Dude: Date me or get raped.

Internet: What. The. Fuck. PIG.

Dude: Bitch, I didn't actually rape you! Look at what this guy said about how rape isn't bad! I just think rape is funny, he thinks rape is ok.

The Internet: RAGE.

When I was a preteen, I moved from Hawaii to Washington. When writing back home to my friends, I liked to add a p.s. that went something like this, "Write Back Soon - or I'm sending the Beastie Boys to Rape You!" I thought the Beastie Boys were ugly. I thought rape was something... unreal. Nobody actually does anything like that, right? So sending ugly dudes to commit a mythical sin upon the bodies of your best friends was sooo damned funny to me.

I recalled this only recently and I'm horrified at my past-self. Today, I'm wondering about this kid at the exact same high school I attended (was I still writing shit like this when I was in high school? I can't remember.) - how horrified is he going to be in 20 years? I wrote a p.s. in a letter to some friends. He used Twitter and has thousands of followers.

from scootius.tumblr.com: facebooksexism-thisiseverydayracism

I wanted the rest of the story. He posted the infamous Prom Rape Joke in April. The guy tweets so much, it took me over 10 minutes to get down to the May tweets about his suspension. About another 5 minutes to find his pseudo-response to the whole thing:

Please read this if you think I'm a rapist
the-problem-with-slacktivism-rape-jokes-are-not-okay-and-neither-are-death-threats-nsfw … You're uneducated for believing everything you see on the internet.

It is an interesting read. A very calm, level-headed, look-at-all-sides-of-the-situation type post. The kind of thing I strive for in my own commentaries, with varying success. It misses the mark though. But I didn't even need to say that. "Anonymous" did it for me in the comments (intelligent comment discussions on a blog post?! holy shit!). I swear, I was asking myself if I had written this and blanked it out, it just sounds so much like what I would say. And it's 11 paragraphs long! But I swear I didn't write it!

[if the link doesn't properly send you to the comment, scroll down to 18 May, 2014 @ 7:00pm]

I've written about rape culture before. And one of my biggest pet peeves is a guy who responds to criticism by pointing out someone else's (my) bad behavior to take the heat off (not naming names, as that would get me divorced). But I don't know whether to rage or cry or just shake my head. I don't understand how someone so entrenched in social media (he tweets so much that I had to scroll 17 times to read just one day's worth of tweets) can be so fundamentally clueless about (a) the repercussions of tweeting anything controversial, (b) the ridiculous amount of rape threats being made by trolls across the internet on a regular basis, (c) the concept of "trigger" words or phrases that cause rape and other PTSD victims to relive their trauma every time it's even mentioned, and (d) pointing people to a blog written by someone else asking for mercy is not an explanation of your actions or a retraction or an apology. There are some great satirists out there. It's a human tradition. Posting a picture of an offensive joke, not explaining yourself, then vilifying/name calling/ignoring/redirecting those calling you out is NOT great satire. It's just a joke by a kid proving how totally and completely clueless he is about what real life as an adult is all about.

He (vaguely) claims the satire is to point out rape culture. If that was his intent, he should have known why rape culture is so harmful. He should have known what it actually is. He should have known that he would offend people. He should have accepted graciously the comments (no, not the death threats) by people pointing out that he was actually contributing to the culture he was allegedly trying to point out. He should have been willing to engage in conversation. He should have learned something. I don't see any of these points as true, so I have to doubt the veracity of his claims. Calling a joke satire after the fact does not make it satire.

Finally, one of the more frustrating things about this is the Lady Texan blogger's attempt to shame the people who called this kid's school.

Um, no.

Is he a kid? Sure. Can kids commit acts that need to be reported to the proper authorities? You bet. Is it up to those authorities to decide what to do with the information? True.

Once again, the moral of the story that everyone is missing more and more lately: it is not anti-acceptance to point out and refuse to accept improper behavior. It is completely reasonable to demand every one of us be human to each other and to face the consequences when we ourselves slip up. The United States is not an anarchy. We can accept a lot, but we will not/should not accept harmful behavior. Harm can only be defined by the victim, not the attacker. We have given authorities the right to judge whether harm has been committed. So we take our case to them. If it's dismissed, that's another matter. But you don't silence victims, regardless of how anyone else views the allegations they make. If they say there is harm, they have been harmed enough to say it. Whether or not that is enough to have real consequences is not up to bystanders to decide. So can everyone please stop shouting down the whistle-blowers?

ps: calling someone out is not "slacktivism"
pps: cyber-stalking is bad
ppps: death threats are bad
pppps: the kid has mentioned suicidal thoughts, so back the fuck off. No, we don't know if he meant it. Doesn't matter.

Words are sacred to me. I love the way they sound, I love the way they look, I love the way they convey layers upon layers of meaning. They are an integral connection to our past, the most favored way to express ourselves in the present, and about the easiest way to communicate our visions of the future. Words can, and should be allowed to, live through millenia as messages from our past to our future selves. To silence speech is a wretched trampling of human rights. To erase speech, the attempt to erase our past, is nothing less than blasphemy. It is harmful to the whole of humanity. No one should have the power to lobotomize history. No one should want to.

But, alas, some poor, misinformed conservative Christians in the Netherlands have convinced their local school board chairman to do just that - at an expense of €15,000. The design work of six students - all 3,000 copies of student diaries - were destroyed for featuring Satanic symbolism on the cover. Because everyone knows that Lucifer's favored symbol is the peace sign, designed in 1958 for the British nuclear disarmament movement. Actually, I'm pretty sure that Satan wouldn't be in favor of nuclear disarmament, but the thought probably never crossed the mind of Mr. Johan van Puten.

You see, when confronted with anti-Satanic outrage by some local parents, the man did a little internet research - and seems to have completely bypassed any legitimate sources of information and instead skipped over to a site that sounds much more reliable than the likes of Wikipedia, about.com, peacesymbol.org, or teachpeace.com. No, with a little research of my own, it appears that the man decided to go with the authority on all such research matters: jesus-is-savior.com. Obviously, the wikipedia preview mentioning relevant tidbits about the olive branch and ancient Greeks just wasn't catchy enough. His eyes were drawn down to more exciting words like "Satanism", "rituals", and "Yasser Arafat" mentioned in the Google preview of jesus-is-savior.com. And like any respectable member of the academic community, he looked over the first source that supported his thesis and stopped all other forms of research and came to the conclusion that the parents were right, the peace symbol is Satanic, and the diaries must go. It was a hard decision for him, but obviously the right one: "he realises wasting good paper is a poor example to his pupils. 'But you have to understand, it was the lesser of two evils'."

Now that we've gotten down the facts - Oh, wait, those aren't the facts, now are they? I think people should be aware of some actual TRUE facts on the subject.

Here are some that our bumbling beaurocrat may have stumbled upon at his favored research website:

- the evil stems from the letter "V", because of the Masons (like Winston Churchill), the Illuminati, the Hebrew language (v = "van" = "nail" = the Brotherhood of Satan), Satan loves the five (V is the Roman sign for the number 5) sided PENTA-gram favored by Masons and Witchcraft, and is kept alive through current day usage by such Satanic cults as the Young Socialist Alliance, Vets for Peace in Vietnam, and the Students for a Democratic Society

- the ACTUAL peace sign is a Teutonic (Neronic) Cross "designed" by the Commies Gerald Holtom and Bertrand Russell, but has really been around for 2,000 years because Nero so despised Christianity that he had St. Peter crucified upside-down

- Hinduism is of the occult, blahblahblah, "witch's foot", blahblahblah, Germanic Runes, blahblahblah, Hitler, blahblahblah, Church of Satan, blahblahblah, Druids

- The Vulcan hand sign from Star Trek might be said to mean "Live Long and Prosper", but "Vulcan" was some ancient human deity who looked suspiciously like Satan, who married Venus, aka Lucifer, so Spock is the Devil!!!

- The Masons are sex fiends who wear pornographic golf pins to Church

It never ceases to amaze me just how often the truly moronic are elevated to positions of power. It would be amusing, if only for all the merry glee one could have in correcting them, except that they are doing so much harm using their defective brains to weild such power. So I will sigh at the loss of those diaries and the insult to the design work of his students, and console myself with dismantling the idiocy displayed by Mr. van Puten.

The letter "V", the Masons and Winston Churchill, certain letters of the Hebrew language, any symbol with five sides, witchcraft and Wiccans, socialists, communists, Democrats, and Vietnam Vets (regardless of their opinions on the war) are not Satanic.

Teutonic and Neronic do not mean the same thing and are not interchangeable words. Neronic refers to the Roman emperor Nero, who may or may not have hated Christians and may have crucified a few or more, but St. Peter asked to be crucified upside down as a form of humility because he felt he didn't deserve the honor of dying in the same manner as Christ. The Teutonic, Black, or Iron Cross refers to the Teutonic Knights, formed during the Crusades to aid Christians on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Crucifying someone, upside-down or right-side-up, is pretty mean but not Satanic. Christian orders, military or otherwise, are by definition not Satanic.

The peace sign was created by superimposing the semaphore symbols for "N" (nuclear) and "D" (disarmament). No crosses were broken or otherwise harmed in its creation. Jesus and the Saints were pretty much left out of it too.

The word "occult" means "of or pertaining to magic, astrology, or any system claiming use or knowledge of secret or supernatural powers or agencies. Or "beyond the range of ordinary knowledge or understanding; mysterious." If Hinduism is of the occult, I would like Christianity to meet Mr. Pot and Mr. Kettle, both of whom share the surname Black.

The Church of Satan doesn't believe in Satan. It may sound like an oxymoron, but the Church of Satan is not Satanic.

Everyone knows that old-school Klingons look WAY more Satanic than Spock. Because Venus was a female deity, it's news to me that she could be Lucifer. Maybe it's the sexyness? So, woman is no longer of the devil, but actual IS the devil. As is love, which is also Venus/Aphrodite's domain. Or was Lucifier merely play-acting in girls clothes, a transvestite at the first gay marriage in recorded history? I've heard that the guy can be tricksy like that, but that is really something. I can see why everyone dislikes him so much, pulling one over on poor Vulcan that way. Wait... But... Are you implying that Vulcan and Venus are both Satan and thus Satan married himself? Mind. Blown.

Let this be a cautionary tale to those who would commit the blasphemy of censorship in the future: you harm your charges, you show yourself as an uneducated idiot, and you make my head hurt with your illogic. A mind-meld sounds like it could just about hit the spot right now. Peace, yo.

"If consumers found fulfillment at any meaningful level," she extemporized, "Corpocracy would be finished." Thus, media is keen to scorn colonies such as hers, comparing them to tapeworms. Accusing them of stealing rainwater from Rain Corp, royalties from Veg Corp patent holders, oxygen from Air Corp. The Abbess feared that, should the day ever come when the board decided they were a viable alternative to Corpocratic ideology, the tapeworms would be renamed terrorists. "Smart bombs will rain, and our tunnels flood with fire."

I'm currently listening to the audible book version of Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. The movie made quite an impact, but there were questions that I wondered could they be answered by reading the book. I have had my questions answered, but am sobered by the knowledge that, at least so far, it seems the book is not as optimistic as the movie. You see, the story is one of interwoven lives over hundreds of years, of reincarnated lives actually, and the backdrop is the evolution/de-evolution of human society.

In the far distant future, humanity's last great civilization is a corpocracy of astonishing technology and brutality. The words "citizen" and "consumer" are used interchangeably. It is a frightening glimpse into our possible future. A future I see as much too plausible. Hence, I have been ruminating darkly this past week.

Today, I was linked to two articles within minutes, their inter-connectedness with each other and my current thoughts leaving me breathless with unease.

The first, "Perhaps Culture is Now the Counterculture", A Defense of the Humanities, a commencement address to Brandeis University graduates by Leon Wieseltier of New Republic. Here is a quote:

"The machines to which we have become enslaved, all of them quite astonishing, represent the greatest assault on human attention ever devised: they are engines of mental and spiritual dispersal, which make us wider only by making us less deep. There are thinkers, reputable ones if you can believe it, who proclaim that the exponential growth in computational ability will soon take us beyond the finitude of our bodies and our minds so that, as one of them puts it, there will no longer be any difference between human and machine. La Mettrie lives in Silicon Valley. This, of course, is not an apotheosis of the human but an abolition of the human; but Google is very excited by it."

Then the second article, Is Google God ? by Karthik Karunakaran at Armed With The Truth. To quote:

PROOF #1
Google is the closest thing to an Omniscient (all-knowing) entity in existence, which can be scientifically verified. She indexes over 9.5 billion Webpages, which is more than any other search engine on the web today. Not only is Google the closest known entity to being Omniscient, but She also sorts through this vast amount of knowledge using Her patented Page-rank technology, organizing said data and making it easily accessible to us mere mortals."

As I said, I have been thinking quite darkly these past days about the plausibility of our current culture evolving into one of Corpocracy. It's been in the back of my mind for awhile now, after reading the book Jennifer Government, and then the Supreme Court granting personhood to corporations. My conservative friends talk about jobs going overseas because there are too many restrictions on corporations here, the implication being that corporations be given free reign in pursuit of the All American Dollar. Daily, it seems conservatives would see our capitalistic form of economy grow to become a corpocratic form of government. Does this not frighten them? They worship the dollar with one face, and the Constitution with the other, but they don't see how the dollar could take over and abolish that other half so easily.

Economics not being my strong suit, I must leave those thoughts there as half-formed ponderings. This morning what strikes me is my near-complete aversion to the commencement address by Wieseltier. Why should I respond so negatively?

The lesser reason is the attack against technology. If I am a slave to the American Dollar, I am a willing supplicant to Technology. It is my friend, my lover, my parent, quite possibly my god? Not quite.

The greater reason, the real reason I dislike this piece, is that it rails against the elevation of Science to religion.

Owing to its preference for totalistic explanation, scientism transforms science into an ideology, which is of course a betrayal of the experimental and empirical spirit. There is no perplexity of human emotion or human behavior that these days is not accounted for genetically or in the cocksure terms of evolutionary biology. It is true that the selfish gene has lately been replaced by the altruistic gene, which is lovelier, but it is still the gene that tyrannically rules. Liberal scientism should be no more philosophically attractive to us than conservative scientism, insofar as it, too, arrogantly reduces all the realms that we inhabit to a single realm, and tempts us into the belief that the epistemological eschaton has finally arrived, and at last we know what we need to know to manipulate human affairs wisely. This belief is invariably false and occasionally disastrous. We are becoming ignorant of ignorance.

Did I mention that my Facebook feed has become inundated with posts by my Atheist group? Someone posted a list of "fight the government, fight capitalism, fight the status quo" talking points. A very angsty member went on a tirade against it. Here's a juicy bit:

No - fuck you! Change your fucking attitude and learn to respect history. Change your stupid hippie pink glasses and put something more realistic there. I will keep working and consuming and enjoying my existence because I want and because fuck you. My work is valuable, my time is valuable, and it costs money. And I am glad to be a part of it. I can get debts and then I use them to make more money and bring them back. Because you are incompetent, doesn't mean debt is slavery. It means you make shitty decisions with your money and you blame someone else for it.

He wants to consume. Consume!!! I can only imagine he means more than food. He wants things. And today, that means technology.

I am taken aback. I don't want to be a blind consumer. I don't want to be a worshiper. But I don't like this whole spiel being testified by Wieseltier either. Why. Why?

Have you guessed yet? All of the worship talk I've been interweaving should be a clue. On my mind is not just the dollar and technology but worshipfulness and spirituality and morality.

My problem with Wieseltier is not necessarily his message, but in the manner he is delivering it: a subtle undertone of spirituality. He talks of good and evil, he calls evolutionists "cocksure", he includes a bit about a philosopher who "wondered why God, if He wanted us to know the truth about everything, did not simply tell us the truth about everything." Did you catch the part where he growls at liberal "scientism" for the way it "arrogantly reduces all the realms that we inhabit to a single realm"?

Another article today, this one I didn't bother to read, Kathleen Taylor, Neuroscientist, Says Religious Fundamentalism Could Be Treated As A Mental Illness. Did you hear my jaw drop?

My problem with Wieseltier is that it has drawn out a problem I have within myself. This dancing on the fence between Atheism and Agnosticism. In mixed company, I defiantly proclaim myself as an Atheist, spouting its dogma with passion and no little amount of anger. When I am more myself, I admit that I am instead an "Agnostic", an I-don't-knower, with varying amounts of idealistic whimsy about the possibilities that may exist instead of "God".

Why? Because religion terrifies me. I have seen its works, past and present and imagined future, and there is no better way to describe my reaction to it. Why? Because of what it does to people when they are weak, it takes them over, gives them the strength of self-conviction, turns them into prosthelytizers and skull crackers and Inquisitors and Jihadists. What non-believer can step back and not fear that kind of power?

And so I rally against religion in all its forms publicly. I want it to have no place in my world. I don't even want it to have a toehold. At my worst, I am capable of becoming just as irrational as what I fear. To the extent that I could react with distaste and suspicion to a beautiful and powerful commencement address that should speak to the very heart of me.

I need to remember that place in me that questions all dogma, even my own. I need to remember that place that questions existence and belief and information. I need to remember myself.

That atheist group is currently bickering about true definitions of atheism, not eloquently or rationally, but by name calling in the middle of discussions of the possible existence/non-existence of spirits.

It astonishes me how all of these things so tied into my current psychological/philosophical earworm have appeared in front of me in the space of minutes. This happened to me a few weeks ago, and I let it all slip through my fingers without writing down my response to it all. I let go of something very powerful that could have defined my future so clearly, and I am so angry with myself for letting it go. So I just had to catch onto this smaller re-enactment before that too slid away.

I only hope others out there can follow my thinking. Tying capitalism and atheism and spirituality and technology all together in this rambling piece comes straight from my head where I can see the glowing chords of connection. I hope I've illuminated those connections enough for others to see them as well.

I had originally intended to write about Forgiveness in two parts, as I had two separate experiences/ideas to write about. But the universe did its thing, throwing all sorts of relevant conversations and stories at me this week. There has been so much to think about and digest, I can't keep up with it all! For now, I go back to my original plan and the topic I had meant to write about next. I imagine some things from this week will filter in. I'll have to see when I'm finished how much is left unsaid that still needs to be addressed later...

In my last post, I wrote about my need to learn how to forgive my mother. Today, I want to talk about my inability to forgive my father, something that may not just be impossible, but that can be argued may or may not be in my best interest to attempt. I don't want to talk about my father in specifics. There is too much there, and it is all very painful, which will make what I'm attempting to do here much more emotional than I'd like. I'm trying to examine myself, my feelings, the way I think, my opinions - to reconcile this with the outer world, the "normal" world. I don't want to dwell in the past, I want to deal with my present mindset.

But I need to be clear about a few things. First, I believe my father to be the second most evil individual I have ever met. Two, during my childhood my father was violent, alcoholic, quick to anger, extremely volatile - I believe he was/is suffering from schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, or some other psychotic personality disorder. Three, my mother on the other hand was/is merely neurotic. Four, I believe my father should be rotting away in some prison right now for the crimes he has committed against me and my family, as well as others with the misfortune of having been in his life. Five, the most evil person I have ever met was my father's step-father, the biological father of my dad's brothers - but not genetically responsible for my father or his sister.

. . .

I had a full session with my therapist this week, knowing I had more to talk about than just the usual half-hour check-in appointment could allow for. I talked about my bitterness, how hard it is for me to forgive anyone for even the smallest infractions, about my negativity and pessimism. She wanted to know where my pessimism came from, if it was something my parents or others from my childhood might have instilled or modeled for me to learn. The answer to that is while my parents are likely hugely responsible for my negativity and pessimism, I believe the extent is merely through the self-defense mechanisms I developed in response to their actions. I don't recall my mother or father being pessimistic or optimistic. I remember my mother encouraging us to follow our dreams and telling us we could do whatever it is in life we wanted to try. I remember my father always chasing fantastical dreams of wealth.

My earliest memories of pessimism are from a volleyball game in the 7th grade. I was not horrifically bad at volleyball, unlike 99% of the other things inflicted on me in school during PE. On this occasion, my team was winning. Every time we made a point or thwarted the other team's attempts to score, all the boys would cheer and trash-talk the opposing team. This infuriated me. I saw no reason to celebrate a game that wasn't over, a game that we could still lose. We shouldn't count our chickens before they had hatched, because it would tempt fate.

Lessons learned through this memory: I was (irrationally?) superstitious from a young age, I am not or at least was not a complete failure at physical activity, and - drum roll please - school kids may be the root cause of my pessimism. Huh.

Today, I feel I am a total failure at anything physical, completely lacking any grace or delicacy of movement, a true "bull in a china shop". In the 7th grade playing volleyball, I already believed this. Why? Because of years of heckling from teammates in PE. It wasn't enough to be fat or white or shy or poor or lacking fashion sense - all the sources of school yard taunts. No, my level of unawesomeness carried over into the classroom, where it was a daily ritual for most of the boys and some of the girls to mock and ridicule my physical ineptitude during Physical Education period. Moving around, this was something that didn't change: co-ed PE was brutal for me in both Hawaii and Port Orchard. Thinking back, I should probably have been more thankful for middle-school PE in Port Orchard, where class was not co-ed, and team sports were rarely (if ever) played. There just isn't room for mocking when every last girl in the class is winded and hating the teacher for assigning yet another day of Cross Country running.

I have always believed I suck at sports. Completely and utterly. A belief in your own worthlessness is pessimism, right? This belief was indeed prompted by actual suckage on my part, but the point was truly hammered home by the voices of cruel little boys who hated losing games by having me on their team.

So my pessimism isn't from my parents. Who knew? But the bitterness, that is another story. As an adult, I have avoided all things physically demanding and voila, I don't suck all the time! But I seem to be incapable of avoiding childhood memories of the cruelty of my father. So pessimism I can work on. Actually, I personally believe I am a closet optimist, because no matter how bad things get, I always hold on to at least a smidgen of hope. This isn't very healthy either, clinging to the hope of miracles in the face of impending doom/failure.

I see my pessimism, my negativity, my bitterness, my difficulty giving forgiveness, as one thing. Maybe it's not? Maybe they're just related? But I definitely see my bitterness as caused not only by my past, but my current inability to forgive and/or let go of the past. I don't want to be a pessimist. I don't want to be bitter. I don't want to spend my entire life dwelling on past hurts to the extent of not being able to forgive. But how?

Actively working on forgiving my mother has been helpful. Time has helped partially heal the scars caused by childhood bullies. But time hasn't helped in the case of my father, and I cannot or will not forgive him. Leaving me to wonder, do I have to forgive my father to let go of my past and finally be happy with my present?

This is my dilemma, and one I don't really have an answer for. Of course, blurting out this statement only came at the very end of my therapy session. Ha! But she didn't shut down the conversation before telling me that it didn't have to be necessary for me to forgive my father. That there are ways of letting go of the past without forgiveness. Now there is a solution I'd like to pay money for! Unfortunately, if it was something simple, it would have been dished out by now in therapy. Nope, I'm thinking it's going to be rather complicated.

This hasn't really been much about my father like I expected, so let me steer back in that direction. I am the only person in my family who does not have a relationship with my father. My mother, my sister, my brothers - they all allow him in their lives. Hell, not a single one of my mother's relatives have ever put a foot down and banned him from anything - it's always up to my mother to convince him that everyone would be more comfortable at Thanksgiving dinner if he didn't go with us over to Gramma's house. All of this passive acceptance of him has added more bitterness for me to deal with. Because I don't understand. I don't understand how he can do the things he's done, treat them just the same for years and years, and still be allowed in their lives. I just don't understand it. It's confusing to me. It hurts, actually. It's been more difficult than I feel it should have been to communicate just how serious I am about not being in the same room with him, ever, for any reason.

My step-grand-father, the most evil person in the world, was never disowned by anyone in his family. Not even by my father, who was an actual victim of physical abuse usually shared for non-family members. Usually. You would think that violence in the home would give weight to accusations by outsiders, but it didn't. You would think that the violence against his stepchildren would give weight to the accusations of his grandchildren, but it didn't. You would think that he would have eventually ended up in prison and then some state graveyard only to be identified by a number, when in fact he lived out his last days happily at home, then was buried right next to my grandmother with a name and honored remarks on his tombstone.

Have all these people forgiven? Just put it out of their mind? Lied to themselves? Denied and remained unbelieving against all evidence? I don't get it, not in the case of my father or his step-father.

The same day CNN carried a story about forgiveness and Casey Anthony, I followed a link to Why people stick by scandal-plagued pastors. The article touches on money scandals, infidelity, sexual coercion. In all cases, there are people who "jump ship", but there are others who "stand by their man". What. The. Fuck? Apparently, disbelief is a big part of it. Cases where there is just no evidence that could possibly come to light to change the favorable opinion of a few loyal followers. Some people are voyeurs actively interested in watching the scandal fallout first hand. Again, WTF? Some "view themselves as participants in a cosmic struggle." Uh, what now? This has got to be my favorite though:

None of this appeared to matter to Kirkpatrick. He said Long would have to answer to God, not him.
"I don't think Bishop Long can do anything worse than what Judas did, and God still loved him," Kirkpatrick said.
Kirkpatrick compared pastors to doctors.
"There are people who we trust with our lives every day, like doctors, who do all sorts of things, but we don't question them. This is our spiritual medicine. We come here to get what we need and then we leave."
When asked if there was anything that would cause him to stop attending New Birth, Kirkpatrick lowered his head and paused before he finally said:
"The church would have to close."

I thought that the article might shed some light on my family's (un)reaction to the crimes of my father and his step-father. The closest that any of it came was the concept that a parishioner (child) can't leave a paster (parent) to whom they attribute a positive action in their life like help with drug addiction or a failing marriage (or... giving birth???).

"There is a suspension of common sense, a refusal to put two and two together," Thompson said. "For a lot of people, this is the man who gave them the keys to a whole new way of living. They can't separate the good they received from the man himself, so they feel it would be a betrayal to turn on him now."
When outsiders ratchet up criticism against an embattled pastor, members often go into battle mode, said Thompson, author of "The Prodigal Brother: Making Peace with Your Parents, Your Past, and the Wayward One in Your Family."
"They circle the wagons to protect their guy," Thompson said. "They don't want to see, and they don't want to be made to see what 'the world' sees. They believe the world's view is false, so they form the firewall."

In the end, I am no less confused. I'm just more in awe at some people's capacity for stupidity and/or ability to self-delude. Some things are just unknowable, unexplainable, to someone not experiencing it for themselves. Even when we're talking about two people having two completely different reactions to the same event.

And I'm no closer in my quest to understand and grant forgiveness.

And dammit if now there has to be a Part 3 in this series.

Forgiveness has been on my mind lately. I think it started when I was inspired by My Life List to make a life Goal to "forgive my mother". (It's an interesting concept, a website to declare and track your goals in life, combined with social media if you'd like to get public support in your endeavors.)

In case you haven't noticed, I'm a very bitter person. I am alternatively snarky or silent on many topics based on the emotional echoes from my past. I've only recently realized the extent that bitterness has infected my life, and it's become important to me to try to reverse. How does one reverse bitterness? Let go of the past, stop living your life there, and keep your past in your past. And forgive. Forgive yourself and others. Unfortunately, forgiveness does not come easily to me.

But the day after declaring to the world that I intend to forgive my mother, I stumble upon some thought-provoking pieces on CNN. The first was the most relevant, Casey Anthony and the challenge of forgiveness. For those living under a rock, Casey Anthony was found not-guilty of murdering her own daughter last week, after a very public trial, to the outrage of the American public. I personally think that trial-by-media is a horrific form of yellow journalism that is both detrimental to those involved in the case, as well as those who get sucked in by the media coverage - the first group doesn't get a proper trial (and in return receive unwanted attention at the worst possible moments of their lives), and the second group is whipped into a riotous feeding frenzy by news agencies. A "trial of peers" is not a trial by every person who has access to a television, it's by a 12 member jury picked to represent the public at large. There are rules about this sort of thing, and those rules are in place for everyone's sake. It is not healthy to become obsessed with media coverage of anything, especially not a murder trial that has nothing to do with you. But after an acquittal, the resulting public outcry is... ferocious, monstrous, and really fucking scary. An entire nation on the verge of rioting is frightening, but when it's caused by something that has nothing to do with them except to feed an obsession... can I just say, holy shit?

So Patrick Wanis wrote this piece for CNN about forgiveness, with Casey Anthony as the focus, but only as a greater lesson.

staying stuck in anger, bitterness, vindictiveness or a desire for revenge does not bring about positive results. As a human behavior expert and therapist, the most common denominator of the pain, mental and emotional affliction that I see people suffer is the lack of forgiveness - the anger and pursuit of revenge against mom, dad, brother, sister, aunt, uncle or self for something that someone did or didn’t do.

Without forgiveness, there is only pain, recurring memories that hurt again and again and again. There is a line between seeking justice and revenge, and holding out for revenge just destroys us from the inside out. Wanis gets all spiritual in his article, but even as an atheist I can understand and take to heart the examples in scripture and real life of forgiveness. He talks of Jesus, he talks of a Holocaust survivor, he steers back to Casey Anthony.

Look in your heart and ask yourself what effect the poison of anger and revenge have on you and your life. We have all wronged and we are all imperfect. Of course, murder is not the same as the wrongs that most of us commit.

But if Jesus could ask God to forgive the people that were about to murder him and if a Holocaust survivor could forgive the people that poisoned her and tried to exterminate her family, then what holds you and I back from forgiving anyone? The next time you commit a wrongdoing, won’t you be saying “Please forgive me?”

This is very powerful stuff. And relevant to my personal struggle with my relationship with my mother. I don't want to talk about what my mother did or didn't do, what was justified or not, whether I'm in the right or not. I love my mother, I know I hold the past against her, and I know that our relationship can't be healthy until I let that go. I have to forgive her.

But how? How does one forgive? There are obviously varying degrees of slights, and varying degrees of forgiveness we must find within ourselves to move forward. I am cut from the cloth that finds forgiveness of almost any level hard to grant. This is so shameful for me. So often, I know I'm being unreasonable, but I don't know how to stop myself. In the past, I have told people I forgive them without actually meaning it. Or meaning it at the time, only to realize later that I'm still holding bitterness against them. Neither is true forgiveness, neither is healthy for me or the other person.

Once again, I'm going to blame my crazy brain and its obsessiveness. I can't really speak for other people's brains I guess, but I've been given the impression that it's not normal to be constantly reliving a moment or emotion or event or series of events. I can be distracted - my mind is constantly going and going and going like a hamster on a wheel, and I'm constantly interrupted by all sorts of stray thoughts. But there is always something that my mind is holding on to like some rabid dog, and the only thing that relieves it is when the thought is replaced by a different obsessive thought. I am seriously exhausted just by what's going on in my head all the time, every minute of every hour of every day.

I'm thinking... Post Traumatic Stress Disorder coupled with Obessive Compulsive Disorder. Somehow, the OCD magnifies the PTSD, so that every negative event gets seared into my brain for reliving in Full Living Color and Smell-o-Vision over and over forever. My memories don't fade. The pain doesn't fade.

This is not really true, not in the long term. I do eventually "get over" most hurts. Most. Eventually. But the constant marathon reliving of the pain in the short term makes the process so maddening, so hard to live through, so hard to come out on the other side at all. Sometimes, I don't. For the most part, the things I can't forgive ever are from my childhood. My brain may find other distractions over time, other things to worry or obsess about over the years. But the smallest thing can set off a memory and suddenly it's as if it just happened. How does a person defeat that?

The answer is therapy of course - it has taught me how to actually notice that my mind is stuck in a rut. Noticing helps you actively distract yourself so you can get out. But... unfortunately, that's about it. I notice I'm doing it and I actively try to stop it. This isn't really all that much more pleasant than not noticing. At least there is some relief more often though.

So, let's see... Bitterness and revenge are bad, forgiveness is good, forgiveness is difficult to achieve, forgiveness of childhood hurts is more than difficult. Guess where my bitterness against my mother stems from? Childhood.

Time is helping. Talking is helping. Life is helping - you hear from other people about their similar experiences, you watch it unfold in movies, you read about it on CNN. It can be chipped away at over time. It just can't be forced.

There are some things that I'm convinced that I'm never going to forgive. But none of them involve my mother. I love her, I need her in my life again, I have done so much more harm through this bitterness - to her, to my siblings, to myself. Can actively trying to put those memories away actually help? I really, really hope so.

Last week CNN shared an article by Martha Beck from Oprah.com, 20 Questions that could change your life. Despite not being an Oprah viewer, I decided to click the link to read these mysterious questions. To be honest, I didn't know it had anything to do with Oprah at the time and, despite some vague curiosity, I didn't really think I would find it all that enlightening anyway.

It wasn't exactly enlightening, but there was a familiarity to it that kept me reading. Most every question had me really thinking about myself and my current place in life. It all seemed to tie in very closely to the mental/emotional changes that I've been experiencing/implementing in my life this past year. So I thought I'd take it one step further and write my answers, to do some real critical thinking on it - writing about something has its own unique way of ferreting out insight within me that I had no idea was hiding there to begin with. So today, Question 1.

1. What questions should I be asking myself?
At first I thought asking yourself what you should be asking yourself was redundant. It isn't. Without this question, you wouldn't ask any others, so it gets top billing. It creates an alert, thoughtful mind state, ideal for ferreting out the information you most need in every situation. Ask it frequently.

The questions I ask myself every day: how do I feel? is this worth it? am I doing the right thing? why is it so difficult to go to the gym?

The questions I'd prefer to ask myself: what do you want to do today? what do you want to create today? what do you want to write today? where do you want to go today? what do I want to photograph today?

Every day, I am stuck in the rut of being ruled by my health problems and judged by my own self. Yes, it's necessary to gauge my energy level before I start any task. And yes, looking at yourself critically is important. But that seems to be the entirety of my inner-monologue: health, ramifications of health, disappointment in self.

It seems I would much rather be escaping and/or creating. I want to be out of the house, or deep in a project - both with the result that I will be out of my mind, away from my own worries and criticisms. Is this really such a bad thing? Why don't I listen to this part of myself more often? Why has it been so long since I've been creative?

Rereading this before posting, there is another set of questions that occurs to me: am I healthy enough for a baby? is this good enough for the baby? am I good enough for the baby?

Worry, worry, worry! I'm so tied to worrying, I seem to have lost sight of why I want to have a child.

Questions I should be asking myself: what do I want to teach my baby? how will I explain this idea to the baby? how will I tell this story to the baby? what would be a good way to get my baby interested in this?

The blog Single Dad Laughing had a post so thought provoking, it took me days to formulate a proper response. And once I had it, there was no way it was all going to fit in a comment box. Here's to hoping Dan comes over to read what I had to say, because I think he's started a truly fascinating conversation.

Women are ugly.
Women are fat.
Women are bad mothers. Women are bad wives. Women are bad daughters.
Women are lousy cooks. Women don't keep their houses clean enough.
Women have too much cellulite in their thighs. Their abdomens are too flabby. Their under-arms are too Jell-oesque.
Women are terrible singers. They are terrible dancers. They are terrible public speakers.
Women are stupid. Women are scatter-brained.
Women are weak. They are powerless. They are defenseless.
Women don't dress well enough. They don't have clear enough complexions. They have too many freckles.
Women don't have full enough lips. They don't have skin that is soft enough.
Women are too dominant. Women are too passive.
Women are too mean. Women are too nice. Women are nothing but doormats.
Women aren't good enough. Women will never be good enough.
Women are, simply put, worthless.

Yes, they are all these things. If, that is, I am to believe the very words that are constantly being spoken by women themselves (which I don't). These are their words. And I've heard them declared again. And again. And again. To me, to other men, to other women, and for all I know to their pets and their plants.

Worthless. What a concept. To hold no value. To be less desirable than a can of dirt. Are you freaking kidding me? Every single statement on this list, including the worthless comment, was a declaration that at least one woman has made to me, for whatever reason. I bet there isn't a statement above that we all haven't heard at least once; most likely hundreds or thousands of times. Why would any of these horrible, degrading beliefs spill across the lips of any woman?

What hurts me the most is that most of these things have been said to me by more women than I would care to count.

Get real for a moment, ladies. How many of these statements have you yourself said or thought? Be honest. Go through the list, one by one, and admit to the number. I'm genuinely curious. I'm genuinely sick about it. How many of them have you said or thought just since you got out of bed this morning?

I did. And I was startled.

I am ugly. I am fat. I will be a bad mother. I am a bad wife. I am a bad daughter.

Why on earth is it ok for me to say things like this about myself, but if someone said it to me, or about another woman, I would be livid? I recently blogged about my negativity, and how in the past I've simply felt that I am honest with myself. But seriously. Saying all of that? Again and again? Believing it? Shit, what am I doing to myself?

My new therapy group has very quickly shown me just how powerful my mind can be, but the Law of Attraction theory has been just a little too much for me to swallow. Wishing I had a pony doesn't instantly make one pop into existence, and not calling myself fat isn't going to make me stop thinking I'm fat. However, if I really want that pony, keeping it in my mind is the best way to get myself to put things into action to get myself a pony. On the flip side, not allowing myself to call myself fat puts a little less pressure on my self-esteem, makes a little extra space for me to think positively about myself, and that is great motivation to start down the path of self-love and healthy living.

I understand the reason you constantly let slip these damaging statements. I understand the reason why you actually believe these things. I understand the real reason you feel this way. And the real reason breaks my heart. (...)

Guys... It is our fault. The blame lies with us.

Whoa! You're about to say a whole bunch of interesting things that I kind of agree with, but let's pause here before you martyr yourself. Men do not own this problem, they didn't create it, not alone. Yes, men influence women. But you don't make us. We are the sum of all of our experiences, filtered through our own thought processes.

We have destroyed the very beauty that women are.

We've replaced that beauty with a standard that is, and always will be, impossible for them to hit. We've decided what the perfect legs are. We've decided what the perfect body is. We've decided what the perfect breasts are to be shaped like. We've decided what the perfect face, skin, butt, and neck should be. And we've made no hesitations to boldly let it be known.

We declare it, and we do so with little care for the tender women standing beside us.

This is some really good insight on your part, so thank you. But the we here isn't men, it is society as a whole - including women themselves. Your concern for "tender women" is appreciated, but again you've made this a problem that men have to solve for women. Please, don't treat us kindly because you've treated us badly in the past. Treat us with respect because we deserve it as equals. Be kind because that's how you should always act towards everyone.

Now, you may be naively sitting there thinking, I don't declare that. I tell women they are amazing. That they are beautiful. That there is nothing wrong with them.

Do you not understand? It doesn't take opening your mouth to propound these things. It doesn't take flapping your lips to make a statement. It doesn't take verbal anything to spread this vicious ideology.

All it takes is you and me, stopping and looking.(...)

And that simple, repeated act is how we constantly, and never-endingly declare to women that they are not good enough, and will never be good enough.(...)

And they remember it. They store it. They program their minds to say, "what he is looking at is obviously what men want, and I must have that or men won't want me".

Thank you. Thank you so much for realizing that thoughts and actions, however silent, make an impact. This is such a simple truth, and yet so many people just don't seem to get it. Our collective preferences and actions have shaped our culture into one that worships perfection. This is reflected back to us in media and entertainment, further reinforcing and skewing our ideals to extremes.

This reminds me of trying to explain the concept of "institutional racism", which simply put is the entrenched cultural racism that still affects us today through the policies and opinions of yesterday. The Ghost of Racism Past, so much like the Ghost of Patriarchy Past - hard to define or put a finger on it exactly, but harder still to eradicate it.

A woman can tell herself that those images are fake until the sun goes down, but at the end of the day, her self-talk will barely matter. Not when men think that they're real. Not when she knows that men want what is shamelessly being touted from those photos. Not when she knows that men think of those photos as real.

Yes, let's talk about men. Let's talk about women ogling men, about Playgirl magazine, about paper towel commercials depicting "the perfect man", about statements like "Men can go to hell" - all socially acceptable for women. Ask yourself the next time you see a movie scene where a woman grabs a random man's ass and giggle with her cohorts, "What if that had been a man grabbing a woman?" When perturbed, women "smack" men on the shoulder or punch his gut: remember Elaine always escalating her "Get Out!" shoving of men on Seinfeld?

Women are just as guilty as men of being uncouth, insensitive, and down right mean. Men are afraid to call women on it because, apparently, women have earned the privilege to be assholes to men through historic suffering at the hands of men. This is part of our culture, being reinforced by the media, as well as the actions of men and women.

We must stop stopping. We must stop looking. We must stop fooling ourselves that such fantasies exist. We must stop wanting our women to live up to impossible ideals. We must stop seeking out images of scantily clad and naked women. We must stop filling our mind with all this fiction. We must stop.(...)

My dear brothers, can we not start loving everything about our "real" women? Can we not start ogling our "real" women instead of those fictitious fantasies in the check-out line? Can we not send a message to the world that we are no longer interested in anything that is less (or more) than "real"? That we are no longer interested in setting our standard of beauty based on images that some artist found some way to create with a damn computer? Can we not declare that we're only interested in the very "real" women standing beside us and around us?

This is a lofty, noble idea. But not very realistic. Because women and men are physically attracted to each other because of physical appearance. You can convince yourself to love someone, you can convince yourself to sleep with someone you don't really desire, but you can't talk yourself into finding someone attractive. A world where "hotties" get with "plain janes" can make a woman salivate, but what about the man?

This is where I start to make the connection with Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut. If we strive so hard to force equality, we stamp out individualism. Shall we all wear potato sacks to pretty people don't have an advantage over the not-so-much crowd? That wouldn't really do it, now would it? Golf has a handicap, and Bergeron's society has its own version: making pretty people uglier, smarter people dumber. Forcing equality isn't the way to go. Embracing each person's inherent worth, and determining that worth without physical requirements, is what's necessary.

I can't believe I am going to say what I am about to say. I can't believe I actually do want what I am about to ask. But I do. Desperately. So, I'm going to throw it out there. I think we need women to wear clothing that shows a little less instead of a little more. We need women to wear pants that are a little looser instead of a little tighter. We need women to put their boobs back inside of their shirts. I feel crazy even saying it (I'm a single guy for crying out loud), but maybe if women gave everybody a little less to compare, this whole thing would be a little easier for us all, no matter what our chromosomal make-up.

Don't get me wrong. None of this is to say that men should or can stop appreciating beauty. That would be unnatural. That would be impossible. It is not to say that women shouldn't make themselves as attractive as they can be. It is not to say that we shouldn't appreciate cleanliness and comeliness. No, it is not to say any of those things. It is only to plead with each of you. Let's bring this world back to reality. Let's make sure that the people we are attracted to are "real" people. Let's make sure that the women we stop and look at are "real" women.

And here, my friend, is where you have me truly scratching my head. On the surface, this may sound nice to you and to women: I'll stop looking if you stop tempting me. But not only is it wrong, but it won't work.

Covering women invokes the specter of the burqa and the prairie dress. When a woman wears a burqa, is she considered or treated as an equal to men? No. Do men stop wanting beautiful women? No. You suggest a woman covering up a little more, but you forget the lesson of culture skewing things to the extreme. The more women start covering up, the more they will start to be expected to cover up, expectation leads to mandates and laws. What started so innocently, if implemented, would lead to more and more parts being covered, and harsher and harsher penalties for not going with the flow.

Covering or hiding something creates taboo associations, creates both shame and the desire of the forbidden. Once something is covered, it is worth less, and worth more. A society that covers a woman doesn't treat her as an equal, but instead covets her to the point of being an object to be owned.

In the end, I have to say congratulations for gaining such insight, and bravo for writing something so honest and thought provoking. And too bad you haven't figured it all out yet. Not to worry though, no one else has beat you to the punch!

I think it's time for an update on Baby Quest. I've recently been trying to make a concerted effort to keep negativity in check here, but that's another conversation entirely.

When last we saw our heroine, the ethics of the donor selection process were weighing heavily on her. I jokingly referred to our selection as our brood-mare, because this process seems so de-humanizing I just needed to inject a little levity. Read on for more laugh-or-cry moments!

So we selected a donor, and signed a preliminary "on-hold" document. Then, and only then, did I decide to re-examine a little sentence that I had looked over in the most recent email from our donor coordinator. Because I am a numbskull. A nutjob. A scatterbrained dumbass. But  it's not my fault! It was followed by two very convincing sentences about how un-troublesome the original statement was. For your perusal:

The donor let me know that she had something called Factor 5 Leiden with her last pregnancy.  It is not a genetic disorder, just a blood clotting disorder that she had to take blood thinners for.  She no longer needs to take medications since she is not pregnant.

Are you soothed? I was. But still, due diligence and all that, right? Well guess what Wikipedia and a host of other websites had to say about the matter:

Factor V Leiden is the most common hereditary hypercoagulability disorder amongst Eurasians. - Wikipedia

Factor V Leiden is the most common hereditary blood coagualtion disorder in the United States. It is present in 5% of the Caucasian population and 1.2% of the African American population.
- FVLeiden.org

Factor V Leiden thrombophilia is an inherited disorder of blood clotting. Factor V Leiden is the name of a specific gene mutation that results in thrombophilia, which is an increased tendency to form abnormal blood clots that can block blood vessels.
- Genetics Home Reference, U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health

Factor V Leiden (FAK-tur five LIDE-n) is a common inherited genetic disorder that can increase your chance of developing abnormal blood clots (thrombophilia), usually in your veins.
Most people with factor V Leiden never develop abnormal clots. However, some people with factor V Leiden develop clots that lead to long-term health problems or become life-threatening.
Both men and women can have factor V Leiden, but women may have an increased tendency to develop blood clots during pregnancy or when taking the hormone estrogen.
- Mayo Clinic

All signs point towards "deal breaker." The other members of the Committee for Baby Quest - Eric, his mother (a nurse), his sister (a nurse), and his father (a two-time Grampa) - concur.

However, the phrasing of the bad news leaves some room for doubt. Why would they call this not genetic when it is? Could it possibly be that the diagnosis is wrong? That the donor misunderstood?? or was told she had something like the disorder but not really???

Through emails (I'm now regretting not picking up the phone about this yet), the coordinator at my clinic tells me that my fertility doctor agrees it is genetic, but is "doing research". Have yet to hear the results of that research...

Tomorrow marks the one-week mark of putting this all together, and also the deadline to file the formal paperwork/contract and submit a lot of money. So this morning has been about looking into this again, as well as contacting everyone to follow-up. And realizing that this has been on my mind so much that I could swear I spoke with the donor coordinator about this when in fact I hadn't. Oy-vey!

Honestly, the only way to resolve this is through re-examination of the donor's medical records and/or testing. Neither of which can be done without me signing the contract and forking over the fees. So in my email to the donor coordinator, I asked if it would be possible to have the donor just talk to her doctors about her true diagnosis, as well as testing without a contract just for this disorder. Who knows how much that would cost though?

This is sooo not an easy process. But I'm doing fine with it right now. I'm still really bad with remembering to follow-up, but other than that, I think I'm doing a pretty good job handling this, including mentally.

I was sick of the old "dark" layout, so I've been looking for something a bit lighter, and I just adore this new look. Unfortunately, there are some ticks that are taking me forever to fix. I've been at this for hours, fighting the sleepiness induced by my medication. No more: I'm going to bed. We'll see if I can iron out the rest of this when I'm actually awake. FYI, Deluxe Templates has some AWESOME blogger layouts, all free!

My earlier blog post jogged my memory of another article with fact citation problems. But this time around, it was about over-citation.

U.S. professor disappears during Japan volcano hike updated 10:02 p.m. EDT, Thu April 30, 2009 By Jason Hanna

(CNN) -- Teams in southern Japan are searching for an award-winning U.S. poet and college professor who failed to return from a hike to a volcano, his university said Thursday.

Craig Arnold was doing research for a poetry and essay book on volcanoes, a colleague said.

Craig Arnold was doing research for a poetry and essay book on volcanoes, a colleague said.

Craig Arnold, a 41-year-old assistant professor at the University of Wyoming, did not return from his Monday hike to a volcano on Kuchinoerabujima, a small island just west of Yakushima, the school said.

"The only clues that [searchers] have found were indications that he had begun the ascent -- footprints on the trail," said Peter Parolin, head of the university's English department, citing Arnold's family.

Arnold, a creative writing professor, was doing research for a poetry and essay book he is writing about volcanoes, Parolin said. See where island is located »

A team of 60 people, with helicopters and search dogs, is looking for Arnold, according to the school. Japanese authorities have agreed to continue the search through Sunday, the university said.

Arnold, according to the school, wrote two award-winning volumes of poetry: "Shells," chosen for the Yale Series of Younger Poets in 1999; and 2008's "Made Flesh."

His work has been anthologized in several volumes of the Best American Poetry Series, and his awards and honors include a Fulbright Fellowship and the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, according to the university.

Arnold took the semester off from teaching and traveled to Japan alone through a U.S.-Japan creative artists' fellowship, Parolin said.

He had planned to spend a day alone at the volcano, and an innkeeper contacted authorities when he didn't return that evening, according to Parolin.

Arnold has scaled many volcanoes, Parolin said.

"If it's technical or dangerous, he does it with a guide. But from all reports, on this trip he went by himself," Parolin said.

Arnold "is the kind of person and poet who is attracted to extreme places and extreme geographies -- places that not all of us visit," the University of Wyoming English department head said.

"He feels the need to go to places that people don't go and come back and tell us about them," Parolin said.

A press officer at the U.S. Embassy in Japan said he couldn't confirm whether Arnold was missing, citing privacy law. However, he said the U.S. Air Force sent four Okinawa-based helicopters to the area Thursday at the embassy's request to assist with what he believed was a search operation on Kuchinoerabujima.

The Air Force helicopters, from Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, were on an unrelated mission in the area when they were diverted, he said.

Holy crap! Now there is citing your sources, and then there is listing a bunch of quotes together and calling it an article! Every paragraph, yes every paragraph, includes some kind of citation, mostly "he said." I can't stop saying Holy Crap! Did Jason Hanna not take any English classes at university. Oh, wait - all the things wrong here I learned in jr. high and high school!

1. One sentence does not a paragraph make (I give you a pass on this one Jason, since every print and online news source organizes their articles this way)

2. Don't repeat yourself over, and over, and over, and over!

3. When writing a research report, include quotes and their citations (usually in footnotes). But don't over-do it! Too much quoting is basically plagarizing. Yep, you listed your sources, used quotes, and gave citations next to those quotes. Now how about finding an original sentence and actually writing something yourself!

Maybe it was a cut-and-paste, last-minute piece. Maybe Jason's 12 year old intern really wrote the article. Maybe Jason's editors were asleep upon submittal, or worse, have it in for him and giggled gleefully at being handed fodder for his downfall. Who knows?

For me, the worst part of this article is the tone that's created. A man is missing, probably dead. As you describe him, you should be respectful. But say a few of these sentences out loud to yourself, like the one that had me begin re-reading the article just to be sure it was as weird as I thought.

His work has been anthologized in several volumes of the Best American Poetry Series, and his awards and honors include a Fulbright Fellowship and the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, according to the university.

If my use of bold type doesn't do it for you, try reading the sentence parts in reverse order:

"According to the university, his work has been anthologized..."

or this one

"He said the Air Force helicopters... were on an unrelated mission..."

Excellent job Jason, you've just written an article that presents every word as fact, and then questions everything you've said. All because of phrasing. Here's a cookie.

*cough* Confidential to Jason Hanna: I am so sorry (she said) for being such a cold bitch, but there was just so much to work with, I couldn't help myself.

Honestly, its bizarre how many English grammar and writing rules have stuck with me, as opposed to the ones I've long since forgotten. Anyone else heard the one that goes "never end a sentence in a preposition"? Ask me if I remember what a preposition is. I never understood this one, as I seem to remember it makes you talk like Yoda.

Or hey, did you see that misplacement of my question mark? I know quite well that, according to the textbooks, when you have a quote at the end of your sentence, the punctuation is placed before the closing quotation mark. But you know what, that makes my quote look like it is a question, and it's not. So I purposely misplace question marks in those situations, even though my memory flashes big red flags in my head every time I do it.

And I love to start sentences (gasp!) with the word "but." Or "and." Or "or." Or "because." (Hey, those aren't prepositions, are they? Crap. Time to consult dictionary.com.) Why? Why do I do this? Why am I so reckless? Because my 7th Grade English teacher told me that the phrase "But that's not to say" was not proper English. Do you have any idea how much time I labored over finding a new transition was? You make yourself 11 again and try to reword it: "Therefore, Duran Duran is an awesome, very talented, and sexy group of guys. (New paragraph) But that's not to say that Wham! isn't awesome in their own right."

Apparently, "but" is NEVER, ever, ever used to start a sentence. So tell me this, oh wise woman, how did I pick up that particular phrase? On a stick of bubble gum? In a conversation with my Barbies? Nope. I picked it up from books. Did you know that Anne Rice, among others, has no qualms about beginning a sentence (even at the beginning of a paragraph, or to start a new chapter!) with "and", as well as "because"?

If Anne Rice can do it, so can I. So nya-nya-nya.

OK, so my assignment on compare and contrast almost tanked because of this stupid woman. How about the one where we were supposed to rewrite a film clip in the first person? Now imagine a young man trying to cross a snowy, icy crevasse on his hands and knees via a rickety old ladder. What would be going through your mind? I thought it went something like this:

"Oh god, oh god, oh god. Please don't let me fall. Oh god! That was a close one! Oh god, oh god, oh god!"

According to my teacher, there was way too much repetition in this paragraph. Apparently, when people are terrified and certain death is up ahead, they are supposed to think like this:

"Oh god, oh god, oh - Uh oh! I can't be repetitive! Um... Oh Buddha! Or Mohammed! Oh Flying Spaghetti Monster! Please don't let me fall! Oh... Holy Monkey-headed dude! Man, I really hate my 7th grade English teacher right now. Aaaaaiiiiiiieeeee!" *splat*

But annoying grammar rules just kept on coming! In the 10th grade, I wrote a one-page paper summarizing a book on the life of Mozart. Here was my glaring mistake (erm, rephrased...)

"Mozart was an awesome musician. But he also had amazing fashion sense."

Apparently, there are grammar rules that can cross sentences! I was informed that I can only use the phrase "but also" if the phrase "not only" was in the previous sentence!

"Not only was Mozart an awesome musician, but he also had amazing fashion sense."

*sigh* What if I wanted two sentences instead of one, huh? Still, this is one I actually took to heart. Probably because the teacher stood up for me when the department head told him she thought I was cheating. Apparently no one in his class could possible be smart enough to know how to quote foreign languages within English sentences"

"Mozart was widely believed to be a wünderkind, having written his first opera at age four."

Really, is it any wonder that I have English-nazi issues?

I am a germaphobe - just ask my husband! The media's over-attentiveness to disease and virus outbreaks has just made it worse (ie: swine flu, avian flu, MRSA, ebola, the Hanta virus, flesh-eating bacteria). So have signs in the bathrooms of restaurants and medical buildings - you've noticed that places like this have signs telling you how to wash your hands, yes?

I really started paying attention to those signs when I was working in a daycare and there was a sign right at eye level over the sink showing the correct way to wash your hands, provided by the county health department. It includes using a paper towel to turn off the tap, something I now do religiously. In fact, my need to be sanitary and my urge to conserve frequently have a battle in my head when I'm washing up: is cleanliness worth wasting water and paper towels? I say yes. But... do I leave the tap running in order to grab a paper towel and dry my hands before turning off the water? Or do I grab a paper towel to turn off the tap right away, throw away the towel, and then grab another one to actually dry my hands? Which resource is more precious, water or trees? What's more expensive, an extra 30 seconds of water usage or 1 paper towel? Welcome to the wacky world of mysie's brain everybody!!!

So now I've pointed out that I'm a germaphobe and I hate to be wasteful, let's throw in the fact that I want to have a baby. A healthy baby. A baby without disease, autism, or my knocked knees. Have you heard that there is mercury in childhood vaccinations, and there is a very vocal group convinced this is the main cause of autism? Merde.

March 2008: Federal Officials Say Vaccines Worsened Condition That Led to Autism Spectrum Disorder in Georgia Girl

February 2009: Vaccine Court: No Merit to Claims That Thimerosal in Vaccines Contributed to Autism

Today the Seattle PI.com ran an article about environmental factors in autism: Autism: It's the environment, not just doctors diagnosing more disease

Looking for more information, I found an article about autism rates now that mercury has been removed from (most) vaccines: Autism Cases Still Going Up As Vaccine Mercury Removed

This statement in the PI had me particularly worried: "Household products such as antibacterial soaps also could have ingredients that harm the brain by changing immune systems..." So I tried to do a search on that, and didn't come up with much. However, when you type in "antibacterial soap" into Google, before you can type "change immune system", you are presented with Google's favorite searches for that first phrase. A scary-sounding option comes up: "antibacterial soaps unnecessary risks no benefits".

Apparently, there are a growing number of people that believe that not only are antibacterial soaps no more effective than regular soaps, but that they are also harmful. Including the Centers For Disease Control (CDC): Antibacterial Household Products: Cause for Concern.

So what now?! How on earth is a die-hard germaphobe and baby mama wannabe supposed to live without antibacterial soap??? Somewhere (sorry, lost the link) I read that alcohol-based antibacterial formulas are not a problem, but whether or not that's true seems to be swept under the rug by the public's growing concern over the entire antibacterial products market. Then there is the sinister plan of Tuft University researcher Stuart Levy, as posited by foxnews.com's Junk Science columnist Steven Milloy:

"no mention was made of Levy’s affiliation (vice-chairman, chief scientific officer and co-founder) with Paratek Pharmaceuticals.... Paratek is well positioned to develop [antibacterial] products to serve this non-hospital consumer product market."

Can you hear me rolling my eyes? I am no fan of media sensationalization every time a new health study is published. Nor do I think it's particularly helpful to get all of your health news information from green/organic/eco-friendly groups - they are awesome at pointing out things that you should further study on your own, but too often come up with their own conclusions without any scientific process or study. But calling Stuart Levy's research (backed by the CDC) junk science is just crossing the line. I disagree with his assessment that the new study lets antibacterials off the hook, but I understand how easy it is to interpret the study to mean that.

It happens all the time - media tries to come up with interesting headlines and soundbites, which require summarizing massive amounts of data into a short, easy-to-understand format for their audience. This is how you get competing headlines when it comes to studies: "Alcohol is bad!" vs. "Red wine is good for your heart" vs. "Wine makes no difference to your health".

Then there is the tendency to translate statistics to support your own conclusion. If a study reveals a statistic... oh, let's say "40% of autistic kids have higher-than-average mercury levels in their blood", then it is correct to say "The majority of children with autism do not have high levels of mercury in their blood. But is that a responsible thing to say when you're a public figure with a large audience? What about the results that showed "75% of non-autistic children have less than 2% of the mercury content found in autistic children." Put those facts together, and you've got this: Mercury doesn't necessarily cause autism, but there is evidence that it plays some role."

Yes, I made up all the statements in that last paragraph, but misinterpretations of statistics happen all the time! The media and the average lay-person have such small attention spans that they demand an obvious statement to sum up research, rather than digging for the complexities of the truth to be found in most studies.

And speaking of irresponsible, here's a great (re: terrible) example: "Antibacterial Soaps: Unnecessary Risks, No Benefits" posted at divinecaroline.com. Remember that google search I mentioned? Well, this article is the #1 item returned by google in that search. On the surface, this is a very eye-opening, well-written, and easy-to-read article. But did you actually read what she was not saying?

"Many experts believe that," "shown resistance to S. aureous", "nearly 80 percent of all liquid soaps", "antibacterial agents promote strains of bacteria", and "If that’s not enough, the bacteria-killing chemicals go down the drain and into our waterways, harming wildlife and potentially ending up back in our bodies where they can present health risks."

Can you guess what she's leaving out? Hint: Check out the statements on page 2 that are much better.

"According to the Food and Drug Administration and the American Medical Association", "In one study", and "A 2007 study detected".

Congratulations Sarah Krupp, you've just discovered the concept of citing your sources! What would be even better would be actual links to or publication information for her source materials. Still, she got better. I'll try to keep in mind that she wrote this piece for a non-scientific website where anyone can say anything.

But: her article is the #1 source on the internet when looking for the risks of antibacterial soaps. I have no idea how many searches a day google handles, or how many searches of that particular phrase, but there it is at the top - proving its popularity with readers (Google's search results are ranked by how often each link from a search is chosen by the searcher - ha, there's my Quasi-Citation!) But my point is, when your audience is this large, it's time that responsibility and journalistic integrity play an important role in the wording of your article. The average reader is just too eager to read a group of claims in one article and decide that the entire article is fact.

So, in my OPINION:

1. statistics rarely show definite conclusions
2. statistics are very easy to interpret incorrrectly
3. purposely interpreting statistics incorrectly to disseminate to an audience is morally reprehensible
4. it is morally imperative that a journalist, even a web journalist, only state facts that can be cited
5. when most people read something well-written with a lot of reasonably stated ideas presented as facts, they too easily trust that these facts are mounting evidence, and thus everything stated must be correct
6. it's YOUR responsibility to research claims that affect your life
7. I have to start eliminating anti-bacterials from my life - and the germaphobe inside of me is terrified. I'm totally screwed.

Isn't science fun?!