TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2009:

1. Tim McGraw Southern Voices

I was worried that this wasn't very good, but i have had it in the rotation for a pretty constant 3 months. Poltical and moderate, a kind of post-Obama opus about what exactly it means to be from the South, American, a man and weirdly, in it's moral comprimises and socially constructed smooth negotiating power, a democrat. All of that said, his voice is strong, his band is the tightest it has been in a decade, and the lyrics maintain a sophistication, and slightly dark twinge that we expect.

2. Lyle Lovett Natural Forces

There is something so lovely, so exacting, and so emotionally wrought about his work. Filled with a swing that is only sometimes melancholy which sets the place with an exactitude that is effortless. It is also one of the most charmingly filthy albums of the year--including a cover of the Doughboys epic food=fucking opus Pantry, and perhaps the catchiest song about masturbation ever (Choke My Chicken). That he does this while covering Van Zandt's heartbreaking Loretta, or Bayou Song, the harshest text about Louisanna since Randy Newman.

3. Corb Lund Losin' Lately Gambler

Not as epic as the last one, a set of domestic settlings. Moving from home because of money, or losing lovers to the lure of the east, or gambling in suburban malls instead of Vegas. Post-recession, for a group of people that never made that much money in the first place.

4. Roseanne Cash The List

Maybe this riding her daddy's coat tales has more to it then I anticipated. A freudian nightmare of loss and erotic attachment to the absent, it provides a liturgical counterpoint to the popularizing hagiography of Cash. (I am reminded of what Dorthy Day said about being made a saint: "“Don't call me a saint. I don't want to be dismissed so easily")

5. Steve Earle Townes

Speaking of acts of Hagiography. Earle seems more comfortable in New York then he ever did in Nashville, and some of the best work about home is done by those in exile. Sung by a survivor of vice, the rough burr of hard living is never made smooth, but it is also not used as an excuse for poor musicianship or lacklustre performances. An act of brotherly devotion that works as a musical text as well.

6. Alaisdair Roberts Spoils

Outsider folk singer from Edinburgh. Holy, multivalent, ancient and post-modern, it's competing signals isolate any attempts at singular meaning. It is a morally severe attempt to find out what it means to be holy, and to not be religious, and is filled with both a terror of the divine and a love of Her as a parent. It also featured the hurdy-gurdy, which is awesome.

7. Bob Dylan Christmas in the Heart

It must be a joke, some inscrutable camp construction that is not intended to be understood--and so one wonders if the last jewish mystic is playing around on us or making some sort of real statement. That he keeps throwing curve balls, and we keep swinging must mean something.

8. Luke Bryan Doin' My Thing

Young, handsome, and reatively new to the scene, he knows how to write.

9. Brad Paisley American SAturday Night

Better contained, and excluding his more sentimental instincts, here for this voice, and his refusal to play to the worst instincts of his own cornpone schitck.

10. Miranda Lambert Revolution

Not the masterpeice of the last album, but enough of a new direction, with the same kind of pop instincts grafted onto a desire for Opry led legitimacy. Makes me want to know what she does next.

TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2009:

1. Adam Lambert Ring of Fire

The song really is about destruction, it is not cute or sweet or loving--it is about the destruction of both self and other. Sarah Vowell once wrote about the fire being hellfire--a pentecostal fear of damnation. This queering of the original text takes the discourse about original sourcing, about love, and about the desire for queer acceptance and moves it to centre stage. More destabilzing then the faux-outrage blowjob at the AMA awards, and also prettier then most other covers.

2. Dierks Bentley Sideways

The sing-along chorus of the summer, pure pleasure.

3. John Mayer Who Says I Can't

Remember when Laurel Canyon folk used to be as country as Bakersfield or Alabama or Omaha, makes we want to hear an entire album from him.

4. John Rich Shuttin' Detroit Down

Rich turned crazy this year, with the cocaine, the legal messes, whatever he was doing to Glenn Beck, and the general irrascibility, all of which hid the album, which might have been a mixed blessing, because there was only one or two great songs on it. This was one of them, a sequel to What Made Milwauke Famous, it was a huge stone on the chest, equal parts first person reportage and call to economic war.

5. Brad Paisley – “Welcome to The Future”

A little optimism never hurt anyone; the guitar is super tight, and the eight byte sound effects make the song both about then and now. A correction to his cult of nostalgia.

6. Heartland Mustache

I laughed. I still laugh.

7. Carrie Underwood Cowboy Casanova

I love when erotic langour goes all sideways and bitter.

8. White Horse--Taylor Swift

She could do with a bit more self awareness, but there is something tender that seems real--i mean i know the problems with authenticity and pop, but there is something so lovely, so intensely broken about how she realises what she was told was a lie.

9. Miranda Lambert White Liar

You do not want to get Miranda Lambert angry, you would not like her when she is angry. (she is a bit self loathing, and sad, here too, but it is mostly about the vengeful)

10. Roseanne Cash Sea of Heartbreak

I love her voice.

TOP FIVE COUNTRY REISSUES OF 2009:

1. In the Pines Tar Heel Folk Songs and Fiddle Tunes Old Time Music of North Carolina
2. Fire in my Bones Raw and Rare and Other Worldly African American Gospel
3. Joan Baez How Sweet the Sound
4.
5.

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST MALE VOCALISTS OF 2009:

1. Brad Paisley
2. Corb Lund
3. Steve Earle

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST FEMALE VOCALISTS OF 2009:

1. Taylor Swift
2. Carrie Underwood
3. Roseanne CAsh

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST LIVE ACTS OF 2009:

1. Corb Lund
2. Ian Tyson
3. Kenny Chesney

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST SONGWRITERS OF 2009:

1. Luke Laird
2. Natahlie Hemby
3. Corb Lund

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST DUOS, TRIOS OR GROUPS OF 2009:

1. Tim McGraw's Backup Band
2. Lyle Lovett's Small Band
3. Sugarland

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST NEW ACTS OF 2009:

1. Heartland
2. Zac Brown
3.

COUNTRY MUSIC’S THREE BEST OVERALL ACTS OF 2009:

1. Tim McGraw
2. Miranda Lambert
3.Brad Paisley

outline for xian history paper

introduction:

1. origen and augustine were two of the most important thinkers of sex and the body in the early church
   
2. origen's castration and augustine's (problematic) relationship with his son were two narratives of profound ambiguity that cast a long shadow of this history.
   
3. these two acts could be construed as narratives of absence, of neglect, of longing, and desire.
   
4. they left the church scrambling for narratives of presence, completion, and satition.
   

origen:

1. on the history of castration as a literal act
   
2. on the ambiguity of exactly what origen did
   
3. on the calling out of castration at the council of nicea
   
4. on the move from castration being literal to being a lingustic/symbolic model.
   
5. the construction of celibacy as part of this model, and its later antecdents.
   

augustine:

1. on the history of his libertine nature
   
2. on his rship to the mancieans and the paradox of pleasure
   
3. the ambigious and problematic connection he had with his son, one of attachment and deattachment, loyalty and shame
   
4. how this realtionship worked thru a seires of lacnue/absences.
   
5. some notes on the virture of contience, how it relates to his earlier sexual ethics, and his later work.
   
6. a small note on the misogyny angle.
   

conclusion:

1. the body as unruly and unstable. esp. the penis
2. personal history as social history as church history
   
3. lessons to learn.
   

Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition: Studies in Justin, Clement, and Origen
Book by Henry Chadwick; Oxford University Press, 1984

Three goods of marriage, Augustine
(offspring, fiedilty, sacrament)
The Treatise of Marriage, 401
Holy Viriginity


augustine was with this woman for 15 years, some discussion about thier sexuality practicing contraception,

anti reproductive stance of the manicheans

marriage as an example of free will, but if that was the case, is not marrying also the same way, one can chose to sin, but why did augustine not marry him

from elizabeth clarks intro to the anthology st augustine on sex and marriage.

David G. Hunter
Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity:
The Jovinianist Controversy
Oxford Early Christian Studies


From A Note on Origen's Self-Mutilation
Author(s): R. P. C. Hanson
Source: Vigiliae Christianae, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Jun., 1966), pp. 81-82
Published by: BRILL
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1582228
Accessed: 28/11/2009 14:47

The Acts of John 53 and 54, a mid-second century legendary ac-
count made by one Leucius Charinus of a markedly Gnostic turn of
mind. Here a young man is described as castrating himself shortly after
his conversion. John rebukes him gently, saying that he should have
cut off the impulse and not the members. Compare Justin, Apology 1,
29, 2-3, where a young Christian is recorded as asking permission of
the governor of Alexandria to perform the same act.1


Charles Wilcox, introduction to the good of marriage
The virgins and celibates of ST Augustines time were being challenged by the insidious quesitons: You, then are better then Sara, You then are better then Abraham


From Caroyln Dimshaw's Eunuch Hermentuics:

"There is in Augustine's writing a deep strain of belief in the natural relation of words and their referents. Die Diealectia includes a chapter on the origins of words...this fanscaiton with he infnats process of learning language in the confessions suggests a profound desire for verbal signs rooted in the physical, in the body, al anugage understood by all humans..."

From the Council of Nicea:
Canon 1:

Canon 1

If any one in sickness has been subjected by physicians to a surgical operation, or if he has been castrated by barbarians, let him remain among the clergy; but, if any one in sound health has castrated himself, it behooves that such an one, if [already] enrolled among the clergy, should cease [from his ministry], and that from henceforth no such person should be promoted. But, as it is evident that this is said of those who wilfully do the thing and presume to castrate themselves, so if any have been made eunuchs by barbarians, or by their masters, and should otherwise be found worthy, such men the Canon admits to the clergy.

Celibate Pleasures:Masculinity,Desire, and
Asceticismin Augustine
ERIN SAWYER
Department of Religious Studies
Stanford University
1995, vol. 6, no. 1]
[Journalof theHistory Sexuality
of


From
Augustine is a complex figure who writes a dynamic of pleasure and
eroticism into many of his texts, ranging from his more abstract essays
on the human will, the concupiscence of the soul, and the life of Adam
and Eve in Eden, to his deeply personal Confessions.He centers many
theological discourses and debates with his contemporaries around sex-
ual questions and their ramifications for the life of the human subject in
the worldly city.

Augustine's ideal state is not a quietistic, contemplative asceticism in
which sexuality has been stilled; rather, Augustine creates a new type of
asceticism that turns from the pleasures of the body toward the pleasures
of the struggle against sexuality carried out through foregrounding
sexuality.

Margaret Miles, Desire and Delight: A New Reading of Augustine's "Confessions"
(New York, 1991),

4Peter Brown, in his chapter on Augustine in his The Body and Society:Men, Women,
and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York, 1988)


Frustrated by his inability to rationally explicate this irrational moment of
orgasm, Augustine produces more and more discourse and centers more
theological debates around the problem of sexual excess in an unend-
ing spiral.

Augustine, on the other hand, sees sexuality, albeit a regu-
lated sexuality, as a central feature of life in Paradise had the fall from
grace not occurred.

While Adam and Eve can be ashamed by their nakedness, Adam incurs
a heightened degree of shame because of his disobedient member. This
shamefulness produced by the splitting between the will and the body
leads Augustine to lament, "Where does that come from which, unless
resisted, will not permit man to be chaste? ... It rises up, I repress it; it
resists, I restrain it; it fights, I oppose it (18)

Augustine's discourses illustrate that the real problem is located
in the competition between the two poles of animal lust and divine will
within the same body. (20)


To read the Confessionsas a failure on its own terms, however, is to
overlook the crucial metaphor of battle and struggle. Augustine cannot
come to a total unification of the will and a complete sexual asceticism
because the spirals of discourse on sexuality he generates prevent the
possibility of coming to rest. More specifically, Augustine revels in the
struggles against desire and intensifies these struggles within his texts in
order to produce sharp conflicts between the spirit and flesh. I am not
disputing the contention that Augustine may have had certain types of
physical desires, but I am focusing on how he reproduces his erotic long-
ings on the level of text and discourse. Augustine does not limit his con-
fessions to vague discussions about his lustful feelings. Rather, he feels
the need to confess even the most private secrets-"I exhausted myself
in depravity, in the pursuit of an unholy curiosity ... I defied you even
so far as to relish the thought of lust, and gratify it too, within the walls
of your church during the celebration of your mysteries" (3.3.57)-
events that must have haunted him well into his converted, ascetic years (26)

"Cesearius again: "a monk called called Bernard at Calavux was troubled by lust. He then dreamt that he was pursued by a man dressed as an executioner, carrying a long knife, accompined by a black dog. Eventually his persuer caught and castrated him, feeding his balls to the hound. The man found himself phyiscally intact but free from lust." (108)

Similar stories told about Elias, and a stranger story from the golden legend, where a pilgrim commits fornication and then is tempted by a demon in the guise of st james the apostle, to castrate himself, he is going to this until st james himself saves his balls

Cassian's 6 stages of chasity.

"the point of origen's castration was to remove scandal rather then to remove desire. The latter, as ORigen said, it refused to do" 113

Golden Legend, 98

The LAbour Of Contiteince: Masculinity and Clerical Virginity, John H Arnold found in
From Medieval Virginities. Edited by Anke Bernau, Ruth Evans, and Sarah Salih. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. xiv + 296 pp.

From Untitled Album

via don iveson.

researchers have found a way to grow rabbit penises in a lab.

photos from WWI trenches, via Green Howard.

dozens of hand drawn theme park maps

From Untitled Album

Hulk Hogan is too old for this shit.

down low is not as important to high rates of women with hiv/aids as once thot.

ann powers on the cma.


How to Snap.

according to the new england journal of medicine suggests that pfizer regularly spins medical information.

more evidence that wealth breeds wealth.

the confernce of american bishops have an interesting finincal stake in allowing for the stupak-pitts ammendment to go through. and some worries that the ammendment might end abortion for all.


carrie brownstien on beards and indie music

From Untitled Album

john hamm, why wont you love me.

woodporn

a fantastic article on Pipolliti Rist, and the pleasures of looking. Choice qoute: "“Using moving images as much as possible for purely philosophical and poetical reasons and goals,” she says, “can work as a shield or exorcism of the over-image-reproduced world."

list of chicken soup for the soul books

the bbc never really liked enid blyton's writing

want!


i love this kid.

new pastoral letter on same sex blessings from the catholics. here it is and no i havent had the time to read it yet.

anthology of world sf

uterus pillow.


Golden REterivers TEach Science

schismatic lutherans.

tasteless holocaust foto shoot.

Armond White tears apart precious. (john said yesterday that it would be like john waters)

From Untitled Album

samuri armour from the 19th century, via the new show at the met.

19th century postcards from japan for the year of the monkey.

rodeo fotos from flickr.

led tattoos


Murder City Devils Swagger Boom Swagger.

patrick kennedy and bishop have abortion dispute, stemming from the bishop refusing to give kennedy the euchraist.,

mill creek church in seattle gives tattoos on the altar.

aspie kid spends 11 days running away from his parents, living on the subways of ny.

the walking paths of brasilla

michael julius is an emt operator in putnam, and shoots while on duty. the resulting fotos are pretty amazing.

From Untitled Album

1. cliched, but in an attractive bob mizer way
2. the way that he has played this, manipulating the media, playing games, the whole hockey thing, the promise of cock and then the refusal to deliver cock, suggests that instead of a stumbling, silly yokel, he is the dude from the sticks who knows how to fuck with the expectations of the city.
   
3. they are so weighted with personal and political signifers, with a history of desire and for poltical contempt, that i am not sure they can be entirely used as pornography
   
4. excellently timed, the boy will go far.
   

i saw geddy lee at caplansky's today

'jeremiah:

bloody skirts:
three possiblities:
a) rape imagery
b) extension of the menstrual taboo
c) stabbing etc

not mentioned by most men, tissue of horrors.

Top Twenty Singles from the Jukebox this year:

1. Yeah Yeah Yeahs---Heads Will Roll
   
2. Taylor Swift---Fifteen
   
3. Beyonce Diva
4. Frank Turner The Road
   
5. Britney Spears If You Seek Amy
6. Heartland Mustache
   
7. The Mountain Goats Ezekiel 7 and the Permanent Efficacy of Grace
8. John Mayer--Who Says I Can't Get Stoned
   
9. Simian Mobile Disco Audacity of Huge
10. 3Oh!3 Star Strukk
11. Susan Boyle Wild Horses
    
12. Florence and the Machine You Got the Love
    
13. Jay Z Death of Autotune
    
14. Mariah Carey Obsessed
    
15. Fuck Buttons--Surf Solar
    
16. Gossip Heavy Cross
17. Karen O All Is Love
18. The Drummers--Let's Go Surfing (alt: Lily Allen Not Fair)
19. Lily Allen 22
    
20. Sarah JArosz Left Home
    

i just woke up from an erotic dream featuring having sex with a straight boy of my acquaintance in a bland midlevel american hotel room while afternoon delight played. the sex featured cuddling.

moving slightly away from attending mary mags to somewhere else suggests that my christanity is emerging from one of its perodical slumps and i am ready for community again

three small anecdotes about the eucharist:

1. there were 14 of us or so, for adrianna's bday at the old spaghetti factory. they serve bread, and we had a bottle of not very good red. paul the baptist makes a joke about having eucharist right there and then. the sacramental ones among the anglicans are not really finding this funny. it's mostly a lame joke, but i am never sure what it means to be offended anymore. later on, nancy tells an anecdote about a priest sanctifying pretzels and beer in southern germany, later on, i think about my childhood with wonderbread and wonder. the host will be determined by what you have availble.
   
2. there is a conversation, half of which i understand, at class on monday, about kids taking the eucharist. i keep thinking about this idea of an open table, adults baptised and children baptised. people get angry in this discussion. i don't think i have ever cared to be angry about who gets to eat and who gets to drink.
   
3. chris and i are going to a lutheran church last sunday--chris's church. i have been curious about moving lower, but not too low that liturgy escapes. we talk about the eucharist, and about the gospel on the way to church, and the church itself barely post war, german, domestic, friendly. there are husbands and wives, children, everyone says the peace to everyone else. we sing the canticle of the turning, with discussions of the world turned upside down, and lyrics about tyrants being dragged from thrones. the eucharist was one bread, common like the cup. it tastes vaguely like cinamon. afterwards, it sits with the baked goods, at coffee hour, because the lutherans do not have a tabernacle. i have spent the last three days figuring out what is signifcant about this.
   

“Ultimately, cynicism is the great mask of the disappointed and betrayed heart.” -bell hooks

6. Then you say, "And all his pomp. " Now the pomp of the devil is the madness of theatres , and horse-races, and hunting, and all such vanity: from which that holy man praying to be delivered says unto God, Turn away my eyes from beholding vanity. Be not interested in the madness of the theatre, where you will behold the wanton gestures of the players , carried on with mockeries and all unseemliness, and the frantic dancing of effeminate men —nor in the madness of them who in hunts expose themselves to wild beasts, that they may pamper their miserable appetite; who, to serve their belly with meats, become themselves in reality meat for the belly of untamed beasts; and to speak justly, for the sake of their own god, their belly, they cast away their life headlong in single combats. Shun also horse-races, that frantic and soul-subverting spectacle. For all these are the pomp of the devil.


The First Apology of Justin:
Hence are we called atheists. And we confess that we are atheists, so far as gods of this sort are concerned, but not with respect to the most true God, the Father of righteousness and temperance and the other virtues, who is free from all impurity. But both Him, and the Son (who came forth from Him and taught us these things, and the host of the other good angels who follow and are made like to Him),9 and the prophetic Spirit, we worship and adore, knowing them in reason and truth, and declaring without grudging to every one who wishes to learn, as we have been taught.

And when you hear that we look for a kingdom, you suppose, without making any inquiry, that we speak of a human kingdom; whereas we speak of that which is with God, as appears also from the confession of their faith made by those who are charged with being Christians, though they know that death is the punishment awarded to him who so confesses. For if we looked for a human kingdom, we should also deny our Christ, that we might not be slain; and we should strive to escape detection, that we might obtain what we expect. But since our thoughts are not fixed on the present, we are not concerned when men cut us off; since also death is a debt which must at all events be paid.

Cyril of Jersuelem Catehcial Lecture 1
1. Having been baptized into Christ, and put on Christ Galatians 3:27 , you have been made conformable to the Son of God; for God having foreordained us unto adoption as sons Ephesians 1:5 , made us to be conformed to the body of Christ's glory. Philippians 3:21 Having therefore become partakers of Christ Hebrews 3:14, you are properly called Christs, and of you God said, Touch not My Christs , or anointed. Now you have been made Christs, by receiving the antitype of the Holy Ghost; and all things have been wrought in you by imitation , because you are images of Christ. He washed in the river Jordan, and having imparted of the fragrance of His Godhead to the waters, He came up from them; and the Holy Ghost in the fullness of His being lighted on Him, like resting upon like. And to you in like manner, after you had come up from the pool of the sacred streams, there was given an Unction , the anti-type of that wherewith Christ was anointed; and this is the Holy Ghost; of whom also the blessed Esaias, in his prophecy respecting Him, said in the person of the Lord, The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me: He has sent Me to preach glad tidings to the poor Isaiah 61:1 .


Hipoyltus of Rome:
6 Likewise, if someone makes an offering of cheese and olives, the bishop shall say,
2"Sanctify this brought-together milk, just as you also bring us together in your love. 3Let this
fruit not leave your sweetness, this olive which is a symbol of your abundance, which you made
to flow from the tree, for life to those who hope in you."
4In every blessing should be said:
To you be glory,
Father and Son
with the Holy Spirit,
in your Holy Church,
now and forever,
and throughout all the ages of the ages.
Amen.



6 Likewise, if someone makes an offering of cheese and olives, the bishop shall say,
2"Sanctify this brought-together milk, just as you also bring us together in your love. 3Let this
fruit not leave your sweetness, this olive which is a symbol of your abundance, which you made
to flow from the tree, for life to those who hope in you."
4In every blessing should be said:
To you be glory,
Father and Son
with the Holy Spirit,
in your Holy Church,
now and forever,
and throughout all the ages of the ages.
Amen.

eter
Brown's The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early
Christianity-

hey were determined either to rescue marriage and the family or to abolish them.
One moves from Tertullian, the arch-misogynist, though a happily married man, to
Jerome, his devaluation of marriage and exaltation of virginity, to, finally Augustine,
who is now seennot ashaving treated these problems as side issuesbut to have devoted
the best part of his energies to them.


Jovinian's position has,however, be considered context. He wasnot only say-
to in
ing that marriageand chastitywere conditions of equal worth, but he was actively
urging Christians-especially,accordingto Jerome,youngerwidows-to marry, and
manipulating scripturaltexts in order to make it seemobligatory for them to do so.
To this end, Jovinian cited God's first commandment,which, he argued,had been
reiterated againand againand wasas binding in the New Testamentasin the Old:
"Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth"



ery simply, for Jerome , one cannot acknowledge Christ without, at the same time,
acknowledging chastity. Jesus is the second Adam. He has all the equipment of a male
but chooses not to use it. He chooses not to be male. The passage seems rather boldly
antimasculinist:
What does the Apostle mean by exhorting to continence, if continence be conrtary to
nature? What does our Lord mean when he instructs us in the various kinds of eunuchs?
Surely the Apostle, who bids us to emulate his own chastity, must be asked, if we are to
be consistent, Why are you like other men, Paul? Why are you distinguished from the
female sex by a beard, hair, and other peculiarities of person? How is it that you do not
have swelling bosoms, and are not broad at the hips, narrow at the chest? Your voice is
rugged, your speechrough, your eyebrowsshaggy. To no purpose you have all these manly
qualities, if you forego the embraces of women. I am compelled to say something and
become a fool: but you have forced me to dare to speak. Our Lord and Savior, who,
though He was in the form of God, condescended to take the form of a servant, and
became obedient to the Father, even unto death, yea the death of the cross-what
necessity was there for Him to be born with members which He was not going to use?
He certainly was circumcised to manifest his sex.33

Jerome's first task is to discussthe basic nature of the marriage obligations and how
marriage compares, as a socially sanctioned relationship, with, on the one hand,
unregulated sexual impulse-"fornication"-and, on the other, virginity. What is the
difference between sex in marriage and sexoutside it? Why is the one condoned-if
not blessed-and the other condemned as a mortal sin? What about sex in marriage?
Under what circumstances-undertaken in what spirit-is it licit, under what others
not? What are the mutual obligations of husband and wife? To what extent do they
"owe" one another their respective bodies? How is their "indebtedness" qualified by
other obligations-for example, by prayer? How does the condition of marriage com-
pare with other status conditions?

This is carnal knowledge: it establishes the difference of the sexes. Chastity is not
a snare; concupiscence is. Sex, and sexism, for Jerome, seem to be mutually linked.
Abolish, or overcome, the one and the other is abolished. It seemsa draconian solu-
tion, an extreme measure, but I do not think Jerome's position is so extreme as it
appears. He is, to be sure, against sex in marriage or fot, if you like, the "sexless
marriage," but this is a metaphor as much as a reality, and it should not obscure the
point that Jerome is in favor of a deep, abiding conjugal affection. To assimilate
the husband/wife relationship to the brother/sister one is not, in my opinion, to
devalue marriage. To argue for mutual respect between marriage partners, asJerome
does, is not to devalue marriage

A more general concern appears in the Niclaean Canons and
the so-called Apostolic constitutions which contain statutes against self-made
eunuchs both among the laity and the clergy.

Moreover, the sources indicate that self-castrationwas sometimes adopted
by male ascetics to allay suspicion which might otherwise arise from their
living with female ascetics.

Indeed, the tacit approval with which Justin regards his Alexandrian
youth is exceptionalin the extant Christiansources.The second/third century
apocryphalActs ofJohn presents another young man who, upon converting


to Christianity, "took the sickle and cut off his private parts." When he
ran to John to show what he had done, the apostle displayed little char-
ity toward the man's first act as a Christian:it was rather "the devices of
Satan" that had made him "cut off [his] unruly members as if this were
a virtuous act.


y.After all, if a teacher as revered as Origen
was believed to have castrated himself, or a figure as revered as Melito,
Bishop of Sardis, was referredto as "the eunuch, living wholly in the Holy
Spirit,"30 if such an epithet could appear on a Christian gravestone,3'
or
and self-castrationhad already been a technique of long-standing in non-
Christian devotional circles,32it is not so surprising that many young
Christians,"young men hot with the faith" who "possessa passion for self-
control, though not according to knowledge,"33 thought it admirable to use
a knife or sickle in the service of their zeal.



addition to the testimony of Basil who, as quoted above, was
alarmedby the spread of "many such men" in the Church, Epiphanius
of Salamis observed by 377 that "not a few" monks in Egypt had "dared
to make themselves eunuchs."43 describes one Transjordaniansect, the
He
who
Valesians,
exceptfor a few... when they take someoneas a disciple,
are all castrated
as long as he has not yet been castrated does not partake animalflesh.
he of
But once they have persuaded forcedhim to be castrated, then he par-
or
their own this
takesof anythingwhatsoever.... They not merelydiscipline
way, but oftenimposethe sameon strangers entertained
passingthrough, by
them as guests.



The third and fourth-centuryphenomenon of the virgines the
subintroductae,
spiritual female friends and students of certain male ascetics and clerics,
seems to have been a survival from such communities of travelers (and
didaskaleia) an earlier period. Eusebius records a letter describing the
of
actions of a council at Antioch (268) brought against Paul of Samosata
who, besides teaching objectionable doctrine, was known to keep such
women in his household; his presbyters and deacons allegedly kept such
company as well.56Cyprian addressed a similar situation at Carthage, ca.
250


The Practice and Prohibition of Self-Castration in Early Christianity
Author(s): Daniel F. Caner
Source: Vigiliae Christianae, Vol. 51, No. 4 (Nov., 1997), pp. 396-415
Published by: BRILL

three texts:

Lev 26, Jeremiah 2:36-37, Exo. 32:4


six questions:

1. when were each written
2. what tradition do each have in common
   
3. what are they prohibiting
4. what do they say about the people of israel as a collective
   
5. the use of gendered language in the above, why is this different
   
6. the rhetorical use of the prophetic voice, the use of prophetic grammar.
   

Less pub than brothel, and you, the regulars
The ninth pillar from Castor and Pollux
Do you think you are the only ones equipped with a penis,
That you are the only ones licensed for fucking
And that the rest who do it are merely goats?
Do you think, as you sit waiting in rows
A hundred or two hundred together, that I shall not dare
To do the whole lot of you, two hundred together?
Think again: I will draw scorpions
All over the walls of the place.
For my girl, who has escaped from my arms,
Who was loved as much, and more than any is loved,
For whom I have expended all my forces,
She is there. You, the great and the good, all love her,
You the valueless, corrupt, adulterous all lover her;
You above all Egnatius
Long-haired son of a rabbit-toothed Celtiberian,
Only made good by your beard
Your teeth whitened by Spanish piss.

-Catullus (via Harold Pinter and translated by C.H. Sisson)

Comfort, comfort ye my people; speak ye peace: thus says your God. Comfort those who sit in darkness bowed beneath oppression’s load; speak ye to Jerusalem of the peace that waits for them tell her that her sins I cover, and her warfare no is over. Make ye straight what logn was crooked; make the rougher places plain. Let your heart be true and humble as befit Messiah’s reign. For the glory of the Lord now o’er earth is she abroad, and all flesh shall see the token that God’s Word is never broken. – Book of Common Praise, 100:1-3.

kos releases the sql code for the sequia voting systems.


Robert Lee is the hardest mobile home salesman in the world.

the sexiest goat in the world.


Collection of David Wojnarowicz Prints

paul higgis resigns from scientology in a spectacular fashion.

a russian historian who has been researching arctic gulags and germans in the 2nd world war has been arrested on trumped up charges last week. Russian security services has also confiscated his entire personal archives.

i have no idea why but there was also a range of explotation cannibal films in italy in the 70s and 80s.

cutest tarot ever


Lyke Wake Dirge, PEntagle.

Ameila Hill a novelist and critic, talks about the misogyny in crime novels.

From Untitled Album

Update of Phyisque Pictorial Aesthetic, Photo Unknown.

when the lights went out: britian in the 70s Bennett.

wired has been doing some really impt fairly traditional reportage of late, this article about vaccines is among them, and i would award it the pu litizer.


Burke and Hare, some Hammer cheese from the 70s.

a useful chart of john irvings recurring themes.

some asshole in columbus, ohio is sharpying all of the nasty words out of library books.

schwarzenegger uses an obsecene acrostic to tell the california house how he really feels.

women, sexual violence and PTSD in american combat situtaitons.

From Untitled Album

O Keefe as shot by Steiglietz.

more info on the really weird raids that shut down one of the largest halal butchers in michigan, and the sect that ran it. No real information yet but some more details.

North CArolina's supreme court cannot tell the difference b/w fantasy and reality when it comes to rape victims and rape sheiled laws.


John Cale covers LCD Soundsytem.

nyt obit on Claude Levi STrauss who died last week.

From Untitled Album

Schiaprelli Gloves, 1938, leather and lame.


the only female beefeater has been the victim of systematic harrassment due to her gender, hoping to make her quit

Justin Bourne writes in USA today about homophobia and hockey.

From Untitled Album

via regretsy.

photo essay on the marijuna harvest in medincino.

absoutely fucking gorgeous posters for the internaitonal year of astronomy.


Joni Mitchell, My Old Man, 1970 (for Maine)

sweden ordains a lesbian bishop.

Roberta Smith on Roni Horn.

praying with someone i think is so intimate, and i have been called to pray of late, and not sure quite how to do it. what it means to pray, what it means to speak to a god that might not be there, or a god you construct as a miasma of free floating signifiers. asking yhwh to intergrate yrself makes me lose all sorts of post modern points, but i need it, and so i get on my knees for the first time since child hood, and we hold hands, and he prays over me, and i pray for myself, and thanksgiving, grace, desire, joy, hope, and also a violation, a backsliding of all the hard work of instability and destabilizing i have done.

Townes Van Zandt Lungs.

Primordial landscapes, incorruptible bodies. New York: Peter Lang 2008.Immortal bodies, Before Christ. Bodily continuity in ancient Greece and 1 Corinthians». Journal for the Study of the New Testament 30, 2008: 417-36.
Greek Resurrection Beliefs and the Success of Christianity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2009.
Dag Øistein Endsjø

http://cbi.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/7/2/179
http://books.google.ca/books?id=wfNBQP2UaMEC&pg=PA748&lpg=PA748&dq=paul+hellenic+sexual+ethics+first+corinthians&source=bl&ots=sUeGpx1re7&sig=wDgv9UoBboOQ0zTfHDYDOqT17-g&hl=en&ei=y0f3Svr1EI_sMfP28egF&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CA4Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=paul%20hellenic%20sexual%20ethics%20first%20corinthians&f=false
http://books.google.ca/books?id=sclZnr2SUIgC&pg=PA87&lpg=PA87&dq=paul+hellenic+sexual+ethics+first+corinthians&source=bl&ots=wZOXnhSicw&sig=QeqwrJGKUq5rlnJ9Iy27W_gk6fA&hl=en&ei=y0f3Svr1EI_sMfP28egF&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CBkQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=&f=false
St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent

http://www.theandros.com/bantekastemp.html

Yesterday I was in Te Papa, New Zealand's national museum. On Level 3 there is a display which includes an exhibit about kakapo conservation.

There is a marvellous artifact there, which appears to be a roughly head-shaped globe made of ridged, soft plastic. The accompanying notes tell us that people had noticed the propensity for certain birds to try and mate with conservation workers' heads, and had designed a special piece of headgear to try and capture kakapo sperm for artificial insemination.

Sadly, it turns out that the item in question was a complete failure.

But anyway, there is a neat label telling you what the thing is called. My 14 year old daughter called out with some excitement: "Dad! It's an ejaculation helmet!"

mefi qoute

Desolate, outside of London, From the Train

Desolate, outside of London, From the Train
Originally uploaded by PinkMoose

long and productive lecture from hal foster about dada today. two take aways:

1. ball went back to the church, duchamp moved away from the old provactions, picaba retreated back to kitsch, schwitters and arp went back to an abstracted naturalism, hoch painted pretty flowers, heartfield went back to east berlin and did communist theatre, grosz went to the states and painted landscapes and conventional nudes, tzara became a stalinist, ernst moved to beverly hills, dix became a nazi and moved onto painting religious allegories
   
2. "you take on the dissonce of yr age until self disintegrates"
   

23. For if there be as many contrary natures as there are conflicting wills, there will not now be two natures only, but many. If any one deliberate whether he should go to their conventicle, or to the theatre, those men at once cry out, Behold, here are two natures—one good, drawing this way, another bad, drawing back that way; for whence else is this indecision between conflicting wills? But I reply that both are bad— that which draws to them, and that which draws back to the theatre. But they believe not that will to be other than good which draws to them. Supposing, then, one of us should deliberate, and through the conflict of his two wills should waver whether he should go to the theatre or to our church, would not these also waver what to answer? For either they must confess, which they are not willing to do, that the will which leads to our church is good, as well as that of those who have received and are held by the mysteries of theirs, or they must imagine that there are two evil natures and two evil minds in one man, at war one with the other; and that will not be true which they say, that there is one good and another bad; or they must be converted to the truth, and no longer deny that where any one deliberates, there is one soul fluctuating between conflicting wills.

8.10.23

8. Behold with what companions I walked the streets of Babylon, in whose filth I was rolled, as if in cinnamon and precious ointments. And that I might cleave the more tenaciously to its very centre, my invisible enemy trod me down, and seduced me, I being easily seduced. Nor did the mother of my flesh, although she herself had ere this fled out of the midst of Babylon, Jeremiah 51:6 — progressing, however, but slowly in the skirts of it—in counselling me to chastity, so bear in mind what she had been told about me by her husband as to restrain in the limits of conjugal affection (if it could not be cut away to the quick) what she knew to be destructive in the present and dangerous in the future. But she took no heed of this, for she was afraid lest a wife should prove a hindrance and a clog to my hopes. Not those hopes of the future world, which my mother had in You; but the hope of learning, which both my parents were too anxious that I should acquire—he, because he had little or no thought of You, and but vain thoughts for me— she, because she calculated that those usual courses of learning would not only be nodrawback, but rather a furtherance towards my attaining You. For thus I conjecture, recalling as well as I can the dispositions of my parents. The reins, meantime, were slackened towards me beyond the restraint of due severity, that I might play, yea, even to dissoluteness, in whatsoever I fancied. And in all there was a mist, shutting out from my sight the brightness of Your truth, O my God; and my iniquity displayed itself as from very fatness.

2.3.8

21. For what can be more wretched than the wretch who pities not himself shedding tears over the death of Dido for love of Æneas, but shedding no tears over his own death in not loving You, O God, light of my heart, and bread of the inner mouth of my soul, and the power that weddest my mind with my innermost thoughts? I did not love You, and committed fornication against You; and those around me thus sinning cried, Well done! Well done! For the friendship of this world is fornication against You; James 4:4 and Well done! Well done! is cried until one feels ashamed not to be such a man. And for this I shed no tears, though I wept for Dido, who sought death at the sword's point, myself the while seeking the lowest of Your creatures— having forsaken You— earth tending to the earth; and if forbidden to read these things, how grieved would I feel that I was not permitted to read what grieved me. This sort of madness is considered a more honourable and more fruitful learning than that by which I learned to read and write.

Augustine, Confessions, 1:21

Geoff

it's not supposed to - no self is purely autonomous, no voice purely its own creation

2:31amAnthony

yeah

i would like them to take a deli number

2:31amGeof

exactly - being able to put them in a queue - your neurosis is important to us and we endeavour to respond in the quickest amount of time possible. in the mean time, please feel free to peruse our selection of highly eroticised incidents from our past

i like being around a table with film geeks and philsophers, and horror nerds, metalheads

rhetoricans

english freaks

19th century american obsessives

and saying what are you doing,

having all of this clusterfuck of multidiscipniary otherness