Great Light Saber Sequence

Bigotry Isn't a Moral Virtue

Wayne Besen's article this week denounces those who want political correctness erased from speech and be allowed to say whatever they want about whoever they want. More specifically he's aiming his ire against religious leaders and few Republicans. Besen explains,

It seems that a decade of conservative rule has eroded basic rules of civility. What used to be called mutual respect is now derisively dismissed as “political correctness.” Social conservatives now feel unrestrained and increasingly believe they are entitled to say whatever they want, no matter how obnoxious, hurtful or offensive.

While many of us know outstandingly moral and kind Republicans, there are some who see their bigotry as a moral strength. Just read about the NARTH spokespersons who think we did the slaves a favor "rescuing them from Africa" or about a Georgia minister who sounds more like Fred Phelps.

To read Besen's article, go here.

Banned Books

Yahoo news has a report of the Top 25 most challenged books of the last decade. By challenged, these books contain themes, ideas, and words that result in either books being pulled from local library shelves or books that are forbidden to be read in the classrooms.

Banning books is a tricky thing. Sure, we want to protect folks from ideas that harm and yet, there is also a good justification for reading those ideas so that we can know what we're either for or against. And, it's also a great non-confrontational way to hear opinions that are different fromwhat we already hold. This way we can weight the necessary ideas and find ourselves grappling or rejecting beliefs that challenge us. And, we might just find ourselves learning in the process.

Here are the Top 25 challenged books:

1. "Harry Potter" (Series) (J.K. Rowling)
2. "To Kill a Mockingbird" (Harper Lee)
3. "The Color Purple" (Alice Walker)
4. "The Outsiders" (S.E. Hinton)
5. "Lord of the Flies" (William Golding)
6. "Of Mice and Men" (John Steinbeck)
7. "Goosebumps" (Series) (R.L. Stine)
8. "How to Eat Fried Worms" (Thomas Rockwell)
9. "The Catcher in the Rye" (J.D. Salinger)
10. "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (Mark Twain)
11. "The Giver" (Lois Lowry)
12. "Brave New World" (Aldous Huxley)
13. "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" (Mark Twain)
14. "Captain Underpants" (Dav Pilkey)
15. "The Anarchist Cookbook" (William Powell)
16. "Carrie" (Stephen King)
17. "Flowers for Algernon" (Daniel Keyes)
18. "The Dead Zone" (Stephen King)
19. "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" (Maya Angelou)
20. "Go Ask Alice" (anonymous)
21. "American Psycho" (Bret Easton Ellis)
22. "The Chocolate War" (Robert Cormier)
23. "James and the Giant Peach" (Roald Dahl)
24. "The Pigman" (Paul Zindel)
25. "A Wrinkle in Time" (Madeleine L'Engle)

You can read the Top 100 challenged books here.

Logo Online

Logo, the national LGBT television network is hosting another 'best of' series. The last one focused on the 100 best LGBT movies and it was wildly popular. This time, they are showing the best LGBT movie shorts. These shorts are movies that are approx 15-20 minutes in length and are being voted on by the viewers. Once the results are tallied, Logo will present the finalists on their station. You can watch these movie shorts at www.logoonline.com.

While there are some great movies to watch, this one is my favorite so far. Go here to view Fairies. And then select Watch It!

Weird Al Song

Okay, sure, Weird Al is just that.. kinda weird, but does remind me of all those skits I did when I was in my church youth group as a kid; only his stuff is better and funnier.

He has a new song, "Don't Download this Song" that is funny while addressing the issue of downloading pirated music. It's good music too.

Fantastic Dominos!

Bingo Night

I tell you, I had a great birthday. First, I woke up and I wasn't dead. Turning 41 can be a scary thing but alas, I was feeling as good as the night before I went to sleep.

On Tuesday, my birthday, I practically did what my mom always did on my birthday. Normally during my school days, mom let me stay home from school. When I was even younger, she and I would often go to the zoo or do something fun together. This past Tuesday, I relived my youth and stayed in bed until about 10:00am. And for the rest of the morning and early afternoon, I watched tv and basically did nothing until the guilt finally set in.

Once my guilt set in, I went and visited a church member undergoing physical therapy and stopped in at the office for a few hours. But checking my clock, I didn't stay long. I had to get to my bowling league. My teammates and I have named ourselves the 'Pin Flamingos'. We were going to call ourselves the Pink Flamingos but decided Pin Flamingos sounded more funny and tied in with our bowling.

After bowling some decent scores, I left and made it to my usual Bingo game hosted by the Fabulous Big Blanche. Bingo is only every other week, so I have to wait two weeks in between games. The last time I played I won a DVD player (I think I blogged about that already). On Tuesday, I won this ice cooler! Is that hilarious or what? Everyone just groaned when I hollered out the loudest Bingo! you've ever heard. I tell you, sometimes I can be such a dork. A good natured dork, but a dork nonetheless.

Here is my new bowling ball

Tuesday night I bowled with my new bowling ball. I am now an official New Joisey redneck on a bowling league. Sure, it's a gay bowling league; however, much as we might look redneck, we are all truly fabulous at heart.

Fancy Smancy Birthday Present

My eldest brother bought and sent to me this incredible new 19" LCD monitor for my birthday. The specs are: Acer AL1906AB / 19" / 8ms / 500:1 / SXGA 1280 x 1024 / Black / LCD Monitor. It only cost $159 after rebate and let me tell you, it is soooooooooooooo nice! And big! You just gotta love TigerDirect.com, right? Go here for the monitor if you're interested in it.

Daaaaaaaaaang!

Blogger's been down for ages! And, I haven't been able to upload any pics or videos since their last update. It is for this reason, that I a) put that funny but tasteless joke up (or so says mom) and b) that I haven't posted anything of significance of late. That'll all change now that everything on blogspot is up and running.

The Tree Hugger

While walking through the Boulder Colorado woods a man came upon another man hugging a tree with his ear firmly against the tree.

Seeing this he inquired, "Just out of curiosity, what the heck are you doing?"

"I'm listening to the music of the tree," the other man replied.

"You gotta be kiddin' me."

"No, would you like to give it a try?"

Understandably curious, the man says, "Well, OK..." So he wrapped his arms around the tree and pressed his ear up against it.

With this the other guy, slapped a pair of handcuffs on him, took his wallet, jewelry, car keys, then stripped him naked and left.

Two hours later another nature lover strolled by, saw this guy handcuffed to the tree stark naked, and asked, "What the hell happened to you?"

He told the guy the whole terrible story about how he got there.

When he finished telling his story, the other guy shook his head in sympathy, walked around behind him, kissed him gently behind the ear and said, "Man, this just ain't gonna be your day, cupcake..."

Happy Birthday to Me

Okay, sure, it's a bit self-congratulatory, but hey, I am 41 years old. After 40, I figure I now have an excuse to do so.

An Interesting Study in NYC

An article appeared in the journal of The Annals of Internal Medicine (no jokes please) that relayed an interesting finding. The article said,

A study published in the [The Annals of Internal Medicine] found that a survey of 4,193 men conducted by the New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene found that 10% of the men who identified themselves as heterosexual, 69 percent of them who reported having had sex with other men were married. (You'll need to scroll down toward the middle of the report under the heading, Results, Male Survery Participants. Or, you can go here to read Yahoo's news summary of the article.)

Many admitted they had not used a condom and had not been tested for HIV.

"Doctors need to ask patients about specific sexual practices instead of relying on self-reported sexual orientation to assess risk for unsafe sexual practices and risk for sexually transmitted diseases," said Preeti Pathela, who led the study.

"Public health prevention messages should target risky sexual activities, such as unprotected receptive anal sex, and should not be framed to appeal solely to gay-identified men."

(The bolding and italics are mine, which I added for emphasis.)

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Now, I don't know why these particular men were interviewed by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in the first place or the particular sampling method used, but the findings are more than interesting.

To suggest that such a high number of married men (10%) have had gay sex within the past year with at least one partner is rather shocking, right? I mean, had the number been closer to 2% we could strug our heads and say, "Eh, people do as people do, you can't expect anyone to figure in that small percentage into the equation of HIV transmission, education, or public service announcements." But when the figure is almost 10%, is says, "Heyyy!!! Is anyone paying attention here?! This is important!"

Sure, those living in New York City are living in a city with perhaps the most lax sexual mores and those living in NYC are not like the typical American city- but it makes me wonder how men in other towns, smaller cities, or in the country would report. I remember a friend of mine who lived in Oklahoma. I asked him how many men in his small town (of Davis, OK) did he think were gay. He said I was asking the wrong question. He said, "Are you asking how many men have sex with men, regardless of whether they are married or not?" I said, "Eh, sure." He said at least 50% of the guys he knew, whether married or not, have had sex with other men.

We need to get past the mindset that says, 'If we don't talk about it, people aren't doing it." Or, to realize the addage that if we DO talk about it, more people will do it. Heck, more people already ARE doing it and we need to keep this little tidbit in mind when we think of public policy, AIDS awareness, and societal expectations.

Woo-hoo! The Painters Are Done!

Finally! The painting inside and outside of the parsonage is complete. The painters came today and finished the bathrooms, painting the window sills on the back porch and the front pillars on my front porch. While it only took them two days to paint, the time from when they first began to the time when they came back to finish the job was excruciatingly long. But now, it's all done!

Now, there are only two things left to be done for the update to the parsonage to be complete:
1. A shower door for my downstairs bathroom
2. New wall-to-wall carpeting. The carpeting is at least 25 years old (from what I am told) and upstairs there is actually shag carpeting that must be a whole heck of a lot older than 25 years.

Anyways, my place is looking so nice. I am so thrilled at the generosity of the church to help make the parsonage look so nice.

Very Funny Ads

Last night while watching TBS's presentation of Kill Bill, Vol. 1, there was an advertisement for a website called, www.veryfunnyads.com. This site hosts the worlds funniest commercial ads. And, without any tired commentary (like in shows such as America's Funny Home Videos), it has a lot of commericials as they are, including this one.

The Dutch are the World's Tallest People

According to a news report, the Dutch are the tallest people in the world. And as it is, I happen to be Dutch too, so that explains a whole heck of a lot. I have been meaning to go to Amsterdam and just walked around among giants. I have a couple of friends from there and they all say that not only would I love it there, I'd be among fellow tall people.

While I do enjoy my height, it has some disadvantages. Since I am not extremely outgoing, I tend to enjoy just 'blending in the crowd,' which is something I can't do unless I am sitting down. So, when I go out, I tend to sit down a lot. But if I were to go to Amsterdam, I could stand up all the time. (smile) Yeah, my next overseas travel expedition will be to Amsterdam.

Political or Religious Post?

Okay, so my first venture into writing a blog post of some measure of rant, contains something to do with Bush and something to do with religion and a lot of how we interpret religion in light of politics. Was that a post for this blog or the church blog? I am having my doubts already. Hmm...

Coffee Maker Extraordinare

Just when you thought you didn't have enough gadgets and needs one thing more, along comes a coffee maker that gives you the weather report as your pouring either your first cup of coffee for the day. And, it'll grind your beans before you brew them. That's a nice feature too. You can read more about the coffee maker here and here.

Wouldn't THIS be cool?!

It is a treehouse called the Scallywag Sloop Treehouse and it can be yours (or your kid's) for only $20,000. You can read the story here and it'll provide links to the company that makes this treehouse as well as others (most of them start around $8000).



Man I tell you, this would be fantastic if it were bigger and made for a guy 6ft 9in tall. I'd totally move out there.

another blog..

As it happens, the church where I serve has agreed to allow me to put up a blog on the church's website hosted by blogspot (nothing says "Let's do it!" like something that also says 'free!'

So I will be experimenting with what it'll be like, what I'll say, and throw a rant or two in there for good measure. As for this blog, I'll keep it and continue to post my thoughts and opinions- there will only be less specifically religious or spiritual things here. I'll save my political rants for here.

If you'd like to check out my new church blog, go here: http://cresskillucc.blogspot.com