Losing my religion

Being born British, and 100% C of E (Church of England - Cake or Death?) religion and spirituality played a very minimal role in my upbringing. I went to regular non-parochial schools, made fun of those that didn't, and palled around with Jewish and Hindu mates without batting an eye. My parents tried in my earlier years to have the family go to church on a somewhat more regular basis than most, i.e. not just Christmas and Easter, but it just sort of petered out over time. I seem to recall that the last time we all went as a family it was to a regular Sunday morning service at a beautiful and picturesque local church in my home county of Kent. The reason I remember it so vividly after all of these years was because it was disrupted by one of the parishioners having a loud and violent seizure midway through the sermon.

Had I been old enough to have seen 'The Exorcist' ( I wasn't - plus it hadn't been filmed yet) I would have sworn to you that this old woman, helplessly flailing around the floor, had been possessed by demons that were intent on ripping themselves out of her body right there and then. I mean seriously, the only thing missing was the rotating head and the pea-soup. I don't mind telling you I damned near crapped myself. It didn't help that the person who had suffered that seizure was the local village Crazy Lady.  In retrospect she was probably a very lonely old soul, but she scared the shit out of all of  us kids because she had crazy eyes and she had hair growing out of her moles. (I swear to you I am not making this up. Just typing this is giving me the heebie-jeebies remembering what she looked like). She scared us so much that we used to cross the busy main road in the village so as not to get in her path if she was spotted walking back from the local shops.

I was probably somewhere around the ripe old age of ten when that all happened, but I can sit here now, nearly forty years later, and remember it like it was yesterday. I don't think that was the sole reason (soul reason?) we stopped going to church, and I don't recall it being announced officially that the whole 'Let's go and say thanks to God and Jesus every week' experiment was over, but I like to think that my parents thought that my brother and I had been sufficiently scarred by that incident that we wouldn't need to go back. It's a real shame in a way because the church this all happened in really is a very pretty little country church, but my pace always quickened a step or two anytime I ever passed it from that day forward.

My only other truly memorable church memory happened about ten years later. I was on a visit back home from studying in America, probably early 1980's, and I had gone down the pub with an old mate of mine to catch up (as you do). After we had been thrown out of the boozer at closing time by the lovely landlady we staggered back to his mum's house to have a few more. By the time we were done polishing off his mother's booze,  it was probably one o'clock in the morning, and I still had a walk of a mile or so to get back to my parents place. There was only one small problem. Between his mum's place, and my folks abode stood a church. Not the same church as before, a different one. There was nothing wrong this church either, it too was a very pretty, standard sort of English country church, a little larger than the other one perhaps, but there were no horror stories or ghostly tales of hauntings about it in the village. But neither one of us big, strong, 20 year-old young men wanted to walk past this church late at night because it was too scary. Now, you have to remember that this is in England, which means that the church itself is typically surrounded by a graveyard. In fact, this one had a grave-yard on the other side of the main road that ran next to the church, as well as the main one by the church building itself, so in effect I was going to have to walk through the middle of the graveyard to get home.

I came up with a cunning plan.

I suggested to my mate (for the purposes of this piece I shall call him Mike, if for no other reason than because that's what his name is), that he accompany me home, past the church, he could then have a quick coffee at my folks place and then he could head back home by himself. Alas, dear reader he too saw through that plan. He was not too sozzled to figure out that my suggested course of action would mean that even though we would have each other for moral support and courage as we passed the church on the way to my folks place, he would have to walk past the church on his way back to his mum's place, by himself. In turning my suggestion down I seem to recall Mike suggested I perform an act upon myself that is both physically, and anatomically impossible. He may very well have also questioned my mental capacity and my parent's marital status as well,  I can't be sure, but the over-riding fact was that it was most definitely a no-go.

Resigned to my fate I finally screwed up enough courage to head out the door and begin my trek back chez mes parents. As I got closer to the church, quietly cursing Mike under my breath with every step,  I was thankful that it was a brilliantly lit night courtesy of what seemed like a very low-hanging moon, not quite full, but close. The moonlight helped ease my sense of foreboding as I walked around the bend and the church and the graveyard came into view. My pace quickened a little and reflexively I started to whistle. Yes, it's corny I know, but if you want to know why that phrase came into being, I suggest YOU try walking past a graveyard in the dead of night (okay, that one was deliberate) and not whistle, or hum. Trust me, you will do anything to make some sort of sound to break the still, oppressive quiet of nothing more than a late night breeze rustling a few leaves, and what you'd swear was either the sound of bending boughs in the trees or the faint sound of a coffin-lid slowly creaking open on the other side of that headstone over there in the corner....

Anyway, I was about half-way through the graveyard when all of a sudden the clock bell rings out with two ear-shatteringly loud chimes from the church tower. I'm not sure if I screamed out loud or not, but I do recall that I immediately dropped my ciggy and started running at full clip. I didn't stop until I could see the lights of my parents house in the distance getting closer. That was about three quarters of a mile away just so you know, a distance I couldn't run today if you offered me a million dollars and a blow-job from the Hollywood Starlet of my choice as a reward.

Once I arrived safely in the bosom of Casa de Mum & Dad I found, annoyingly, that I had become immediately sober, and so as soon as my heart-rate had settled down, and now that I no longer needed the obligatory post-booze-fest aspirin-and-a-gallon-of-water,  I shuffled off to bed and cursed my mate Mike for opting to stay safely at home under the covers, most likely having a wank, rather than offer support to his friend.

I checked my underwear the following morning and was heartily impressed to find them unsoiled by my previous evenings' frightening escapade. As I sat down to tuck into a damned fine English breakfast, both Mum and Dad asked after the events of the previous night. I skipped over the bits where I struck out with all of the ladies, but gave them the full blow-by-blow details about the walk/run home. They found it vastly amusing that my best friend had told me to stop being such a big girl's blouse and walk home by myself, and were even more impressed that I had been able to actually get the key on the door upon my arrival, but they exchanged quizzical looks when I told them about the church bells ringing out. They both looked at me and asked if I was sure that the bells had rung out, and I said "Of course they bloody did! That's why I ran all the way here!" to which they replied, almost in unison, "Well that's a little odd, the church clock hasn't worked for years, dear..."

I suddenly realized I needed to check my underwear again...and then I excused myself from the breakfast table....

Which century is this again?

As the political season slouches forward, and the gop candidate-picking contest continues to devolve into something more closely resembling 'Swamp People' rather than an attempt to find a bona fide contender to go up against the President, the relentless republican War on Women continues.

In Virginia they are on the verge of mandating 'State Rape' in the form of forced ultrasounds for any women wanting an abortion, regardless of the reason.

In Oklahoma they are ready to officially call a fertilized human egg a 'person', and bestow upon it all manner of constitutional rights. This would immediately make the destruction of a fertilized human egg a crime. So you know, if you were a pregnant woman that mis-carried, you would technically be a criminal and could face investigation and prosecution.

In the Senate there are various bills being put forth to try and allow employers to 'opt out' of paying for birth control, because you know, a woman's sole purpose is to pro-create here in the twenty-first century.

This all comes on the heels of the American Catholic Bishops getting all ginned up about being forced to pay for contraception by President Obama's health care bill, something they say that goes against their fundamental principles, although covering up the rape of thousands of children by pedophile priests in their midst apparently doesn't...

I have said it before, and I'll say it again, if you have a vagina and you vote Republican you need to have your head examined. What will it take for you to understand they HATE you? They don't want you to have access to affordable health care (see the outrage when Susan G. Komen walked back their ill-fated decision to fuck with Planned Parenthood), they don't want you to have control over your own reproductive cycle, and if you get pregnant and don't want to take it to full-term, well you are well and truly fucked aren't you?

Folks, politicians in the USA like to attach the word 'war' alot to things they want to get funding and support for, the 'war' on drugs, the 'war' on cancer, the 'war' on terror (how do you fight a noun exactly?), so make no mistake about it, the republican party has declared 'war' on women....oh they may try and wrap it up as some sort of benevolent "we're only trying to protect generations of future women from being harmed", but when their anti-abortion legislation is so strict it would prevent pregnant victims of incest and rape from aborting the fetus, I think you truly get what they are after, total control over women's bodies.

This issue has nothing to do with protecting cute, cuddly babies, and EVERYTHING to do with MEN telling WOMEN what they can do with their bodies, and bugger-all else.

So ladies, this fall, in State and Federal elections wherever you are, get out there and vote for candidates that will support women's rights, and fight to keep angry old white men out of your vaginas...

What "liberal" media?

CNN got caught being two-faced right-wing enablers this week when they suspended Roland Martin, one of their 'liberal' commentators for something he tweeted about during the Super-bowel ad-fest. Specifically something that was construed by many to be homophobic about the David Beckham underwear ads.

Why is that two-faced you might ask?

Simple, when Tea-bagger Dana Loesch said that the Marines that were being charged for pissing on the bodies of some dead Taliban fighters should have been rewarded instead, and that if she'd been there she'd have done it too , CNN not only didn't suspend her, they defended her...'CNN contributors are commentators who express a wide range of viewpoints - on and off of CNN - that often provoke strong agreement or disagreement. Their viewpoints are their own."

Now, call me old fashioned, but if that statement was really true, shouldn't BOTH commentators have been treated the same way?

"Liberal media" my arse....

There's stupid, there's dumb, and then there's this broad....

Dana Perino, pResident George Dumbya Bush's former public relations peroxide-pixie, was on the Faux "news" channel yesterday bitching about the Madonna half-time show at the Super-Dee-Duper Bowl, particularly the middle-finger displayed by MIA during that 'mutton-dressed-as-lamb' lip-synched dance session. Dana was all flustered because MIA wasn't "even an American" and why would any non-American be performing at the Super-Dee-Duper Bowl in the first place? Skipping over the fact that the finger-flip was on the air for even less time than Janet Jackson's nipple-slip, which for no apparent reason caused White America to lose its goddamned mind, is she really suggesting that it would be alright for an American to flip off the teevee audience? I don't think so.

Nope, I think this has bugger all to do with the country the performer is from, and everything to do with the skin colour of the performer....

Or does this mental midget really think that other previous half-time performers like The Who, Sting, The Rolling Stones, U2, Phil Collins and Paul McCartney are actually Americans too?

Think pink? Not so fast....

Folks, as many of you know my wife has breast cancer. Thankfully, due to early detection, we were able to catch it in its' infancy and the prognosis looks excellent for a full recovery. Due to this unplanned foray into an area that I formerly had very little knowledge about, I have learned a good many things. Most have been very positive, especially in the way family and friends and co-workers have come together to offer my wife their love and support. I have also come to realize just how vast the entire 'industry' built around this disease, has become. Most of it is geared at support and help for the cancer patients themselves, and some for researching the disease as well. But there is also a growing sector of this industry that is more and more involved in promoting their brand name, rather than offering support for cancer patients, or funding research for "the cure".

I am speaking directly about Susan G. Komen  for the Cure. This organisation started out with the very best of intentions, but has now become more and more consumed with promoting it's own brand, selling "pink", and preaching it's own political ideology, than it is in doing what it claims to do, i.e. "find the cure".

This all came to a head yesterday when their national office announced their decision to cut it's yearly funding to Planned Parenthood (you know, the folks that actually DO help women with their health). Not unsurprisingly this kicked up one hell of a fuss on the interwebs. As the news spread, Susan G Komen came under increasing fire for what most saw as a pathetic cave-in to the religious right who have been harping on them, and threatening them, if they didn't cut their funding to Planned Parenthood simply because PP provides access to abortions.

This actually should come as no surprise as their new V.P. of Policy is a radical anti-abortionist, former Georgia gubernatorial candidate, endorsed in 2010 by none other than Caribou Barbie herself, Sarah Palin for her aggressive "pro-life" stance (unless of course you are an animal, in which case she is decidedly pro-death, especially if it involves high-powered rifles, a pack of wolves and a helicopter).

So this got me to doing even more research about the whole "pink" industry that has mushroomed over the years, and I came across a fabulous website, http://thinkbeforeyoupink.org that offers everyone the opportunity to do a little more digging into the various charities and organisations that purport to be "pink", but may actually not be as pink as you think.

I highly recommend that you check that site out the next time you consider pulling out your checkbook or wallet and donating to the cause because the money you give, might not be used the way you think it is.

As for me, I e-mailed Susan G Komen for the Cure this morning and expressed my feelings about their cowardly decision, and then I donated $10 to http://www.plannedparenthood.org

I know that I am not alone in my outrage that a charity that presents itself as being "pro-women" would do something that is decidedly "anti-woman", and I respectfully suggest that you do your own research, and then give what you can to those organisations and charities that ARE interested in actually helping women, and not just selling "pink"...

Cheers!!!