Nov 25 2023
Jesus loves you … but
Nov 21 2023
“If you can’t trust me with a choice …”
“If you can’t trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child?”
brilliant bumper sticker from The Onion
Nov 15 2023
Another Tim Dorsey novel …
Coconut Cowboy – as always, several good bits …
about a meeting of an anarchist group (p205-6):
“What would the official minutes look like? … ‘Meeting not called to order …’ ‘Minutes from previous meeting shredded …’ ‘Agenda rejected’ …’ ‘All officers impeached’ ‘Group disbanded’ …”
about obsessive compulsive disorder (p206):
“I prefer the term ‘focus-intensity gifted’
Nov 10 2023
Great stuff from Stoltenberg
…[T] male-dominated gay liberation movement never really grasped how homophobia is rooted in the woman hating that is a fixture of male supremacy. Quite simply, the male homosexual is stigmatized because he is perceived to participate in the degraded status of the female …
…
The system of male supremacy requires gender polarity—with real men as different from real women as they can be …
…
The threat of homophobic insult or attack not only keeps men aimed at women as their appropriate sexual prey; it also keeps men ‘real men’.
…
The political reality of the gender hierarchy in male supremacy requires that we make it resonate through our nerves, flesh, and vascular system just as often as we can. We are supposed to respond orgasmically to power and powerlessness, to violence and violatedness; our sexuality is supposed to be inhabited by a reverence for supremacy, for unjust power over and against other human life. We are not supposed to experience any other erotic possibility; we are not supposed to glimpse eroticized justice. … [Y]ou come to the point where you have to impose hierarchy on ever sex act you attempt—otherwise it doesn’t feel like sex.
from “You Can’t Fight Homophobia and Protect the Pornographers at the Same Time—An Analysis of What Went Wrong in Hardwick,” John Stoltenberg.
Oct 30 2023
Among the things that don’t count …
Oct 24 2023
What if all news were written this way?
Oct 21 2023
Shriver on healthcare costs
from “In Defense of Death,” in Abominations, Lionel Shriver
“In the United Kingdom, 40 percent of the government’s budget goes to the National Health Service …” (p222)
“Alas, for many patients, we don’t extend life but drag out death …” (p225)
Among the recommendations attributed to Daniel Callahan (Taming the Beloved Beast) …
“Return to a medical model that treats injury and disease, not dissatisfaction—thus relegating redress of infertility, erectile dysfunction, and gender reassignment, for example, to elective procedures that the disgruntled are obliged to finance on their own dime.” (p225-6)
“,,, half of the American population … consumers a mere 3 percent of the [healthcare] costs. (Five percent of the population consumes 50 percent of the costs; the top 1 percent consumers 22 percent of the costs.)” (p231)
Oct 20 2023




















