Oh, Dear Lord!

It happened one night in Borja! 

At left, the original painting "Ecce Homo" by Elias Garcia Martinez painted on the wall of the church Santuario de Misericordia in Borja, Spain. 

At right, the down-home restoration efforts of what one official calls, "a neighboring octogenarian who acted spontaneously and without asking anyone's permission, although she meant well." 

Max Read of Gawker writes:

A couple of weeks ago, the Centro de Estudios Borjanos in Borja, Spain, received a donation from the granddaughter of 19th-century painter Elías García Martínez. The image on right is how it looked when the Centro went to check it out on August 6th after receiving the donation.Hmm.

There is plenty of opportunity here for a mature, sophisticated dialogue over the destruction of religious art however, after spending the last hour in hysterics, laughing until I wept, I think it best to to keep myself out of such discussions.

The commentary on El Pais' website was highly entertaining but one remark really hit home for me:

"Parece el cristo de alfa-centauro"                         ~ Francisco Javier Navarro  

(It looks like the Christ of Alpha Centauri)

Young Mathijsen Learns His Lesson

Let's watch as Tobias Mathijsen's 15-year-old brother learns a quick lesson about revenge.

Here we see him going through a series of emotions: shock, denial and finally, acceptance.

Oh Nee!

Paul Ryan, My Womb Would Like A Word

Dear Paul,

I need to have a word with you about your seemingly unhealthy obsession with my womb and what goes on inside it.

First, I would just like to point out that your Libertarian street cred and claims to be against government overreach into citizen's private lives goes right out the window when you start trying to legislate what certain private citizens (i.e. women) can and can't do with their reproductive organs.

It's also hard to believe that you really want to limit the power of the federal government when you have signed on as potential "first in line to the throne" should Mittens actually be chosen as the next president.

I often wonder why the people who whine the loudest about "big government" are usually running for a position within it. I'll save those musings for another post.

Anyway, lets get back to my ladybits. You've made it obvious that you see social programs as unsustainable and crippling to the economy.

Yes, I know you're legit. You worked at McDonald's once and eventually managed to become a millionaire (through marriage). If you as a white male with no uterus to speak of can do it, why not the rest of us? Amiright?

As a woman who bore a child at the tender age of 19 and had to raise that child alone, with no physical or financial help from the father, I can vouch for the saving grace of government assistance.

It was the very same social programs that you want to cut that helped me and my child to survive.

I don't know how you think young women with no higher education or life skills can make ends meet without some sort of societal support, but I would love to hear about your plan to "magic" their problems away.

Seriously, I would love to know how you plan to make minimum wage, unskilled labor jobs sufficient enough to cover the cost of rent, daycare, food, clothing and health insurance.

Because the real hard work for women begins not when she is carrying a non- cognizant, non-feeling, non-viable cluster of rapidly dividing cells, but instead when she gives birth.

Suddenly she is faced with the fact that she is unprepared financially, educationally and, in many cases, emotionally for the demands of motherhood. Single motherhood is a particularly cruel process as a woman has to bear the burden of meeting all the needs of two people while barely earning enough for one.

Perhaps you and Mittens have set up a fund to support the children you claim to care so much about? No? Well color me surprised.

I've also noticed that your tax plan would place a larger burden on those who can least afford it. Taxing the plebeians in this way will force them to tighten their belts and panic over how to pay for the basics of everyday life.

Taxing million or billionaires a little more would, at worst, force them to change to a cheaper brand of feed for their polo ponies and perhaps dismiss three of their five pool boys.

I think somehow progress and innovation would not grind to a halt if this were to occur.

I'll end this post with a quote from your favorite heroine, Ayn Rand:

An embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not-yet-living (or the unborn).

Abortion is a moral right—which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered. Who can conceivably have the right to dictate to her what disposition she is to make of the functions of her own body?

Watch It Ginger!

This is the cover for the forthcoming album from the Irish band "Two Door Cinema Club."

I must give in to my baser command of English when I pose this sincere question: What the shit is this shit? 

You have a band made up of three, seemingly non-threatening waif types who write fantastic music that you can listen to over and over again and this is what gets put on the cover of their sophomore album? 

Is this what happens when you transfer pasty lads from the Emerald Isle to the rough streets of L.A. for a recording session? 

I guess the misogyny smog just floats in through a window and gets into everyone's brains.

The lead singer, a sweater-wearing ginger named Alex Trimble has an innocent baby face and his voice makes me imagine that he has a passion for trees and Hush Puppies loafers. He seems like the type who would bring you daisies from a field and ask politely if he could give you a peck on the cheek. 

What the hell were you thinking Trimble? 

This doesn't make the band look cool by the way, it makes them look like a group of douche canoes headed for Douchebag falls.

It's like they wanted to prove that they can, in fact, "get girls" but then they don't know what to do with them so they stick them through the ceiling and wire their crotches for electrical current.

Here we have a hanging vagina lamp and inexplicably, the album is called "Beacon." 

Why? 

Is the light from the glowing hooha there to draw in nerds like little moths and then zap them? 

To me it just looks like a woman being reduced to her reproductive parts and used as decoration. 

And then it gets worse:

This is the image for the single "Sleep Alone."

A woman bound and almost naked on the floor.

To me it looks like she is a powerless victim who might be facing all sorts of horrors, like rape.

I find this image repugnant and said as much in an email to the company that handles the band's U.S. press.

I don't know what the flip these guys were thinking but I hope there's a public outcry and they are compelled to do away with these images.

Until then, I won't be buying any more of the band's music.

Development and the Privileged Class

I am currently in a graduate studies program. My degree concentration is in International Policy and Conflict Resolution.

The amazing thing about my school is that the majority of the student body is international. In addition to getting an education from the publications and professors, my classmates often have first-hand experiences in a region we are a studying.

I have learned about the Arab Spring from a Cairene who was in Tahrir Square when the revolution began. My close friend from Angola has taught me about the down side of foreign direct investment in his country when coupled with government corruption. My friend from Palestine had two of his brothers murdered by IDF soldiers and he still desires peace with the Israelis.

These students have made my educational experience that much richer.

The cost of my private institution means that the students, no matter their home country, usually come from a privileged background. Unfortunately, many of them are lacking insight into "how the other half lives." This isn't always the case but there is an undercurrent of elitism that remains in the classroom.

One need not have lived in abject poverty in order desire its eradication or to have a modicum of compassion. However, a life of relative ease coupled with youth and inexperience sometimes causes a frightening lack of concern for vulnerable and exploited populations.

This might be merely unfortunate in a student of finance or business but with students of public policy (who will very likely be crafting policy in the future) it is appalling.

I have heard fellow students make excuses for development models that devastate local populations by forcing them into a life of abject poverty and servitude.

"Well, at least the sweatshop gives these women a option other than prostitution," they might say.

The false dilemma seems to be a popular go-to fallacy.

Today, our instructor asked if it was fair for the economic system to assume that because no one was being forced to work in a sweatshop, that they had entered into that job freely, that that made it okay.

Remarkably, some people seemed to think that this sort of work was better than "nothing."

We watched a video on women in Bangladesh who work for 12-14 hours a day for 8 cents an hour in the smothering heat of a factory overseen by men who may hit them when they "slack off."

I'd like to think some of my classmates rethought their original positions after that.

Some of them still reasoned that wage increase would fuel mass unemployment, drive businesses to other markets or kill innovation and investment.

Happily, none of them seemed to object to having a fan installed in the factory to circulate the stifling air- so I guess there's that.

I will now insult the reader's intelligence by pointing out that the people thinking this way are the ones who will always profit from the situation. Neither they or anyone they know personally will ever have to work in these conditions.

Noticeably absent from our debate were any actual sweatshop workers. I assume if they had been present they wouldn't have shocked me by confessing to an enjoyment of being abused and shat on by powerful foreign multinational corporations.

Sweatshops do not empower future generations or allow for the formation of a middle class. They keep people in a constant and lasting state of poverty.

Heaven forbid one of these workers should become incapacitated and unable to ever work again. There is no health coverage or unemployment program to take care of ill and injured. There are also countless workers to replace the ones that have been rendered "useless."

The lack of ethical conviction in some of my fellow students kills me.

So many people are willing to shrug and say that some sacrifice is necessary for capitalism to thrive. As long as said sacrifice stays abstract and doesn't hit too close to home, it's perfectly acceptable.

Soon the Fall semester will begin and a whole new crop of students will appear. Some of them will continue to embrace and defend the same tropes that have allowed for some of the worst abuses against our fellow human beings.

Inevitably, several of them will try to get away with this sort of crap in one of my classes.

Heaven help them.

Another Reason I Love New Zealand: The All Blacks Haka

Caustic C and the Regrettable Row

I returned to the small town to visit friends.

I was told that C would be at their home doing his laundry but I planned on ignoring him and didn’t foresee any problems.

I don’t know C that well. He has a reputation for pontificating on philosophy and being highly argumentative but I had never personally gotten into any heated discussions with him so I couldn’t have known what was in store.

I arrived at J and L’s house and made a vague nod toward C. What I really wanted to do was sprawl on some piece of furniture and get lost in the novelization of Jane Campion’s “The Piano.”

Somehow, some awful way, it was decided that J and L would host an impromptu cookout and that C and I should be the ones to go buy the meat.

C began acting nervous as if someone were forcing him into a small cage with a lioness. I was highly irritated by this.

“Would you like to drive?” I asked sarcastically. “Oh that’s right, you can’t!”

This was a low blow on my part because C’s license was suspended for driving under the influence.

We started off on our meat safari chatting with a forced politeness. After about 15 minutes we were speaking of my mentor from the town who had passed away last year and C launched into an dreadful attack on his character, painting him as a hack, professional failure, letch and all around terrible person because he worked for Texaco back at the dawn of time. I asked him if he had ever made a mistake before in his life but this only accelerated his assault on my old friend. I then asked him if it was lonely up there on his cross and he said my comment was “stupid.”

We managed some sort of civility in the store and even managed to chat on the drive back about the Michigan boarding school I attended which was near where he grew up.

All of a sudden, we were arguing again. He was attacking my military service and desire to work as a diplomat.

He then committed the fatal error of saying “you don’t understand.”

My mother often says this to me, usually when we are discussing something political or religious and she wants to insinuate that I have been living in a cave somewhere and have no idea what I’m talking about.

Nothing incenses me quite like this phrase.

No, of course I don’t understand. I’ve only served in two branches of the military and am completing a master’s program in International Policy.

Poor sheltered me!

I told C there were two kinds of people in the world; those who complain about the problem and those who figure out how to do something about it. He said there was a third option and I asked what it was. He said it would take too long to explain and I offered to slow my driving speed. He then began to make ad hominem attacks in which he posited that I was naïve and idiotic. He seemed to have decided that I was on the opposite side of whatever his point of view was (without actually knowing my thoughts) and he insinuated that I was both morally and ethically bankrupt. This was never more apparent than when he was talking about the evils of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obviously, he thought of me as their personal cheerleader and number one fan.

I went tearing up J and L’s driveway calling C “the biggest a-hole I had ever met” and yelling at him to get the hell away from me.

I sought refuge with L while C wandered over to J –probably to make some sweeping generalizations about womankind. I told L I had always instinctually felt the need to dislike C and now had concrete reasons for doing so. She likened him to Holden Caulfield saying that to him, everyone else was a fake and he was the only true thing. She also said that he tended to lash out verbally when he felt nervous around people. My temper was somewhat calmed by the idea of him being so terrified of my beauty and intellect that he felt defensive. It was pitiful and flattering at the same time.

I decided to try being civil. I walked out onto the patio and told him I thought he was a bit of jerk but I still liked him.

That might have done the trick if we both hadn’t started drinking.

As guests continued to arrive, the fireworks between C and I were amped up to a spectacular degree. He said I was a giant leap backward for womankind and I mused that men like him were the reason why I continued to have such low expectations for his gender. He said I was a powerful argument for suicide and I offered to search the nearby shed for a rusty farm implements that might do the trick.

When performing character assassinations in English became too easy, we switched to Spanish.

At one point I got so mad that I pushed him in the chest.

This shocked me for two reasons:

1      I abhor physical violence

2     His chest was firmer than I anticipated.

Had I been a bit more sober I might have realized that C repeatedly tried to seek refuge from me in different parts of the house.

As the guests started to leave and I threw myself down on a couch in the living room. I loudly asked J when he was “taking the a-hole home” while C was standing right beside him.

I went to bed thereafter, only to later be awoken by the sound of C snoring on the couch in the living room. Instead of drifting off to sleep I stayed up for a few more hours thinking of mean comments to hurl at him in the morning.

When I finally did get up he was already gone.

Throughout the rest of the day, L told me how I had stalked after him in the house and taken great pleasure in publicly berating him.

At first I felt triumphant for out-bullying the bully but then I began to realize that he had been trying to avoid me for most of the night and I was the one who kept at him.

In the story “Peter Pan,” the treacherous Captain Hook is constantly self reflecting on his actions and asking himself if any of them were in bad form. He simply can’t bare the idea of being in bad form. I realized that I had been in bad form with C the entire evening and I began to feel deeply ashamed of myself.

C is obviously intelligent but the impact of his ideas is overshadowed by the abrasive way in which they are expressed. His overwhelming hubris combined with his pompous tone and caustic retorts would wear out the most patient of saints.

I can’t think of a more tragic, nervous affliction to have. The person being verbally assaulted by him is left with the desire to clarify their position, argue their point and defend their good name all at once. This, of course, is impossible.

After I stewed in the shame of my actions for a few days, I asked J to take me to C’s house so I could apologies. He agreed and I stood before C in a state of absolute contrition. I asked that he pardon me for my crass and belligerent behavior and he graciously did. I was relieved and immediately began to feel that all was right with the world again. I listened as he and J spoke to each other and vowed to keep silent for the duration. Before we left, C shook my hand and I was happy.

I think I’ll stick to drinking water the next time I’m around him.