on The Mountain Goats song ezekiel 7.

I have been doing godwork, formally, for a few months now--and i am finding some important things about myself. I do not have a missional realtionship to christ. I am most likely not a christian. I do not feel called to ministry, to an intense and personal relationship with God. My queerness, my autism, my depression, my prickly/spiny nature in addition to the above as made the communal work that godtalk entails almost impossible and profoundly lonely. This loneliness is compounded with a never ending quest for completeness, for holiness, for purity, that if i am devout enough or together enough, or even if i do nothing, God in her infinte mercy would make me whole. I do not believe in the Divine, and I want her to make me whole. This album, and esp this song, is the best expression of that profound/postmodern paradox. I could talk about it musically, but the mystery of grace is foundaitonal to the push me/pull me tale of the fallen and the redeemed. Darinelle is CAtholic, he is not Protestant, and my move from the Catholics to the Protestants is one of seeking Grace--Here is Luther (another fallen Catholic) on Grace: It is like the case of a man who is ill, who trusts the doctor who promises him a certain recovery and in the meantime obeys the doctor’s instructions, abstaining from what has been forbidden to him, in the hope of the promised recovery (in spe promissae sanitatis), so that he does not do anything to hinder this promised recovery...Now this man who is ill, is he healthy?.

I feel as if Christ, or the narratology of Christianity has been forbidden to me, that I have had to abstain from it. This song, the album that this song comes from, has broken the hobble, I feel healthier listening to it, I feel less ill.

I feel like sometimes that the confusion, the narrative stumbling, the devotion to brokenness that Darnielle enages in, is a post-Catholic pushing around the history of his childhood, hoping that under that Sisyphian stone, there will be grace, that to make stories about it will make us healthier.

I have my doubts it will, but i like the hope.

fifteen points for the reflection paper:

1. to be Christian requires exile and absence from the world.
2. xian's origin is one of obliquneess,
3. but also deliberately choosing to engage in any number of scriptual traditions
   
4. one cannot be forced, this choice is about our autonomy
   
5. choosing to engage in these traditions means to (in the best of our limited human understanding) discern the will and nature of god
   
6. there is a tension then between a profound personal realtionship and a seeking of the communal, a tension that can be seen in many of the parables (inc. lazarus, the good samaratian, the fisherman, loaves and fishes, the widows mite, and others)
   
7. this tension is often contained wihtin calls towards liberation and justice.
8. there is something profoundly problematic in calling people who are marginazlized, who have their exile thrust upon them, to be exiled again, exiled by choice...the isolation of them marginialised, while absent from the gospels is often mirrored in the traditions of the church (Bruggerans DWEM comments, but also from Coakley: "
   "Where the question of gender then insidiously inserts itself into this scholarly divide is in the willingness... to construe forms of 'weakness,' 'passivity' or 'vulnerability' (all traditionally demerits for the male, but manifestly present in Jesus' passion) as either normatively human or even revelatorily divine...if Jesus' 'vulnerability' is a primary narrative given, rather than a philosophical embarrassment to explain away, then precisely the question is raised whether 'vulnerability' need be seen as a female weakness rather than a...human strength." (Power and Submission, find the page number)
   
9. all of this tension, this paradoxical desire for a liberating christ for a people in exile, considering that those who seek or need liberation are contained by the church, is constrained by how we construct narratives of autonomy.
   
10. to construct narratives, to treat t he parables as examples of right living, is required as a missional preacher, is required as a way of speaking about christ, at least w/i the euro-american proddie tradition, or even w/ i the anglican corpus.
    
11. how does working against interpertation, and against applicaiton (as dally requires of us), sontag: Thus, interpretation is not (as most people assume) an absolute value, a gesture of mind situated in some timeless realm of capabilities. Interpretation must itself be evaluated, within a historical view of human consciousness. In some cultural contexts, interpretation is a liberating act. It is a means of revising, of transvaluing, of escaping the dead past. In other cultural contexts, it is reactionary, impertinent, cowardly, stifling...(against interpertation, online source, find dead tree)
12. or to put it simply, how does one choose exile?
13. which dramas are enacted, which roles are to be played, which narratives are engaged with, or how does one know that the exillic desires of YHWH, of moving away from the world, are the correct ones? (call of the fisherman)
    
14. Bruggerman page 64--the call towards god is one of liberation, against those that contain and break us,
15. How are we included and excluceded from the multivalent narratives of history (cf Cone)
    
16. how do we rewrite the narrative of history
    
17. how do w emantain our own narratives while doing the above work
    
18. can these questions be answered, or is this something that is found in the wandering of the desert, the abandonment of our own purposes and a seeking of the divine (bruggerman's woodwork metaphor, or dally's idea of metaonia, that we are converted thru attempts at remaking ourselves.)

zebrass, zebronkey, zeass, zeedonk, zedonk, zebadonk, zenkey, donbra, donbri, donkra, zebrinny, clive, zebrula

40 women more attractive then kate beckinsale, who according to esquire is the most beautiful woman in the world.

1. susan sarandon
   
2. sigourney weaver
3. aishwarya rai
4. li gong
5. alfre woodward
6. miranda lambert
7. liz benson
   
8. padmi laksi
   
9. catherine denuve
   
10. charollette rampling
    
11. tilda, (oh, tilda, my tilda)
12. karen o
    
13. virginie leydon
    
14. thandie newton
    
15. sophie okonedo
    
16. zaha hadid
    
17. elizabeth peyton
    
18. shohreh aghdashloo
19. michelle williams
    
20. natahlie portman
    
21. zooey dacheneal
    
22. anne hathaway
    
23. beth ditto
    
24. sophie dahl
    
25. lucinda williams
26. neko case
    
27. zadie smith
    
28. michelle rodiguez
    
29. jodie foster
    
30. michelle yeoh
    
31. lily cole
    
32. kate moss
    
33. gemma ward
34. agness deyn
    
35. helen mirren
36. julie christie
37. rita dominic
38. dita von tease
    
39. crystal renn
40. buck angel.
    

i failed an assignment today

which might lead to failing other assignments

because i dont understand the structure of the course

but i have disability services, and someone who is good at the structure and i am meeting the prof

and school is for learning

so there is hope

come on, nobel, atwood is not going to last forever.

left behind notes:

• meta (first shots are about being filmed)
• filmic adaptation using the tropes of big budget action films
• the aesthetic of digital handicam (fire from the sky, carpathia screencaps, reflection of a mirror in the bar. laptops)
  
• shot for shot of other films (suburan fly shot, parking garage, dark bar)
  
• domestic/adventure narrative combined
  
• on the legitmacy of paranoia, textual linkings to nixon
  
• late great planet earth as book that inspired left behind movie, but also the dispeantaltionsit charts etc
  
• musical cues of drama, and the break down post rapture, like john williams
  
• UN obession
• family obession the returning home to family, and also families ruptured
  
• dirk's house wiht the single dove,
  
• knowing and beleiving are two distinct things
  
• c/c 19th century converstion narratives, i am kneeling before you, etc
  
• the martyology of dirk
  
• cameron losing his secualr quality (ie by his virtue he is saved, car bomb that kills allen, etc)
• new hope church
• socratic discussion of bibilical tropes (also from conversion narratives)
• buck dresses like a baptist preacher
• the last 15 minutes of the film, the reveal is the begging of the prqaise music
  
• a man only intested in the truth
  
• mexican standoff, on yr knees johnathon (the carptheian gunshot)
• 
  

From Untitled Album

Delacroix, Tiger Etching., 184?, in the collection of the MIA, Boston.

53 photos of phillip johnson's house.

robot violates Asmiov's first law.

satan loving teen sets church on fire.

owen heathley tears the fuck out of the keep calm and carry on nostaliga. .

From Untitled Album

January Jones, from last week's madmen.

Cinciati censors an american nun's tadvocacy for the ordination of women.

luke jerom's glass microbiological models are drop dead gorgeous.

an mp3 of carmen miranda's hyper quick tico nico.

From Untitled Album

Nan Goldin, Rob Lowe, from Vanity Fair, 1983.

a) avedon has more of the stated virtues of goldin, and goldin has more of the stated virtues of avedon. (ie goldin's house style rests heavily on formalism, rigious placement of figures in space, and a conserative compostional style) (avedon's house style rests heavily on emotional conneciton to people, collapsing of the rigiours of studio led formalism, and a open compostional style)
b) this is the first major commisison for goldin, and it cleans up/makes commerical the erotic potential of her earlier work, similar to mapplethorpe's portraits of for example patti smith.
c) the androngynous male figure as one of the eroticised gaze of the viewer femminzes the discourse, esp when shot by a woman in a fashion glamour magazine, etc etc been done to death, the first two of those are more interesting then the last one

bolster pillows like cut off logs.

i have been thinking about this essay of ted's this week b/c i have started seeking sex on the net again, for the first time in my life paying for a membership and claiming what i want, rarely do people email me back, there is a brutality to the bluntness of their rejection, and i want more of Kerr's gentleness.

Road Runner and Lacan's Mirror Stage.



Bowie sings the Alabama Song.

iranian funk from the 70s

ai wei wei writes and publishes fotos of his surgery in munich, brain injury due to the batons of chinese police.

10 fotos of Kruger's install at the LEver House, no red, no images, b&w text only.

interesting article on hunters collecting deer skins for shonesne people via the LDS social services int he 30s.


PErformance of Loudan Wainwright singing Cardboard Boxes on the British TV in the 70s.

great blog with some pretty amazing photographs, of a blog about hunting and cooking.


This Matt Dallas video shivers with the abject, and the lighting is somewhere b/w clinical and crime scene.

blue jake in los angeles.

westwoods new line has that unhinged, slightly weird, but not outragous qaulity that marks her transhistorical maturity post the highland fling collection.

bill dunlap makes amazing drawings of montsters (rawr), here are some t shirts


You are Being Shagged by a Rare Parrot.

sweet little doc on indianaoplis picture day.

tom wood's looking for love is simialr to what i am doing with my other peoples wedding seires.

rogue emu

yeltsin as drunken buffoon

snoop dog loves the britcom keeping up apperances.

55 hotel door hangers

From Untitled Album

all of larkin's Dispensationalist Charts cleaned up.

schizophrenia and it's realtion to body langauge.

15 early sydny mugshots

wycliffe cut and paste,
i didnt get a copy of the constituion, the shoe thing is still bugging me, some of the people that they have brought in i find problematic, i am unsure abvout the r/ship b/w students and residents, t here is something hinky in the elections that gwen lost

there was a memorial to glbtq suicides outside of gencon this weekend, in slc.

“If I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But… f—ing, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to f— young girls. Juries want to f— young girls. Everyone wants to f— young girls!” Polanski, to Martin Amis, in the Tatler, 1973, republished in Visiting Ms Nabakov, and the LA times this week.

a) i have less problems with fucking 13 yr olds then i should have, esp considering my history.
b) my problem with polanski is not that that he fucked a 13 yr old, it is that he drugged, and anally raped a 13 yr old. drugging and raping someone is taboo behaviour regardless of age, and i don't think that makes me a prude.

patterns and cuts in the McQueen resort collection is vaguely circus tenty, but the construciton makes up for it.

From Untitled Album

some interesting discussion on testorane and vaginal tissues, esp. vis

eelslap

sucide in high park related to teacher seeking under age students via the internet.

yale publishes holographic academic manuscript of early book of morman interesting review of it in the wsj. the translator is active, teaches at byu, and so the conserative qaulity of the translation is reflected in that.

fbi arrests man who orginzed philly g20 protests via social media.

From Untitled Album

five things about the aspie kids:

1. the kids themselves were great, sort of bored, low key, but seemingly really excited to have "adults" come in and listen to them.
   
2. dave p and i were on the same page about identity, about the difficulty of living with hte condition, about history and the like, dave w went to some strange places
   
3. the kids were really excited about us, the kids in the main assembly, we spent 90 minutes, and there were questions asked afterwards---the usual stuff, when did you know, how did you know, what is life like, what are you good at , can you ride a bike, can you ride a car, are there any perks...
4. danny, one of the aspie kids was great, he invited us to recess, though we could not come, and his parents asked me about life in uni, and i was like i dont know, it was fucked for me, and i am not a role model, and i have met danny for about 30 minutes, so ask him...(in fact that was the thing that I said over and over again, listen to the kids, the kids know what they want, one of the things that disability does is that infantilizes children, so it might take longer, but give them the time and space to be an autonomous being w/i their own context
5. part of me is really glad that these kids are discovering what it means to be an aspie young (really young), and it did help with my attempt to internalize or constructive a collective identitiy around this thing, and that 4th-8th graders are able to do that is great, but i worry that it will be their only construction, that they will be less skilled in the juggling of nouns and adverbs that mark life now (something that dave p put forth as well, that being an aspie is part of my identity, but there are others, many others)
6. had lunch with david afterwards, me a double bourban neat, him a coke. i like being an adult, it means i can drink at 11 am.
   

we might be doing the high school circuit next (the phrase dispraxic softshoe was mentioned)

aspie group went so well that we are going to see the highschools

talking to jeff about fornication as a lingustic trope today, while he ate a peach.

* Interviewer: What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
* Slavoj Zizek: That life is a stupid, meaningless thing that has nothing to teach you.

empress & hanged man

Beige on BEige

Beige on BEige
Originally uploaded by PinkMoose

Victoria University E.J. Pratt
Stacks
BT708 .G33 2003
IN
Trinity College (John W Graham)
Stacks
BT708 .G33 2003


Church fathers, independent virgins /
Joyce E. Salisbury.
London : Verso, 1991.
Book
IN
Robarts
Stacks
BR195 .C45 S24 1991

Victoria University Emmanuel College
Stacks
BL25 .L4 no.13

I predict opening ceremonies so sexy they make a Quebecois stripper blush.
posted by Keith Talent (on Rio winning the Olympics)

crowd source my answers to the aspie kids:

- What do you have? Autism or Aspergers?

-Do you have a special classroom at the university?

-Do you have a girlfriend like you (with Autism?). Do you have a typical girlfriend?

*Ms. K. says I should ask if you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend or say 'partner' (thanks Danny :p )

- Do you have a career?

- Do you have any girls in your class?

- What courses are you taking?

- Is it easy to get along with other classmates (people who don't have Autism)?

- How easy was your education?

- How cool is your special class if you have one?

- How do you do in your work?

- Have you ever thought of a career in the Army/Navy/Air Force?

- Did you do good in school when you were little?

- Do you have a favorite book/video/food/holiday etc.?

- What do you like to do now?

- What did you like to do when you were a kid?

- How did you do in high school?

- Did you have any good friends in high school?

- How does your family do? Are they happy?

- Do you live in a dorm/on the university campus?

- Do you have room mates? Boy or girl?

- How do you feel like ... optimistic ... about Autism? Do you feel good about Autism?

- Do you play sports?

- Do you speak another language?

today:

wycliffe common room, i played cards with 5 men, while another repaired hockey equipment. the tv was playing ufc.

so next week i am going to markham, and talking to 5 aspie elementary/middle school kids, and then addressing a school assembly of regular kids.

its going to be weird.