Things I overheard while talking to myself

In more antics from the crazy English professor, today he saw a half-eaten cheeseburger sitting outside the window and somehow managed to bring it into what he was talking about.

He also wants us to write for next week the last sentence we would write if we were about to die (or "cease to be" as he put it). A bit of a weighty task. The first thing I though of was this poem by Walt Whitman:

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.
I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.
I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

I think I actually cried the first time I heard this one. I have to make it all my own, but maybe go for the same sort of message.

Just a little gem from Monty Python I want to save for future reference (and philosophy department gatherings):

Immanuel Kant was a real piss-ant who was very rarely stable.
Heideggar, Heideggar was a boozy beggar who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel.
And Whittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as sloshed as Schlegel.
There's nothing Nieizsche couldn't teach 'ya 'bout the raising of the wrist.
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed.
John Stewart Mill, of his own free will, after half a pint of shanty was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away, half a crate of whiskey every day!
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
And Hobbes was fond of his Dram.
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart:
"I drink, therefore I am."
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed.

Also, this one, and I can tell I'm learning more and more about these guys so it becomes even funnier.

Today Diversity Services invited a woman named Cathy Bao Bean, who gave a talk about being bi-cultural and how we have different "modes" because of our culture.

She was born in China and mostly raised in the US, she's married to a white artist who does stuff like paint the lawn and wear pick socks and sandals with a suit, has a bi-racial son, and is gut-bustingly hilarious while also being very deep and poignant while speaking. I also bought her book, The Chopsticks-Fork Principle, A Memoir and Manual since it includes quotes like this:

No father - especially an immigrant from China - says to his daughter, "Please, marry an artist."

Definitely have to read it. Just the intro is hilarious, I'll probably be quoting from it as I read. Diversity Services gets really good speakers at their events, though I always end up buying their books. ^_^;

And so the mighty book pile increases once again. I'll just put it after the John LeCarre that I'm only a few pages from the end of.

I just read through the Amicus Curiae briefs being put in front of the California Supreme Court about overturning Prop 8, and even though I obviously have a horribly biased opinion towards one side, mainly the side that treats me like a person.

A few good quotes from my side that sum up the issue:

"The fundamental rights embodied in our liberty and privacy clauses cannot serve their critical need in our democratic society if they are denied to those minority groups in greatest need of protection."

"Because a 'core element' of the right to marry is 'equal dignity and respect' the deprivation of that right from a suspect class violates the core principles that underlie our constitutional democracy."

"... [Prop 8 should be overturned] Otherwise, the court will leave unpopular minority groups - who have been mercilessly persecuted based on characteristics that have no bearing on their ability to perform or contribute to society - beholden to the whims of an intemperate majority. If... a bare majority of voters may deprive a suspect class of a fundamental right through the initiative process, then voters may propose and enact a constitutional amendment authorizing the segregation of Muslims or lesbians and gay men in public school in order to prevent them from influencing other students."

"Amici suggest that these fears are overblown and that suspect classes should trust that voters will do the "right thing". But history belies this suggestion. Certainly, voters did not do the "right thing" when they passed an initiative amendment that authorized racial discrimination in housing. And history is replete with examples where a majority group sought to deprive an unpopular minority group of its fundamental rights."

"The blanket assurance of the amici that no other fundamental rights would be repealed or narrowed for lesbians and gay men after Proposition 8 provided scant comfort. As described by two amici, the misleading and demeaning tactics used by proponents of Proposition 8 hardly suggest that [they] will limit their efforts to depriving lesbians and gay men of their right to marry."

Also, Ken Starr is full of shit, and his argument lacks any substance beyond "ACTIVIST JUDGES!" type ranting. He also fails to address anything related to oh, a little thing called the 14th Amendment, and basically implies that if the voters say so that one can be disregarded. THE CONSTITUTION DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!

I didn't actually watch the inauguration, but I think that the Invocation spoken by Gene Robinson on Sunday deserves to be reposted:

Oh God of our many understandings, we pray that you will bless us with tears, tears for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women in many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die a day from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

Bless this nation with anger -- anger at discrimination at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants; women; people of color; gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort at the easy simplistic answers we prefer to hear from our politicians instead of the truth about ourselves and our world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be fixed anytime soon and the understanding that our next president is a human being, not a messiah. Bless us with humility, open to understanding that our own needs as a nation must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance, replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences.

Bless us with compassion and generosity, remembering that every religion’s god judges us by the ways we care for the most vulnerable. And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of the president of the United States. Give him wisdom beyond his years, inspire him with President Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for all people.

Give him a quiet heart, for our ship of state needs a steady, calm captain. Give him stirring words; we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.

Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership there will be neither red nor blue states but a United States. Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.

Give him strength to find family time and privacy and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods. And please God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents and we’re asking far too much of this one; we implore you, oh good and great God to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand that he might do the work that we have called him to do. That he might find joy in this impossible calling and that, in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity, and peace.

Amen.

I just found a very profound line while reading a fanfic of all things, on the subject of love and intimacy:

"It was giving every little part of yourself to someone else and trusting them to treasure the pieces, not throw them away."

That sums up how I feel exactly, but I'd never heard anyone put it quite that way.

Ah, man, that really got me.

There was a program on Walt Whitman on PBS, and right at the end when they read one of his poems I just started crying at the last line. Jeez.

Here's said poem, Song Of Myself LII:

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One of the best things I've seen lately on the TV Tropes website lately at the I Am Not Making This Up Mythology Examples page:

Gilgamesh was 2/3 God. How that actually worked is anyone's guess.

And the response:

As Gilgamesh was essentially the Babylonian equivalent of Chuck Norris, the answer is that he's such a badass that he actually re-fertilized his own embryo.

Exactly what it sounds like.

But in the mean time, have "The Mendacity of Hope" an article about an editorial I read a few days ago and Patrick Lang sums it up nicely. What ought to be true isn't true, using the example of a claim made by Barack Obama that more black men are in prison than college. A hard-hitting message, but it has the small problem of not being true.

I've said before that Obama makes me nervous for some reason, and I think it has to do with all the talk of "change" and him being "the one" when the truth is that stuff like that can't pay the bills when it comes down to it. Plus I think he's way too wet behind the ears as of right now, and that people are getting caught up in his message. In short, I don't think he can deliver.

And I think Lang has a good message about not believing any claims like that, whether they be from the right of left, based one what we want to see in a person.

"There is a danger of seeing what you want to see in someone, of accepting the crude image building that modern political campaigns depend on for shaping our weak minds. In the case of Obama the danger is increased by the desire we all have to feel good about ourselves, to believe that he and we are now better and purer than we were."

OK, so this wasn't really about nothing. But I haven't had much to post lately. :P

"We fight against the tyranny of the majority."

Watching a news program featuring about a PBS special that will be tonight about the Intelligent Design debate, and they have John Jones, the judge who ruled against Intelligent Design, there for an interview. He said the above quote, and all I could think was "That's how the judicial system should work."

And he was a conservative Republican, too, which was the kicker. I actually just made an argument in a paper last week that the right to have same-sex marriage is guaranteed under the 14th Amendment, but given the current state of the legal system I don't think it would win in court. But with more people like this John Jones -- people who actually believe in the Constitution and enforce it regardless of their personal beliefs -- then this country might just be able to move forward again.