Poor, defenseless marriage

When I was younger I'd hear news stories about "budget deficits" and how "the United States has a ten gazillion dollar debt" and and I'd think to myself, "isn't the government in charge of the U.S. Mint? Why don't they just print some more money and pay off the debt. Problem solved."

I had visions of my idea saving the American economy from slipping into an unrecoverable abyss. I had visions of being flown to Stockholm to receive my Nobel Prize. "It was all so simple. We adults were just overthinking it," the King of Sweden would decree in my commendation.

I soon came to understand the reason why this was not the solution. Just printing more money would weaken the value of the dollars that were already in circulation.

The same can be said about marriage licenses. There's all kinds of people out there who want more of them. So why don't we just let 'em have 'em - just print a bunch more and then the marriage deficit will go away. Now hold on! The same economic principle is obviously at work here. If we just print more of them then the value of those that are already in circulation will dissipate and those people who are married will become matrimonially insolvent. We can't have that!

Good thing North Carolina has Sen. James Forrester, Defender of Marriage, serving faithfully in its General Assembly. You see, Sen. James Forrester, Defender of Marriage, heard about all that excitement going on over there in California over this whole "Prop 8" business and he thought, "Sweet succotash, we need to get us some of that drama right here, and fast! Mercy heavens me!" And so late one night, while sitting at home in his high back Queen Anne chair smoking a fag, Sen. Forrester, Defender of Marriage, began to pen what would soon become "Senate Bill 272 - Defense of Marriage."

Nevermind the fact that the state of North Carolina is mired in one of its worst financial crises in decades and desperately needs all hands on deck in order to deal with budget shortfalls and job insecurity and such. There's marriages being threatened here! So, good thing that Stanley, North Carolina's own Sen. Forrester, Defender of Marriage, is dedicating plenty of precious time and taxpayer money to the legislative fight that will likely ensue over S.B. 272. Nevermind, also, that marriage is clearly a human right and that bigoted laws such as Prop 8 and its ambitious lil' brother S.B. 272 will eventually be found unconstitutional by the courts. S.B. 272 is just such a great investment for our future. Hopefully our marriage portfolios will rebound sharply in response to this wonderful news.

kitsch and kvlt

As I was driving yesterday, I was listening to our local oldies/adult contemporary station and was transfixed by a song I hadn't heard before called "Year of the Cat" by Al Stewart. I don't know what it is about the song that hooked me, but I can't stop watching the YouTube video:



And then they played You're So Vain, so they were totally two for two. My music taste is generally pretty predictable "sad bastard" music, so while doing a little recon on a local favorite John Darnielle/The Mountains Goats (brilliant SB music) blog lastplanetojakarta, I noticed a side project from Gaahl of Gogoroth fame, who I've had an interest in since I saw the Vice documentary. I kind of love it too.

Where do we go when we die?

While I tend to favor the lyrics from Sentimental Man by Dismemberment Plan:

There is no heaven and there is no hell
No limbo in-between -- I think it's all a lie
Just a white light out to velvet black
and back to neutral gray -- that's all when we die

I do sometimes wonder "Is that really all there is?" and "What would heaven look like?". Well, one of my favorite sites, raptureready.com, home of the Rapture Index, an up-t0-date list that rates how close we are to the Apocalypse, can not only answer that question, but can tell me EXACTLY what my heavenly home would look like here. I adore the "Widow's Mite" and the "God-Fearing" mansions, but I'm wondering if they might require a little too much work on my part. Maybe Jesus could custom-make me a nice Craftsman bungalow like they have in Old North Durham? He could call it the "Bleeding Heart Liberal" model. I understand that I probably won't get the square footage of the "Average Christian", but I'm okay with that, as long as the windows are original. [If you're reading this JC, something like the one below would be great]


If you don't already know about the Rapture, here's a little instructional video to help you out:




Or I guess you could just ask me; I'm kind of an expert after reading through Book 6 (Assassins) of the Left Behind Series....

From the bookshelves....part 1

Here are two images from the book Life Beyond Earth by Timothy Ferris. The top is an engraving from "Monthly Discussions of All Sorts of Books, by Several Friends, " from 1697. The bottom is from 1687 from "Comical History of the States and Empires of the Worlds of the Moon and the Sun" by Cyrano de Bergerac.
In a similar vein, here are two cosmological diagrams from the 1500's. These come from The Cosmographical Glass: Renaissance Diagrams of the Universe, purchased at the incredible Museum of Jurassic Technology in LA. Also included is an illustration of one of Kepler's geometric conceptualizations.