Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Let MY Will Be Done, Goddamn it!


Is it merely the contrarian in me that thinks, "If the born again Christians hovering around the Florida hospice where Terri Schiavo lies dying actually believed in an afterlife, in heaven, in their God, shouldn't they be happy for Terri now that her feeding tube has been removed, and she now approaches death"?

If these Right to Life/Culture of Life zealots weren't so maniacal I would be interested in approaching one. I'd love to have a look at their Bible. I'm no theologian, and it's been nearly two decades since I read a Bible, but I do remember a few things that it purports that Jesus Christ said. Stuff about minding one's business, leaving the speck in your neighbor's eye alone so you can address the log in your own eye, and a lot of ambiguous blather about faith. That's a key word among the crisply righteous -- they have faith. Except they don't.

Instead of faith the cracklingly righteous have a void, an emotional black hole into which any sense of propriety, decency, balance, and modesty has been swallowed. This emotional black hole moves them to make public horses asses out of themselves while turning an excruciating private family matter into a fucking circus.

Terri Schiavo married her husband Michael. It was a legal marriage recognized by the State. Although I was not in attendance, I would guess that they were married in a church, in a religious, as well as legal, ceremony. Maybe in a synagogue. Whether they were married in St. Peter's Bascillica by St. Seraphin or wedded while standing on a beach looking onto Lake Erie by a justice of the peace, can we not agree that that wedding took place before "the eyes of God"? If God is all powerful, all seeing, all knowing, then He/She/It witnessed the wedding.

And during that wedding Michael Schiavo gave himself to Terri Schindler, and Terri Schindler gave herself to Michael Schiavo. For better and for worse, and all that.

So, after Terri was unfairly, unfortunately, unbearably struck down in the early 1990s -- reduced to a persistent vegetative state; her cerebral cortex having been liquified -- the heartbreaking decision was left to Michael: What would Terri have wanted? And Michael's answer has been: Not to waste away as she has been for the past decade and a half.

Of course Terri Schiavo's parents are clinging to her; unwilling to let her go. Of course they are seeing signs of consciousness in her where there are none. Under such tremendous emotional strain, the heart is capable of producing such mirages. They can't let go. Who can blame them? Who among us wouldn't cling to the shoelace of a loved one we saw being snatched away by the Angel of Death? We all would. Without question.

Let Terri die in peace. Dignity is not only for the dead.

WerkHorrer

I have an innate suspicion of anyone who wears shoes that need to be shined.

Three weeks into my 34th job, it's found me again. The Daemon, the changeling, the unquiet ghost: Werk Horrer.

Werk (pronounced Vurk!) is what I do to pay my bills. "Work" is what I do to sustain my soul, such as writing, reading books, watching movies. Werk horrer is the blinding, soul-starving, tear-provoking response of my genuine self to the day-in-day-out-ness of a day job.

The conundrum of werk horrer for me is that my day job clutters up so much of my life that I find myself almost shunning inspiration for my writing. I used to escape into my writing, but over the years I've found having to emerge from it to confront another day of werk like subjecting myself to a breach birth morning after morning.

So, while driving around in my car, I find myself listening to talk radio. I hate talk radio, but I can't listen to music anymore. I love music. But I'm sick of walking around with spiritual blue balls because I cannot consummate the inspiration music rouses in me.

The other morning, I diagnosed myself as a dry-drunk in dry-dock, feet pedaling in the air. I'm sweating off the miserable withdrawals from Indoorsmanhood, yoked with a new schedule, news sounds and people around me; the pscyhic circuitboard in the office seems overloaded, and I'm the one browning out as a result.

You're lazy! the ungracious part of myself accuses me. You're afraid of work so you call it werk to facilitate your complaining. But what lazy person could portage the merciless landscape to completing a book? I've made the journey half a dozen times...

Fuck it, I'm delving into abstractions to mask the real reasons.

As my good friend, who has made it through nine steps of the AA twelve-step program, says about his own such feelings, It's all me. It's all me.

Gerry Fall-Well Stands on the Precipice of the Great Spiritual Drunk Tank

I won't shed a tear for the passing of Gerray Fall-Well, noted ego-maniac, religious profiteer, empty moralist, and all around chubby, ridiculous guy. However, I am excited about his being poised on the precipice of leaving this life and entering the Great Spiritual Drunk Tank that doubtless lies beyond this world for charlatans like Fall-Well.

If Fall-Well believes even a fraction of the spiritual hokum he's made a damned good living preaching (and there's no evidence to think he believes a single bit of it) I would love to be a fly on the wall when his accounts are squared up with St. Peter. If the heaven of the evangelical movement does, in fact, exist (and there's no evidence to think it actually does), I can't imagine how Fall-Well's spiritually penniless soul will scrounge the price of admission.

And it's not like the evangelicals' Satan figure (and there's no evidence indicating one actually exists) would have any further use for the corpulent carcass that will very soon be Gerray Fall-Well. Fall-Well has done the bidding of greed, bigotry, avarice, ego, anti-intellectualism (founding a unversity doesn't mitigate this last one, only exascerbates it), with his trademark smug, chubby smirk throughout his time among us. But once his microphone falls silent, a shadow falls across his worn collection plate, and the green gooh within his bloated body stops exuding wakefulness, Fall-Well's usefulness to any sort of malevolent consciousness will be over.

So, fare thee well Jerrie Fall-Well. You were a jerk, a huckster, a shingle-salesman who doubled as a bottomless pit of malignant self-righteousness. You won't be missed for an instant. There are countless jackals waiting to take your place.

Monday, March 28, 2005

Right to Life vultures gnashing their beaks after losing their battle with justice


God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

There is no serenity among the Christian Right to Life vultures hovering outside the Florida hospice where braindead woman, Terri Schiavo, lies dying. There is no acceptance. There is no courage. There is no wisdom.

These followers of Jesus Christ, all lopsided with self-righteousness, contorted with hollow conviction are like sex addicts, compulsive gamblers, kids who've had their video games taken away from them. These are the kind of people who pray for a good parking space at the shopping mall, whose facade of "faith" is just another pathetic way of competing with their neighbors. Who have sided with the galactic Schoolyard Bully, owner of all misfortune, conniver, black comedian, supporter of the born-again bigot in the White House, and those who revel in the grotesque emotional orgy on the sidewalk outside of the hospice housing Terri Schiavo.

"From Slate: In 1988, Tom DeLay's 65-year-old father, Charles DeLay, suffered catastrophic brain damage and went into a coma. He had no hope of recovery but evidently reacted when his son entered the room. Although Charles DeLay had no living will, his family concluded that he would be better off dead and wouldn't want to go on living this way. Tom DeLay joined other family members in deciding to withhold dialysis. His father died.

There is no doubt that beyond the veil of this life, a spiritual drunk-tank awaits these Culture-of-Life vultures who feast upon the carrion of other peoples' misery.

Hypocrisy

KansasCity.com
Associated Press
KRISTIE RIEKEN
Tue, Mar. 15, 2005

(Excerpt:)

HOUSTON - Doctors at Texas Children's Hospital plan to take a critically ill 5-month-old baby off life support after a judge on Monday reaffirmed his decision lifting an injunction that prevented them from stopping care they believe is futile.

Sun Hudson has been diagnosed with a fatal genetic disorder called thanatophoric dysplasia, a condition characterized by a tiny chest and lungs too small to support life. He has been on a ventilator since birth.

His mother, Wanda Hudson, has been fighting the hospital, maintaining he just needs time to grow to be weaned off the ventilator.

"I'm just going to wait and see," she said Monday in the online edition of the Houston Chronicle.

Texas law allows hospitals to end life support in cases such as this but requires that families be given 10 days to find another facility to care for the patient. No hospital has been found to take the baby.

Blogger's note: George W. Bush signed this practice into law while governor of Texas.

The Right to Life vultures are in full thrall in Florida protesting, gnashing their beaks, throwing temper tantrums in their battle with justice to keep braindead woman Terri Schiavo alive. The American Christian right, led by their morally bankrupt shamen, George W., Tom DeLay, et al, have raised high their flags of hypocricisy in turning this miserably sad and difficult family situation into political hay. If Terri Schiavo were anything other than a white Christian woman the Pharisees among us wouldn't give two shits about her fate.

There has surely been no similar outcry for the tens of thousands of injured and murdered Iraqi citizens who've crushed under the blindfolded American war machine abroad. They are not white Christians.

From Yahoo! News: Among the messages on protest signs Sunday: "Barbara Bush: Are you proud of your sons now?" "Stop the American Holocaust!" "Send in the National Guard!"

I think several military cargo planes should be filled with these people, and their quaint signs, and flown to Iraq so that they can administer food and water and surly chants to people whose families want them to have help. These people should tend their own households first before making public nuisances of themselves in a case where their input, signs, and indignation were not requested. Michael Schiavo is Terri's husband. He says that Terri would not want to be kept alive this way. Those are her wishes, though I'm sure none of the sign-carrying righteous would believe that -- I've been listening to them malign Michael Schiavo all weekend on Web radio. I think the ire on display in Florida and Washington D.C. is, in part, rising from peoples' fear of their own mortality, their lack of faith in their spouses, and the limits of science and medicine.

Let Terri Schiavo die in peace.