I don't remember who mentioned that TLC show to me but I finally remembered to add it to my Tivo list the other day. I got a chance to watch it yesterday and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

It's fun to watch Cody learn about things like what Shalom means and the JCC. While I did grew up in the South (Shalom, Ya'll!) I also grew up in a neighborhood with a fairly large Jewish population. I swam at the JCC for years when I was little. I remember going to see Fiddler on the Roof there. In high school I got the radio deejay job because my friend Paige was in Israel for the summer. My second serious boyfriend was Jewish. I came *this close* to converting and a lot of what he was reading at the time combined with the Catholic boarding school I'd gone to my freshman year made me really start to examine organized religion and how I felt about it. So the idea that Cody'd never heard of the JCC until after he met me is so weird!

So back to Shalom in the Home. The episode I watched was about the lesbian couple with the two daughers. I thought it was particularly cool that the daughters had the same mother and had been inseminated by sperm from the same anonymous donor so those girls are actual biological sisters. Not that a family isn't a family if they're not biologically linked. I just thought that was kind of neat. This was an interesting family. Both mothers were successful smart women and the daughters were clearly intelligent and creative. There was some stress but in the end the family had worked things out.

I think my favorite part was when Rabbi Shmuley (is that not the coolest name ever?) was very careful to explain that we are all God's children and it's not our place to judge any of his children. There are a lot of things I don't like about organized religion but that's the kind of accepting love in Judeo-Christianity I can always get behind.

So imagine my delight when the doorbell rang fifteen minutes ago and there was a woman on my front porch with her two children (roughly the ages of supergirl and superboy). The mother was holding a bible. My house is like a magnet for door to door sales but I hadn't had anyone testifying for quite a while. I'd forgotten to put the "No soliciting" sign back up after Halloween but the sales calls have diminished over the years. Which is good because Cody is sleeping during the day and the doorbell and dog barking interrupts his sleep.

Weirdly my hundred pound dog clawing at the storm door didn't even seem to phase her or her kids. I was mostly just confused that she wasn't the UPS guy and she had such a look of compassion on her face that I didn't have time to come up with a quick excuse. So she started talking about how one should look to the bible for comfort instead of paying attention to the depressing news (depressing because of sins of ommision and maybe warmongering by our elected leaders perhaps?) and talked about the promises of the world beyond. Specifically passages from the book of Matthew. I think people are free to believe in whatever they want but I'm not so crazy about having it peddled door to door or legislated into my life. It always seems to lose its sincerity by then. So I stood there and pet my dog. And looked at her kids who mostly looked hot and tired even this early in the day.

And I quoted what Rabbi Shmuley had said, which I think took her by surprise since clearly we had the messy yard and three headed dog of pagans. Then I told her that my husband is sleeping because he works nights but good luck to her. And she's welcome to come back tonight when we'll be roasting a goat and dancing nekkid around the yard. Ok, not that last part. But I didn't offend anyone and I managed to quote a guy named Rabbi Shmuley and it isn't even noon yet.

Shalom and Blessed Be, ya'll!

If only this were a joke but this is from an actual screen shot of a real website. Looks like the Beverly Hills Teddy Bear Company plans to make some money on the surge in popularity of Christianity by using biblical figures and selected passages and incorporating them into an incredibly tacky toy. If I actually believed in this religion I would probably be insulted by it.

A few comments I can't *not* make.

Why David? And why does he have a mullet?

I love Mary's ghetto mod frosty lipstick and Wilma Flintstonesque dilated pupils.

Speaking of dilated pupils, does anyone else think Moses looks kind of like he's been living in Jamaica and smoking a lot of pot while everyone else thought he was in the desert? Cody thinks his voice sounds just like James Earl Jones. "Luuuuuke..pass the dutchie from the left hand side"

Does anyone else doubt the liklihood of Jesus sporting his beard with a soul patch?

And what the fuck is with the Raiders of the Lost Ark poster style? Are we supposed to think about all those wacky scrapes Jesus and his whip got into while searching for his Daddy's grail and dodging those pesky nazis? Dun de dunDUN dun de DUUUN.

I can't help thinking about all the hate mail Kevin Smith got when he was making Dogma - a movie that, in the end, puts a lot of creedence in the concept of faith and divine love. Now seriously. Which is more insulting to Christianity? Buddy Christ or these action figures?

And I can't pass up another opportunity to reference the Jesus Christ sports statues. Don't forget kids: if you lose the game it's because Jesus doesn't love you.

Porn for Tea Lovers

nifty little camera

strange but cute

new free online game is beta testing nice improvements on the original

I found some cute needle holders. I'll knit but I won't sew.

Fiddler on the Roof is on. I love this movie. It's a part of my childhood. My parents had the broadway album and we had all kinds of big skirts and gypsy-looking clothes (a lot of it was old square dancing costumes from Nana I think) and I used to dress up and spin around in them. And I remember a stage production of it at the JCC in 76 or 78. Was my sister in it or just one of her friends?

We used to have a membership there and used the pool almost all summer. Their snowcones were like a berry gelato.

It's very hard to describe the strong Jewish influences we grew up with in Birmingham. It's not a community that people would associate with Alabama. But the neighborhood we lived in particularly had a very active community. Matzos in the cafeteria during passover. Learning the Dreidel song right along with The Twelve Days of Christmas. I came *this close* to converting at one point. But that was because of a boyfriend and I just don't think religion should be based on whom you're fucking. Just one of my crazy little ideas. It did start me on the idea that Christianity is not exactly for me which inspired a lot of reading and study about world religions and religious histories. Which I usually examine in a more sociological way than actually believing in any of it.

But as cynical as I am about a lot of organized religions, I keep a pretty healthy amount of respect for Judaism.

Anyway, I was just thinking about how the fiddler might represent God. Or Tevye's imagination of God. Probably not a new concept but I hadn't thought about it before.

That rayon boucle is evil for n00b knitters. I was getting extremely frustrated so today I started a cream colored stockingette scarf with hearts done in a seed stitch. It won't be as cutesy country kitchen as it sounds but probably traditional enough to give to my mother-in-law for her belated birthday present.

Still clinging to the stubborn belief that we are not descended from animals? Go read this .

Or, since news sites can be kind of crappy with their archive links and I want to be able to read this again, you can read it here.

Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by
() on Tuesday, November 30, 2004 at 20:51:06
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email:
name: Taylor
comments: What a foul, filthy, trashy, blog. Get a life and stop seeking attention.
send: send
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My Reply:

Hi. Fuck you and the minute you wasted sending this email.

PS. get a set of balls and use a real email address the next time you decide to say shit like that on someone's site.

This is probably really crappy but it's my site and I can be crappy like this if I wanna. I apologize in advance for the crassness of this post but I reallyreallyreally want an ipod. So if blatant begging and/or commercialism offends thee then you better move along for the moment.

I'm awaiting four completed offers at freeipods.com and I still need seven more at freeflatscreentv.com. The good news is I have something to offer in return.

I have twelve gmail invites right now. If you go sign up, complete an offer, and email me with the address you used to sign up I will send you a gmail invitation. Don't try to bullshit me because I have access to who did or did not sign up and complete their offers.

I hate to say it but Internet Explorer seems to be the only browser that handles their signup pages properly so be sure to use IE.

I'll update this post with the number of invites left as it happens. And I'll probably get some more invites soon that I'll be happy to offer up for more sign ups.

What's with the free ipod and free flat screen tv? Some call it a pyramid scam or our century's answer to a chain letter. Basically if you click a referral link, sign up, complete one of the site's offers (like signing up for aol or real rhapsody), and get five (for the ipod) or eight (for the tv) friends to do the same they'll send you your prize. Not all offers require a credit card but the last time I checked they are all trial offers that can be cancelled without a charge.

Many many sites have been researching this issue and have confirmed its legitimacy. Here are a few-
Wired news
Engadget
Forever geek
Free ipod guide

To the Landover Baptist Church!

Their store has had me giggling insanely for about twenty minutes.

but this is kinda creepy

oh. oh my. I can't get over the little drawing of red and white blood cells with crosses inside floating around. Or are the white things sperms for christ? eeeeeoooow

Look what I found in my mailbox today. Not only was the basic design just awful but..oh just go look.

Doesn't it scare you when you know someone who genuinely believes in the rapture has access to the big red button?

neener neener neenerneenerneener

Weirdo Music

This post has inspired me to work on being more supportive of the people that get out there and stand up to the mean neocon mutherfuckers even though it pretty much guarantees them heaps of abuse and emails chock full of painfully misspelled assumptions about their sexual practices. While I think that going on fox news won't neccesarily reach the oh my god I'm surrounded by 'moh-rons' liberals - I can't even watch the allegedly liberal CNN there's no way I could stomach Fox - his intentions appear to be sincere.
In any case it goes along with practice of not just calling the manager to complain but to compliment a good employee too. I've tried to cultivate this since those dreaded customer service phone job days. So maybe I should find a way to do this with my politics as well.

That said, I'm going to do two things this week - go to the kerry meetup and drag my hermit-like husband to a movie for the first time in four years.

While I'm not the biggest fan of Kerry the first step is to get that evil little poo throwing monkey out of the white house then we can start fixing some of the damage to our reputation with other countries and maybe, just maybe try to separate church doctrine from our states' laws?

While on the subject of religion Mac posted a veery interesting link which intimates that divorce rates are higher among judeo-christian couples. According to this report (which is missing out on a good number of variables imho) you're more likely to remain married if you are from the northeast US, are over 72, don't believe in god, and your odds increase considerably if you get married in a mass-marrying ceremony. Oookay

Here's what a spokesperson for "American Atheists" had to say: These findings confirm what I have been saying these last five years. Since Atheist ethics are of a higher calibre than religious morals, it stands to reason that our families would be dedicated more to each other than to some invisible monitor in the sky. With Atheism, women and men are equally responsible for a healthy marriage. There is no room in Atheist ethics for the type of 'submissive' nonsense preached by Baptists and other Christian and/or Jewish groups. Atheists reject, and rightly so, the primitive patriarchal attitudes so prevalent in many religions with respect to marriage. I'm sure there was a more diplomatic way of putting that.

What do you do when you're stuck on Antarctica? Make Boxbots!

get past the velvet underground or you'll miss your bar mitzvah

Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting

And did I just see friggin Adrian Brody selling Diet Coke? Wherefore art thou my old punk rock secret boyfriend?