in black and white

Peter, who I am about to starting calling “Radio Free – Vatican” told me that, “Dude, the world isn’t black and white,” and I countered, “It is when you’re color blind.” That is, indeed, the story of my life. Here is the run down on our conversation, and where I am black and white:

Newt Gingrich is thinking of running for President, giving hope to fat, Lutheran kids who had sex with their geometry teacher with an absolute lack of social skills that they too will do something with their lives. However, in defense of this small demographic, please, Newt, do you think that being humiliated in front of the Republic once enough? Do you have to do this, again? You have to ask yourself, “How many times did he touch that hot stove before his mother viciously beat him out of the kitchen and back into his room where he wrote tawdry geometry proofs?”

Newt did something some thing most politicians only talk about: some thing. He did something while he was Speaker of the House and not many can claim that. After forty years, the Democrats had little to show for it and all of Bill Clinton’s accomplishments are rooted in the Contract With America. Newt may be social inept, but his revolution was why I could not vote for John Kerry in 2004 – what did John Kerry do as a legislator? Nothing, he never led and henceforth anyone leaving the Federal Legislature should have something to show for it if they want me to promote him or her to Commander In Chief. Bill Clinton’s legacy as President is putting the Republicans in control of the Congress, the Courts, and practically electing George W. Bush, twice.

Jeanine Pirro is an interesting bird. I have to commend my Republican brethren in New York. I did not think you could find someone with more political baggage than Hillary Clinton, but you did, and you are running her AGAINST Senator Clinton. Finding someone with a bigger albatross of a husband must have been no small task, but they put in the hours and the dug someone up.

Make no mistakes, Hillary will be reelected and transition smoothly into the White House, I hope the help remembers where she put things because they might be reverting to the way things used to be. To lose the Senate election in 2006 Hillary Clinton will have to be found in bed with a dead a girl or a young boy, not unlike her husband in 1996, but also Osama bin Laden, Vice-President Cheney, Colonel Sanders, the corpse of John Paul II, and that Panda who just gave birth at the National Zoo. Actually, can you imagine the uproar if she were caught in bed with her own husband. Well, if you told me that I’d counter that with, “you are making that shit up.”

The State of New York could save a great deal of money if they just cancelled the election and told Ms. Pirro that while an election would be amusing, and sell newspapers, but that the Republicans will look like big enough asses as it is running Gingrich on a National ticket and she should just stick to visiting her relatives in prison.

Intelligent Design should be taught and given the same respect as every other crackpot theory that we throw at kids in school. If we look to Darwinism, as one of the few people I know that have read his book or actually studied the man, we need to realize that even HE did not buy what he was selling after critical analysis. If Jesus comes back and says: “Dudes, what was I thinking?” I will rethink that, too.

Intelligent Design is always framed as pedestrian and that the intelligent designer is a micromanaging sadist. However, few Christian or Jewish traditions teach the Intelligent Micromanager or the Intelligent, Distant Designer who made something and walked away. How many of us have had every science experiment go the way we wanted? Or more accurately, how many of us have given someone we love a choice, seen them make a choice that ended up breaking our hearts – we love them anyway – and seen that choice wreck their lives?

On the scientific side, after critical, secular analysis, I cannot see how something as complex as a human came about by accident, or even as something as delightfully simple as grass. The legitimate question of how some animals spontaneously decided to sprout new organs or drop old ones is a question worth having answered, “why are there still monkeys” demonstrates that we need to teach evolution but the question “why are humans the only animals who have achieved what we have?” demonstrates that evolution vs. intelligent design debate deserves to be had.

The Bible does not say (in its remarkably gender pronoun free description of God in the original Hebrew) how God created the world just that He did. Who knows how it was done? I am entitled to my well-studied belief, just as you are. I also do not think it is as wild a thing to believe in coming from a pack of people who believe(d) in Santa, the Easter Bunny (while never believing in Christmas or Easter) and the Tooth Fairy – while I did not believe in those things.

If you want to know where my crazy beliefs really start, it is not at Intelligent Design, but I believe in a virgin birth that was God incarnate (as a man, if you can believe it – God is not just in charge but he has a sense of humor) whose message boiled down to “love each other, but NO, Pandionna I do not mean ‘Just do whatever the hell you want – everything is okay by me,’ take care of each other, and love God, believing in me is the only way out of this mess” and then this person who never did anything wrong was pounced on by the religious and civil authorities who killed him, he rose from the dead and forgave them [this is typically, predictably where I got incredulous as a child, I’d have kicked their…when I rose from the dead and was packed away to the principal’s office] and the crazy beliefs end with a firm notion that Jesus will come back (hopefully not soon, my room is a mess and my bed isn’t made) and judge us all – at which point the Democrat and Republican Parties will be shocked to know that they are both only getting it half right and all wrong, the Lutherans will be surprised to find Catholics in Heaven and vice versa and Jesus being Black will cause all the Southern Baptists to walk out of the meeting, probably singing.

I once claimed to Pandionna that she is specifically mentioned in the Bible, and that I know this (and she doesn’t) because I have seen the Dead Sea Scrolls and she hasn’t.

I am open to comments on everything EXCEPT intelligent design, I don’t care for what you’ve read or the link you’re dying to show me supporting this or that. I do not form my opinions from the internet and unlike ninety-nine percent of the population, I have studied the issue to the point where, while open minded, this is an article of faith for me and in the end, I am quite sure God used evolution or allowed it to happen (that’s undeniable) but I also believe, “all things are in and by His hand.” Honestly, both sides of this debate are so stupid and poor debaters that it is making me jittery with fury.

Again, we go off topic – the drugs are kicking in

Last night to combat my sleeplessness I took a Tylenol PM, thinking it would knock me out and help me sleep. Tylenol PM does not help you sleep, but it does make it damn near impossible to wake yourself up in the morning and get a move on for the day. I tried again tonight; we will see what happens.

I cleaned out my closet today in preparation for my mother taking me school clothes shopping. She plans to take me to Abercrombie and Fitch – not unlike ten years ago when I was in high school – and while I appreciate it, I am not sure I will find something I should teach in, but I definitely will anyway.

You would be amazed at how many red plaid shirts one man can own, and still wear, and not let go of at the same time I got rid of three Hawaiian shirts (they’re against my morals) and enough Old Navy T-Shirts with the American Flag on them to give the Pakistanis something to burn for years to come. Do not let your heart be troubled, even the argyle with pulls and pills remain neatly on their shelves awaiting their chance to be worn. The argyle that have taken a beating will be used for days when I could get dirty or look like I too have rolled down a hill of leaves in Autumn. Frightening? My students have no experience with this! I will fix this, have no worries.

On the topic of argyle, it should be noted that I now can go three school weeks without repeating an argyle. I will be wearing argyle to the wedding and my argyle polo for the drive home immediately thereafter. I spent a whole week deciding which argyle to wear when I met the Diary Land luminaries in New Haven – thus solidifying and legitimizing my leadership there – to be smote by the Lord with a heat wave, that I bravely wore my sweater in anyway. Once does not disappoint Golf Widow and her retinue.

Peter, the voice of the Vatican, my second best friend, sometimes calls me in the morning around the time I am getting ready for work and he’ll say, “guess what I’m wearing today” and really he wears the same outfit every day and then he’ll say, “I’ll bet you’re wearing gray wool pants and some hideous argyle sweater.” My sister prevented my mother from buying me an argyle sweater just last week and was nearly out on her ass (she lives in what used to be my office here in the belfry) and I am not sure I am legally permitted to forgive her for it.

I think I am going to fall down in my soup (stolen from the poor box) so I will sign off now.

Comments

[Peter]

I came here by hitting, "Don't be fooled by this cross that I got, I'm still Jesus from the Block" banner. Good job, heretic.

[Christopher]

Don't you have a job, Peter? Do you have something to do? Or where you put here by our sadist intelligent designer to torment me? I think yes.

[Peter]

At least you're finally admitting your excuses are LAME, it can't always be cold, can it?

[Christopher]

Well, thank you for your studied observations.

[purple chai]

Well, well, there was so much in there, I don't know where to start! But I did laugh out loud a couple of times. Here's a no-particular-stand on the Intelligent Design thing, if you'll permit me: a former colleague, now retired, was both a devout Catholic and an extremely devout biologist; he taught all our upper-level biology and anatomy classes. He dissapproved of teaching creationism, as it was then known, but was firm in his belief that Darwin and the Bible were 100% compatible with each other and made perfect sense to him. Evolution was based on scientific evidence, and had to be correct. But there was no reason, to him, that God wasn't behind it all, too.

[Christopher]

Of course I'd permit you, I have nothing but respect for you and your opinions and I feel the same way, although as one person put it, the science isn't as strong as we'd all like to think. Science, unlike Religion, is always changing so I would not put too much faith in it. However, if it makes sense and can be reasoned - it should be.

[Summer Gale]

Ruh Roh! Politics *shiver*

[l-empress]

"Science, unlike religion, is always changing..." If that isn't enough to scare you away from religion forever!

[cosmic]

I don't know what is right or wrong. I do feel that beliefs are felt and not taught. You can't be told to believe about God or creation. You have to feel it in your heart. Evolution theory, from what I have read, isn't an absololute either. I think I will just wait until after my demise and get the true story.

[Margaret]

I agree with you on intelligent design and evolution--they can and do go hand in hand.

[Christopher]

The steadfastness of religion in this changing world is what I love about it. I need something constant in my life. I really do agree with the Holy Father about the "Dictatorship of Relativism."

[Mary]

Right on, Christopher. Right on. And I have a really hard time that if God created an ape to turn into a man that the Bible would say that God created man. Hand in hand? I am not too sure about that.