Bored?

Friends unavailable? Run out of DudeLube? Worry not - read a blog. Two for you to twang your groovethang too. Firstly, you could try the travelling moustache fetishist as he strokes his fur across Russia. Secondly, spend some quality time with 'D' at In Girum Imus Nocte (we go into the circle at night??), and check out his poetry. His collection is entitled 'The Hotel Pimodan' and it's shockingly good.

On another topic, I had wanted to make some comments about religion, but rather than do that (I worked late and I am tired), here's something from The Friday Thing, a journal I am growing to lurrrve...

..CHRIST

This week the latest leg of the Holy Foodstuff Tour saw Jesus
Christ appearing in a crisp, or 'potato chip', in Florida.
'Deeply religious' Rosalie Lawson, 55, daughter of the Very
Reverend LeRoy Lawson, doesn't know what to do for the best.
'It's sitting in a jar in the kitchen while we decide,' she said.
'We may sell it. I'm not really sure.'

Oh, Jesus. Not again. Please, God. Please explain. Why hast thou
stuffed the collective headpiece of thine finest creation with
turds? Christopher Hitchens put it rather well recently at the
The Hay Literature Festival when he said: 'I can't stand anyone
who believes in God, who invokes the divinity, or who is a person
of faith. I mean that to me is a horrible repulsive thing.' Well
said, Christopher. You would also have been given a point for
'moral retards'.



..MORAL RETARDS

Timothy Shortell, a Brooklyn College associate professor in the
sociology department at the City University of New York, in
America, was all set to become department chairman. Then, on
Monday, he informed his colleagues that he would not be taking up
the position. He gave his reasons for stepping down in an email,
citing the 'venom directed at [him] by some members of the
department during the last two weeks'. Venom? But why on earth
would a humble sociology boffin attract venom? Well, it was
something he wrote a while back, in 2001, for an online magazine
called Fifteen Credibility Street. It rubbed people up the wrong
way. The article was recently dredged up, perhaps, Shortell has
intimated, in an effort to derail his appointment. This is the
paragraph that seems to have particularly rankled - it's rather
good:

'On a personal level, religiosity is merely annoying - like pop
music or reality television. This immaturity represents a
significant social problem, however, because religious adherents
fail to recognize their limitations. So, in the name of their
faith, these moral retards are running around pointing fingers
and doing real harm to others. One only has to read the newspaper
to see the results of their handiwork. They discriminate, exclude
and belittle. They make a virtue of closed-mindedness and
virulent ignorance. They are an ugly, violent lot.'

The eventual response to this piece, as we have seen, has been an
awful lot of finger-pointing, discriminating, excluding and
belittling. Shortell has his supporters of course, who speak of
intellectual and academic freedom and who are furious that a good
man has been bullied out of a job he would do well. But there are
also many others at CUNY who speak of the inappropriateness of
having a department head whose views are 'outside the
mainstream'.

Same old same old. Well, we say, fuck 'em. Fuck 'em in the ear,
Timothy. They're only sore because they know you're right.

...and Shortell's Response.

I'm not a big fan of religion, and having laws that inhibit our
right to question, mock and rip the piss out of it makes me
uncomfortable.  The idea of free speech means hearing
(if not listening to) things you don't agree with.  A free
society can't be free for just one person, and progress rarely
occurs without a challenge being laid.  Ah well, back to the KY...