Saturday, July 20, 2013

Jesus was homeless. . . wasn't he?





'Survival' of United Church not a priority


(Blogger's note. I was a longtime, active member of the United Church until a sense of alienation drove me away a few years ago. The National Post article below (describing churches scrambling frantically to survive financial hardship) scored a direct hit. During my 15 years as a committed member, I saw churches trying to maintain cavernous old buildings, in dire debt because they couldn't make their mortgage payments. I saw them grabbing people practically as they walked in the door to join committees, shaming people if they couldn't or wouldn't tithe (often actively questioning their commitment if they felt their money was better spent giving directly to charities), and even driving away people who were contributing in a way that was outside the box. Such interlopers made everyone uneasy, as they seemed to be saying: look, guys, the old ways aren't working any more. What can we do that's new? 






So today I found this article online which was written SIX YEARS AGO. I wonder what has changed. Probably not much. Members are still probably sitting through endless annual meetings in which the main subject is financial doom and the reprehensible lack of members' commitment which has brought it about. I remember the gloomy, depressed feeling hanging over us as we left these meetings, shamed into believing we were letting our church down and even letting the United Church die because we didn't care.

Though everything in our culture has changed  so radically that it is practically unrecognizable, the United Church expects to go on operating in the same way it did in the 1950s. Why doesn't it work any more? Can you guess? But shame isn't the answer, nor is panic, scrambling to get the old ways back, or bitterness and gloom.

Ask yourself: how many churches did Jesus build? Only one, and it has no walls.)





By National Post October 13, 2007 


The leader of the United Church of Canada says his Church is too "preoccupied" with protecting its buildings, counting its money and recruiting members, and should instead devote its energies to helping the poor, the hungry and the sick beyond its walls.

Reverend David Giuliano, the Moderator, or spiritual head, of one of Canada's largest Protestant churches, has sent a letter to United Church congregations across the country, urging them to worry less about "buildings and budgets" and become more concerned about the "suffering of the world around us."






"Our hope is not for our survival or even growth," Rev. Giuliano writes. "I am praying that our preoccupation with getting people into church is transformed by a passion for getting the church out into the world.

"I am praying that we welcome strangers with a radical hospitality that sees in them the face of Christ -- not an 'identifiable giver' or a 'potential committee member.' "

Rev. Giuliano's plea comes in the midst of a difficult period for the Church and its roughly 600,000 members. Along with other mainstream Christian denominations, the United Church of Canada is experiencing a long decline in national membership; its congregational lists fell 39% between 1961 and 2001.

In July, the Church announced program cuts and layoffs at its national headquarters in Toronto due to financial pressures -- including the closure of its audiovisual production office and the cancellation of its award-winning current affairs television pro-gram Spirit Connection, which will air for the last time on Vision TV on Dec. 30.






In an interview this week Rev. Giuliano acknowledged, "There's a lot of anxiety in the Church about our institution --about money and numbers."

He said the Church, which once boasted more than a million active adherents, was for many generations a source of cultural and social authority in Protestant Canada.

"Many of us are reluctant to give up [that authority]--even if it doesn't really exist today --but I see the change as liberating, because we don't have to hold on to that any more."

"Jesus's followers were not a huge group of people, and they were not prosperous," he said.

"The measurement of a faithful community cannot be in its numbers."

Rev. Giuliano said that as one example of the Church's preoccupation with survival, too much money is spent maintaining Church buildings that serve little purpose other than to shelter a declining group of worshippers once a week.








"I think we have too much property," he said. "We have places where we have three United Churches within three blocks of each other."

He applauded one of the country's oldest congregations, First United Church in Ottawa, which sold its old building last year and now leases meeting and programming space from a nearby Anglican Church.

Rev. Giuliano likened the Church institution to a treasured car that a proud owner might keep in their driveway.

"The Church is a vehicle intended to get us somewhere. If you keep it fixed and washed and waxed but you don't ever take it anywhere, it doesn't have much purpose," he said.

"If what we do is ask the question, 'How do we get big or even survive,' I think we've lost our way," he said. "For me, the real question is, 'What does it mean to be faithful?' "

© (c) CanWest MediaWorks Publications Inc.






(Post-blog. I can hear the protests now. But it won't work. It won't work. Whether we like it or not, the world runs on money and it can't be any other way. End of discussion.

Show me ONE organization that has survived for more than a couple of years without significant financial support from its membership?

I have one, and it has many branches and exists in many forms. It was started in the 1930s because a doctor and a stockbroker couldn't stay sober. But together, with mutual insight and support, they found that they could. No one told them that survival without money was impossible, so they survived. They did more than survive: their tiny church of two became the most successful worldwide self-help organization in human history. And all this with no dues or fees, so that NO ONE would be excluded.

Maybe just a little bit closer to what Jesus had in mind.)





Ever ridden in a pussyvan?


BIKE - 18 obsolete words, which never should have gone out of style

News

18 obsolete words which never should have gone out of style


Just like facts and flies, English words have life-spans. Some are thousands of years old, from before English officially existed, others change, or are replaced or get ditched entirely.
Here are 18 uncommon or obsolete words that we think may have died early. We found them in two places: a book called “The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten” by Jeffrey Kacirk, and on a blog called Obsolete Word of The Day that’s been out of service since 2010. Both are fantastic— you should check them out.

Snoutfair: A person with a handsome countenance — “The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten” by Jeffrey Kacirk

Pussyvan: A flurry, temper — “The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten” by Jeffrey Kacirk

Wonder-wench: A sweetheart — “The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten” by Jeffrey Kacirk

Lunting: Walking while smoking a pipe — John Mactaggart’s “Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia,” 1824





California widow: A married woman whose husband is away from her for any extended period — John Farmer’s “Americanisms Old and New”, 1889

Groak: To silently watch someone while they are eating, hoping to be invited to join them – www.ObsoleteWord.Blogspot.com

Jirble: To pour out (a liquid) with an unsteady hand: as, he jirbles out a dram — www.Wordnik.com

Curglaff: The shock felt in bathing when one first plunges into the cold water — John Jamieson’s Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808

Spermologer: A picker-up of trivia, of current news, a gossip monger, what we would today call a columnist — “The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten” by Jeffrey Kacirk

Tyromancy: Divining by the coagulation of cheese — “The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten” by Jeffrey Kacirk

Beef-witted: Having an inactive brain, thought to be from eating too much beef. — John Phin’s “Shakespeare Cyclopaedia and Glossary”, 1902

Queerplungers: Cheats who throw themselves into the water in order that they may be taken up by their accomplices, who carry them to one of the houses appointed by the Humane Society for the recovery of drowned persons, where they are rewarded by the society with a guinea each, and the supposed drowned person, pretending he was driven to that extremity by great necessity, is also frequently sent away with a contribution in his pocket. — “The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten” by Jeffrey Kacirk





Englishable: That which may be rendered into English — John Ogilvie’s “Comprehensive English Dictionary”, 1865

Resistentialism: The seemingly spiteful behavior shown by inanimate objects — www.ObsoleteWord.Blogspot.com

Bookwright: A writer of books; an author; a term of slight contempt — Daniel Lyons’s “Dictionary of the English Language”, 1897

Soda-squirt: One who works at a soda fountain in New Mexico — Elsie Warnock’s “Dialect Speech in California and New Mexico”, 1919

With squirrel: Pregnant — Vance Randolph’s “Down in the Holler: A Gallery of Ozark Folk Speech”, 1953

Zafty: A person very easily imposed upon — Maj. B. Lowsley’s “A Glossary of Berkshire Words and Phrases”, 1888



Friday, July 19, 2013

THE FLY: a cautionary tale













And so. . . good night.

Never trust a clown with a social disease




His Satanic Majesty, the Milkster, is back. All it took is one mis-reference in my last post (i. e. the title of a Harold Lloyd movie, The Milky Way) to trip off the awful synapses, releasing the nightmare miasma of my Milky memories.

Though Milky never actually inspired a suicide cult, he could have. You could just as easily put cyanide in Twin Pines milk, couldn't you? Actually, it might even be more pleasant to take. And there's something else about Twin Pines. . . 




IT'S MAGIC.


No one has figured out yet just HOW secretions from a cow's udder could have this sort of paranormal power.  No one has figured out yet, either, why anyone would have kept a festering old milk carton from 1962 which obviously has mold growing on the top. 




I have no idea what this is or how it got here. It just appeared like boils from a plague. It could be a very, very stained old tshirt, but why leave us hanging with such a motto? "Milky" Says - WHAT?? Maybe you turned the shirt over and it said "blow me".





I always suspected Milky had superior mathematical skills, and now I know it. Just look at this fraction here, it's unbelievable, isn't it? Never mind that it looks like his mother made that suit out of an old bedsheet. He was on a different system from all the rest of us.The system of clowns whose  brains had been eaten away by social diseases contracted during their low-budget Shrine Circus days. The system of hot dirty canvas and heaving sawdust and straining ropes. The stench of animal dung and the screams of little children.








Thursday, July 18, 2013

Harold on my mind (again!)




                                                                  Girls. . .




Girls-girls. . .




GIRLS - GIRLS - GIRLS!!

Harold always liked to up the ante. For him, more was always better. I think these shots are from one of his early talkies, The Milky Way, in which he plays a milkman who is accidentally catapulted to fame as a prizefighter. How he ends up with all these dames we'll never know, but he sure looks happy.

Harold loved women - he made no secret of it, and liked to photograph them - nude - in 3D.  If I had the guts I'd post some of his nude shots of pinup girls like Bettie Page. The family isn't trying to hide any of this, as they put out a coffee-table-type book of his 3D Nudes a decade or so ago. The poses are spectacularly hokey, early Playboy with a touch of surrealism. The book comes with hokey 3D spectacles that don't work very well. Actually, MY copy, which I bought used from Amazon, didn't have the spectacles and I had to use the ones that came with the DVD boxed set, The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection.




I think I've posted this before, but I have a feeling no one reads this stuff every single day of their lives and thus MIGHT have missed it. I couldn't help but see a certain eerie similarity between these two photos.




Very early Woody Allen does bear a kind of resemblance to Lloyd, without the physical feats (though apparently Woody Allen was  a talented ball player who played down his athletic prowess because it didn't fit his nerdy image). He's hapless and misunderstood, but somehow or other by the end of the picture, he always gets the girl.

By the way, Woody Allen was for some reason not interested in getting involved in the biopic which will be adapted from The Glass Character. I'll just have to go to Marty or Clint (or Ronnie or Steve).




These are Lloyd candid shots. This is what he did between takes or while waiting for his girl friend. He was a sly devil and to me, always looked a bit seductive.




Making up for The Kid Brother, a tender, lyrical movie that is in my top six Lloyd favorites. The reissued movie has a score by Carl Davis that makes me cry.




Harold was a non-drinker who ran to ice cream floats. There was something of the earnest Midwestern boy in him that was endearing, though it did include a petulant temper. Last night I watched Kevin Brownlow's documentary The Third Genius (again!) and was charmed by the way his Nebraskan accent popped out in certain places. "Forehead" came out something like "foah-hayyd". In Movie Crazy, I remember him exclaiming, "The stock market crayyshed!"




OK, so I lied - I'm going to post some of the nude shots! These are almost decorous by today's standards, and the frontal shots never show much below the waist. The women look to me like skin sculptures, or maybe a 12-year-old boy's vision of what a nude woman might look like. He liked some meat on his women, which is commendable. Today's 6-foot-tall, stick-thin models probably wouldn't interest him.




Yes, yes, I told you they were weird! Maybe all those buckles did it for him, who knows.




Uhhhhh. . .




It must have taken him quite a lot of effort to get that spider on the wall.


(POST-POST: I just had the most evil thought about The Milky Way. It sounds like the title for Milky the Clown's  memoirs, or perhaps a religion where thousands of devotees in clown suits drink poisoned Twin Pines milk and die in a heap.)



Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!



Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Five deadly words you never want to hear





“I love you."

"Thank you!”

I heard this deadly five-word conversation on The Big Bang Theory not long ago, as part of Leonard and Penny’s six-year-long dance around each other. They sleep together; they don’t sleep together. They date; they don’t date. They see other people for a while, sometimes quite a while, and then. . .

And then poor, vulnerable Leonard drops the l-bomb.

Penny, completely disconcerted, reacts with a stunned silence, almost as if she's been slapped. Then blurts out the response that makes Leonard's heart sink into the floor.






"Thank you."

To lay oneself open in what may be the most vulnerable statement that exists, only to have it politely dismissed, indicates that the person you had all those tender, passionate feelings for dwells on a separate planet, and probably always will.

People assume this disastrous emotional misfire only happens in "relationships", which has somehow come to mean "boy-girl with sex". But it used to apply more broadly. I know about the l-bomb because it happened to me a few years ago, and though it wasn't BGWS, the script was almost exactly the same. The other person, someone I knew as a close friend through a 12-step program, probably believed they were responding appropriately and even kindly. Fairly. Isn’t that the right thing to say when you receive a compliment?





Of course. "Thank you" is a perfectly good response. 

Is "love" always seen as "romantic love" now and nothing else? I am beginning to wonder. Or do those three little words just cause certain people to turn tail and run?

In my case, it seems to me I’ve lived my life on the dark side of the moon, meaning I give much more than I receive. Oddly enough, I am often seen as selfish because what I give isn’t understood, or else isn’t the “right” thing and does not exactly fit the slot of what is required. What I have to give is suspect or too different, even if it represents an avalanche of love.

In fact, I think that’s the whole problem.





When love is doled out with an eyedropper, it does not exactly match an avalanche of love. When do things match in life? Never. But being on another planet, a very lonely one, is a whole different thing.

When, after years and years of dissatisfaction and pain, you finally break and begin to explain to the other person what you think is really going on, they are completely confused. Not only do they expect you to stick to the script (i. e. accept them exactly the way they are, even if they have had multiple drug slips and are going down for the third time), they are shocked and baffled and even offended when you deviate from it and don’t seem to care if you are finally expressing what you really feel.






But that’s not the purpose of the relationship. Not any more. It has become a chess game: your move; my move. If anyone deviates, it’s wrong and spoils the rhythm, requiring an immediate correction.

This has happened to me too many times, and not just in the perilous waters of 12-step groups where, in spite of a lot of smoke-blowing, emotional dishonesty and manipulation is practically the norm. I don’t know why I am always at the bottom end of the seesaw. I suppose the self-help gurus would say that I engineer it that way, that I make it happen myself (neatly letting all those abusive jerks off the hook: how they must love this theory!) in order to shortchange myself. And when you have grown up with alcoholism and sexual abuse as daily fare (completely denied by the family as nasty lies), perhaps it’s not hard to see why.




Any love I have seems to hang  by a spider’s thread. I’m an emotional sharecropper: “yes, massuh!” What’s the matter with me? I should be more grateful. Or so it seems. When your best intentions to help are met with an offended silence, when you risk being gutted by opening your soul ONE MORE TIME, when you make the ultimate statement and receive a handshake in return, it devastates in a way I cannot really describe.

I love you. Thanks! I’m dying inside. That's too bad!  I’m going to commit suicide now. Here, I’ll show you to the bridge!







It’s not quite like that, but when the other person is completely puzzled and thinks you’re being unreasonable and even mean when you somehow hope for more, you get that ice floe feeling. A nice pan of ice; a good hard shove.


Tuesday, July 16, 2013

You say it's your birthday




Lauren, in her Jailhouse Rock dance costume, blows out her half of the candles at the girls' joint Birthday Extravaganza last month. Lauren had six candles, Erica had eight, and both ended up with at least two boy friends.



This looked perfect, until I realized I had no tits




Me 'n the Bobster are this tight.


GOD, I wish I had written this!!



An erotic illusion




This is a painting I stumbled on, End of the Ball by Rogelio de Egusquiza, as usual when I was looking for something else. I thought it was supremely gorgeous, quite erotic, and seemed to embody that old term "swept off her feet". She looks like she is swooning in his arms, resting her full weight on him. If he let go of her, she would fall. He holds her delicately, almost gingerly, as she collapses into him in an attitude of erotic surrender. 




But then, hey hey, what is this?

It's some sort of odd old photograph, obviously meant as a model of sorts for the gorgeous erotic painting. But it is hardly erotic. She leans awkwardly towards his shoulder while he holds her stiffly (the two don't know each other, after all), and their hands are literally held up by a pole, reminding me of the braces used in Victorian post-mortem photography where the corpse was propped up in a "lifelike" pose. Most ludicrous of all is the wooden stool holding up the train of her exquisite gown, presumably so the artist can get the racy, shocking exposed foot just right. (I can't see the foot in the photo. Perhaps it was just too unthinkable to expose oneself in such a manner.)






It's kind of like seeing the undergirding of an exquisite building or sculpture, the mundane bones of the thing. I wonder here however if this photo was taken merely as a reference. Any artist worth his salt would need to work from "life", not a two-dimensional black-and-white photo. He would need to see skin pigment and folds of silk and individual petals. These models, if they did pose for him, probably had to hold the pose for hours. No wonder they used that prop. (And what if they had to go to the bathroom? It's hard for me to believe that people DID go to the bathroom in those days.) But the stool under the skirt just ruins the whole thing.



 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book
    It took me years to write, will you take a look



Sunday, July 14, 2013

Twilight Zone - The Midnight Sun Clip


MUST READ! SEVEN KEYS to Prosperity, Wealth, and Happiness!




MUST READ:  Seven Keys to Lifelong Properity (Read 

right now this minute or your nose will fall off)



Hey!  Do you like to read those catchy lists you’re seeing everywhere these days, listing ten or seven or nineteen Best Ofs or Worst Ofs or Craziest or Sanest or Most Gross and Disgusting? YOU DO? Then, hey - this is your lucky day! So let's read it right now this minute: WHY WE SHOULD READ LISTS!






1. Lists are the hot thing now! They really are! That means they're good! Lists catch everybody’s attention! That means they want to read them, RIGHT NOW! That means they SHOULD read them, right now! That means they DO read them, RIGHT NOW!


2. It doesn’t matter if the lists have any content or not because that’s not the point! In fact, the less content the lists have, the better!





3. Lists make us think the person who made the list KNOWS SOMETHING! It means he looks SMART and isn't just somebody with the intelligence of an orangutan!


4. Not only that! Because the items are NUMBERED, the list makes us think that this person knew how to PUT THESE THINGS IN ORDER! Really! They’re not just slammed up here randomly to fill space (even if they are).






5. These lists are almost always accompanied by pop-up ads that pop up (maybe that’s why they’re called pop-up ads!), like popcorn or gophers or some other thing that pops up (maybe Pop Tarts?). Nobody knows why that is! But nobody cares, either!






6. Lists kind of boil everything down to a few words of one syllable so you don’t have to do any actual reading or thinking, which is a real time-saver in today’s stress-filled world!


7. Seven things is too many things to come up with right now so we’ll just say seven things even though it’s really six, because “six things” just sounds totally lame, you know? (And who's counting anyway?) But SEVEN things just seems magical, special, and something you JUST HAVE TO READ. And DON'T say I made a mistake in the title cuz I speled it in Tweetspeak where shorter is always better!