facets of humanity*

Tell me you don't find these excerpts from a letter between Qaddafi and Obama fascinating. 
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/world/africa/20libya.html?_r=1&hp

*humanity of fascists

what could the result be?!?!?

I've got a pregnancy test sitting on my desk.

Ha! I knew that'd get you. It's true, I have a pregnancy test on my desk, I won it in a game on Saturday. A cousin of mine had a baby shower so my aunt, two cousins, and my sister and I piled in to a little SUV for the three hour round-trip drive. Our bonding time included:

Car horn honking; glitter stick-on flowers; me accepting that none of us could muster an origami crane and my card would instead look like something out of Star Trek; a discussion of our enjoyment of Stanley Tucci; and deciding why Rihanna sings "What's my name" when he's "taken the time to get to know [her]."


At the baby shower we had to face the proverbial shower game time. Bridal/Baby shower games always find me at my least competitive. I don't want to guess how much anyone weighs or make toilet paper wedding dresses. But. This time the prize was a pregnancy test. Who would not get excited about that?

Now, I'm LDS and not married and so you can imagine how much I need this test. But I'm going to take it.The really ironic thing is my weekly reading of NYT's Modern Love essay is about a single 35 year old Mormon woman deciding she's done with the hopeful, celibate, single Mormon girl life.


So let's talk about this. Nicole writes, "Most troubling was the fact that as I grew older I had the distinct sense of remaining a child in a woman’s body; virginity brought with it arrested development on the level of a handicapping condition, like the Russian orphans I’d read about whose lack of physical contact altered their neurobiology and prevented them from forming emotional bonds. Similarly, it felt as if celibacy was stunting my growth; it wasn’t just sex I lacked but relationships with men entirely. Too independent for Mormon men, and too much a virgin for the other set, I felt trapped in adolescence."
I'm not yet a Russion orphan adolescent trapped in my woman body. But I've struggled with liking my physical body. And while this may be a life long struggle of mine (an issue to which I might subject you to in another blog post) and there are many facets I need to work on to find peace with myself–one day I kissed a boy and I suddenly felt a lot more comfortable in my own skin. Like ridiculously 100 times more comfortable in my own skin. Sadly, we didn't even really like each other and yet I felt like my body was a little less blundery and flawed. I doubt this had much to do with making it through a societal rite of passage. Frequently our physicality is taken for granted in our relationships and daily interactions, it's still important, but we don't recognize how great it is. Instead, our physicality takes the blame for our awkwardness, lack of success. It becomes our corrupt flesh.

In sports, romantic/sexual relations, and between a female and her offspring (I can't speak for males) the body is exalted and cannot be ignored. It is absolutely necessary. Of course I felt happier with myself. I work! My body is just like everybody else's body! And (cover your eyes for a sentence, Dad) boys like my body!

President Boyd K. Packer, president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, says, "The gift of mortal life and the capacity to kindle other lives is a supernal blessing. Through the righteous exercise of this power, as in nothing else, we may come close to our Father in Heaven and experience a fulness of our joy. This power is not an incidental part of the plan of happiness. It is the key–the very key...Pure love presuposes that only after a pledge of eternal fidelity, a legal and lawful ceremony, and ideally after the sealing ordinance in the temple, are those life-giving powers released for the full expression of love.*" Through physical relations we can fully express love.

Somehow this–recognizing how great our bodies are–falls by the wayside even though in LDS theology we learn that a huge point to this mortal life is that we receive a physical body. We lived with God before our life here on earth, God presented a plan for our growth and eventual salvation, most of us agreed to this plan. We come to earth, our spirits are given mortal bodies of flesh, bones, blood. When we die and are resurrected we then have perfected physical bodies. We're a physical religion.

But maybe we don't talk about this enough. In Nicole's essay I mourn all that could be as she describes what happens to her in her trip to Planned Parenthood "Oddly, my trip to Planned Parenthood provided much that the church had not in recent years. During my exam, the clinician explained every move before she made it, asked permission to touch me during the most routine procedures. I was mystified: by her compassion, by the level of attention paid to my body — as if it were fragile, or sacred." Our bodies are nothing but sacred. I don't care what you believe in, they're divine. We don't just forget this in churches, we destroy our bodies everywhere with our obsession with perfection and change.



I just tried out my pregnancy test. Why not? I like to practice before there's any pressure or hyped up expectations. Hilldear aided me as I tried to follow the directions exactly. You're supposed to pee into a cup. Apparently we're all out of paper cups. But we did have plastic, disposable champagne glasses. And I'm not pregnant.

This isn't a subject I really want to end up in a void. If anyone wants to take me up in discussion, counterarguments, personal stories, self-flagellation, yoga, or pick me up in a honda to go on a date, that'd be cool.

*October 2010 General Conference address "Cleansing the Inner Vessel"  

sans school, I want to...

...make things like this:
(More New York Times. Note: I need to start reading multiple newspapers because I don't understand Republicans at all.)

Literary Underground

from sketchbook by Amy Goldwasser and Peter Arkle
One Sunday afternoon this holiday season, as the literary professionals were putting finishing touches on their year-end lists of best books, citizen critics were busy just reading. On a No. 6 train between Astor Place and 125th Street full of shopping bags and bundled-up passengers lost in books analog and digital, we asked underground readers for their reviews. (continue reading and viewing pleasurely here.)

another reason for buffy

A New York Times article on how bullying starts young young young young young these days or maybe always.

I felt vindicated when they cite shows like Hannah Montana, that have extremely self-centered protagonists, as having a negative effect on young girls. However, they compare Montana to Brady Bunch girls which is a little ridiculous. Why not Buffy?

  
Also, an interesting article about how women are treated in France. In the article they point to  the World Economic's 2010 Forum ("world economic's" links to a description of the forum, "2010 forum" to an article about the 2010 forum) that says France has fallen from 18th place to 46th place and now ranks behind Kazakhstan in gender equality. But I've been reading up on the World Economic Forum and it ranks countries by how much they've progressed or digressed in the past year. Alors, it seems the forum compares progress and not the actual standard of equality. And France fell in ranking because "of the departure this year of several high-ranking women from the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy." That being said, it doesn't seem terribly appealing to be a woman in France, even if it is France*.

And don't think I want to make career women out of us all, one woman says she quit her job to be a stay at home mom and she feels pressured to by (French) society to go back to work.

Oh and please don't leave any comments with lame jokes about how French people are stupid (unless you're one of the five Monty Pythoners–Gilliam is from the US and therefore has to abide by the same rules I've set for everyone else. Then I would have to say that I don't really understand why you're reading my blog. Go away). Those jokes are so old, widen your repertoire.

And note, the U.S. only recently broke the top 20 and is now above Canada but behind Latvia. I am currently looking for the actual Forum report because, well, newspaper articles interpret what they want. At this point you might point out how I could be in the wrong about the Hanna Montana genre of tv shows for this same reason but then I would have to touché you back by saying it's what I want to hear so it works for me.

and more from the Buffy side:





*My number one reason for saying no when someone asks me, "don't you wish you were alive back in such and such a day and age," is because I want to stay in a time period where I've got more rights.