Random Thoughts

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Two words you never want to hear together: creative cruelty.

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I once read that Jews have a Yiddish term that means "a shame to the goyim" to describe Jews who disgrace themselves publically in such a way that it could make all Jews look bad. It's long past time Christians had such a term for those who make us look bad to non-Christians.

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Although I like patriotism, I've sometimes found myself sitting at redlights, staring at the automobile ahead of me and wondering what good those magnetic Support Our Troops ribbons do for anyone other than magnetic ribbon manufacturers. And I think I've figured it out. The War on Terror (more accurately, the War on Islamofascism) is as much a war of ideas as of bullets, and "American fighting men deserve our support" is an idea--not the largest idea in the war, but an idea nevertheless. Good on those people who propagate that idea for everyone to see.

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Can't we as a nation agree that we've heard far too many jokes about prostate exams and encourage comedy writers to move on?

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Why did we need a law against taking a minor across state lines for an abortion without parental permission? I thought it was illegal to take a minor across state lines without parental permission for ANY reason.

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One result of making the morning-after pill available OTC that no one mentions is that stores would have a new high-theft item to worry about; people (teenagers, presumably) already steal condoms surprisingly frequently. But I guess theft is low on the list of potential problems.

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I saw a teenaged boy at mass wearing brown corduroy slippers. Maybe he thought if girls can get away with wearing pajama pants all over town, there's no reason he shouldn't wear bedroom slippers in public.

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There's something mildly odd about turning over an "I <3 America" product and seeing a "Made in China" sticker. We can't even make our own patriotica?

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Being "heteronormative" is like being right-handed normative, only even more so, as there's a lot more left-handed people than there are homosexual people. I see protest potential--lefties, start those protests at the scissor companies and the letter-writing campaigns against people who use "right hand man" as a compliment. Oh, and against all churches that use the Apostles or Nicene creed.

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The Three Investigators (children's series book characters) had the perfect (late) childhood setup. But the series was also very much a boy's fantasy. Does that mean the perfect childhood is a boy's childhood?

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Brenda Ueland (or was it Natalie Goldberg?) said writers expect more from the most peewee of efforts than any other artists-craftsmen. I think sometimes we religious folk are like that--we expect a continuous supply of enormous blessings when we're barely willing to give God a few minutes at the end of the day.

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Re Jonah Goldberg's "Welfare Kings" article: As disgusting as our current state of farm subsidies may be and as nice as it might be to give Third World a chance to prosper (see sixth paragraph), I can't help but think it would be unwise to leave much of our food production to others.

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I know it's good to pray for peace and all, but given that war is one of the things there is a season for (Ecclesiastes 3), sometimes it makes more sense to me to pray for the strength to do what needs to be done.

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At the bookstore I saw a boy of about eight dressed in a shirt at least two sizes too big, denim shorts with the crotch hanging down to his mid-thigh, and large athletic shoes--and I couldn't tell if he was dressed that way because his parents were poor and a bit neglectful or if they'd voluntarily paid good money to have him dressed like an urchin.