A downright shame

The Israel Insider is reporting a recent incident in which two demographics continue to clash in a small town.

The contenders: traditional Jews and Messianic Jews. The most recent incident: allegedly at the prompting of a local leader, the traditionals took the New Testaments that the Messianics had been distributing out of their homes and burned them in public. Concerned citizens draw a comparison to the book burnings of the Inquisition, the Third Reich, and the enclaves of backwards, bigoted, loony twats in modern America.

Okay, not the last one; that's my own contribution.

I agree with the complainants that book burning is terrible, but I think we disagree on why it's terrible. First, books should not be burned on account of the carbon emissions that the smoldering mess spits into the atmosphere - that's just not healthy.

Second and more substantively, the burning of books represents the destruction of knowledge (useful knowledge, as in the case of the burning of the Library at Alexandria centuries ago, for one example, or useless knowledge, as in the case of Bibles), censorship, and the violent quelling of dissent. Even when books are held to be dangerous (the perspective on the Library at Alexandria of the Christians and later the Muslims who torched it, or more appropriately, the perspective of many freethinkers and skeptics on the Bible and other "holy" texts), the solution is not to censor and destroy. Educate the public, provide warnings as to the content of what they may voluntarily choose to read - but let them choose whether or not to read it. Book burning is the calling card of would-be thought police.

I grant that the object of these Israeli Bible burnings (New Testament burnings, to be entirely fair) is not censorship or totalitarianism per se but mere protest. These are books that belong to the citizens who choose to destroy them, which while still disagreeable is not as bad as the dystopia Ray Bradbury once envisioned.

Still, though - and third and finally - if one chooses to destroy a book, there are surely better methods to employ. Burning books not only represents the destruction of knowledge but also is not necessarily healthy for people or the environment. If we're going to destroy holy books, I think we should recycle them. It's better for the environment and it's far more appropriate: the transformation into a more useful resource. Who knows, the Bible you choose to recycle today could become a science textbook tomorrow!

So people of Ohr Yehuda, I say unto you: do the right thing. Don't burn the New Testament. Recycle it!

(via Religion Clause)

Wolves tending the flock

The most recent sex scandal of child molestation by priests that is currently rocking the Roman Catholic Church started in 2002 when victims of John Geoghan of the Boston Archdiocese came forward to allege sexual abuse at his hands when they were children. In time, Geoghan was convicted and killed in prison, but the victims also alleged that the church hierarchy knew of Geoghan’s predilections and elected not to confront, treat, or remove him. The church was said to have simply moved the predator from one parish to the next, endangering children for more than twenty years while abjuring its own responsibility to its followers. Cardinal Bernard Law, possessing premier authority in the Boston Archdiocese, resigned over his perceived role in the movements of Geoghan and the more than ten-percent of priests in that archdiocese against whom similar complaints had been filed (Sullivan, 2002).

That the priest sex scandal first broke in Boston is only the beginning of the story, however. When the victims first spoke out in Boston in 2002, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops commissioned an independent report to measure the scope of the abuse; in this survey, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice “found that almost 4,500 clergy perpetrators have been reported…since 1950 and there were at least 10,000 victims” (Doyle, Sipe, and Wall, 2006). The Vatican has allocated more than one billion dollars to controlling the ongoing sex scandal since 1950, and where experts agree that the majority of victims of child abuse never report the offense, more than 100,000 victims have come forward in the United States alone to register complaints against priests (Berg, 2006). Moreover, a number of studies and reports indicate that, on average, anywhere from five to ten percent of Catholic priests have had complaints of child abuse filed against them (Doyle, et al., 2006). Meanwhile, the relocation and concealment that is capital to the activities of the church hierarchy in the case of John Geoghan offers a paradigm that the church has consistently followed whenever a victim of child abuse alleges a complaint. For example, filmmaker Amy Berg’s award-winning 2006 documentary Deliver us from evil highlights the similar case of Oliver O’Grady, a predator priest in the Los Angeles Archdiocese whose superiors repeatedly shifted him between different parishes.

Such alarming facts demand hard questions of psychiatry and psychology, of the history of sex in the Catholic Church, and of the scale of the problem nationally and worldwide, but most immediately, of the civil, criminal, and criminological implications. Indeed, many theories are proposed to explain crime and pedophilia in general, and the phenomenon among clergy is especially troublesome and deserving of special consideration. Traditional criminological theories, however, can only do so much to help understand the issue when other angles and perspectives can always be introduced. It is helpful, therefore, to integrate theories to gain a more complete picture of the crime under consideration. The techniques of neutralization, a control theory proposed by Gresham M. Sykes and David Matza, can be used together with the social learning theory of Ronald L. Akers to understand the actions of the Catholic Church and of the pedophile priest in cases such as that of Oliver O’Grady.

Oliver O’Grady was born in Ireland, where he studied at a seminary before immigrating to California. O’Grady was first assigned as an associate pastor in Lodi, California, in 1971, where he befriended the Jyono family and their young daughter Ann. After a complaint was filed by an unrelated family that was suspicious of O’Grady’s relationship with their son, he was relocated in 1978 to a parish in Turlock, where a subsequent complaint influenced the presiding bishop to relocate O’Grady to Stockton, California, in 1982. In Stockton, further accusations were filed, and O’Grady was moved to San Andreas, where at last criminal charges were filed when accusations arose in the community.

O’Grady’s lifeline in Lodi was with the Jyono family, who took in the young priest as an extension of their family; he would eat and sleep in their household, seeing the family off to work and their daughter off to school while alternately fulfilling his duties at the community church. Ann Jyono was five years old when “Father Ollie” first came to town; she recalls in Berg’s Deliver us from evil that O’Grady wielded total control over her life and those of his other victims: “he was in our home, in our school, and in our church; as a Catholic,” little is left after that (2006). The Jyono family had a well established, trusting relationship with O’Grady until the very end, when his name was plastered across the news headlines in San Andreas. When these accusations came to light, Ann admitted molestation by the man her family let into their home for years, often alone with their daughter. Ann Jyono is now forty years old, single, and unmarried; she and her mother and father are no less devastated by O’Grady’s actions now then when he was active in the priesthood in California.

Nancy Sloan, another of O’Grady’s more than twenty victims, recalls that she met the priest at a summer camp, and that they soon developed a relationship in which he would write her flowery letters and hold sleepovers, sleeping in her bed. Nancy states that her trusting mother wished for her introvert daughter to spend time with O’Grady; her last memory of Father Ollie before he relocated to another parish is “severe pain” before blacking out (Berg, 2006).

Sadly, the story remains essentially the same for all of O’Grady’s victims; the young priest with his “insulating charm” would “worm his way into the good graces of simple, pious people” only to destroy their children (Schickel, 2006). In Berg’s film, the Jyono’s attorney remarks that O’Grady says he has been “grooming” for as long as he has been fulfilling his priestly duties, which means some thirty years (2006). As disheartening as O’Grady’s case is, however, and as representative as it is of the cases of other priest child molesters around the nation and the world, the same can be said of the actions of the church hierarchy charged with supervising O’Grady. When suspicions arose in Lodi, California, Bishop Guilfoyle became angry at O’Grady’s managing pastor, Case Degroot, for his recommendation of a “conciliatory letter” to the victim, and promptly relocated O’Grady to Turlock (Berg, 2006); when complaints arose in Turlock, O’Grady was again relocated, this time to Stockton, California. When police caught wind of O’Grady’s activities in Stockton, then-Bishop Roger Mahoney (soon to be a cardinal and archbishop in the Los Angeles Archdiocese) made a deal with law enforcement for charges to be dropped if O’Grady were sent to a treatment facility and kept by himself where he could not endanger other parishioners or children; no such plans were ever made, however, and O’Grady instead was made the lone pastor of a church in San Andreas, California (Steinhauer, 2006; Berg, 2006). In turn, O’Grady again came to the attention of law enforcement, and he was later tried and convicted; in recorded depositions, Mahoney and other church officials deny knowledge of O’Grady’s “problems,” despite clear documentation that indicates otherwise, and even suggest that if they were aware of them, they would not have taken any corrective action. After seven years in prison, O’Grady was deported to Ireland in 2001, where he lives and roams freely today (Steinhauer, 2006).

Furthermore, in addition to active secrecy and concealment of the sex abuse issue, church officials were and are consistently obtuse, combative, and antagonistic towards victims who approach the hierarchy seeking answers (Doyle, et al., 2006). Nancy Sloan recalls that when she asked to meet with Oliver O’Grady during the height of his trials, the church briskly turned her away, citing Biblical passages and implying that “vengeance is wrong” (Berg, 2006). Such reactions serve only to “re-victimize” the victims who are seeking some manner of healing (Doyle, et al., 2006). The sickening actions of priest pedophiles and their hierarchical enablers are inexcusable, but examining such activities through integrated criminological theories sheds light on the reasons that the priest and the church have acted so deplorably.

The first criminological theory referenced above is the control theory of techniques of neutralization proposed by Gresham M. Sykes and David Matza. Most of criminology is devoted to discovering the roots of crime and explaining why individuals commit crime. Control theory, in contrast, is a theory of conformity that asks why people conform and why more people are not criminals or otherwise deviants. The control theory answers that society is rife with various control factors that inhibit an individual’s innate deviant instincts; nonconformity would be expected in any circumstance in which social controls are not completely effective (Lilly, Cullen, and Ball, 2007). In their 1957 American sociological review article entitled “Techniques of neutralization: A theory of delinquency,” Sykes and Matza take the premise of control theory a step further to suggest that even deviants are generally conformist in nature. Sykes and Matza argue that a prevailing theory of their time, that delinquents wholly embraced a deviant culture opposed to the dominant one, did not account for the remorse offenders felt, their selection of specific targets, or for their otherwise association with or devotion to authority figures such as parents or coaches (1957). They contended that deviants largely conform to the dominant culture and create rationalizations in their minds that justify behavior contrary to the law. These rationalizations include the denial of responsibility, wherein the offender claims he was compelled or forced to commit a crime beyond his control; a denial of injury, wherein the offender claims that no real harm has come to anyone through his behavior; a denial of the victim, wherein those affected by the offender’s actions are somehow deserving of the transgression; condemnation of the condemners, in which offenders claim that their accusers lack a moral high ground to allege offense or have played some abstract role in the offense; and an appeal to higher loyalties, wherein the offender claims that his pursuit of a higher ideal or purpose justifies the defiance of the law (Sykes and Matza, 1957).

Control theory explains why individuals are deviant or commit crime: either because of a lack of social controls or, in the instance of Sykes and Matza’s techniques of neutralization, because the offender has justified to himself the commission of the act outside the bounds of convention. This does not explain the roots of crime, however: people may elect to commit crime in a moment of desperation; or perhaps deviant tendencies are either present at birth or acquired later in life. All control theories are silent on this matter and it could even be assumed that all individuals, from the vilest criminal to the most unassuming housewife, refrain from deviance only because they experience social controls or lack a justification to neutralize those controls. In the face of such gaps the integration of two or more theories may be prudent or necessary to complete the gaps left open by one. As J. Robert Lilly, Francis T. Cullen, and Richard A. Ball write in Criminological theory: Context and consequences, singular theories have the weakness of excluding “variables from competing theories that might well be implicated in crime causation” (2007), and existing criminological theories are often broad enough that they can be successfully combined with others to explain crime.

Thus, where the techniques of neutralization proposed by Sykes and Matza explain why individuals commit crime, another perspective, such as the social learning theory of Ronald L. Akers, may be useful to discover the roots of crime or criminal tendencies. Akers developed his theory in the tradition of criminologists such as Clifford R. Shaw, Henry D. McKay, and Edwin H. Sutherland who posited that deviants learned delinquent or criminal behavior in the dubious social setting of the city or through peers or other deviants (Lilly, et al., 2007). Akers extended these ideas and especially those of Sutherland by intoning that what individuals learned through their environment or associations included “definitions” that “can prompt wayward behavior” and by giving form to what these definitions were (Lilly, et al., 2007). These definitions may be “general,” including moral values of right and wrong; “specific,” applying to particular crimes and their occasional “permissibility”; “negative” or “positive” towards behaviors; or “neutralizing”- in the same manner Sykes and Matza suggested – in allowing for excuses or justifications of criminal behavior (Akers, 1998). Akers further suggested that offending behaviors may be acquired in imitation of others, and he incorporated the associative and environmental considerations of Shaw, McKay, and Sutherland into his perspective as well (Lilly, et al., 2007). His social learning theory as a whole neatly complements Sykes and Matza’s techniques of neutralization. Where social learning theory indicates the roots of criminal behavior or tendencies, the techniques of neutralization (the principles of which Akers cites) offer perspective on why deviant or criminal acts are committed. This integration of the two theories is instructive in considering the priest sex scandal in which individual priests such as Oliver O’Grady and the institution of the church itself are deviously implicated.

The primary actor in these cases of sexual abuse of children is of course the priest himself. In the case of ordinary citizens who commit crimes, the larger context into which the models of control theory and the techniques of neutralization must fit is society at large and the dominant culture. In the case of the pedophile priest, this context could be considered to include both the larger society and the smaller, insulated society of the institutional church. Because the church hierarchy may never question the pedophile priest, offer reproach, or effect controls, and because the church often is an accessory to the priest’s crime by shuffling him through different parishes, the smaller circle of the church is not useful in considering the techniques of neutralization. However, the pedophile priest must answer to the larger society or culture when he is discovered. Here the lack of controls acting upon him (neither personally nor by the church) is revealed, but more relevantly, he may offer excuses such as Sykes and Matza’s denial of the victim (e.g. “The child seduced me” or “The child did not object”), a denial of injury, or a denial of responsibility. Oliver O’Grady hinted at the latter rationalization in Deliver us from evil when he suggested that he could not control his compulsions and that the complicit church shoulders blame for later incidents (Berg, 2006).

The techniques of neutralization describe the reasons for the priests’ actions, but the origin of their behavior or tendencies are observed under Akers’ social learning theory. It may be the case that predator priests were themselves molested as children, perhaps by a trusted clergyman. If this is the case, the child’s views and definitions of behavior will be warped by the experience, influencing their behavior later in life which is learned or imitated based on that experience long ago. Furthermore, Thomas P. Doyle, A.W.R. Sipe, and Patrick J. Wall, all experts in sexual victimization by priests, write in their damning investigation, Sex, priests, and secret codes: The Catholic Church’s 2,000-year paper trail of sexual abuse, that the endemic, negligible attitude toward the church code of celibacy is learned in the seminary (2006). Doyle and his co-authors suggest that as many as fifty-percent of all priests are sexually active despite their prohibitory oath; under these circumstances, no one priest will report on another for fear of blackmail, and when all sex is “bad sex,” preying on children (which, according to Sipe’s estimates, accounts for as much as half of all sexual activity by priests) is scarcely more offensive than sexual relations with an adult man or woman (2006). Moreover, the predatory sexual behaviors of priests may also be learned in the seminary, which would do much to explain the allegation by the Los Angeles Times that a full ten-percent of priests who graduated from St. John’s Seminary since 1960 are pedophiles (Doyle, et al., 2006; Berg, 2006).

The rationalizations of predator priests and the means by which they may learn their offending behaviors are despicable, but the hierarchy of the institutional church is also involved in the crimes against children. Case after case has shown that the church hierarchy is protecting the offending priests and concealing the pedophilia to the detriment of victims past, present, and future. It is useful to examine this fact through Sykes and Matza’s techniques of neutralization to understand the thoughts behind the actions. First, despite evidence that violations of celibacy, and sexual abuse of varying natures but also including pedophilia, have been issues within the church nearly since its inception, many church officials deny the responsibility they have in the long-term concealment of the scandals and the relocation of known offending priests. Indeed, the church has devised all manner of explanations that condemn society at large and deny responsibility for the current scandal, as Doyle, Sipe, and Wall note:

“Unofficial Vatican sources and other ranking prelates have attributed the contemporary phenomenon to media exaggeration, weakness of faith, and secular materialistic morality, among other reasons. The most prestigious source, the pope, has attributed the problem to personal sin on the part of the clergy abusers as well as to external forces such as an overly sexually charged American culture...” (2006)

Second, in a move that at once serves to both deny the victim and to “condemn the condemners,” many church officials, in receiving complaints of sexual abuse by clergy, actively blame the priest’s victim for leading the saintly clergyman into sin. Victims’ allegations are disbelieved or condemned, their overtures for a heartfelt discussion or for closure are rejected and denied, and they are not embraced by the church but instead are “re-victimized” by it (Doyle, et al., 2006).

Third, the church hierarchy employs what Sykes and Matza would refer to as an appeal to higher loyalties: protection of the institution of the church. This technique of neutralization serves also to encompass all the methods employed by the church in managing the sex scandal. Doyle, Sipe, and Wall write that while sexual abuse has been an issue in the church for centuries, violators of canon law or of celibacy (which Doyle, in Amy Berg’s 2006 film, contends was instituted in the fourth century to ensure that when priests died, their wealth would pass to the church and not to a son) were tried and ridiculed in a public forum, as shame was a critical factor of their punishment (2006). However, beginning with the Protestant Reformation, when the Catholic Church began to lose control in Europe, and narrowing in scope ever since, church officials have taken steps to keep matters of sexual abuse out of the public eye and a question of church records in an effort to maintain the image of the church in a world increasingly hostile to it (Doyle, et al., 2006). It is in this spirit that members of the church hierarchy have consistently relocated troublesome priests time and again; sought to conceal documentation revealing knowledge of incidents of abuse; acted under deposition so as to shift blame, play around words, change the subject, and avoid questions; claimed special protection under the law; and claimed special privileges that have no basis in either canon, civil, or criminal law (Berg, 2006; Doyle, et al., 2006). Indeed the Vatican, faced with the possibility that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, may be held liable for abuses that transpired between 1978 and 2005, when he held the office of the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that is responsible for overseeing the protection of children, it requested – and received – special immunity from President George W. Bush (Berg, 2006).

The effort to at all costs protect the image of the church, and by proxy the church itself, also recalls the social learning theory of Ronald Akers. Thomas Doyle and his co-authors allege that officials of the church hierarchy are instructed to do what they must to protect the Catholic Church, and that some passages in canon law are also suggestive of this (2006). However, while progressive Catholics and the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s have returned the definition of the “church” to its original concept as the “people of god,” the institutional church at large – aided in part by the governance of Pope John Paul II, who critics charge overruled the Second Vatican Council and returned the church to its monarchical hierarchy – seeks protection of itself, often at the cost of its followers (Doyle, et al., 2006; Berg, 2006). The techniques of neutralization that the church uses to justify its actions are learned within the structure of the institution itself.

One critical factor that remains, however, is the accountability and responsibility of the church in the eyes of the general public. The story of sex abuse has broken now, but critics have long charged that the fundamental flaw with any religion is its resistance to open inquiry and the willingness of the public to follow blindly. Many behaviors that are unthinkable in any other context become untouchable and sacred as a vestige of religious belief. While the latter is certainly not true for the sexual abuse of children, the long-held assumption of infallibility and rightness and the failure to question or examine religious doctrines or bureaucracies is what allowed the crimes at the heart of the sex scandals to happen in the first place. If the cycle of abuse and concealment is to ever end, the public must be more inquisitive of its spiritual leaders; and the church must be more honest and forthcoming of incidents that take place within its auspices, and more demanding and reproachful of clergy and would-be clergy. It is one matter to expect good behavior and perfection of priests; it is another matter altogether for those in positions of authority over priests to be implicated in the crimes of priests and then to rationalize that misuse of authority.

The priest sex scandals typified by Oliver O’Grady are clearly complex and multi-faceted affairs that bear no easy explanation. The priest is but one actor in the crime whose criminal tendencies and mindset must be explained, and the institution of the church is also often heavily involved as an accessory to child molestation for a completely different set of reasons. No one theory of crime can completely and sufficiently explain the phenomenon of sexual predatory priests, and it is necessary to integrate a variety of concepts and theories to gain a better understanding of it. The techniques of neutralization proposed by Sykes and Matza, in combination with the social learning theory of Ronald Akers, are important tools with which to understand the origin of and reasons for the criminal behaviors committed by the lone pedophile priest and the institutional church that supports him.
_____________________________________________

Akers, R.L. (1998). Social learning and social structure: A general theory of crime and deviance. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press.

Berg, A. (Writer and Director). (2006). [film]. Deliver us from evil. Lionsgate.

Broder, J.M. (2005, October 12). Los Angeles files recount decades of priests' abuse. Retrieved 29 October 2007, from New York Times Web site: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/12/national/12priests.html

Doyle, T.P., Sipe, A.W.R., & Wall, P.J. (2006). Sex, priests, and secret codes: The Catholic Church's 2,000-year paper trail of sexual abuse. Los Angeles, CA: Volt Press.

Israely, J. (2007, July 18). Should the Vatican pay for abuse?. Retrieved 29 October 2007, from Time Web site: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1644599,00.html

Lilly, J.R., Cullen, F.T., & Ball, R.A. (2007). Criminological theory: Context and consequences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Schickel, R. (2006, October 13). The predator priest. Retrieved 29 October 2007, from Time Web site: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1545947,00.html

Steinhauer, J. (2006, October 7). Film on pedophile priest revives focus on cardinal. Retrieved 29 October 2007, from New York Times Web site: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/07/us/07priest.html

Sullivan, A. (2002, March 4). They still don't get it. Retrieved 29 October 2007, from Time Web site: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1001926,00.html

Sykes, G.M., & Matza, D. (1957). Techniques of neutralization: A theory of delinquency. American sociological review. 22, 664-670.

Go, go, Gadget Retrospective! - University Edition

There's a neat little coffee shop on Main Street of my hometown that has been open for years. Many of my friends have sworn by it for as long as they have functioned cognitively and independently. I, on the other hand, never even knew it existed until last summer. I met there with a friend from high school whom I had not seen since we graduated. We always got along well in high school but never really hung out, so I was surprised when this fine woman, a blonde and a cheerleader in high school, turned out to be every bit the intellectual, socialist, atheist, and art fanatic that I am.

Well, okay, I'm not an art fanatic, but otherwise we have a lot more in common than I had ever imagined we would.

In any case, she had matriculated just last spring from New York University in a three-year program. By all means, NYU is considerably more prestigious than my own Caligula U. (although, my alma mater is working hard to build its educational programs quite considerably, so that may change some day far into the future). Based on my own experiences and those I had gleaned from my university friends and other high school friends prior to my junior year, I had to ask a question that was really nagging at me.

All throughout grade school and high school - really, throughout the entirety of my life prior to enrolling in university - I was always told that college is the biggest, baddest, meanest, hardest playing field on which anyone could ever step. Finals were foretold as being some mythical beast guarding the gates to Hell itself, cursive handwriting was supposedly the only acceptable form of communication, the dormitories were veritable concentration camps, and the professors were ornery old farts with an intense hatred of anyone younger than sixty. The university experience was supposed to be immensely difficult.

I grant that for students majoring in engineering, physics... or let's face it, pretty much any math-heavy field (or law or medicine, for that matter), university is, in fact, the harbinger of doom. But for the average student? Me, my friends (high school and university), my NYU comrade? University is a less brutal form of high school. It was a blow-off.

Oh, yes, I've had more than one semester when my schedule was crammed full of papers to write and things to do. But the work itself was nothing, and everyone to whom I have spoken, including my friend who attended the far more prestigious NYU, agrees that, in essence, college was a joke. For all the expectations that had been created in us as youths, scarcely one was ever fulfilled. Finals were a breeze. Cursive has nearly gone the way of the dodo (and, sadly, so has writing ability - but that's a story for another day). Modern dorms are more like apartment suites than prisons, and professors are generally much more lax than my high school teachers ever were. All those research papers and projects we had to write? I could have turned in ten pages of "butts butts butts butts butts butts butts butts..." and still received at least a "C."

(That last one might be a slight exaggeration.)

I was both hoping and fearing that I would find a perfect example of the ease of university before I graduated, and I have. The "capstone project" for Caligula U.'s University Honors Program is a thesis project. Depending on one's major and inclinations, this could take the form of a scientific experiment, an art exhibition, or, as in my case, a simple research paper. The point is that one is to exercise the research abilities or use the knowledge and experience that one has gained during one's time at university to create and present or defend a work that truly represents the culmination of one's studies.

For a couple years I was unsure of completing the honors program because I couldn't think of a suitable topic for my thesis. It was while reading Sam Harris' The End of Faith, however, that I stumbled across the perfect subject: marijuana laws and the War on Drugs.

I knew before I took the instructional course for the honors thesis (more like guideline course) what I wanted to do - hooray! I knew last summer, in fact, and wanted to get started on this massive research project right away - so I... Read a single book the entire summer. Just one. Very informative and useful - but only one. During the fall, I picked up another couple books as I took the course. I hammered out a vague abstract, worked on a vague outline for my project (the paper? the presentation? both? - I don't even know), and read one of those two books. Over winter break - prior to this past spring semester - I read another book. Between three of the four aforementioned books I had formed the basis for what the entirety of my project was going to be. Great, let's get started! ...... So I picked at research articles online here and there for most of this past semester. Finally, within the last few weeks, I got serious about the project, did everything that I should have started doing a whole year ago, and, despite a kerfluffle with the retiring director of the honors program, turned in my paper and presented my thesis in front of my committee.

On both my paper and my presentation I was highly complimented by my committee: my research advisor, the chair of the department of justice studies; my honors board member, and the instructor of last fall's honors thesis (guideline) course, an associate professor of health and athletics; and my "independent reviewer," one of my favorite professors, and also, incidentally, also a member on the honors board, a professor of the department of history and political science. All three commended me on doing a great job and working very hard. I received an "A."

In my opinion, the whole project was some of my sloppiest work of my entire university career, and the presentation was one of the greatest atrocities for which I have ever been responsible.

Either I am a prodigy and I don't know my own abilities, or there is absolutely no quality control in universities.

I think that my paper turned out rather well, as a whole, but the whole thing was still rather rushed and I'm not happy with the last few pages. I wish I could scrap the entire presentation and do it over again.

And I was told "great job."

Again, maybe I just don't have the proper perspective on my own abilities. Nevertheless, my experience with the thesis project (my conclusion: marijuana laws are insane and barbaric, the War on Drugs equally so, and both need to be repealed) is, I think, reflective of what my friends and I have found university to be. For our fellow students majoring in law, science, physics, chemistry, and so on, I do not doubt that there is an immense burden riding on their shoulders. For everyone else... University is nothing more than an all-around better version of high school.

Of course, I have yet to begin my master's program (classes start in the fall), so we'll see what I have to say about that. Still, it has been just over one week since I received my undergraduate diploma and I can't help but think: "Really? That's it?"

At least I'm over the worst of my despair about leaving my university friends... for now.

Simply inhuman

I have a couple of Yngwie Malmsteen's albums, several of Steve Vai's albums, and I've seen them in concert with Joe Satriani. I have a reasonably large metal collection as a whole, in fact, but no disc that once entrances me fails to do so again. If music is good, you're hooked for life, emotionally and otherwise.

I've never actually listened to Dragonforce until a couple weeks ago. During the last radio show of the semester of Archaeopteryx and Snuffleupagus, they played "Through the Fire and Flames."

I don't really think that I need to say anything else.

Cheese? Yes. Original? Not quite. Talent, songwriting ability, metal? - HELL YES.

I don't care that the video below is the work of a bot. Seeing this song played in Guitar Hero III is still incredible:



And the fact that they are actually playing this makes it all the more incredible to watch:



I wish only that the above video used the full-length version of the song.

Contrary to popular belief, metal bands don't take themselves completely seriously. Serious about the music? Oh my, yes. About themselves? Not in the least. Case in point:

Stupidity: Groomer Has It

A clip from the commercial for the next episode of Animal Planet's reality-TV-contest series Groomer Has It:

Ugly people do not deserve good things just because they can groom a dog.

I don't know what the context of this statement is, but I can definitively say this: to give these people time on the air is an insult to the wondrous creatures that Animal Planet otherwise features in its regular programming.

Racism

[This is a repost from another location of something I wrote a year or so ago. I wish I could say that people have wisened and matured in that year, but that's obviously not true given some recent news items - and I'm not holding my breath, either.

Also, be warned: NSFW language ensues.]

==========

A bulletin circulating on MySpace reads as follows:

You call me - "redneck" ,"hillbilly", "slaker" , "Cracker", "Honkey", "Whitey",
"Gringo" and you think it's OK.

...But when I call you coon, jiggaboo, Kike, sand nigger, rag head ,Towelhead, WOP, Camel Jockey, Gook, slant eyes or Chink you call me a racist.

-You say that whites commit a lot of violence against you, so why are the ghettos the most dangerous places to live?

-You have the United Negro College Fund.

-You have Martin Luther King Day.

-You have Black History Month.

-You have Cesar Chavez Day.

-You have Yom Hashoah

-You have Ma'uled Al-Nabi

-You have the NAACP.

-You have BET (Black Entertainment Television).


-If we had WET(white entertainment television) ...we'd be racist.

-If we had a White Pride Day... you would call us racist.

-If we had white history month... we'd be racist.

-If we had an organization for only whites to "advance" our lives... we'd be racist.

-If we had a college fund that only gave white students scholarships...you know we'd be racist.

-In the Million Man March, you believed that you were marching for your race and rights. If we marched for our race and rights...you would call us racist.

-Did you know that some high school students decided to make a club for only the white students because the other ethnicities had them... they all got sent to court for being racist but the african-american, Latino, and Asia clubs were not even questioned.

-You are proud to be black, brown, yellow and orange, and you're not afraid to announce it. But when we announce our white pride, you call us racists.



I am white.

I am proud.
But, you call me a racist.



Why is it that only whites can be racists?


Now watch, I'll be a racist for posting this

So what? no one will re post this for fear of being called racist



if you think its true re-post it saying "I'm not racist but its true






===============================================

Let's take a close look at this line of thought one step at a time.










///You call me - "redneck" ,"hillbilly", "slaker" , "Cracker", "Honkey", "Whitey", "Gringo" and you think it's OK.

...But when I call you coon, jiggaboo, Kike, sand nigger, rag head ,Towelhead, WOP, Camel Jockey, Gook, slant eyes or Chink you call me a racist.

I'm not going to say that any of these offensive slang terms are okay, because they're not. They never should have materialized in the first place and they should not be used today. But the difference between Caucasian American slang terms for other ethnicities and other ethnicities' slang terms for Caucasian Americans is that most of the latter, though no less unreasonable, have a far more rational and even logical derivation. Look up the words in question on Wikipedia, the Oxford English Dictionary, and the American Heritage Dictionary. The manner in which all these terms are used today certainly have a bigoted connotation, but it would seem that this was not always so.

[Note that Wikipedia cites all its sources in this instance.]

"Redneck" is a "term for a member of the white rural laboring class, especially in the southern United States" (AHD) - not necessarily a nice term by any means, but one based in reality. The laboring class in question was largely agrarian, and toiling in the fields and otherwise outdoors obviously lends itself to tanning and sunburn - hence, literally, a "red neck." AHD goes on to further define "redneck" as a Caucasian who is regarded "as having a provincial, conservative, often bigoted attitude" - attitudes which were, not surprisingly, common in early America, and even today. When the term "redneck" is used today - even by fellow Americans and Caucasians - it is most often used in reference to those same "provincial, conservative, often bigoted" and regressive attitudes and resistance to change or progress.

A "hillbilly," meanwhile, having taken on additional connotations in the modern era not dissimilar to those held by "redneck," is simply defined as "a person from the backwoods or a remote mountain area" (AHD). Nothing more, nothing less.

"Cracker" - while having far less distinct roots - was originally used to refer to "the poor whites" in the Deep South, according to OED. The first documented appearance of the term was in a 1766 letter from an unspecified man to his "lord" (likely a correspondence between two British gents) in which he wrote, "I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas and Georgia, who often change their places of abode." (I should note that OED, in one of its definitions of "cracker," notes the term as another word for "a boaster, braggart.") Here, it is used by fellow Caucasians (albeit not "Americans" per se) as a word describing pride. OED goes on to cite the later use of "cracker" in an 1887 edition of the Boston Beacon, quoting the periodical as saying "the word 'cracker' ... is supposed to have been suggested by their cracking whips over oxen or mules in taking their cotton to the market." One might also insinuate that the cracking of whips over slaves' backs may also have lent influence to the coining of this term, although the "whip" derivation is indeed found more than 100 years after the original appearance of the word.

In discussing the word "honky," Wikipedia notes: "The word honky as a term for whites derives from bohunk and hunky. In the early 1900's, these were derogatory terms for Bohemian, Hungarian, and Polish immigrants. According to Robert Hendrickson, author of the Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, Black workers in Chicago meat-packing plants picked up the term from white workers and began applying it indiscriminately to all Caucasians."

The American Heritage Dictionary speaks at even greater length of the term "gringo": In Latin America the word gringo is an offensive term for a foreigner, particularly an American or English person. But the word existed in Spanish before this particular sense came into being. In fact, gringo may be an alteration of the word griego, the Spanish development of Latin Graecus, “Greek.” Griego first meant “Greek, Grecian,” as an adjective and “Greek, Greek language,” as a noun. The saying “It's Greek to me” exists in Spanish, as it does in English, and helps us understand why griego came to mean “unintelligible language” and perhaps, by further extension of this idea, “stranger, that is, one who speaks a foreign language.” The altered form gringo lost touch with Greek but has the senses “unintelligible language,” “foreigner, especially an English person,” and in Latin America, “North American or Britisher.” Its first recorded English use (1849) is in John Woodhouse Audubon's Western Journal: “We were hooted and shouted at as we passed through, and called ‘Gringoes.’”

"Slaker" as a slang term does not even appear in any of the above sources (nor have I ever heard that word used in any context). OED notes only that "slake" can mean (in speaking of people) "To diminish the intensity of one's efforts; to become less energetic or eager; also, to undergo or manifest a weakening or decrease in some specified respect"; "to fall away from one; to depart"; "to become relaxed, slack, or loose"; and other such concepts referring to, in a broad sense, slack or a lessening. One might speculate it to be a term used by slaves and other minorities in early American society to refer to the perceived laziness of the plantation owners and other Caucasian elite who did not "work" in the same way that the indentured or enslaved might. (Note, however, that this is my own extrapolation - I have seen no such explanation elsewhere.)

Among the given terms that minorities and members of other ethnicities use to describe (American) Caucasians, "whitey" alone stands as a clear racial epithet.

Let us compare this with the list of given terms that are used by Americans to describe other ethnicities.

"Coon," according to Wikipedia, is possibly derived "from [the] Portugese 'barracoos,' a building constructed to hold slaves for sale." There's nothing offensive about slavery!

Wikipedia, citing the Online Etymology Dictionary, suggests, in reference to "jigaboo": "perhaps from jig (q.v.), which had been applied insultingly to persons since late 18c., and ending from bugaboo."

"Kike" may be derived from the Yiddish "kikel" (circle); Wikipedia notes that "immigrant Jews signed legal documents with an 'O' (similar to an 'X')." It would seem to be a term aimed at baselessly deriding Jewish customs.

"Nigger" and all related terms finds its origins in non-English words meaning "black," including "negro" (Spanish from the Latin "niger," and "negre" in French, also derived from the Latin) and refer specifically to the subject's skin color. That's not racism!

"Raghead" and "towelhead" seem to be racial epithets aimed solely at baselessly deriding the cultural traditions of Arabs and other groups who wear turbans or similar headwear.

"Wop" is "a racial term for anyone of Italian descent," and has its roots in "an Italian word 'guappo,' meaning 'thug.'" First appearing in 1912 (OED), this one term, at least, has some "sound" historical basis, but it is the only one so far. Let's continue.

"Camel jockey" is a racial epithet again aimed baselessly at the cultural traditions of Arabs and other desert-dwelling peoples.

Of "gook," Wikipedia has the following to say: Probably derived from the Korean words “hanguk” and “miguk”. “Hanguk” refers to Korea and “miguk” is the common word for America. American troops misinterpreted "miguk" (sounds like "me gook") as an assertion of "I am a gook." The word persisted during the Vietnam War, perhaps also because the Vietnamese people have a similar word “quoc”, meaning "country."

"Slant eyes" and "chink" ("chink" also being defined, as early as 1398, as "A fissure caused by splitting; a cleft, rift, or crack; a crevice, gap" -- OED), meanwhile, are clearly aimed at deriding the natural appearance of those of Asian descent.

Compare these two lists of terms against one another. The totality of the meanings and derivations speaks for itself.







Let's continue.

///You say that whites commit a lot of violence against you, so why are the ghettos the most dangerous places to live?

There is a simple answer to this challenge. For many reasons that I don't think I should need to explain, minorities have, historically speaking, been awash in poverty. Impoverished families cannot afford "decent" housing, so they live where they can - often in the city and in a more rundown area. Poverty has been shown time and again to breed crime. Few teachers, counsellors, and other career professionals or volunteers who have the abilities to potentially turn the situation around are going to jeopardize their lives, let alone the lives of their family, and so there is no way for the "most dangerous places to live" to improve. The cycle continues.

///-You have the United Negro College Fund.

-You have Martin Luther King Day.

-You have Black History Month.

-You have Cesar Chavez Day.

-You have Yom Hashoah

-You have Ma'uled Al-Nabi

-You have the NAACP.

-You have BET (Black Entertainment Television).

Do I really need to discuss how completely outrageous all these statements are?

I'm not going to touch each and every one of these points (USE YOUR COMMON SENSE, PEOPLE!), but let's go over a few.

Serendipitously enough, I have a book discussing television checked out of the library for one of my research projects this semester. In Viewing Violence, Bay Area psychologist Madeline Levine, Ph.D., writes the following: "Television has enormous power to shape our views about other groups of people. For a long time, African American people on television were either athletic superstars or thugs. A series of situation comedies expanded that repertoire, but it wasn't until 1995 that Under One Roof, the first dramatic series about African American families, was briefly aired. Many white children in America have very limited contact with black children, and so while most of their understanding derives from their families and from their community, a great deal is also learned through the media."

The television programs Americans were watching on their television included minority characters, but they were highly stereotypical. Founded in 1980, BET - whatever the quality of the programming, which is another question altogether - was the one place on television where African Americans could go and not be slapped in the face.

--Actually, let's skip over the rest of those "bulleted" points for the time being. Let's see what the white response is to these bastions of African American culture and status in America.

///-If we had WET(white entertainment television) ...we'd be racist.

-If we had a White Pride Day... you would call us racist.

-If we had white history month... we'd be racist.

-If we had an organization for only whites to "advance" our lives... we'd be racist.

-If we had a college fund that only gave white students scholarships...you know we'd be racist.

-In the Million Man March, you believed that you were marching for your race and rights. If we marched for our race and rights...you would call us racist.

-Did you know that some high school students decided to make a club for only the white students because the other ethnicities had them... they all got sent to court for being racist but the african-american, Latino, and Asia clubs were not even questioned.

-You are proud to be black, brown, yellow and orange, and you're not afraid to announce it. But when we announce our white pride, you call us racists.

Yes, you're right: we - not just minorities, but fellow Caucasians as well - do call you racists.

Caucasians don't need a "White Entertainment Television." No one ever suggests that Caucasians are being unfairly portrayed on American television. The Caucasian perspective, and Caucasian culture, dominate American television, plain and simple. We don't need a "White Entertainment Television" channel because every channel on television already caters to Caucasians.

We don't need a "white history month" because we are at the top and have been for hundreds of years, often to the detriment of other ethnicities. These trends continue, and history continues to tell its story through the Caucasian American perspective, while contributions to civilization from other ethnicities are a mere footnote in grade school and high school textbooks.

For the same reasons, Caucasians don't need an equivalent of the National Assocation for the Advancement of Colored People. I say again: we are already at the top and have been for hundreds of years, often to the detriment of other ethnicities. These trends continue still.

All the other claims supporting "white pride" - a holiday, college fund, a white Million Man March, a whites-only high school club, and so on - smack of the same exploitive, imperialist, "provincial, conservative, often bigoted" (sound familiar?), ethnocentrist, and narrow-minded worldview that has led us to this point in history - a point at which Caucasians ride the boat, built and paid for on the backs and with the blood, sweat, and tears of ethnic minorities, while everyone else is drowning in the river.

Whites don't need a high school club because the average American high school IS a white club.

Whites don't need a special college fund because college IS a white enterprise.

Whites don't need a special holiday to celebrate the accomplishments of men who were specifically white or to celebrate "white pride" because every day IS a white day.

///You are proud to be black, brown, yellow and orange, and you're not afraid to announce it. But when we announce our white pride, you call us racists.

People who are "black, brown, yellow and orange" (very eloquent descriptive terms themselves) announce their pride because they have had to struggle under the oppression of Caucasians to get where they are today. The Civil Rights Movement of the twentieth century didn't happen because a white man said "yes." It happened because African Americans refused to say "no."

In any case, what has the "white race" accomplished of which we should be so proud? Think long and hard about this one.

Yes, Caucasians have been at the forefront of many developments in society. So have many minorities, whose accomplishments are largely overlooked. But these achievements are not made for the benefit of a single race; they are made for all mankind. The difference is that minorities have been oppressed for so long - even missing out on the educational and intellectual pursuits that allowed Caucasians to prosper - that it truly is a wonder they have made it this far. The accomplishments of ethnic minorities are a triumph not just for mankind but for their fellow down-trodden man for the simple reason that it is a sign that they are finally making progress and becoming a part of the global community on their own merits. Outside of philosophy and other abstracts, Caucasians, for the most part, can't make the same claim: we are at our place today largely because we exploited the less fortunate.






The question we need to be asking is not "Is (non-Caucasian) ethnic pride racist?"

The question should be, "Is it racist to assume ethnic minorities cannot advance in society on their own merits?"

The tide is slowly changing, but the latter is a question that will have to wait until another day some untold number of years from now, after all peoples are viewed first and foremost as members of the human race and when all are truly considered equal.

Briefly, my story

How did I come to be an atheist?

The day that my belief in God fell away was one of the proudest and best days of and a turning point in my life. After years of questions and introspection, I stepped out of the shower one morning, stood in front of the mirror, and asked myself: If God as a creator was himself uncreated and has always existed, why could the same not be said of matter and energy in the first place?

In that moment, I became an atheist, and to paraphrase a famous ex-pastor, I'm amazed that I ever believed at all or that I did not reach this conclusion sooner.

My brother and I were raised Roman Catholic. My parents were never particularly strict or dogmatic in raising us; we attended church services every Sunday, on the major holidays, and sometimes on the demarcated Holy Days as well. My brother and I were also made to attend catechism classes, and my parents clearly expressed their frustration with us if we were obstinate or intentionally indolent in readying ourselves for Sunday school or for mass. Still, my parents never truly forced anything on us in the way that so many other ex-Christians have reported. Mine was what I should think was a perfectly “normal” childhood, and my parents encouraged independent thought and education. As most young children are wont to do, however, I paid little heed to what was going on around me, neither in school nor in church; I was more interested in cartoons and playing with my friends.

By the time that I was perhaps thirteen years old, though, I had begun to question what I was taught in church and Sunday school. Talk of Hell and of the exclusion of my beloved dog from Heaven did not sit well with me, and some of the supernatural events in the Bible seemed suspicious as well. In time I would learn that one of my close friends was an atheist, which came as a complete surprise. A few of my Sunday school teachers in particular had hammered on the point that Roman Catholicism was the social norm and that by extension, anyone who was not Catholic or at least Christian was abnormal. My friend was perfectly stable, healthy, and law-abiding and otherwise stood in contradiction to what I had learned to believe. Furthermore, I could not accept the idea that my atheist friend was destined to burn in Hell simply because of his beliefs: he was a good, moral person, more so than some Christians I knew, and the idea that he was to suffer nonetheless influenced me to seek my own path of belief. At one point during high school I went through a period of about two months where I tried – I really, truly, honestly tried – to believe; I prayed every night and I listened intently in church only to find, at length, that I was getting no more out of the experience than I had previously. For the remainder of my high school career, I maintained belief in Jesus and the Judeo-Christian God while discounting the precepts of the organized church.

From the time that I graduated from high school through the following year, I dispensed entirely with my Christian beliefs. I was at odds with what I had learned as a child, with what I was taught about my friends and non-Christians, and with what I was told about the world around me. The Bible said that God created the universe, but learning about the Big Bang theory did not support that idea. Noah supposedly built an ark and rode the seas through a worldwide flood, but there was no evidence of any such great cataclysm. Moreover, the Bible made no mention of dinosaurs or other prehistoric species and events that were discussed in my science classes. While recognizing these conflicts for years, I shoved conscious thought of it to the back of my mind, and unable nevertheless to entirely let go of God, I formed my own ideas about Heaven and Hell, angels and devils, and the nature of God. More than once did I realize that I was only believing what I wanted to believe, but the gravity of my inner turmoil did not yet hit home. Finally, at the beginning of my sophomore year at university, I was determined to “conclusively” define what I thought about God. Early one morning the realization came that based on what I had learned about the world and the universe, there was no need to assume the existence of an intangible supernatural force. Since that time I have been, am now, and will no doubt die an atheist.

However, to lose faith in faith, as Dan Barker might say, was only the beginning. As much as if not more than my other passions, I am enamored with critical thinking, skepticism, science, the separation of church and state, and other interests befitting my newfound freedom of mind. One of the great joys of our worldview is the active pursuit of knowledge: a journey that does not end but only begins with the falling away of religious belief.

The big crunch

Today, Saturday 10 May, was the big day: I have received my diploma and have graduated as a senior from university. I'll have to think of what else to put in the blog header. [Done: that wasn't so hard - Ed.]

After the ceremony, my parents and brother helped me to load our three vehicles with most of my possessions from my apartment. (I'll be heading back - at least once - next week before moving out for good.) We ate out for a late lunch before completing the trek to Sector 001.

For a quick, simple, yet delicious dinner, we opted for pizza from Little Caesar's. It has been at least a couple years since I've had their pizza, in no small part because there are no franchise stores in the Caligula area. I was going to remark on this out loud but had to stop myself for fear of breaking down into hysterics when I caught myself thinking "there aren't any Little Caesar's around home."

It is said that "home is where the heart is." The physical location in which I live doesn't matter so much, but based on what I said last time, it's going to take me a long, long time to adjust to not having my university friends around. I even thought to myself earlier today: Well, two or three months from now I'll be back on campus and I'll get to see everyone again.

Oh, wait. No I won't.

I know we'll keep in touch online, and I'll make a point of driving down to visit over some weekends. That said, it's more than the physical separation. Over four years, I have developed personally and intellectually into my own being, and because of this the friendships I have forged at university are stronger, deeper, and far more meaningful than those from high school. This is not intended as a slight on my high school friends: it is simply the truth, and I suspect that they would understand what I mean to say. Over four years - or in some instances, three years, two years, or even less than one year - I have grown very close to some, while as a general rule I can positively declare that Caligula U. became my home for the fact of the friends that I made.

Caligula U. is far more to me than a physical location. In terms of the university itself, it is an embodiment of values. More personally significant, it is an embodiment of everyone I came to know and love - effectively, it was everything I knew, my entire life - for four years: my home.

I never imagined that being away from home could be so difficult.

The coming storm

Last Thursday a few friends and I dropped in to the Caligula U. radio station for the last show of one of the regular programs. Two-thirds of the DJs were going to be around for another year but their mainstay, who had been a part of the radio station crew for a couple years, is, like myself, graduating on Saturday. To say that the last twenty minutes or so were emotional is an understatement. I had only ever seen these folks from afar but even I was getting a little teary-eyed at the whole charade.

Part of that has to do with my empathy for the disc jockeys, but it no doubt also had a great deal to do with the realization that I, too, am leaving. Beyond this Thursday past, the reality of the situation really hasn't "hit home" yet, as is colloquially popular to say. But bits and pieces of that reality are penetrating my deflector shields on a regular basis - Saturday is only three days away, after all - and thinking back on the radio show last Thursday doesn't help me to feel any better.

To say that I am graduating and moving on to the next big thing in life is one matter. To say that I am effectively leaving all my university friends behind is another matter entirely. A few are graduating and are staying in the area. Others in my "cohort" have another semester or two to go and sticking in this area. Still others, underclassmen, are fine folks that I have met only this semester, somehow making my departure all the more bittersweet. It would be different if the job I had landed was local such that I could still regularly visit all my friends who are staying in the area (which accounts for the vast majority), but I'm going to be almost two and a half hours away. Even thinking about saying goodbye is tearing me apart.

And the reality of the move on my own - or, temporarily, back home - is also weighing heavily on my mind. I will be on my own. Sure, my parents will be relatively nearby, and my friends from high school will be close as well (at least for the time being), but I'll be perfectly honest: with only a few exceptions, I am not nearly as close to any of my friends from high school as I am to my friends from university, and in some instances I am loathe to be back in the area. I know that part of this special connection to my Caligula friends stems from my own personal development while at university: the friendships I forged here are naturally stronger because I am stronger, while most of my friendships from high school are more or less flippant in nature. Even though I will be working full-time, working on my Master's Degree, have a couple kittens to keep me preoccupied, and plenty of books (last count: 289!) to keep me busy, without close friends geographically nearby, I'm afraid that I won't know what to do with myself.

Of course there is also the new job to consider. Is it precisely what I want to do? No; I will be starting in juvenile probation, not adult, and even at that, what I really want to do, some day in the future, is work as animal control. Nonetheless, I am once again finding myself in a new situation, with new people, with presently uncertain expectations and training in my future.

Daunting, to say the least.

I know that I will get past all of this. I know this is a part of life: packing up and moving on. That doesn't make it any easier to actually do.

The Man that Nutjobs Fear

When I was a wee one (let's call it at twelve years of age), MTV had not yet degenerated into complete suck. Even c. 1997, it was rather terrible, but it had not yet reached the absolute depths to which it has now crumbled. In these '90s hey-days of music television, if you can call it that, I remember seeing the video for Marilyn Manson's "Man that You Fear" and being incredibly unimpressed. I couldn't get into the song and the video certainly made no sense to me.

Fast forward another decade to when I recently bought a copy of Antichrist Superstar. I've read mixed reviews of the album, which is to say that some folks who are even more critical of music than I am (aesthetically, substantively, and otherwise) gave the album a thumbs-down. For a long time I had avoided Antichrist Superstar because of such reviews, but curiosity has gotten the best of me and in any case, while I do agree with most reviews of albums I have heard, there are certainly exceptions. I'm pleased to say that Antichrist Superstar is one such exception.

There's nothing especially great about the album. While it is a good listen from start to finish, and while I enjoy each track on its own, only a couple songs ("The Beautiful People" and "Man that You Fear") really stick out from the others - owing as much to their quality as to their distinct sound. Still, the lyrical themes and the story being told, in combination with Manson's own anti-religious rhetoric and the general quality of the music, makes for a great listening experience.

It is frustrating, but not unsurprising, that Marilyn Manson - the man and the band - have become the target of so much ire in their career. Antichrist Superstar set the fundagelicals on fire, and a few years later his music was condemned for allegedly inspiring the Columbine school shooting, reigniting the calls for censorship of "violent music" by politicians and irresponsible parents with something stuck in an uncomfortable bodiliy orifice. The trumped-up "controversy" has little to do with the actual content of the music but simply on the image that Manson presents. Especially in the light of such callousness, I admire Manson for being vocal about his opinions.

I have little experience with Manson outside (a) Antichrist Superstar and (b) his many singles. Judging from everything I have heard so far, I wouldn't place him at the same level as his contemporaries (most notably Trent Reznor) or other hard rock or metal acts. Still, I think his offerings stand as everything I expect from music, and I respect him as an artist. I am glad to have finally procured a copy of Antichrist Superstar - a landmark album of the '90s and for Manson's career, if not for hard rock as a whole, and one that is going to spend a lot of time in my stereo.

Watching it now, I'm still not entirely impressed with the video for "Man that You Fear." In the context of the album and the story, though, it makes a lot more sense to me now than it did when I was twelve years old, and I certainly have a greater appreciation for the song itself.

There's only one appropriate way to end this post: