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| What does the word "ecumenical" mean? I heard it on an episode of a television show called "Father Ted" about the "Irish people". They train a boozy, perverted priest to shout (as that is the only way he can communicate) "That would be an ecumenical matter?" I laughed knowingly but without any true meaning of what the word meant. I guess the laugh was justified by the situation of the joke, even if I didn't know what the word literally meant. But somewhere inside I felt like one of those people who laugh at New Yorker cartoons without getting the joke, but then they feel sort of smarter because they're laughing. So anyways, I was wondering what it meant. I suppose I could look it up on the internets but I feel like that takes away from the mystique and mystery surrounding my understanding of the word. So here's what I'm saying: I don't know what the word means and don't tell me. First off, it's probably a Catholic thing I'll never truly understand anyways. Secondly, and more importantly, I want the sexiness and the aura of the unknown word to hang over "ecumenical" like a shawl over a naked person, not fully revealing the flesh, but hinting that there's something underneath. I want my language to be authentic: free from the modern world and its industries and technologies and internets, and dictionaries and thesauruses and Microsoft Word Tools tabs and people who already know the word just telling you it and those little electronic pocket dictionaries that tell you the definition of the word and then how to write it in Japanese characters and cotton candy and helium balloons and modern medical equipment that can detect stuff and internal combustion. No. I want not to fully understand. Long live ignorance! Long live the cult of the unknown and the unknowing! Long live ecumenical and the tangential and grotesquely reactionary but very dedicated rants that may be spawned from its existence! You've been Con-Tammie-nated.
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| A note on the word "authentic": I don't like it. I kind of feel like either everything is authentic or nothing is. Everything that seems in between: let's come up with different words for it, ok? Like instead of saying: "Wow! This Mexican food is really authentic!" How about: "Wow! This Mexican food more simply fits my idea of what the word Mexican means to me based on my own experience and not actually any kind of authentic or true Mexican identity!" Or maybe even this would work: "Wow! This Mexican food is prepared in a way that is similar to how it is prepared in Mexico that one time I went or saw on television!" Another example could be like this: "Hey, your family is not authentically Asian because you speak a lot of English to each other!" Perhaps it could be more illustrative to say this: "I am a total putz! I just wanted to say that! Everything I say sucks! I am the least self-aware person on Earth!"
Ok, that was fun.
You've been Con-Tammie-nated. | | |
| 12:35 am
How come it's always 12:35 (or thereabouts) at night when you finally stop to look at a clock on one of those nights out? It's always 12:35 at about the time everyone is done saying their goodbyes and you're walking to your car and you go to yourself, "Hey how long was tonight?" And then Time tells you that it's 12:35. Or maybe you're at a friends and you're all thinking about going to one last party or bar you've heard people you know are at, and even though you've been hanging out for a while, it feels like it hasn't been a totally fulfilling night, and to size up the feasibility of the situation you look up the time at a local Time distributor, and there it is: 12:35. Regardless of whether you leave well enough alone and return home soon after, or you decide to grab life by the intestines and stay up, that crossroads will happen at 12:35 or thereabouts.
2:23 am
Why is it always 2:23 (or thereabouts) when you haven't been able to go to sleep and all the days emotions and characters and dramas are playing out in you head, and then being re-arranged to satisfy your insecurities and indulgences, when you roll over and decide to—in perhaps a moment of restless self-hate—gauge just how incapable you are of ceasing the sleepless perambulations, and you find that all those frustrations, impotence, and pettiness has been calibrated to 2:23 a.m. (or thereabouts)?
Why does Time do this? Has Time become tired of our daily struggles, our little thresholds? Is Time so cynical that it has lost interest? Remember in that Bible book when everyone was living to be hundreds of years old, and then David lived a shorter life than his forefathers so Solomon could live a nice sized one too (that may be less textual, more Rabbinic interpretation and tradition)? Back then Time was young and less caustic. You could negotiate with Time back then, like when Hezekiah lived fifteen more years after he was supposed to die because he was like, "Why must I die?" I'm not sure if it was punishment or reward to make all those Genesis folks live for hundreds of years, but either way, Time had a zest and zeal about his work that has disappeared. There is still hope for Time though. And that hope comes in the form of Anachrony. The symbol is just like the Anarchy A but in the circle there are watch hands. Anachronists support more democratic interpretations of time, and encourage Time to dissolve its adamantine and all-devouring structures and bureaucracies. No more 12:35 a.m.! No more 2:23 a.m.! Long Live Anachrony! Smash all clocks!
You've been Con-Tammie-nated. | | |
| Here's what I hate about stand up comedians: the same old conventions get super played out.
Ok—we get it—men and women are different in many ways. Ok—you think that women are irrational and moody and men are sex obsessed and incapable of talking about emotions. Been there, done that. Who cares? It's not funny (ever) anymore. I would argue that the world doesn't really need to hear for the thousandth time how black people act differently from white people without going any further. White people nerdy voice: if you're not Richard Pryor you're not doing anything new with it. That's not to say that stand up comedy can't be an excellent space for talking about race and gender—but by talking about the difficulties in communications between two groups of people as if those difficulties are innate or natural only further complicates the way we see others.
Here's how my stand up routine would go: "Men have penises! Women have vaginas! Men are strong! Women buy shoes! Men like cars! Women clean things! Men are grossed out by periods! Women have periods and sometimes act differently during that process!" I can only imagine I would become infinitely popular as a stand-up comedian, because that's all I see them do on television.
Don't even get me started on stand up routines revolving around children or dating. ("So I recently became a father [hold for applause] Thank you, thank you…I will now use my new (possibly invented) children to make jokes assuming I know everything about kids and parenthood…They act funny because they are younger than us…")
Ok I'm done talking about my problems with standup comedy. I could go on longer but I have to shop and act moody and irrational for the rest of the day. Busy schedule, believe me. Also, Dane Cook really sucks. And Carlos Mencia. There, I'm done.
You've been Con-Tammie-nated. | | |
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education class.
"why you always gotta get out of the hood. no. you gotta
stay in the hood and make change there. i never wanna leave my
hood. i wanna change it."
"you can't just go around telling them that everything they do is wrong
cuz you don't know. that is their life, their community. we
know that drugs, killing ain't the greatest life but you can't just
tell them that everything they know is wrong...you gotta show them that
they have the opportunity to have better but still give the choice."
"why is college always the answer? i mean class at cal, some of
them are just a joke...it's all sorta pointless and just a show."
"so what if you say you're not to blame. who's to blame doesn't really matter, you can still be part of the solution."
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