The pontiff has email. No kidding! You can send him a message at benedictxvi@vatican.va. The man has had a fan club for years and they have graciously put his email address on their home page. These people are so dedicated it brings tears to my eyes. You can buy FAN CLUB MERCHANDISE! I’d like to report that they donate every dime of profit to the church to be used relieving the suffering of the poor but such is not the case. “Welcome to the Ratzinger Fan Club Giftshop. Proceeds from this store go towards the monthly costs of keeping our website online. ” I’m sure the cost of the website – max a couple hundred bucks/month assuming it is maintained by dedicated volunteers, is barely affordable on their CafePress sales. Of course being that these are hardline Catholics it is more likely that the Ratzinger Fan Club has a well paid staff. But that’s another discussion

Here is what they have to say about this merchandise

“Wear your faith on your sleeve! Our shirts, hats and stickers will provoke a response and initiate debate in such places as RCIA meetings, campuses of pseudo-‘Catholic’ colleges, or any educational function with a tendency to spread confusion and dissent! ”

Cool – it’s Catholic against Catholic! The RCIA is for grownups who have decided to convert. I don’t know which Catholic colleges rate being called ‘pseudo’.

Apparently John Paul also had an email address. If only I had known… but at least I can still send a missive to his holiness. If only I knew how to start out.

Dear Pontiff…. too casual
Your Holiness .. well – no…
Yo, Pope! .. way too casual
Excellency…. not for me so no.
I kiss your ring … correct real time behavior but inappropriate as a salutation
Dear Pope …. probably not but it’s the best I can do.

So how would you begin an email to the Pope and what would you say?

I might say –

Dear Pope,
I am a dissenter. I think it is wrong to promote uncontrolled reproduction among people who don’t have any food. I think women who support and believe the Catholic doctrine should be able to say Mass without having to hide in fear of excommunication (what the hell drives them beats me but I’m just sayin’), I think your wishy, washy view on gays that says being gay is inherent but must be fought as evil is hypocritical. And what about all the molestation? What exactly is the church going to do about that? If being gay is so bad, why is it that a large percentage of your ordained are violating little boys in the ambry?

In short – if you can be 21st Century enough to have an email address why can’t you loosen up and get with the program? What is up with calling one kind of Catholic a dissenter and another kind of Catholic a-okay? What’s up with keeping the Catholic doctrine so strict as to be unconscionable in this day and age? And what about the sexual abuse? Really – what are you going to do about that?

Actually, thank you for getting yourself elected. Please be so completely hard assed over the next 3 to 5 years (your expected term of Popeness) that the church is forced to adopt some 21st Century reforms,

Sincerely,
21stCenturyMom (not now, nor ever a Catholic)

Before you get too busy writing your email please be advised of this statement made in the Fan Club FAQ
You can email him at benedictxvi@vatican.va, but good luck on getting a response. =)

Darn – I was so hoping for some dialog.

I had a really vivid dream last night about grrl. Really vivid. I’m sure it was fueled in part by the guilt I suffer for pooping on her blog and calling the new Pope a Nazi. So okay – he is not a Nazi and served, probably against his will or desire only long enough to figure out how to escape. Or something like that. Whatever. I don’t actually care about the Pope because I’m not Catholic and I’m not a Jew and I’m not really anything although I do strongly feel that the last thing this world needs is another strict religious fundamentalist! For the honest love of God (and I mean that) we need more tolerance and recognition of 21st Century realities and less Catholic, anti-birth control, anti-gay dogma. But I digress.

What I really wanted to talk about is my dream of grrl. I’m pretty sure you all (all 4 of you) know who I am talking about but in the event you don’t I am talking about getupgrrl of Chez Miscarriage. This is a woman who is so smart and so articulate that I’m pretty sure if she had one of those memory foam pillows it would go completely flat and be about 1/100th of an inch thick in the morning because her brain surely must weigh a ton. This is a woman who can take tragedy and loss and write about it so that her audience laughs and cries at the same time. She does this repeatedly with the kind of skill that would bring her a Pulitzer at the very least should she ever publish her work through the standard channels. She is a master of righteous indignation, humor, irony, charactiture and parody. Whatever she writes about is done with a full command and deep knowledge of her subject (unlike some blog commenters who just toss a little verbal poop around and leave). Last night she dominated my dreams and it seemed like a more interesting thing to write about than my recent experience managing the food for our local Junior Prom. I am going to send grrl an email regarding this post but I will not post a comment on her blog pointing to it because that would be blog whoring of the worst kind.

In my dream I was at grrls apartment – a teeny, messy little studio. I wondered why her husband didn’t live there but it somehow made sense because they are both so very busy and need their space. I was visiting her to apologize for making an inappropriate post on her blog and to go out to lunch with her. This also made sense as is true of most of the incongruous, illogical things that populate my dreams. I was very curious about her life and wanted to peruse her bookshelf but more than anything I wanted her mother to call and speak through the answering machine so I could just listen to what she had to say. I kept asking grrl why her mother hadn’t called – was this going to be the one day when the woman didn’t call every 15 minutes? Geeez – I just have all the luck. Grrl and I chatted about this and that and I think we were trying to figure out how to fit a baby into that little, teeny apartment but it wasn’t a major focus. What I really remember was how the place looked. It was very messy. The bed was unmade, there were books on every surface and the apartment was just so tiny – so completely inadequate for the person it housed.

I suppose the significance of the dream is that my own world is too tiny and too full of crap and I’m not really getting what I want but it was much more fun to experience that from the perspective of hanging out with getupgrrl and wishing her Mom would call. I wonder what she would have said?

So thanks for the inadvertant invite, grrl and sorry for the Nazi post.

ps- the title of this post is also the title of a book by Nuala Ofaolain, a sort of off beat but interesting Irish writer. It only seems right to give her proper attribution.

Jessica of Daughter of Opinion has initiated the Interview Game. Here are the rules:

The Official Interview Game Rules
1. If you want to participate, leave a comment below saying “interview me.”
2. I will respond by asking you five questions – each person’s will be different.
3. You will update your journal/blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Here are my questions and answers:

1. Best concert you ever attended?

A Bruce Hornsby concert at a little jazz club in Oakland. He was fantastic. I am a huge Hornsby fan, anyhow but watching him play is sort of a zen experience although he’s the one with the zen thing going. He is the piano. He and the keyboard are one in the same and he just plays and plays and moves in and out of various genres and tunes and he sings, too. People in the audience send requests up via little pieces of paper which he arranges on the music tray. He reads a lot more of them then he grants but he always makes comments. His concert is interspersed with amusing anecdotes and introductions and little bits of information. The guy is a genius.

2. Hardest lesson you’ve learned in life?
Don’t do anything you wouldn’t be willing to see published on the front page of the New York Times. Really. It is the only way to avoid committing a regrettable act.

3. The light is yellow – do you slow down, or speed up?
This is a really boring answer but it depends on how close I am to the light. If I’m really close and I’m moving pretty fast I speed up so that I don’t have to slam on the breaks. Otherwise I stop.

4. The last book you read?
I have been reading more than one at a time so this is a little tricky. I read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time which I liked very much. I also read a book of short stories by Wallace Stegner called The Women on the Wall. That man is also a genius. Crossing to Safety is one of the most engaging, almost plot-free books I’ve ever read. There is a story but it just sort of blossoms out of description and dialog. oops! I’m cheating on this answer – sorry.

5. Who might you have been in a previous life
A rebel and revolutionary. A free thinker and a big mouth. I was probably burned at the stake or subjected to public humiliation for which I engaged in thoroughly wicked subterfuge in order to repay my oppressors. I was an imp, I’m sure.

The End

If you would like me to interview you please post a comment. Thanks Jessica!

What is it with men and their ridiculous sense of immortality? I was cruising an on-line dating site and found man after man after man who, at the age of 50+ happily pronounces that he’s looking for a mate because he’s finally ready to start a family.

I’m sure plenty of people can pipe up and say that his or her DoD is that old or that her spouse was 54 when the first kid was born and it is wonderful and I’m sure it is – for the parents. I’m sure parents that old are great for kids – as long as they are healthy and alive. But here’s an irrefutable fact for you. If you are 60 when your kid is 10 then you will not likely be around for long if at all as a grandparent,. If you are 60 when your kid is born and your kid waits until he or she is 30 to procreate then you are, at the very least going to be very, very old when that grandchild is born.

I have a hard time with that. I really do. I have a really, really hard time with men in their 50s and 60s and 70s fathering children. I just do. I’m a little chagrined to say that because I know there are lots and lots of women who for one reason or another can’t start a family until they are in their early 40s and I have no problem with that at all. In fact, I have no problem with a woman of 42 who has a spouse of 52 starting a family. What I have a problem with is a guy who just screws around being totally selfish until he is in his mid-fifties finally deciding he wants to get married and have a family. I would venture to say that 9.5 times out of 10 he is not looking for a woman who is at the cusp of her childbearing years – he is looking for a woman in her 20s or 30s. Or there is the other model that just frosts my chaps – they guy who has a mid-life crises, dumps his life long faithful wife who stood by his side and raised his children, and then marries some young hottie and starts a second family. I say that even though I have a friend in that category. I still think it is just plain wrong.

Of course there is that element of ‘if all of the men my age are looking for young women to procreate with where does that leave me’ only that isn’t it because men who think like that are not my type (good thing, eh?!)

Anyhow, what do you think?

It’s just that everyone else is writing such interesting things and then they get 420 comments and I have to read them all and then I get ass fatigue and need to get a way from the computer.

I have several posts in draft form. One of these days I’ll post them – promise.

It’s just that everyone else is writing such interesting things and then they get 420 comments and I have to read them all and then I get ass fatigue and need to get a way from the computer.

I have several posts in draft form. One of these days I’ll post them – promise.

There are certain things I neglected to do while my kids were growing up that I now wish I had done. I don’t necessarily regret not having done them because by and large I think regret is a really useless activity. It is not the same as learning from your mistakes – it is the act of taking your mistakes, twisting them into a knoted rope and using them to flagellate yourself until you bleed and feel sick to your stomach. It doesn’t change a thing – it just makes you feel like crap.

Getting back to the point – I was thinking about how when my kids were little I never made a big deal of having them pick out birthday or Christmas presents for each other. I never engaged in the time honored practice of handing one off to somebody else while I took the other 2 shopping to buy something for the soon to be celebrated sibling. Now that I think of it, that might be because I was a single Mom but none the less – I don’t think I did it. In fact, I’m not sure it even occured to me to do that.

My son’s birthday is coming up in a week and I was feeling like I needed to make sure his sisters were aware of that and were planning to do something to honor him like get him a present. I really didn’t know for sure if my kids think about each other’s birthday and get a little excited about coming up with a great gift and I want that – I want that oh so badly because I don’t recall ever feeling that way about my siblings. The thing is, I come from a family that didn’t even bother putting the ‘fun’ back in dysfunctional. The ‘dys’ maybe, and maybe with a capital “D”, but not the fun – never the fun. We barely remember to call each other or send an email for our birthdays . We have spent exactly 1 Christmas all togther in the last 28 years. I think it is just so pathetic and I don’t want my kids to grow up and just forget about each other that way.

I am always wishing I were the mother of the Huggy Bear family. I like to imagine my kids thinking about each other’s birthdays and grinning like half wits, filled to bursting with blind adoration for each other. And just when I was feeling really glum about my own upbringing and thinking I had passed that particularly self centered and unfriendly tradition on, both of my girls asked me what I thought their brother might like for his birthday. My older daughter is planning her visit home to coincide with the big date.

Oh happy day! Sometimes this parenting thing works itself out in spite of it all. They may not be the Huggy Bear siblings but they do love each other and for that I am thankful. I’m not sure what I did but I’m willing to guess I did something right.

My daughter is on her high school’s improv team. The way improv works in the high schools around here is that there is a league and the teams on the league have games where one school competes against the other – sort of like a sport. There are known games with known rules. For example, there is a game called ‘Buy Me A Coke’ where the improv team has to build a scene and sometime during that scene one of the players must order a Coke. The way they pick a scene is to ask the audience for a place and for some roles. Only student members of the audience participate in yelling out possible scenes and roles (the adults understand that they are only there to clap and cheer for their school’s team). So, for example, the MC will ask the audience to ‘give me a place and make it non-geographical’. A good response might be ‘DisneyWorld’. Then the MC asks for a role.

On Friday night every single time the MC asked for a role several members of the audience would yell “Lesbian! Lesbian!”. I know my daughter really enjoys doing a good lesbian themed scene with her friends although I don’t know why since she is definitely straight. Perhaps it is just another way of being edgy. Anyhow, When I went to high school in the 70s no one would have yelled ‘Lesbian’! Lesbians were not seen, not heard, not considered. If they had a name that name was ‘butch dyke’ and it was not entertaining. Lesbian is okay now – lesbian is hot. Lesbian is Melissa Ethridge, Ellen DeGeneres, Cynthia Nixon.

On the other hand I have never heard a kid yell “Gay guy!” when asked for a role at an improv game. Adolescent boys are still largely homophobic and my guess is that they will stay that way until a really great football player comes out of the closet. Not sure what that would mean for the age old butt patting routine so popular on the gridiron but it might make being gay go from ‘not’ to ‘hot’. Time will tell.

My daughter is on her high school’s improv team. The way improv works in the high schools around here is that there is a league and the teams on the league have games where one school competes against the other – sort of like a sport. There are known games with known rules. For example, there is a game called ‘Buy Me A Coke’ where the improv team has to build a scene and sometime during that scene one of the players must order a Coke. The way they pick a scene is to ask the audience for a place and for some roles. Only student members of the audience participate in yelling out possible scenes and roles (the adults understand that they are only there to clap and cheer for their school’s team). So, for example, the MC will ask the audience to ‘give me a place and make it non-geographical’. A good response might be ‘DisneyWorld’. Then the MC asks for a role.

On Friday night every single time the MC asked for a role several members of the audience would yell “Lesbian! Lesbian!”. I know my daughter really enjoys doing a good lesbian themed scene with her friends although I don’t know why since she is definitely straight. Perhaps it is just another way of being edgy. Anyhow, When I went to high school in the 70s no one would have yelled ‘Lesbian’! Lesbians were not seen, not heard, not considered. If they had a name that name was ‘butch dyke’ and it was not entertaining. Lesbian is okay now – lesbian is hot. Lesbian is Melissa Ethridge, Ellen DeGeneres, Cynthia Nixon.

On the other hand I have never heard a kid yell “Gay guy!” when asked for a role at an improv game. Adolescent boys are still largely homophobic and my guess is that they will stay that way until a really great football player comes out of the closet. Not sure what that would mean for the age old butt patting routine so popular on the gridiron but it might make being gay go from ‘not’ to ‘hot’. Time will tell.

In the news today we have the story of the Kansas Attorney General, Phil Kline and his on-going, year long case to subpoena, the records of 2 abortion clinics to get all the dope he can on all of the women and girls who had abortions. This zeal for getting his hands on these records allegedly stems from his desire to protect children.

From his site :

“Senator and Dr. Barnett and Senators Wagle and Journey are correct: rape is a serious crime and when a 10, 11 or 12 year old is pregnant – they have been raped under Kansas law.
“As the State’s Chief Law Enforcement Official I have the duty to investigate and prosecute child rape and other crimes in order to protect Kansas children.