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Dec. 17th, 2000 01:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
verbminxFirst things first - to join the "feministas" community, go here: http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=feministas
There's more info there. I'll spend some time tomorrow or Monday learning to actually run the thing.
Tonight I pledged my firstborn child to get a pack of 48 Prismacolor pencils. Also picked up a few things I will need for school next semester, like bristol board and semigloss gel medium and a cute little wooden mannikin to use as a model for gesture drawings (why? because as was demonstrated earlier this semester, before I had to drop out of the class because of everything that was going on in my life, I am an absolutely hopelessly sad figure-drawer, and need all the help I can get). Dinner and Kinkos thereafter. Tiramisu is my bitch.
All I really did all day was watch Keeping the Faith, a movie I liked in the theater & also liked on TV. It's weird. The movie made me think, which is unusual for a romantic comedy.
I have a lot of issues with religion. I'm softer on most religions than I am on Protestant Xian sects. Christians wonder why it's considered perfectly OK to mock them even in the PC mainstream, and the obvious answer is that they are seen as judgmental & the mockery is seen as giving back what has already been dished out (I'm not saying this is OK or not OK, just that I think it's the reason it happens). I don't have a particular aversion to Christians myself - I just have an aversion to preaching & selfrighteousness (thus, politically-minded vegans who call me a Nazi for eating chicken aren't any safer from my acid tongue than rabid pro-lifers; nor are smugly anti-xian Wiccans). Of course not all Xians/vegans/Wiccans are like that. I've also met strident lefty activists who I wanted to introduce to my left hook - stridence isn't going to make the world any better or change anything, regardless of the nobility of the cause to which it's devoted. It's the best way to alienate people from a good cause.
I've avoided religion as though it were an unholy plague (heh!) for years primarily because many, many religious people rub me the wrong way & many abuses of power are perpetuated with religion as an excuse. However, I wouldn't make a very good atheist, or even a credible agnostic. I'm already a lapsed Christian (well, I was raised with Christianity crammed in my mouth and down my throat like a fucking ball gag, but I was never really successfully indoctrinated, and I can't remember a time when I bought into it 100% - I can't remember a time when in some way I didn't think that some party was being oppressed, even if that's not the way I would have phrased it at the time, I think I internally rebelled pretty much as soon as I was capable of cognitive thought). But still, despite everything, one of my kneejerk responses to stress or fear is for my little inner voice to start praying: "Oh god please..." or "Father I thank you please don't let me get into an accident in this traffic" or etc. Asking for little favors that I try to deserve by being nice rather than by paying lip service to doctrine.
In the past year or so, I've been looking into Buddhism (at least as a philosophy), which gels well with my personal beliefs & what I feel the core ethics of bothering to have a religion should be. I tell people that I wear a small Catholic medal on a chain because I like the look of it and because the idea of priests running to my bedside in the event of my imminent demise flatters my bloated sense of importance, but it's really because I don't have a proper chain for my excruciatingly heavy Kwan Yin charm.
So I enjoy movies like Keeping the Faith, which doesn't pretend to have answers, and I enjoyed Dogma, too, for deflating some of the puffery that surrounds Christianity, for having a heart and having balls. I want to believe in a God who would do handstands and cartwheels, if only we will let hir. I know most of what I believe, but not what to embrace. I worry about the judgment of relatives and friends. I don't like being this exposed on this issue, so I don't usually talk to anyone about it; it's another kneejerk response from childhood, when my mom would pick my brain to see how good a xian I was(n't, as it turned out). Tired of the thought police, I turned in on myself, and I haven't yet been able to turn out again.
There's more info there. I'll spend some time tomorrow or Monday learning to actually run the thing.
Tonight I pledged my firstborn child to get a pack of 48 Prismacolor pencils. Also picked up a few things I will need for school next semester, like bristol board and semigloss gel medium and a cute little wooden mannikin to use as a model for gesture drawings (why? because as was demonstrated earlier this semester, before I had to drop out of the class because of everything that was going on in my life, I am an absolutely hopelessly sad figure-drawer, and need all the help I can get). Dinner and Kinkos thereafter. Tiramisu is my bitch.
All I really did all day was watch Keeping the Faith, a movie I liked in the theater & also liked on TV. It's weird. The movie made me think, which is unusual for a romantic comedy.
I have a lot of issues with religion. I'm softer on most religions than I am on Protestant Xian sects. Christians wonder why it's considered perfectly OK to mock them even in the PC mainstream, and the obvious answer is that they are seen as judgmental & the mockery is seen as giving back what has already been dished out (I'm not saying this is OK or not OK, just that I think it's the reason it happens). I don't have a particular aversion to Christians myself - I just have an aversion to preaching & selfrighteousness (thus, politically-minded vegans who call me a Nazi for eating chicken aren't any safer from my acid tongue than rabid pro-lifers; nor are smugly anti-xian Wiccans). Of course not all Xians/vegans/Wiccans are like that. I've also met strident lefty activists who I wanted to introduce to my left hook - stridence isn't going to make the world any better or change anything, regardless of the nobility of the cause to which it's devoted. It's the best way to alienate people from a good cause.
I've avoided religion as though it were an unholy plague (heh!) for years primarily because many, many religious people rub me the wrong way & many abuses of power are perpetuated with religion as an excuse. However, I wouldn't make a very good atheist, or even a credible agnostic. I'm already a lapsed Christian (well, I was raised with Christianity crammed in my mouth and down my throat like a fucking ball gag, but I was never really successfully indoctrinated, and I can't remember a time when I bought into it 100% - I can't remember a time when in some way I didn't think that some party was being oppressed, even if that's not the way I would have phrased it at the time, I think I internally rebelled pretty much as soon as I was capable of cognitive thought). But still, despite everything, one of my kneejerk responses to stress or fear is for my little inner voice to start praying: "Oh god please..." or "Father I thank you please don't let me get into an accident in this traffic" or etc. Asking for little favors that I try to deserve by being nice rather than by paying lip service to doctrine.
In the past year or so, I've been looking into Buddhism (at least as a philosophy), which gels well with my personal beliefs & what I feel the core ethics of bothering to have a religion should be. I tell people that I wear a small Catholic medal on a chain because I like the look of it and because the idea of priests running to my bedside in the event of my imminent demise flatters my bloated sense of importance, but it's really because I don't have a proper chain for my excruciatingly heavy Kwan Yin charm.
So I enjoy movies like Keeping the Faith, which doesn't pretend to have answers, and I enjoyed Dogma, too, for deflating some of the puffery that surrounds Christianity, for having a heart and having balls. I want to believe in a God who would do handstands and cartwheels, if only we will let hir. I know most of what I believe, but not what to embrace. I worry about the judgment of relatives and friends. I don't like being this exposed on this issue, so I don't usually talk to anyone about it; it's another kneejerk response from childhood, when my mom would pick my brain to see how good a xian I was(n't, as it turned out). Tired of the thought police, I turned in on myself, and I haven't yet been able to turn out again.
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no subject
Date: 2000-12-16 11:51 pm (UTC)I fink this means you gotta put people on the list yerself. The example shown (Seattle Party) by Bradfitz has a thingee to click on which allows you to join it yourself without any trouble. I don't mind that it's moderated -- just telling you I think you need to sign us up yourself.
no subject
Date: 2000-12-17 01:20 am (UTC)