A Bad Joke, A Future Christian Rave, A Future Book Awards Gala, A Bad Day In Retail, And Doozer

Just to get this out of the way.... My favourite joke is only my favourite joke because I can never remember them, and this one I do. Also, when my little cousin told it to me five years ago when he was four, his delivery was hilarious.
Why do women wear make-up and perfume?
– Because they’re ugly and they smell bad.

I have a busy weekend ahead of me. The first thing on the agenda is getting together with the Fiery One and his co-workers for drinks in about 45 minutes. I am not supposed to indulge in the beer part too much, though, because the Fiery One has come up with one doozer of an activity for a Friday night: we are going to a Christian rave. No, really, you read me right. We are going to a Christian rave. There are supposed to be the usual Djs and roving lights and whatnot, but there are also supposed to be ballet dancers dancing interpretively to the music. I always think of interpretive dance as being what my elementary school music teacher used to encourage us to do. She would dim the lights in the music room and play something like Adam Ant (no kidding) and tell us to “move to the music... feel our bodies... be aware of the space and our relation to it.” I usually just lied about on the floor and watched the light bulbs buzz and struggle with the lowered electrical current. I am curious about this mixture of the ballet and interpretive styles being used to demonstrate a depth of Christian faith. I do hope the Lord has a sense of humour. For $10, it is difficult to buy a better or more unique form of entertainment.

Tomorrow, we have tickets to go to the Saskatchewan Book Awards. I have been told that it is quite an upscale affair, second only to New Year’s. This sort of thing always makes me nervous, because I feel all sorts of pressure to adorn myself with the proper upscale accoutrements, which has always felt highly unnatural to me. I do have an appropriate dress this time round, thankfully, so on to the next stress – mingling. There are cocktails beforehand, which I like, especially since they’re free, but I am usually the one that can be found loitering next to a plant wondering if it is just silk or a remarkably well-kept fern. The Fiery One’s presence should help this situation out, because I can at least look engaged in the festivities when I’m standing next to and talking to him. Now that I think of all that, it should go quite well, because after that there is a sit-down dinner, which is easy, because everyone is busy with food, and then there are speeches and readings and awards, which takes care of having to find anything to say to anyone. Oh, I’ll be fine. Always the worry with things like this, but anxiety about an event is almost always worse than the event itself (except for the time that I went to a Pat Metheny concert, and half-way through I went to the bathroom, broke the toilet, caused a flood, had to find my way back to my seat with my heels squooshing full of toilet water, and dragged my friend out through the lobby where we could hear the rushing of water still going on in the ladies’ washroom).

This, a regular occurrence, happened at work today (I just have to snark a teensy weensy bit):
Customer: Having one of those days, eh?
-- This, after I have had difficulty getting her purchase into the bag, dropped a second bag, dropped her debit card, and fumbled with the pen.
Me: Yep, it seems like it. (big smile faked)
I hate this kind of response to my usual physical ineptitude. It is not “one of those days.” This is my life, people, and I feel like bludgeoning you with my stapler when you grin at me and comment on my comical clumsiness. Customers are always joking with me about how it must be “one of those days,” and I am always agreeing that, yes, I am having “one of those days,” but the truth of the matter is that one-of-those-days is my life. I am like this more often than not. Just once, I would like to reply "no, I am not having one of those days. I suffer from a debilitating neurological disorder," which would make that person feel truly awful for having mentioned it. (I do not suffer from a debilitating neurological disorder, by the way. No offense to those who do).

“Doozer” Facts and Links (and sorry ahead of time for the lack of factoidal goodness):
* There is a weblog called Doozer’s Den, and another called Doozer’s Domain of Stuff.
* Doozer is a punk rock band.
* Doozer is also really hi-tech.
* In the show “Fraggle Rock,” episode 36 was called “Doozer Contest,” and the Doozers sang this song, and they looked something like this.
* One of the clan tags for some game called “Savage Caps” is Doozer.
* According to UrbanDictionary.com a doozer is “[a] person (usually a good friend) that does someone else's dirty work for them and/or tells someone bad news even though it isn't their responsiblity to tell them.”

Wallowing, Gordon, Shoe, Bathing In The Stream, And Dust

When the Fiery One goes away on these work trips, I end up living like an eighty-year old man who refuses to move into a home. The apartment looks worse than I have ever seen it. Gordon, the rabbit, has kicked wood shavings all over the floor, which instead of sweeping up, I have chosen to track throughout the apartment. I haven't washed a single dish in three weeks, except for that knife that I had to clean when all the others were too gross to consider re-using. So, I'm spending this evening doing dishes and cleaning up in the computer area, and tomorrow it's the living room, bathroom, and laundry. When the Fiery One gets back, he will never see the level of unwashedness to which I am willing to descend. He knows that I do this, but at least he will never have to experience my dirt-wallowing first-hand.

Gordon had not been out of his cage for a couple of days, so I let him run around the kitchen for a couple of hours this afternoon. I usually block off the kitchen entrance with a couple of collapsed cardboard boxes so that he doesn't get out and end up electrocuting himself by chewing on cords or some such thing. This had proved to be effective in the past, but I now doubt its future abilities. I was in the middle of a long distance telephone call when I heard this loud scrabbling of bunny feet on cardboard. I leapt up and ran to see what was up. There was Gordon, hanging on to the top of the wall with his little front feet and kicking up a storm in an effort to make it over. He is only about three-and-a-half months old, but the jackrabbit in him means that he is already about a foot long, so this wall-vaulting episode is not all that surprising. There will be no more unsupervised bunny playtime. At some point, he will be allowed to run around the living room and whatnot, but he is still figuring out what he can and cannot chew on. I do value some of our furniture.

Watch the Urban Shoe video, which you will find under "Shoe Features." It reminds me of a much smaller, indoor game I used to play with Starcat called Table. (I think I got the name of the game all wrong, but Starcat will surely correct me).

Last night after work, I dropped by my favourite watering hole to see what it looked like, because it was closed for a month for remodelling. I only intended to stay for a couple of pints while I read Corpse: Nature, Forensics, and the Struggle to Pinpoint the Time of Death by Jessica Snyder Sachs. (A fabulous read, by the way. I recommend it very highly). I ended up staying for most of the evening, because I ran into this woman I run into now and again there, and we were eventually joined by a friend of hers and some girl that the friend bumped into on the street and decided to bring along. StreetGirl seemed really nice and intelligent, and I was beginning to think that maybe I really could be making a female friend, which is almost unheard of in the life of Schmutzie. You can probably hear the "but" in there. Just before I decided that it would be best for me to leave, StreetGirl asked me if I was a Christian. I told her that I wasn't, and she started telling me about this zealous religious group she has been a part of for three weeks. Apparently, they have this ritual called "Bathing in the Stream" that is repeated over a period of several weeks to initiate new members into the faith. She said that these people play a video of some kind of leader, and everyone sits quietly and opens their minds to him. StreetGirl said that it gave her an amazing feeling. I warned her about the dangers of a group like that, because having been raised by Christians, I never came across this Bathing-in-the-Stream business. I knew at that point that it was best for me to leave, and I think my exit was quite abrupt. Why must the women who try to befriend me always be crazy or overzealously Christian?

Dust Facts and Links:
* The major cause of allergic reactivity to dust is dust mite waste and not the dust itself.
* The primary cause of lead poisoning is tiny particles of lead dust from deteriorated paint or from painted surfaces disturbed during remodelling, repair, or renovation. Lead dust is invisible and is so tiny in that it passes through most masks and filters.
* Get your own dust mite detector kit today!
* Read The Secret Life of Dust: From the Cosmos to the Kitchen Counter, the Big Consequences of Little Things by Hannah Holmes. I haven't read it, but it actually looks pretty good.
* Crawling infants can ingest 10 grams of dust per day in a dusty home. Visit this link for more "Key Facts About Dust and Cleaning."
* Shelley Long, the actress, is allergic to household dust.
* Why is the dust on your television radioactive?
* One-third of the weight of a ten-year-old pillow is dust mite carcasses and faeces.
* A dust mite molts several times during its life, producing two hundred times its weight in waste. Each mite produces forty to one hundred faeces pellets a day. Their droppings are coated in an enzymatic substance, which after drying become mixed with other particles to create household dust.
* Dead skin cells make up approximately 90% of household dust.
* Check out "The Microbiophobic Household." Hee hee.

Gay Marriage And The Lovely Jains

I really have a bone to pick with the Christian right. I was watching “100 Huntley Street” this morning, and I would have been yelling at the television if not for my cement-block lungs and wretched throat. (No, it is not a part of my regular television viewing, but I do indulge when I am ill. That show is one of the best places to find out where the Christian right stands on things). I had read somewhere a while ago that David Mainse, the “100 Huntley Street” host for twenty-six years, was retiring from the show and leaving his son to take over. Mr. Mainse Sr. was leaving the show in order to pursue his evangelical ministry across the country, because he has become very concerned about our native peoples and also wants to represent the “...Canadian clergy’s concerns regarding the redefinition of marriage at the federal level and within the public sphere.” What this actually means, as he was stating as a guest on today’s episode, is that including room in our laws for gays to be able to declare their unions on a public and legal level like everyone else is “evil” and against the safety of our children. Then Mr. Mainse Sr. suddenly launched into how a police officer he knows called the internet “a window of evil.” With barely a breath taken, he held up what he called a “resource sheet” called “The Fight Against Child Pornography.” Without bothering to explain the links he was making between these topics, he attempted to tie them up together neatly by what he assumed were the obvious connections his audience would make, be they uneducated and emotional responses or not. It is absurd. Homosexuals in long-term, committed relationships who want to get married are somehow deeply connected to the “window of evil” that is the internet and so are obviously the controlling major force behind child pornography. He managed to find time to hold up and mention this "resource sheet" three times while talking about his church's stance on gay marriage, marrying the two ideas in the viewers' minds. This is not out of hate, mind you, because Christians can feel anger and still love, he assured us, the listening audience.

Why does this bother me so much? It bothers me, in part, because these people appeal to a lot of other people’s knee-jerk reactions on the subject, and so have the ability hold a good deal of political sway if they play their cards right. It also bothers me, because they do not seem to see the difference between their religious culture and government law. These are two different things. The Canadian government has no intention of forcing churches to marry homosexuals against their church body's beliefs. The church has hardly made a stink about the fact that the government started marrying people non-religiously. They do not seem to mind much at all that the government saw fit to move such a holy union partially out of the church's grasp and to give itself the right to unite man and woman in a legal union by the same name the church gave it. There is a distinct difference between church and state marriages – one is done under the eyes of God and one is done under the eyes of the law, one is religious and one is secular. So why do some Christian groups feel that they have the right to lobby the government to change its standpoint because these views go against their religious beliefs and practices? Our government should not be an extension or a representative of any particular religious organization, and as the Bible says: “‘Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s’” (Matthew 22:21). Church and state are separate matters, folks. No matter what decision our government comes to on this matter, although I am hoping it falls on the side of allowing all who want to marry to do so, it does not bear on the spiritual values of any church body. Marriage, as it is known by the state, is not about making us holy, but is about a legal definition and the social rights it affords to those who have entered into such a commitment. Honestly, I can’t figure out why they are so up in arms about this issue. Christians can still continue to hand out or take back whatever rights they see fit amongst their church members no matter what the state says.

The third thing that truly gets my goat, (and I promise I will stop after this point): certain Christian groups feel that they have the right to lobby a non-religious organization, the government, on a religious basis in order to limit what I, as a non-religious member of this society, believe in whole-heartedly and see as a great leap forward for humankind. Honestly! The nerve! Wouldn’t we all be super pissed off if particularly puritanical Jains came along and insisted on strict vegetarianism (this means no beer!), covering our mouths to avoid inhaling any life forms, and sweeping the ground before us as we walked to avoid crushing bitty creatures? Those of us who are not Jains would be incensed, because we are not Jains, and no beer is no fun. (I mean no offense to Jains, because they are not the imposing kind whatsoever). So, to all Christians who are being politically vocal about stopping gay marriage from a religious standpoint, shut the fuck up! Maybe you haven’t noticed, but this is not a solely Christian country with a Christian government. There are many of us here who would prefer not to be under a religious group's political leadership. Religious arguments have no place in a secular government's decision-making when it affects a great number of citizens who cannot abide by that rationale.

Jainism Facts and Links:
* If you are into religious texts here are some sacred Jain texts.
* I have always loved cartoons based on religion.
* Listen to the different “Obeisances.” They are short and not very loud, so you won’t have to worry about alerting too much attention.
* Check out "Saroj’s Cookbook" for Jain recipes.
* A brief introduction to Jainism.
* Somehow, reading about great ascetics and the lengths to which they will go is almost pornographic, or am I alone in this? (Again, no offense meant to Jains. This is only a personal feeling).

Lord Mahavira was a Jain monk, and Jain monks may often take a vow to accept food only when it is possible to observe a set of pre-determined special conditions. The practice originates with Mahavira himself. A few months before he attained Keval Jnan, continuously fast until offered food by only that individual who met 10 untold and seemingly impossible conditions. He would accept (1)only urad lentils,(2) offered in a winnowing basket, (3) given by a person standing sideways with one foot on the threshold of a dwelling place and the other foot outside, (4) who was a princess turned in to a slave, (5) who had a shaven head, and (6) whose legs were bound by chains. She had to be (7) a chaste woman, (8) at the time performing the penances of attham (3 days’s fast), and would serve him (9) only after all other mendicants had rejected her food offering, (10) with tears in her eyes.

* And last but definitely not least, a jam-packed Jainism site that will keep you busy for hours if you so desire. I did not.