Mind Vomit by the ikss ~ a journal
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Monday, Aug. 25, 2003the ikss on Christianity and dwarves
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�Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead�
-Lucille Ball
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
--Theodore Roosevelt, 1918
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"The time is always right to do what is right"
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The "seven social sins": Knowledge without character,
Science without humanity,
Wealth without work,
Commerce without morality,
Politics without principles,
Pleasure without conscience,
Worship without self-sacrifice."
--Gandhi
"We have not inherited the world from our forfathers -
We have borrowed it from our children."
--Kashmiri, proverb
Abusive Ex-Priest Is Killed in Prison
By DANIEL J. WAKIN and KATIE ZEZIMA
John J. Geoghan, the former priest whose abuse of children over decades opened the door for a scandal that shook the Roman Catholic Church, was strangled by another inmate in a Massachusetts state prison, officials said yesterday.
Mr. Geoghan, who was defrocked in 1998, was serving a sentence of 9 to 10 years at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley, a medium-security state prison 40 miles northwest of Boston...
Copywrite NY Times
~~~
I haven�t even mentioned the Catholic Church/Pedophile Priests topic in this journal, I don�t think. Not because I don�t care, of course. I just�never got around to it. And also, sadly, I think I never talk about it much because it doesn�t really surprise me.
I know there are men and women who give up sex for religious reasons and are spiritually pure in a way I would never begin to understand. But I think those people are few and far between�like, one in several million. In my opinion, aside from that one in several million, people who willingly enter a life of celibacy (unless and except for what they know is a temporary amount of time) have sexual issues. Sexual issues that they are running from by never dealing with them; by hoping the celibacy will just make it all go away. Therefore, that would mean I think priests are sexually fucked up. Therefore, it doesn�t surprise me that so many priests are sexually fucked up enough to molest kids.
Anyway, so this priest got killed in prison. And you know what? I may be biased on this issue, but I really don�t feel even slightly bad about his murder, except that he now does not have to live with his sins. However, considering how many years he allowed himself to get away with molesting kids, something tells me his guilt feelings were a little subdued anyway. Living with himself may not have been as painful as I might have liked.
I was just reminded about that priest on Oz who was killed a few seasons ago. Man, at least this priest from Boston was just strangled. That one on Oz was crucified to the floor.
Sorry, I know my opinions on this whole topic sound callous and detached. It�s just really hard for me to have any sympathy for someone who is not only a child molester, but molests under the guise of being someone you can turn to for help and guidance. To top it off, although he is supposed to be the paragon of virtue, he does not confess his sin after the first offense; he does not then do whatever he can to keep himself away from kids. He brushes it all under the rug for years and looks for other circumstances he can manipulate in order to satisfy his own perversions.
I can only hope there is a special place in hell.
This is where the whole �Ask and ye shall be forgiven� theory kind of pisses me off sometimes. The bible also says that no one sin is greater than another.
Pardon me, but doesn�t that just strike you as wrong? I mean, �Hey I�m a priest. I molested like 80 kids over the course of several years. But I asked for forgiveness last night and I got it, so now I have a clean slate. I can just molest again today. So long as I ask for forgiveness tonight, I�m good to go.� And that�s the same as someone who stole a roll of Lifesavers from the drug store because he was hungry, had no money for food and the Lifesavers fit neatly in to the palm of his hand?
Something fishy there, if you ask me.
Plus, if you adhere strictly to the scripture, of course, that guy who stole the Lifesavers is going to hell unless he accepted Jesus as his personal savior, even if the life he lived was far morally superior than that Priest over there who accepted Jesus as his savior�you know just before he fondled that altar boy.
Now I happen to have some fairly traditional Christian beliefs, believe it or not. But when people start trying to convince me that the bible should be taken literally, I just have to think of these sorts of things and believe that the bible was written by people�people who may have gotten a thing or two wrong.
Of course, how does one pick and choose what is right, what is wrong, what is symbolic and what should be taken literally? Let�s face it � we all (well, all of us who are of the Judeo-Christian tradition) pick the things out of the bible that we want to believe � the parts about loving your neighbor and somebody else already having died for your sins so that you don�t have to � and we just conveniently ignore the stuff about not masturbating or coveting our neighbor's ass.
I guess I�ll figure it all out when I die.
~~~
I look like a complete dork while on my training walks.
Understand, I am but 5�2� tall. I have short legs. I have a short body. I wear a D Cup bra, too, so my body can look even shorter than it really is. Normally, I can wear clothes that flatter my body type, as we all do. I have yet, however, to find any form of workout ensemble which doesn�t make me look like I have a mental deficiency and my mother should probably not let me dress myself and certainly should not have let me leave the house this way. Actually, I mostly blame my fanny pack. I can look OK without that damn fanny pack.
The whole tee-shirt-tucked-in-to-a-pair-of-shorts-look really doesn�t do much for me. Add to that the fanny pack with two water bottles attached that I now wear around my waist since I am walking longer distances and I end up with a body type somewhere akin to that of a dwarf.
Nothing against dwarves, mind you. I am sure there are many out there living full, happy and productive lives. Whatever. I think we can all agree that their body type is not exactly the societal-approved ideal. In short: I don�t really wanna look like one.
It�s really hard to camouflage ones body dilemmas in shorts and a tee shirt. Even when I wear this lycra unitard thing I am prone to wear when I work out, I end up looking like ikss de Toulose Lautrec and all because of the fanny pack.
So speaking of walking�here is what happened this weekend.
You may recall that the little walking group I am on occasion training with for the Breast Cancer 3-Day was supposed to meet at 7:30am on Saturday, in order to walk 15 miles. Well, I showed up at our designated meeting area at about 7:20. I proceeded to sit on a bench until 7:40. Nobody showed up.
Now, the gal who leads our walks was sick last Thursday, so I assumed she must still be sick and perhaps she had sent an e-mail letting us all know after I left work on Friday. Since I don�t have internet access at home unless John happens to be in town and happens to have brought his laptop with him, I wouldn�t have seen the e-mail. Anyway, so I walked by myself. I didn�t walk 15 miles, though; I walked somewhere between seven and eight.
I walked again Sunday evening, somewhere between 5 and 6 miles this time.
Well, I found out this morning that the gal was still sick, as I had assumed. However, no e-mail was sent; some of the other gals somehow knew she was still sick, however, and decided to meet at 8:00 instead of 7:30. Of course, I was very grateful for the notification I had received about the change in plans.
Actually, I wasn�t pissed or anything, but the whole thing was kind of inconsiderate. Ah well. They only walked 5 miles anyway.
Anyway, back to my looking like a dork.
So here I am, a dwarf in a baseball cap, walking. I think I have mentioned the fact that I was having some problems with my shins. Well, that little problem hasn�t really gone away. It doesn�t matter how much I stretch out before, during and after my walks; it doesn�t matter how slow I try to go when I first start walking. My shins inevitably scream in pain for a while, at the beginning of every walk. It�s weird because this only seems to happen when I am specifically on training walks. When I�m walking to Lucille�s for dinner with John, for instance, my shins are just fine and dandy.
I have tried three different pair of walking/running shoes � none of them is better than another.
I have tried slowing my pace and even stopping for a minute, as soon as the pain begins � doesn�t help.
I have tried eating a lot of fruit right before I walk (for the sugars) � nope.
What I have found, though, is that if I can just muster up the cajones to get through the first two miles or so, the pain goes away. So that�s what I do. I grin and bear it. Just as I start to think I really can't put up with the pain anymore (at around 1 1/2 miles), it starts to abate, then dissipates entirely. I try to walk leading more with my thighs, though, while my shins are hurting me so badly for that first couple of miles. I�m sure that walk goes far in adding to the whole �Hey look, ma � there�s a dwarf!� image I appear to be going for.
~~~
Barbi left me a voice mail message while I was, of all places, at lunch! I don�t even usually take a lunch break away from my office. It just so happened that I wanted to mail a card to my friend, Jody, today and I left that card at home this morning. So I took my lunch hour to run home and pick it up. Of course, that�s when my sister called me from Alaska.
Dammit. I hope she calls back later. *pout*
Seems she�s having a great time. She caught a halibut on their fishing trip (the first catch of the day, in fact, which won her $60) before getting violently seasick for the rest of the trip. Arnett, meanwhile, remained unmoved by the rocky ocean and proceeded to catch not only his limit, but everybody else�s on board as well (sounds like he was the only one catching anything so he gave his excess fish to those not catching any).
A pod of Killer Whales surrounded their boat for an extended period of time, also. Hee. :)
~~~
Word of the Day for Monday August 25, 2003
vainglory VAYN-glor-ee; vayn-GLOR-ee, noun:
1. Excessive pride in one's achievements, abilities, qualities, etc.
2. Vain display.
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