April 21, 2008
back in the world
As Barry reported here on Sunday during a quick foray out of the affected area with his laptop, our larger neighborhood was without any internet connection all weekend. Our contact with the outside world was restored late on Monday, but...
Posted by james at 8:19 PM | Full Post
April 17, 2008
to hell and back with Ratzinger
Goya Inquisition Scene (1816) oil on panel 18" x 28.75" [three notes: beginning in the Middle Ages the Church had prescribed the conical hat, generally yellow, as a distinguishing mark for Jews; Jewish conversos were the principal concern of...
Posted by james at 1:01 AM | Full Post
February 14, 2008
but we do celebrate Valentine's Day . . .
. . . and would like everyone else to be able to do the same Justin Marshall Baby, I wanna make-out 2006 C-print This was one of the works in the artist's show in Chicago's excellent Thomas Robertello Gallery last...
Posted by james at 11:19 AM | Full Post
December 25, 2007
the obscenity of organized hate under cover of religion
A girl, who was wounded in a bomb attack, receives treatment in a hospital in Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) northeast of Baghdad, December 25, 2007. U.S. forces killed two gunmen and detained four others in operation near Baquba,...
Posted by james at 1:18 PM | Full Post
October 5, 2007
Dame Ethel Smyth's "The Wreckers"
John Singer Sargent Ethel Smyth 1901 pastel If this hundred-year-old opera had always enjoyed the success it deserves today I'd probably be whining about the endless parade of productions of La Boheme, Aida, La Traviata, Carmen and The Wreckers....
Posted by james at 4:44 PM | Full Post
September 5, 2007
fuck Mother Teresa!
a very rewarding friendship (Blessed Teresa greeting friend Charles Keating) On this tenth anniversary of the demise of Mother Teresa, the acclaimed world-champion of suffering and death [whose lifer inmates were refused even aspirin, but who died only after...
Posted by james at 12:28 PM | Full Post
July 31, 2007
eruv on 6th Avenue
Last week on the day I took shots of this symbolic fence (the thin [nylon?] wires in the photos) along 6th Avenue just below 23rd Street I couldn't find anything on line confirming that it represented a currently-valid eruv,...
Posted by james at 4:38 PM | Full Post
February 13, 2007
John Waters's Valentine heart
I brought us home a big bunch of beautiful off-red tulips tonight. I really admire more creative responses to the ancient Valentinus challenge, but one story totally intimidates me. John Waters has lately been talking about his own special...
Posted by james at 10:21 PM | Full Post
January 26, 2007
censorship, a goddamned slippery slope
Michael Kelly that goddamned george bush 2006 computer drawing Just spotted this tiny item in this morning's Newsday: BLEEPS ON A PLANE. So much for God and country, at least during some in-flight showings of the Oscar-nominated movie "The...
Posted by james at 11:38 AM | Full Post
January 23, 2007
Abbé Pierre, the excessive priest
"holy anger" Abbé Pierre died yesterday. If there is such a thing as a "saint", this man clearly deserved the title, but he will never be canonized by the Church. Too excessive.He wrote that as a young priest, he...
Posted by james at 12:01 PM | Full Post
January 9, 2007
we've just found another war!
is this trip necessary? Does our singular bellicosity stem simply from our addiction to oil, or from our growing cult of christianism? Or is it simply the pathological expression of a frightened, isolated, ignorant, provincial and bored people? My...
Posted by james at 12:29 PM | Full Post
September 11, 2006
the antidote to 9/11 24/7
I wasn't going to say anything more today about the fifth installment of our annual orgy of mourning and revenge, the anniversary of September 11. But things just got out of hand once we walked into Pierogi this evening and...
Posted by james at 9:37 PM | Full Post
July 13, 2006
closer to Armageddon
Sue Coe War Street 2000 etching 9.5" x 12.5" Okay, for better or for worse, the U.S. is the only "superpower" (for now) so I don't think it's presumptuous to talk about the size of our footprint: Right now...
Posted by james at 12:12 PM | Full Post
June 17, 2006
reopening the Kulturkampf in the 21st century
I've had it. This Catholic apostate would like to be among the first to re-visit a question which most Americans had thought satisfactorily resolved decades ago, with JFK's election in 1960: Recent political moves by confessing Roman cultists have unfortunately...
Posted by james at 11:38 PM | Full Post
February 8, 2006
"Mahomet débordé par les intégristes"
This cartoon appeared today in Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical weekly associated with the radical Left. The in-house drawing portrays the prophet of Islam next to a headline, "Mahomet overwhelmed by the fundamentalists." The distraught man cries, "It's hard...
Posted by james at 1:18 PM | Full Post
February 3, 2006
wacky Christians green with envy?
The U.S. and British governments criticized publication of the caricatures as offensive to Muslims, raising questions about whether the line between free speech and incitement had been crossed. [Associated Press] One more short thought on the subject of cartoons (although...
Posted by james at 6:44 PM | Full Post
February 2, 2006
we are all Danes today
This whole Mohammed image thing is almost perfectly ridiculous, but there is one perfect solution to the problem. Denmark simply must not be left hanging in the wind. There is a popular, although apparently apocryphal story concerning the Danish...
Posted by james at 11:20 PM | Full Post
January 13, 2006
of superstition and death
Voltaire: not quite an atheist, but an enemy of superstition everywhere Even, or perhaps especially, in the midst of so much grief being felt in Mecca and all over the world today, I don't think it's unfair to ask:...
Posted by james at 3:35 PM | Full Post
January 6, 2006
Jesus, just visiting
the eyes have it As I write this it's already the early hours of January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany and traditionally the absolute finish to the long holiday which celebrates the birth of the founder of the...
Posted by james at 12:08 AM | Full Post
December 25, 2005
score another one for Christ, or?
"Quiet tsunami prayers mark Christmas in Thailand" read the headline on the lead story on YAHOO! NEWS when I first looked this afternoon. The story begins:KHAO LAK, Thailand (Reuters) - Simple Buddhist ceremonies marked Christmas Day in Thailand's tsunami zone...
Posted by james at 4:07 PM | Full Post
November 14, 2005
the Target is women - the weapon, "religious freedom"
you can no longer expect more from Target. Barry just sent me an email with a link to this story reporting essentially that the Target corporation will refuse to fill certain prescriptions because to do so would be both immoral...
Posted by james at 3:44 PM | Full Post
October 31, 2005
crocdog sighted on Bedford Street
We ran into Larry Auerbach and his little friend yesterday afternoon in Williamsburg. The dog was very much into his costume, so any sign of affection was totally out of the question. It just never seems like the right...
Posted by james at 2:50 PM | Full Post
August 20, 2005
papal Carnival in Cologne
demonstrators dressed as a priest and a nun kiss in front of a large model dinosaur during an anti-religion demonstration in Cologne August 19, 2005 [as der Ratzinger arrived in Cologne] Sometimes it's best to let the thing speak...
Posted by james at 12:06 AM | Full Post
June 7, 2005
laundry room Speedo
special bulletin spotted this afternoon For me at least this was definitely the most provocative found item of clothing I've seen in our basement laundry room in the eighteen years I've been visiting its splendors. This midnight-blue Speedo even...
Posted by james at 11:17 PM | Full Post
May 31, 2005
life after birth
respect A gentle letter to the editor in today's New York City Newsday ends with this terse critique of the Republicans' evil politics of stem-cell research: "After all, we may differ as to when human life begins, but it...
Posted by james at 1:33 PM | Full Post
May 2, 2005
"Pink Houses"
heroes at large We met these two extraordinary men for the first time this afternoon. Until then our knowledge and experience of the nobility and the courage of John Schenk and Robert Loyd had been limited to the incredible...
Posted by james at 11:29 PM | Full Post
April 24, 2005
this time it looks like suicide; cross your fingers
Matthias Gerung Der römische Klerus in der Hölle [Roman clerics in hell] 1546 wood cut detail They always insist that suicide is a "mortal sin," but at least there's hope for the survivors, the rest of us, those not...
Posted by james at 11:12 PM | Full Post
star-struck pope
(documenting his own fabulousness) I've been looking at pope-arama pictures for a couple of weeks now. Frankly however, since the more colorful elements of Vatican porn, the Medieval pomp and circumstance, have been severely cut back over the last...
Posted by james at 2:27 PM | Full Post
April 20, 2005
Ratzinger's history in New York
how do you say "booga booga!" in ten languages? In an email with the subject line, "My encounter with Pope Benedict XVI," a friend and awesome activist colleague of mine reminds us today that our outrage over what Josef...
Posted by james at 10:50 AM | Full Post
Expressway Virgin
Candles, flowers and a painting of the Virgin Mary embracing John Paul II line the section of the Kennedy Expressway underpass on Chicago's northwest side Tuesday, April 19, 2005, where a yellow and white stain on a concrete wall...
Posted by james at 12:06 AM | Full Post
April 19, 2005
don't forgive them; they know what they're doing
(just for starters) Relativism be now damned! Absolutism has now triumphed! "Dictator" would be nice, but "pope" will do just fine. Besides, it amounts to the same thing, and the costumes are great. The man who would be baby...
Posted by james at 1:53 PM | Full Post
but without the drugs, sex or rock and roll
whose streets? We love Rome, but we're very happy we didn't plan a trip this month. The beautiful ancient streets are filled with cultists and the more than idly-curious; the city's broad and narrow ways fill with their trash...
Posted by james at 10:47 AM | Full Post
April 18, 2005
beware of that "dictatorship of relativism"
when "relativism" knew its place [I wouldn't be so interested in this dreck if I hadn't spent the first twenty years of my life as its prisoner, giving me far too much experience of its evils] How do they...
Posted by james at 7:45 PM | Full Post
April 13, 2005
chapel computer
Europe's fastest supercomputer, an IBM capable of making 40 trillion calculations per second, was booted up for the first time yesterday in a chapel [italics mine] of the Polytechnical University in Barcelona, Spain A beleaguered American atheist, I was...
Posted by james at 2:19 PM | Full Post
April 9, 2005
meanwhile, with merry wives and husbands in Windsor today
a voice crying in the wilderness Peter Tatchell is fabulous, and absolutely irrepressible. We love him! The AP photo caption reads:Gay rights activist Peter Tatchell makes a protest as he stands in the crowd that were spectating the royal...
Posted by james at 2:25 PM | Full Post
March 31, 2005
now that he's finally quiet, let's keep him warm indefinitely
(before) I heard earlier today that Karol Wojtyla is receiving food via a feeding tube and that he has effectively expressed his will that he be kept alive by artificial means even if he were to fall into a...
Posted by james at 6:20 PM | Full Post
March 24, 2005
but how would a vegetarian say it?
spotted tonight in the 23rd Street 1/9 subway station My first thought was, this is Chelsea, and some of our neighbors have interesting ways of showing affection, but then it occurred to me that the message could have been...
Posted by james at 11:45 PM | Full Post
March 17, 2005
just crazy about dancing and such things
Opal Petty 1918-2005 She was 16 when her family had her committed to a mental hospital. "Being fundamentalist Baptists her family didn't approve of her wanting to go out dancing and such things. A church exorcism didn't work, so...
Posted by james at 1:11 PM | Full Post
December 20, 2004
Winter Solstice
Solstice lights Only now that my birthday has passed (even when quite old, late-December children sometimes remain pretty sensitive about their personal nativity celebratory rites) I can start to think about the pagan Saturnalia, the forest peoples' Yule or...
Posted by james at 8:32 PM | Full Post
November 3, 2004
we've destroyed it, and we have no excuses
Can you sucker yourself? Maybe, if you're an incurable optimist. For a few days I actually had convinced myself that this country would redeem itself, and yesterday evening I was bursting with such confidence that I posted this almost giddy...
Posted by james at 11:55 AM | Full Post
October 30, 2004
fascism, but it's all-American
file photograph Fascism, it's so US. Are there still any doubters out there? The Bush campaign is now asking followers to swear allegiance to Bush, right hands extended. The pledge:"I care about freedom and liberty. I care about my...
Posted by james at 12:08 PM | Full Post
September 15, 2004
fucknewyork
Ahhh. The Underground Railroad has the dope on the wonderful little video I posted one month ago. This is from the director, Matt Lenski:We're both native New Yorkers - I was born in Manhattan and lived on Eldridge and Houston...
Posted by james at 7:03 PM | Full Post
August 23, 2004
but can we survive even a Kerry victory?
Tweedledumdee That's it! I'm not voting for Kerry. The man wants to be remembered as a hero, and with good reason, but he wants to hide the one part of his history which finally distinguished him as a truly...
Posted by james at 8:44 PM | Full Post
August 4, 2004
Moon furnished N. Korea missile with subs a threat to U.S.
Yowza! That's showing some really faith-based initiative!It would seem that, a few years ago, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon purchased a small fleet of Russian ballistic missile submarines with the missile-launching hardware intact, then handed the subs over to North...
Posted by james at 10:32 PM | Full Post
April 22, 2004
crush the Church before it crushes all reason
it's a slippery slope But it's 2004! Why do we still have to deal with this accursed thing? I've absolutely had it with the abominations of the Catholic Church, and don't get me started on all the other monstrously...
Posted by james at 1:15 PM | Full Post
