Day: July 16, 2002

This is where we used to live
Broken glass, broke and hungry
Broken hearts and broken bones
This is where we used to live
— Bare Naked Ladies, “The Old Apartment”

I think this will be the last thing I share from my old weblog for awhile. I didn’t keep it very long, and there’s not much there, but there are one or two things I still find interesting or amusing on it. This in particular:

I was digging through some of my papers this evening (I’m a packrat, and not a terrifically well-organized one at that), when I came across a quiz I’ve been holding onto for some reason. It’s just a piece of crinkly looseleaf paper, six short answers, but it’s one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen. Its original owner, Letrell Crittenden — no names have been changed to protect the innocent; to paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, god protects the innocent as a matter of heavenly routine — received a perfect score, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out what sort of class it’s from. You be the judge:

  1. Bar Mitzfah
  2. Racquetball
  3. Whizzer
  4. Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome
  5. 1981
  6. In a river behind and above the stage

Two years later and I still don’t understand it.

Well, while I’m sharing from my old weblog anyway, here are a couple of quotes I feel like passing along:

We stumble, walking wounded from the in-tray to the tea-tray, numb with disbelief, and when the bandages come off we do not recognize ourselves, our bruised expressions, our ill-fitting lives. How did we come to be these wraiths in treadmill corridors? What were we before we were this? — Alan Moore, The Birth Caul

Cross, rope, and arrow: ancient implements of mankind, today reduced, or elevated, to symbols. I do not know why I marvel at them so, when there is nothing on earth that forgetfulness does not fade, memory alter, and when no one knows what sort of image the future may translate into. — Jorge Luis Borges, “Mutations”

Do you have any favorite quotes?

Re-reading about John Ashcroft’s connection to arguably racist organizations like Bob Jones University, I remembered something I posted back in March of 2000, when my weblog used to be here. Thanks to the Wayback Machine, I was able to find it:

Speaking of bad television, I just caught a few minutes of Larry King’s interview with Bob Jones III, president of Bob Jones University, the school that’s recently been in the press because of its policy restricting interracial dating among its students. Jones insists that the policy itself is unimportant, rarely even mentioned on campus, and doesn’t deserve the national attention it has received. The policy exists, he says, not to promote bigotry but resistance to a one-world government, new world order. Frankly, I think I liked it better when I thought he was just a racist.

The policy has, apparently, been dropped, but that unsettling world-view is still in place, judging from the University’s official response:

Does the University believe that those who choose interracial marriage do so out of rebellion against God? No. It does believe, however, that often the promoters of it do so out of antagonism toward God because they are often the same entities that promote homosexuality, abortion, and other forms of social radicalism.

Bob Jones University’s policy regarding interracial dating was more of an opposition to the rebellious and defiant antichrist spirit of the promoters of one-worldism than to interracial dating itself. Many who date and marry interracially are just as opposed to one-worldism and the spirit of Antichrist as we are.

Uh huh. Wow, hard to believe John Ashcroft’s ties to the University raised a few eyebrows, huh?

Ashcroft’s iron will molds the law — found through both Thudfactor and This Modern World.

You know, it’s not so much the Attorney General’s political or religious views that trouble me. No matter how overly simplistic or wrongheaded those views often seem, I can agree to disagree with someone if I respect the strength of their convictions, if it appears they are doing what they believe to be right within the parameters established by law.

But John Ashcroft doesn’t do that. He has continually demonstrated a willingness to circumvent the law, to manipulate public opinion, and to set aside those convictions if doing so will further his political career. As Tulsky writes in his article, “…Ashcroft has repeatedly turned to the courts to pursue his own goals, either to achieve policies that reflect his politics and moral code or, as judges have charged in several cases, to advance his career.” The job of the Attorney General is to defend the laws of the nation — whether he or she agrees with them or not — and I think Ashcroft’s actions have repeatedly shown that he is not capable of that job, despite his assurances to the contrary.