Lament for a frightened virtue…

Does this look like a dangerous person to you?
Before you favour me with the ‘kindnesses’ of your response, there is this:
The Ram 50 is a stead little beast but no amount of anthropomorphic resilience will bring her back to life after a winter's day spent shining her headlights into a snow bank. The wind-swept clutches of an icy parking lot work their slow magic on this proud monster like the little mice chewing away Aslan’s bonds. Only this time the creature does not come back to life but merely whimpers the last gasps of breath as I twist the little shank into her neck.
the battery is dead…
it’s dark. I’m tired. There’s the edge of a rankling brewing on the less than acceptable preliminary results of the exam I have just written. There are 4 other vehicles in the parking lot.
I push the truck to the middle of the lot. It sits prominently under a light pole, hood gaping wide like a suckling at the ready. I even have my own jumper cables. it’s cold.
three young ladies approach fomenting unimaginable horrors upon the nether regions of their professor. They will attend confession in the morning with a tell tale ache of the cerebrum. one of them makes her car beep and as they huddle around the red pontiac like coyotes around a carcass - I make my move.
they scurry inside the car and are gone before I can utter a word. even my inestimably demonstrative gesticulating of my arms does not attract their attention. I’m four bloody feet away from their car and the windows are not frozen. they are not looking at me – on purpose! the tail lights taunt, now visible at the exit. taunt like thumbs stuck in ears - fingers flapping.
my fingers are not flapping – they are stiff with cold. I dial my son to come and help.
two other girls approach – a guy, a pair of guys, and a girl all drive away in vehicles parked within mere meters of my dead Ram. I begin to wonder about the semiotic ‘readability’ of the propped open hood.
at first my anger seethes uncontrolled. a light post becomes receptacle for nasty epithets that discount the honour of the mothers of each of these unhelpfuls
as the blistering rage pauses for breath - a dim recognition
perhaps the sign that is misread here is me. perhaps, as the photo above will attest, I am the very thing their mothers warned them to avoid. looking at me they see that man – the dangerous man.
I should take a glory in the light of this. a smile perhaps? Not that I might revel in the thought of some imagined heinous identity I might possess. no the small glory should come in the success of post Mexico beard growing. but even that small medallion escapes.
now I am repulsed. that I could be a threat to any of those ‘brave’ souls who managed to ‘escape my wicked clutches’ is simply ludicrous. my repulsion fades into gloom.
how is it that an act of charity demanding meagre time wasted -- accomplish-able through the crack of the window, could so easily be discouraged? Should I conclude with Hobbes that we are an evil lot looking only for a way to excuse our selfish enterprise? Is the imagination of me being a potential threat an evident enough image to excuse charity?
Well Hobbes be damned there is benevolence after all. A boy, really, in his Ford SUV pulls up, having spotted me from the other side of the next parking lot. His girlfriend waits in a posture anything but patient. “I was just gonna drop her off at home – when I saw you.” it’s quarter to ten. “need a boost?”
i thank him through the inch and half crack of his window. it’s done. he’s gone. my son pulls up. as my hands slowly, in a screaming burn, return to normal circulatory function I dispense with Hobbes and shake my fist at fear.
a fear so humbly embedded on the everyday negotiation of safety left me out in the cold. a fear not recognized as fear anymore its just the way you do things. you don’t help beardy strangers in a parking lot – is just the way you do things. it is exactly the same quotidian negotiation that keeps us from dragging home the poor soul trying to sleep tonight on the park bench in Galt Gardens. fear is worked down deep inside the practices, keeping us from the charity that empathy might otherwise evoke. perhaps we no longer notice it as fear – its just the way we do things…
we’re not that bad – we’re just scared – and maybe we don’t even know just how scared we are…
look at me – won’t you be scared of me?

More sinful food…

Is it any wonder that this KFC treatsie has obscure yet intentional sexual overtones in its name?




But not only can we participate in sexualized sinful behaviour – almost like a vicarious affair but now we can draw out particular emotional racial stereo-types. Stephen Harper I challenge you to eat this “Bad Boy”.

The Angry French Canadian

Sign your name in the comment section below to add your voice to the petition to get our Prime Minister to eat this puppy…
Oh by the way…
Weight log: 215lb for those of you keeping track that is 3 pounds till 100

Ed Young of Fellowship Church on Steve Colbert - 7 Days of Sex -

Of course the copyright people were going to pull down the youtube version of this video but you can still get to the Colbert Report piece through this link or read this interesting CBS piece as well on the same topic.

Immigrants should be sterilized…

Today in my sociology class we watched a National Film Board documentary called, "The Sterilization of Leilani Muir". Here's the basics:

Leilani was born into a family where she was largely unwanted, and had a difficult childhood. Her mother was often inebriated and withheld food from Leilani. However, Leilani reportedly maintained an average performance in school. The only allegations made against her by the school were for stealing food. As Leilani aged, her mother tried to find ways to remove her from the family. When she was eight, Leilani's mother placed her in the Midnapore Convent for a month. Then, in 1953, Leilani's mother sent an application for Leilani to attend the Provincial Training School for Mental Defectives (a.k.a the Michener Center) in Red Deer, Alberta. At that time Leilani was rejected due to a high volume of patients, but she was later accepted, on July 12, 1955, shortly before her 11th birthday. Leilani was accepted into the school solely on the basis of information provided by her mother, without any diagnostic testing. Before Leilani could be accepted into PTS, the program required a signature from a guardian permitting the legal enforcement of compulsory sterilization. Leilani's mother used her then boyfriend's (future husband's) name, Harley Scorah, to agree to the sterilization of her daughter. Leilani saw her mother only intermittently over the years until her departure from the school at the age of 20. (read more here)

So Leilani scores 64 on an IQ test and is confirmed for sterilization. The reason: that she should not pass along her deficiencies to her progeny. She's told that she is going to get an appendectomy and when she goes under the knife she also gets a tubal ligation. Later on in life she finds out that she cannot have kids. She also scores an even 101 on a subsequent IQ test. She successfully sues the Alberta Government and wins ¾ of a million dollars in compensation for it suffering.

What surprised me about the documentary is the connection that this legislation had to anti-immigration and racist ideologies. Here's a brief description of the bill's history and impetus:

Here's the line that stands out for me (it was an aspect of the documentary that was especially disturbing as well):

The United Farmers of Alberta (that's right it's the UFA we all know and love?), a grassroots movement, responded quickly to the Survey and called on the government to draft legislation for life segregation or sterilization of the feebleminded. The weight of the survey's results, combined with growing fear that new immigrants were inferior, had generated fears over the protection of land and jobs.

It is irrefutable that anti-immigration sentiments fueled what is ostensibly a not so distant cousin of the Arian race policies of Nazi Germany. Recently, I received some of those ubiquitous forwarded emails which expressed some very strong anti-immigration sentiments. While I understand that immigration policy is very complex and nuanced – it is still very disturbing to read these electronic propaganda pieces which essentially promote much of the same racist overtones.

I’m a John…

Well not exactly…

Thursday after my philosophy exam (which I totally nailed) I went to lunch with a class mate. He and I went to the Penny Coffee House and had a lengthy conversation about life and philosophy. Cool kid.

After we were done I walked across the street to get into my truck (RAM-50) and drive home. As I climbed in I saw a group of about 5 or 6 guys in shabby clothes with one girl. I reached down to put the key in the ignition and looked up to find the girls rapping on the passenger side window. Too lazy to wind down the hand crank I opened the door to see what she wanted. She jumped into the truck. Before I could say or do anything she asked me to take her to a shelter on the north side of town. So I pulled out into traffic. To be honest my heart went out to this kid – not more than 17 years old. I have had the opportunity to interact with homeless people on several occasions with the urban mission projects I have worked on. I know that there are many choices that have put these people on the street and many circumstances that are beyond their control that strongly affect those choices. So I decided to take her to the shelter.

No sooner were we in traffic than she spoke up. "Hey mister could you help me out with thirty bucks. I need thirty bucks. I was wondering if you could help me out and I have condoms and everything if you want."

My brain froze. I had just gotten propositioned. Me. ME!

Then my brain goes into overdrive. Millions of thoughts blasting through my brain.

"Sorry I don't do stuff like that." I say half whimpering. Silence.

I'm driving, turning. "Can you help me out though?" she says.

"No! I don't have any money on me."

"I just need 30 bucks for a ride home."

"Where's home?" I'm asking still dazed but starting to organize and rank the thoughts chasing through my brain.

"Coaldale. I need a bus ticket."

"I live in Coaldale." I blurt out - stupid brain is letting me down again. And I follow it up with…

"I could give you ride to Coaldale."

"No that's okay. Just drop me off where you picked me up." She says obviously disappointed and disinterested in wasting anymore her energy on me.

"You know," I say, "having sex with you is worth a whole lot more than $30."

"What…" she seems somewhat reengaged- maybe I have reconsidered.

"Really it should be worth somebody spending their whole life with you. $30 is far too cheap to sell your body."

"Yeah" she says. And it occurs to me that my attempt at a coy counseling tip is lost on her. Perhaps this is due to drugs but likely due to a built up resistance to self righteous jerks trying to guilt her into some sort of change. So I drop her off where I picked her up.

I told my story to police officer who lives in our cul de sac and he scared me a little. He said that I could have been picked up and charged for being in the act of soliciting for sex. A cop who knew the downtown could have arrested me. Now wouldn't that be a pretty different story if I was writing it with a court date pending…

It pisses me off that the law works like that. I was just trying to do something nice. But on the other hand I still wince in anger when I draw on the pictures of the johns in their new SUV's and minivans pulling up beside these wasted pieces of flesh. And it fills me with hopelessness for a world where grace can be a crime and where indecency can perpetuate profound brokenness…

Toothless girl sleep well tonight…

Older and Weaker

This afternoon I listened to the proposed omnibus bill that will deal with a number of significant changes to the criminal code. Included in this bill is the intention of the government to raise the age of sexual consent from 14 to 16. Now while most people might think this is good thing – I for one am pretty much against it.

Now on the one hand I readily recognize what this legislation is intended to accomplish. It seeks to give greater teeth to enforcement and the judicial system in penalizing offenders with stiffer sentences and generally greater consequences. And to be fair it will like do that. And who in their right mind wouldn't want to 'spank' offenders harder for this type of crime. In my opinion the law is not strict enough in penalizing sexual offenders but…

I'm not sure we are fully appreciating the latent or unintended function of this type of legislation. We have worked hard in our society to establish a more gender equality. We have a long way to go but many strides have been taken to help women gain more social power and relieve the oppression that they have suffered in the past. I'm not just talking about more equality in the work force but in more general ways – women today are the beneficiaries of a sense of common ground. I think this is a good thing. And while I recognize that there are still some who would argue that this equality is a negative thing and that it somehow challenges God design – I think that most people recognize that women were unfairly treated in the past and that the partial redemption of their social status is more inline with God's view of our standing in his eyes. I think that is precisely why this legislation moves in the wrong direction.

I think this legislation suggests that women/girls are actually weaker than men/boys and need to be protected. This is because an overwhelming majority of non-consensual sexual offences are perpetrated on females and although the legislation does not discriminate between genders it clearly is aimed at the problem that exists in one specific part of the population. Girls being essentially…raped. The legislation actually deals with the ability of a girl to make a decision about whether or not she wants sex. Essentially the government would like to suggest that a girl under 16 can't really make that decision and actually know what she is doing. This unintentionally communicates the notion that girls are actually exactly the things we have been working so hard all these years to remove – Girls are dimwitted ninnies that need to be rescued and saved and certainly can't process these types of decisions on their own. So in my mind we take a step backward.

On top of that we essentially extract the responsibility of the girl in almost any sexual encounter if she is young enough. Sex is rarely just the action of one person. There is no question that girls who are looking for sex at 12 and 13 are seriously ill. But I have seen enough provocative sexually stimulating behaviour from girls in middle school (from the way they dress to the way they talk and flirt with boys) to know that girls are still caving in to the objectifying attitudes that still dominate our culture and which fly in the face of the equality we have worked to achieve in our society.

Another factor that goes unnoticed is how this type of legislation affects parenting. My question is if the government wants to step into the role of parenting in deciding what kind of behaviour should be acceptable or not they will inadvertently disable parents from providing the first line of behaviour modification which is essential for youth who need personal connected consequences to affect them rather than the disconnected relationship to the government to force them into some behavioural paradigm. I for one expect that my boys will clearly understand the importance of respecting women enough to honour them with a proposal of marriage before engaging in sexual encounters. I also anticipate that in the back of their mind they should fear the consequences that I would deal to them should they 'screw up'! I expect they will fear that more than any jail term could invoke.

what I wish

my wife would have been told when she was a little girl...

...it seems to hardly matter how often I tell her that she is beautiful - somebody else's idea of what she looks like seems even more important!

A Song for Twelve degrees in August

There was no one who
Brought you to your knees
Boot to the head
Like you’re out for revenge
You pesky rat
Like it wasn’t enough for you to chase the sun
To make the white dark
White
There was no one who
Danced on your grave
Taunted you like a defeated fat old school yard bully
Smiled at your sudden demise
For your make-believe oppression thru the sun break
To make the red skin
Brown
Back off winter
Chill
Relax
Inhabit those deep dark places
Where your icy schemes conceived antidotes like
Coffee
And what happens between the duvet and the posturepedic
Go back there
Till the dusk stretched sun has made us all to inebriated to remember
Your frigid handshake at the door

Consulting Part 2A

There is no shortage of griping about how Christianity has wallowed around in the unscrupulous practices of secular business models and marketing strategies.

EXAMPLE:

I was so excited to take my wife to the National Youth Workers Convention for the first time this past fall. We had a great time but… upon entering the main hall to the convention center she could not stop talking about how abhorrent she found the shameless marketing going on. It really ruined a large part of the experience for her.

So today I was thinking a bit more about all this stuff. It seems to me we have developed a symbiotic relationship btwn. marketing and ministry. Think about the Purpose Driven Life for a bit. How is it that that book could saturate the planet (virtually)? Of course many would say that it was a resource directed by God. I am not interested in disputing the effectiveness of the material. I am however drawing the conclusion that this type of saturation simply would not have been possible without the complex marketing strategies available within the Christian publishing enterprises. Of course you could say that that simple dynamic is also a work of God. Let also not forget that it is also a work for profit. And that profit is not small no matter how altruistic the end result of those profits are.

Long and short of it – The purpose driven life does not become the ‘success’ that it is unless it can take advantage of some pretty powerful marketing schemes. Of course, for a skeptic like me it is not hard to follow that statement with questions about the authenticity of the spiritual power of this resource.

And here is the kicker the marketing system is built bigger and more complex with each successful run of a ‘product’. So that it is not long before these systematized marketing schemes can ‘own’ the Christian community. And for youth workers who are already under considerable performance anxiety the temptation to gobble up the latest proven material is irresistible.

You know for the longest time the buzz word was small groups (still is in places). I remember showing up at a ministerial and hearing people talk about their small group ministry and how awesome it was. I thought shoot I must be missing something. But then I realized my youth group was a small group all on its own. And do you know what so was all these other guys too (well most of them). Now I’m not saying small groups are bad. In fact I strongly advocate them but their fad status stripped some of the legitimacy of the strategy for me and proved to me that hopping on the latest ‘strategy’ train is over rated.

That’s why I think we need to walk away from these mass marketed strategies and ‘contextualize’ our ministry models to fit the culture, needs and realities we live in.

Thanks to YSMARKO for posting these pics

up to three months for kissing...

Richard Richard
Most of us probably laughed off this seemingly innocuous little scene. But there are a few angles that sorta catch me on this:
-Gere is obviously well 'lubricated'. Should we dismiss improper conduct for so reasons of voilitional inhibition?
-How do we honor/tolerate the cultural sensibilities of other cultures?
-What is the role of the media in 'spreading' the sensational transgressions of our (or other) cultures? (I mean have you noticed the prominence of 'entertainment news' shows)
But the most intriguing to me is...
-Should we be bothered at the acceptance of a more publically vulgar society?