The Pagan Science Monitor

WWJD??!!??

Q: When was Julio's dialysis?
A: Yesterday, from 6 to 8:30 p.m.
Q: Why was Jacquetta drunk?
A: Public defenders are all drunks.
Q: Was Willie just drooling?
A: Yeah, but you can kinda see why. That dude was extremely good looking.
Q: Would Jesus discriminate?
A: Go here and you decide.
Help me come up with more!
Would Walrus jilt Dumbo? Wait! We'll jump down! Waffles with jam?! Du-u-u-u-de! Walk with Jay-Z, DMX. Where will Jorge defecate? Wilmette, Winnetka junipers desiccated! What we justifiably dread. Wasp wings jitter delicately. Wiretap whoever joins dissent. Wicked Wisdom jams dangerously. Whistle while julianne'ing datils. Waste water just drips. Wolf wobbly Jell-O down. Wendy's whispering, Justin's dozing. Write windy, jealous diaries. Winter weather jems dazzle. Wild women jazzed Detroit! We were joyful, dolorous. White webs jettisoning dew. Wax, wane, journeying disk. Watch while Junior dives. Wanted: wacky jingle downloads. Whirling wheels' jig's done. Wet whiskers' jasmine delicacy. With whiskey, just drink! Winnifred wants Justine desperately. Wombat, wolf, jaguar, doe. Wear wigs jauntily, dearie! Without watchers, justice dies.

Bonus puzzle: This inscription appears on a page in my notebook for June: "T.V.'s mournful S.G. = W.U."
Whatsit mean?
Sender of earliest received correct answer receives prize of his/her choosing (subject to negotiation, cash value not to exceed price of pitcher of margaritas at El Az on Ponce).

Tags: law, policy, public defenders, indigent defense, WWJD, WWJD?, What Would Jesus Do?, Would Jesus Discriminate?, Jesus Metropolitan Community Church, Jesus MCC.

Happy Johannestanz day

June 24, 1374, Aachen: An outbreak of dancing mania grips the town.
The citizens hallucinate and experience convulsions until dropping from exhaustion.
The phenomenon was widespread in Medieval Europe and known before the twentieth century as "St. John's Dance."
(Aside: "St. Vitus's dance" is a neurological disorder related to Huntington's Disease and unrelated to manic dancing.)
(Further aside: The pic is a lithograph of the Danse Macabre, also totally unrelated; it's just that I'm listening to The Faint.)
The Skeptical Inquirer has a good breakdown on dancing mania here. (Three fallacies.)

I Disappear
I disappear / I lost control / My body's moving / All on its own / I watch myself / Walk away / A foreign spirit / Took my place....
--The Faint, Wet From Birth, 2004

(Housekeeping: Starry D. & Severn don't blog here anymore. T.P.S.M. is a one-man show.)

Tags: St. John's Dance, dancing mania, Danse Macabre, Skeptical Inquirer, Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, skepticism, The Faint, Zombies.

Quotation du jour, Mon. 6-11-07

Them that's got shall get
Them that's not shall lose
So the Bible said and it still is news
Mama may have, Papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own
That's got his own

Knocked up: yes, the nuns CAN fire you, you fornicators, you

Griffin v. Sisters of St. Francis, No. 06-3312, 7th Cir., June 6, 2007.
Sister Anita to plaintiffs: No lap dances on the tractor!
Sometimes, it's not about the torture, or the wiretapping, or the fascist threat. Sometimes, it's just about the giggles.
And the beefalo. And the nuns who raise the beefalo.
And the dude who allegedly couldn't keep his mouth and his hands to himself, so the nuns allegedly had to let all the female interns go (you read that right). And the female intern who liked the dude.
And whether a man can be discriminated against under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act.

Quotation du jour

The QDJ is wordless. Today, it is a sound.
It is the refrain from "Isn't She Lovely" (Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life, 1976), played (with heart) on a little harmonica, by someone I glimpsed in the bustle of pedestrians on the south side of the Federal Plaza here, about 4:45 this afternoon.
The sound pulled me out of the silent world you go to in loud public places and in intense private moments. It pulled me back into the other sounds of the street, back into contact.
(Aside: Listen to Patti Smith, Twelve, 2007.)
There's a lot of grousing on these pages. It's been a grim week in this world. The sound reminded me: Thank you. The I.D. social worker who tells me, "I'm too tired to laugh." The public defender who will be drunk again tonight. The prisoner advocate who will not be (again, tonight, and for fourteen years, three weeks, and two days, right?). The accountant ("don't call me that!") at the AIDS-service non-profit who is supposed to call in a few minutes (perhaps with a proposal to get drunk). Thank you. It's been a hell of a week, all the way around, for a lot of people. But there was a sound that pulled me back into the sunlight. May you all find something, too.

Tags: politics, Stevie Wonder, Patti Smith, Quotation du Jour, QDJ, social work, social workers, public defenders, indigent defense, non-profits, Iraq, Cindy Sheehan, gratitude.

In The Pagan Science Reading Room (again): Chris Hedges's "American Fascists"

The Christian fascist movement "will succeed because of the moral failure of those, including Christians, who understand the intent of the radicals yet fail to confront them...."

Other things G-d hates

It's unlikely that the Phelps Monsters will ever surf on in, but, just in case, may yawl find this list helpful.
G-d also hates:
1. Your stylist. Lev. 19:27
2. Also, your do. (Priests only.) Lev. 21:5
3. That Patricia Arquette show. Lev. 19:31 (YHWH ain't alone on this one.)
4. The way you leave granma or granpa in that nursing home. Ex. 20:12
5. Your cheatin' ways on the bathroom scale in the morning. Lev. 19:35-36

WWJD?!??!

Q: When was Julio's dialysis?
A: Yesterday, from 6 to 8:30 p.m.
Q: Why was Jacquetta drunk?
A: Public defenders are all drunks.
Q: Was Willie just drooling?
A: Yeah, but you can kinda see why. That dude was extremely good looking.
Q: Would Jesus discriminate?
A: Go here and you decide.

Would Walrus jilt Dumbo? Wait! We'll jump down! Waffles with jam?! Du-u-u-u-de! Walk with Jay-Z, DMX. Where will Jorge defecate? Wilmette, Winnetka junipers desiccated! What we justifiably dread. Wasp wings jitter delicately. Wiretap whoever joins dissent. Wicked Wisdom jams dangerously. Whistle while julianne'ing datils. Waste water just drips. Wolf wobbly Jell-O down. Wendy's whispering, Justin's dozing. Write windy, jealous diaries. Winter weather jems dazzle. Wild women jazzed Detroit! We were joyful, dolorous. White webs jettisoning dew. Wax, wane, journeying disk. Watch while Junior dives. Wanted: wacky jingle downloads. Whirling wheels' jig's done. Wet whiskers' jasmine delicacy. With whiskey, just drink! Wombat, wolf, jaguar, doe. Wear wigs jauntily, dearie! Without watchers, justice dies.

Malcolm: More than a screen we project on

In the early 1970s at Harvard, "Malcolm X's voice was as fresh as ever. We were all convinced that Malcolm X would hold our position and have our politics if he were alive."
-- Cornel West, "The Making of An American Radical Democrat of African Descent," in The Cornel West Reader, 1999
We all do this. When my friends and I first started carrying the Autobiography in the back pockets of our black Levis, so we could lounge aloofly against the walls of clubs that are gone now, we all read him as somehow like us (our romanticized selves): The outsider and street tough, self-taught, well-read, well-spoken, militant, proud. (It didn't hurt either that he was devastatingly good-looking, bespectacled; nor that his sartorial sensibility could be appropriated if you had a ska show to go to.)

He lived just long enough to see Roe made irrelevant

Jerry Falwell dropped dead.
The argument that Carhart circumvents the rights established in Roe, and makes a direct attack on Roe forever unnecessary, is here.