence that he can take or not (Carla Jean standing up on this point, despite her subsequent death, shows that it is possible to value some convictions of life and its purpose over life itself in a manner that is meaningful). Carla Jean over any other victim impacts the killer and reaches him. She reasons intuitively, drawing on her womanly strengths--she says that it doesn't seem right that the killer should kill her just because he made a promise to her husband.

The sheriff's wife also fills a uniquely womanly role when she draws out of her husband his dreams by allowing and encouraging him to open up to her.

Carla Jean's mother fills the role that I would fill--she announces their plans to everyone and his brother, leading to her son-in-law's death.

The film's title is significant--Men are the ones relied upon in the film to stop and counteract the evil. This is the duty that the sheriff realizes he cannot fulfill. He can handle normal bad actions, but he cannot handle the senseless and psychotic killer (nor the teenager whose intention to kill from when he was fourteen he notes at the beginning of the film). The film makes little effort to give excuse or reason for the killer's actions and character--rather he is foreign to the viewer, even in the principled part of him, for his principles are very far from anything I, for one, can identify with. The sheriff's uncle advises him that we can't turn the world around, but simply put a tourniquet on it to stop the bleeding.

I wonder if that isn't what women in the film show us how to do--Carla Jean, through her face to face interaction with the killer draws him closer to sanity than he arguably has been, the sheriff's wife allows him to talk through his struggles and acts as a correspondent to his uncle, keeping up communication. While the sheriff struggles with the evil that is being expressed by the world on the whole and in the abstract, the women deal with the particular evil that is in front of them, as best they can. As Carla Jean said, "I can deal with anything; I work at Walmart."

On Lent, In Retrospect

So this article, on the decline of self discipline in other areas when one exerts it in one particular area, is amazingly poorly written and one of those in which scientific research backs up something absolutely intuitive (there can't be much value in this, can there?), but it does reinforce my knowledge that during lent I am absolutely ineffective at my work. You know, penancing yourself on the one hand does not work well with accomplishing things in life, on the other.

On the Virtue of Acknowledged Dependence

In the midst of claims that rap music demeans women, we have the song, "Independent Feat," which sings the praises of the independent woman:

I N D E P E N D E N T
Do you know what that mean?
She got her own house
She got her own car [I wish this song were about me]
Two jobs; work hard [okay, not so much]; You a bad broad

The music video shows women sitting in a lecture class (atypical, I must admit, for a rap video) and a women president--the first African-American woman president, according to the video. And the message of the video is, even these women can be sexy, and perhaps even more sexy than other women, since they don't have to be taken care of. There is a degree of respect in the song.

It is not necessarily the respect of competence, however, but rather the respect of independence, as the title indicates--you can do your thing, and I can do my thing, and we can still have sex at the end of the day.


I'm all for working women, and I'm all for men esteeming that, and this song goes a certain distance toward this end. The end of women's work (or for that matter, men's work) ought not be manicured toenails and matching clothes, but rather a contribution to a society that isn't composed of autonomous, independent, individuals, but of persons seeking both their own good and the good of the community (in a condition of acknowledged dependence) together. The praise of the independence of woman sung by a man (who is probably doing this because he thinks this is what women want) speaks to the disintegration of the family as an integral whole (not through women working, but rather through the glorification of the aspect of this work that separates rather than unites). This disintegration of the family as a cohesive whole could easily, then, be extended to the political community. Now rather than being composed of families, participating together in the life of the polis, we participate as "predicate-less persons"--persons choosing to ignore our religious, ethnic, gendered commitments and interact at some lowest common denominator level that leaves out things that are essential to us as persons.

That's My Motto in Life

At the party, Mr. Cohen saw the statuesque Ms. Harper struggling to uncork a bottle of wine and offered to help.

If My House Were a Movie

Myrrh--Keely Hawes. I know Keely Hawes from BBC mini-series-es. I think of her in the role of an older (I mean that in the slight sense, as opposed to in the much older sense) relative (like a cousin). In the films she's a real woman (vivacious and mature), and all the men are after her.

Frankincense--Julia Stiles. Julia Stiles comes across to me as no nonsense--sort of put together and not putting up with anything she doesn't want to.

Gold--The only way I know Lindsay Price (as I'm sure is the case with you, dear reader) is through Lipstick Mafia, in which she is an artsy, young, opinionated, passionate fashion designer.

Emily--Okay, this time I get to be played by Megan Follows, because for me Megan Follows is Anne of Green Gables, and goodness gracious, I wish I were her. Probably in real life she fell in love with Jonathan Crombie (Gilbert). Speaking of, once my father saw his picture on the "my pictures" slideshow on my laptop and thought he was some boy I liked. I mean, he is, but...