the immoral majority

"AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals" - Jerry Falwell

"And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, You helped this happen." - Falwell on who's to blame for 9/11

"Billy Graham is the chief servant of Satan." - Jerry Falwell

"Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It's no different. It is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians. Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today. More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history." - Pat Robertson

"The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians." - Pat Robertson

"You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war...We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with." - Pat Robertson, calling for the assassination of democratically elected Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez


Am I the only one who's getting sick of those guys? It seems like every time I turn around, one of them is saying something bigoted and idiotic and in the process making Christians look bad. Because I'm a Christian and a republican, I end up being associated with them. The media acts like they represent my views, my thoughts. Obviously, they do not. And I don't think they actually represent many Christians at all.

Beyond God doing a miracle, I don't think there's any way to get Pat and Jerry to shutup. And of course I believe that they have the right to say whatever they want to say, no matter how horrible it may be. However, that doesn't mean that the media needs to keep giving them an outlet to say it. They keep putting those clowns on the air partially because crazy people make good TV, but partially I think they because they honestly believe that Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson speak for "evangelical Christians" (I hate that term, by the way). So how do we stop it? We show them that they do not speak for us and they do not speak for anyone. It's a small step and might not accomplish anything, but I started an online petition. Please sign it, whether you're a Christian or not, and let your friends know about it too. Somebody needs to stop these men from making us all look like hateful idiots.

Click here to sign the petition.

flash fiction

Whenever I try to follow the dotted line, I get lost somewhere between the dots. The shortest distance between point A and point B isn't a straight line when there's a chasm between them. I always end up falling somewhere around step three. Sometimes I'll make it to five if I'm lucky. Sometimes.

The box has gotten a bit dusty over the past three weeks. I cleaned up my apartment today, which meant I had to notice it. Not that I don't notice it anyway, sitting in the living room next to the fireplace. Sitting there. Collecting dust apparently.

I don't know what's in it. Nothing special I'm sure. At this point it's become the Pulp Fiction briefcase. Whatever's inside could never live up to the hype. So I let it sit there, don't even touch it. It's just an ordinary box: four walls and a roof, taped up with blue masking tape she brought home from her job. It's gained a life of its own now. Some mornings I make an extra bowl of Fruity Pebbles in case the box decides it's hungry.

Part of me wonders if maybe she left it on purpose. She hasn't asked for it. Not that we've talked. She's come online a couple of times from her parents' house, but she hasn't said a word to me. I'm afraid to break the silence. She cleaned out every other trace of herself while I was gone to work, even vacuumed her hair out of the carpet.

Maybe she wants me to open it. Maybe what's inside is important. It's a burmese python patiently waiting to end my life. It's pictures of her sleeping with all my friends. It's the teddy bear I bought her on Valentine's Day with a note saying she'll always love me.

I've never been this sentimental, so pathetically tied to my emotions. I should just leave it on her parents' doorstep. It's just some pots and pans or old sweat shirts. It's not important. It doesn't have power. It's just a box.

I'm watching one of those shows on E!, one of those "look how rich and better than you celebrites are" shows, the ones that make me sad to be American. The box is right there. Ten feet away. Five steps. I should throw it in the dumpster, take it to the country and burn it, cut it to shreds with a chainsaw. But I'll let it stay here for now. Maybe I'll use the box as a bridge to connect the dots, a raft to sail down the river at the bottom of this canyon. Maybe it's part of the metaphor, some sort of symbol for something. I so wanted to make it to step six this time, but my cardboard friend and I are stuck here at five.

NYC Pictures

This isn't an actual post. I just wanted to post links to the pictures from my vacation. Look at them.

album one
album two

more honesty

I wanted to add something I forgot to mention in my last post. Total honesty doesn't mean you always say everything that's on your mind. Remember that movie, Liar Liar? While it's one of Jim Carrey's funniest, it always bothered me because I didn't buy the premise. I'm okay with the kid's wish making it so that his dad can't lie, but that doesn't mean he has to say everything he's thinking in every situation. Every time I watch it, I find myself wanting to yell at the screen, "Just shut up!"

At any rate, I'm not advocating people saying horrible, mean things to each other simply in the cause of being honest. Sure, there are some things that people don't need to hear and there are ways to tell the truth in a nice way. I'm not against any of that. I just think too often we cross the line from being tactful to being deceiptful.

time to cancel the policy?

We've all heard it said a million times that honesty is the best policy, but is it really? Sure, it's good to tell the truth most of the time, but is it always best to be completely honest with another person in every situation? Let's think about it.

For our first scenario, we'll use an incident that occurred in my last relationship (I say "last" like there's been so many). My girlfriend at the time (we'll call her "Jessica"), got her hair cut a month or so into the relationship. While it wasn't a drastic change in length, to me at least it was a pretty big change in her "look." When I saw the new 'do, she asked me immediately if I liked it. I thought for a second and said something along the lines of, "I'm not sure yet. I definitely don't dislike it or think it looks bad, but I liked your old haircut a lot and this one's going to take some getting used to." Obviously, that wasn't the answer she was looking for. She wanted me to simply say, "It looks great. I love it." whether I meant that or not. And maybe that's what I should have said. But, as I told her at the time, "If I tell you the truth now, then when you ask me another question down the line like, 'Am I fat?' I can say, 'not at all, sweetheart. You're beautiful." and you'll know I mean it. I chose to keep my credibility rather than telling her what she wanted to hear. On the one hand, my total honesty (some might say lack of tact) was probably one of the myriad reasons we split up. On the other hand, at least I can look back and say that I never lied to her. Was it worth it? Hard to say.

Speaking of break-ups, one of the times when people lie the most is when they're breaking up with or rejecting someone. They feel bad enough about the whole thing already and try their best to spare the other person's feelings, even if that means giving them some false reason for the decision rather than telling them the truth. But is that wrong? Personally, I've always said that I'd rather have a girl tell me, "you're ugly and annoying and I don't like you," than give me the old standby, "I don't want to date anybody right now" (translation: I don't want to date you. Ever.) or some other made-up excuse. That's just me though. I can't claim to speak for everyone. Some people might prefer to have their feelings spared. I was actually discussing this subject with a friend the other day and she wondered if maybe it isn't best to sugar coat things sometimes. And it's definitely a logical point. Unless you have some sort of grudge, nobody wants to hurt another person unneccessarily. Why tell a person your real reason for not wanting to date them, she wondered, if it's not something wrong with them or something they can change? What purpose does it serve? My answer was that it doesn't need to serve a purpose. Honesty is intrinsically good. It's right and good to be honest with someone regardless of what it accomplishes. Sure, it may save someone a few self-esteem points to tell them a lie or half-truth, but rejection hurts regardless and at least they won't lie awake in bed at night wondering what went wrong or if they have a chance in the future if you tell the truth. In fact, I'd go out on a limb and say that, when you lie to someone in a break-up or rejection, you're really worried more about your own feelings than theirs. You want to feel less mean and not seem like the bad guy. And I don't mean just girls. They probably get more chance to practice since they get asked out more, but I gave a girl a half-truth once myself in my younger, stupider years. In that case, like most I've seen, all it did was cause more problems and we went from being good friends to not on speaking terms anymore in a matter of months. If I'd been completely, brutally honest, I may have hurt her feelings, but maybe I'd still have her as a friend.

So there you have it. If you're protecting government secrets from the Iranians, by all means lie your butt off, but otherwise, what's the point? If we can't be honest with each other, why even bother communicating? That's my take on things at least. I know it's not exactly ground-breaking (So you mean lying is bad??? Wow!), but maybe it's a bit thought-provoking at least. The way I see it, honesty is, in fact, the best policy.