The Gubernatorial Debate

A few of my thoughts. Julie eventually got too agitated to watch it so we quit over half way through.

1) I thought Medina came off pretty well, but then eventually went completely over the top. She threw in an “eliminate all property taxes” without in any way explaining it which sounded looney. That said, she also consistently countered Perry’s blatant lies with actual facts and figures. Which was great. I have no clue why Hutchinson wasn’t ready to do the same thing. (She did try, she just didn’t have the facts at her fingertips like Medina).

2) Perry was creepy. I thought Bush was creepy. Perry is like a really creepy animatronic Bush. He also appeared to be a bobble head doll with one arm on TV. It did not help matters. His answers were on message, but he really tried to get away with some statements that ranged from stretching to outright lies. He tried to use job numbers from 2007 and got called on it. He tried to claim he cut business taxes after raising them last year. It as classic Republican “they’ll believe me if I say it enough”.

3) While I give Hutchinson points for having a nuanced view on Abortion and actually trying to express it, she did so in such an inelegant way that it was laughable. She basically was trying to make the point that if Roe v. Wade was overturned there would be places in the United States where abortion was very, very legal and it would be quick car ride to get to them. Whereas under Roe v. Wade the federal government has control and can restrict abortions everywhere even if they can’t completely eliminate them. In other words Roe v. Wade gives the anti-abortion movement control at the federal level and thus is a good thing (in so far as it can be in her view). That said, she was obviously trying to avoid the headling “Hutchinson for Roe v. Wade”, and her answer danced and danced. It was patently ridiculous.

4) On the emminent domain question, Perry talked like Bush. He said he was extremely for emminent domain which I couldn’t tell if it was a freudian slip. He said he’d presented a bill for the voters, that they had overwhelmingly approved. It was a constitutional ammendement. But the worst part was they asked about farmers who felt they weren’t getting a fair shake with regards to access and new roads. He said he grew up on a farm (random). And then proceeded to give a completely tone deaf answer. He said the voters were overwhelmingly for tort reform and these farmers concerns were actually just trial lawyers trying to start a new cottage industry in frivolous lawsuits. Which possibly it is. But he really pretty much told rural Texas to take a flying fuck. And with a big ass smirk on his face.

5) Hutchinson quoted a figure from the Dallas Morning News and Perry said that he didn’t take them as a paper of record. WTF? The Dallas Morning News? That’s a Republican newspaper. I understand attacking “the media”, but attacking a right-wing news source, makes you seem ridiculous.

6) Perry brought up the fact that he’s not afraid to veto bills. But I think that misfired, since he just reminded people that he tends to veto bills that they’re counting on. Like the recent retired teacher bonuses bill.

I thought Medina was the only one who came off as being able to articulate a point. Unfortunately her points were a bit to wacko to be elected. She did a great job, though, of breaking through the current Republican trend of being able to flat out lie and have no one call you on it. I have no clue why Hutchinson didn’t do a better job of that.

Hutchinson looked somewhat human and gave the best answers. She talked about Texas being great right now, but needing to plan for the next 20 years. Which is a really good counter to Perry’s platform of nothing. I mean, he really had nothing. That said, he didn’t completely fall on his face, and Hutchinson wasn’t as compelling as she needed to be, so the advantage went to Perry.

Seriously?

So I’ve gotten kindof into the idea of talking about theater lately, and where it should go, and what it should look like. And I realize there’s a difference between my idea of theater, and the idea of theater in some town where they get hundreds or millions of dollars in funding. I mean, I’m a little bitter about Zach Scott getting a new theater on my dime, but it really seems kind of practical when you read this. To sum up for those of you not interested in the subject matter:

FugardChicago2010 is a website jointly created by three Chicago theatres, my day job, Remy Bumppo and Timeline. The League of Chicago Theatres supported the project by helping to cover some of the costs around the project. The rest of the project was paid for by the three theatres. The purpose of the website and the related efforts is to increase the public’s awareness of Athol Fugard, a South African playwright and author.

For those who don’t know who Athol Fugard is, this is basically like 3 south african theaters geting together to create a website to increase awareness about Arthur Miller. Athol Fugard is probably the most famous African playwright. A few people have heard of him. Like a few people have heard of Tony Kushner.

So apparently to raise awareness of one of the world’s most well known living playwrights (which I realize makes him still about as well known as your favorite indy band), we need to pool our grant money to make a website?

Seriously. Established theater’s cannot die quickly enough to stop wasting their resources.

Our Love of Narrative

So The Holmes wrote a great post that pretty much sums up how I’ve been feeling about religion lately. One of the things I’ve been struggling with is our brain’s love of narrative (I know, crazy for a writer, right?). One of the things that I’ve heard people use to justify the idea of a God (any God) and an afterlife is that pretty much everyone on earth seems to think there’s something after death.

But I just wonder if that’s because our brains are hard-wired to invent narrative. What happens in a romantic movie after the final kiss and the credits roll? Our brains tell us that these people live a wonderful life, do wonderful things. But they’re characters in a story. And unless there’s a sequel, technically nothing happens. They’re gone. No thoughts. No actions. Nothing.

Our brains have a real problem with this concept. Sure if we think about it we can wrap our heads around the idea that at the end of Jurrassic Park the survivors don’t continue living their lives. It’s just credits and black. But we like to imagine new adventures. New lives. We do it naturally without even thinking about it. My brain thinks of the characters who are still alive at the end of the story as still being alive (which is definitely bizarre if you’re talking about a silent movie from the turn of the century).

Which, coming back to religion, I just wonder if this built in need for narrative is what drives our need for religion. Because we have a real problem with death being nothing. Not nothing like a black void. But nothing, as in no continued consciousness. Not watching our children grow old. Not hanging around in robes continuing our life on earth more or less with more singing. Just the end.

I’m still trying to wrap my brain around it. And my brain keeps suggesting alternatives. It really doesn’t like this idea of an unresolved narrative that just abruptly ends.

And that makes me wonder about the evolutionary function of it. As a species did we get too neurotic knowing that death could be around any corner and that was the end? Does this evolutionary delusion make us more productive and more likely to take risks thus increasing our genetic mixing?

I’ve been spending way too much time thinking about this.

Trail of Lights

Went to the tail of lights on Sunday. It was pretty miserable for us due to miscommunication and illness, but I thought it was still really pretty and worth the trip.

We drove to Barton Creek Mall, parked near the lower level Sears and got on a number 30 bus. It’s a bit of a circuitous route, but they drop you off right at the entrance to the trail. It’s a great painless way to get there.

Although we’ve got to do something about people letting their dogs off leashes and not picking up. It smells horrible there. Anyone who’s run the Hike and Bike trial when it’s raining knows the smell. I think that this area due to the number of people who let their dogs off leash might be even worse, though. I understand some people have high energy dogs, but seriously , if we’re going to have places where dog’s can go off leash they probably need to not be parks. They probably need to be outdoor areas completely covered in mulch, carefully graded for runoff to go directly into the sewer system. Like a cattle yard.

How do other cities deal with this? It’s foul.

Let’s get really pro-life!

Let’s get really pro-life. In addition to not letting Americans buy health plans that provide coverage for abortions, and not allowing the government to pay for abortions with tax dollars, I think we should also deprive health care funding for any prisons that have a death row. Seems fair to me.

Hey, I’m just taking a page from the Republican playbook.

Mediawiki Playwrighting Extension

When I worked on Empty Bowl I wrote some playwrighting extensions for MediaWiki. This lets you write scripts quite easily. You get easy revisioning and diffs. The scripts look something like this:

Seth 
The girl is not the problem. This house- I won't marry.

Laurel enters

Laurel 
Sure you will Seth.
 

And when you view or print them they look like this:

Seth

The girl is not the problem. This house- I won’t marry.

(Laurel enters)

Laurel

Sure you will Seth.
Act I
Scene I
Character Name
Stage Direction on its own line
Inline Stage Direction within a line

I have no plans to keep developing this, but I’m open to writing a couple more plugins if anyone wants them. I’m open to farming it out to some source control system if anyone else would like to keep developing.

Download Mediawiki Playwrighting Extension

Obama and Transparency

So this meme has come up a lot recently in my life, and I’m trying to figure out where it comes from. There seems to be a Republican meme that the Obama administration is incredibly opaque. This is obviously completely false unless we’re comparing his administration to the administration he was describing while campaigning.

Is Texas really a Blue State?

You know Texas has been lauded a lot as a new model for how to run a state. California (and Democratically run) is the old way and Texas (and Republican run) is the new way. Rick Perry certainly is quick to point this out.

But when you look at what’s really going on, about the best thing you can say for the state legislature and governor is that they stay out of the cities’ way. They’ve kept tax rates low which has allowed cities to raise more taxes. And past that they don’t interfere very much.

When you look at the power house cities in Texas, they’re all run by Democrats. Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, and Houston all have Democratic mayors. And those are really the cities that are being looked at when they talk about Texas as a great place to live and do business. The rest of Texas is poor, uneducated, and propped up by moving money out of the urban areas to help pay for the rural ones. They are a massive financial liability for the state. The places that don’t work are overwhelmingly Republican and run by Republicans.

There are Republican suburbs, but those are all simply leaching off of the good Democratic policy. They get the roads, the public transportation, and the business infrastructure paid for by the cities, and they can spend all their money on education.

So perhaps Texas is actually a Democratic triumph in spite of Republican inefficiencies. It looks that way from where I’m sitting.

Christiantiy and the old Snip-snip

So, my friends and I talk a lot more about circumcision these days. Probably talked about it more in the past 3 years than in the previous 29 of my life. It came up at a party the other day and how parents are having to fight grandparents over not circumcising their boys, on religious grounds. These are Christian grand parents. Growing up in “bible believing” churches I was very aware of this schism. Circumcision is viewed as being done for religious reasons. Which is fine if you’re Muslim or Jewish, but there is a lot of space spent talking about Circumcision in the New Testament. A lot more than any of your hot button topics like homosexuality, abortion, or pre-marital sex. So much time is spent talking about it, that you might get the idea that Paul is obsessed with penises (just saying).

Ok, so first let’s start with Genesis 17:11:

You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you.

This is where most Christians are going to begin and end their discussion of Circumcision. Of course they’ve felt free to reject a host of other “barbaric” traditions that occur in the first few books of the bible, so it’s odd they’ve kept this one. God obviously didn’t want much intermarrying and this was a great way to ensure that you were serious before you got to marry some hot jewish chick. Old testament God was pretty anti-gentile.

So in Romans 2, Paul starts talking about this. He starts off just discussing what he feels circumcision means. If one is used to born-again analogies he’s basically saying you don’t need to be crawl back inside mom and literally be born again. Just believing and changing your life will do:

25Circumcision has value if you observe the law, but if you break the law, you have become as though you had not been circumcised. 26If those who are not circumcised keep the law’s requirements, will they not be regarded as though they were circumcised? 27The one who is not circumcised physically and yet obeys the law will condemn you who, even though you have the<sup class="footnote" value="[c]”>[c] written code and circumcision, are a lawbreaker.

28A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. 29No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a man’s praise is not from men, but from God.

Then in First Corinthians:

1 Corinthians 7:19

Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping God’s commands is what counts.

Then in Galatians 2 we have fear of circumcised Christians:

12Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group.

And here’s one that requires a lot of um… creativity to read “literally” and still advocate circumcision. Well I guess you can advocate it in Paul’s eyes as long as you go back to stoning adulterers:

2Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. 3Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. 4You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. 5But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. 6For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

Here again in Collossians:

11In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature,<sup class="footnote" value="[a]”>[a] not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ,

Here in Titus, pointing out again that the circumcision group were actually the Christians who didn’t really believe and were trying to destroy the church:

Titus 1:10

For there are many rebellious people, mere talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision group.

And that’s not even all of the mentions. It’s incessant. So please, next time you’re talking to a Christian who’s planning on getting their kid circumcised for relgious reasons, point them towards the Bible. Let them come up with a more valid reason, like germaphobia, or making it more unpleasant to masturbate.

And I know some people are going to come up with the extremely creative answer that they want to show their fealty to God in the bodies of their Children, and Paul was just referring to adult males not needing to get circumcised to be Christians, but please – you’re just making stuff up to justify your beliefs.

Oh and don’t try the “it prevents AIDS” defense, unless you already have an appointment to get your daughter the HPV vaccine. Remember abstinence is the answer.