A CNN story comes up today that almost made me sick to my stomach. Not because of anything visual, but more with rage.

Due to content, the rest of this post will be in-link only, rather than right on the main page.
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One of the worst ironies I’ve seen today is a plethora of celebrities who run around adopting children.

This is something I have a problem with for three reasons.

First of all, they almost inevitably go somewhere where there are stringent laws on adoption, and proceed to use their celebrity clout to try to break them or go around them. McDonna did this most famously, but Angelina Jolie’s got a bit of a bad reputation in this regard too.

Second of all, one wonders how much time the supposedly busy – not to mention sometimes crazy – actors/actresses/celebs who do this can really devote to the kids, and how much time the kids are just going to be foisted off on nannies.

My final problem is very specific, and focuses on one Angelina Jolie, who seems to think that the acquisition of kids is some kind of massive Pokemon hunt or something. Jolie’s been running around the world the past few years: first she bought a cambodian boy (Maddox), then she went running to get an African adoption (Zahara), rounded it out with one from non-husband Brat Pitt (Shiloh), and the latest is to try to get a Vietnamese child.

Supposedly, the point is to have a “diverse” household. Personally, I think it’s an ego booster, part of the hollywood celebrity “ooh look what I’ve done, I’m so enlightened” conspicuous-consumption that goes on whenever they attach themselves to “causes.”

And I have to wonder how fucked up those kids are going to be when they get older.

There’s an interesting one going around the web today, about a guy up in Cheddarland (Oconomowakkawakka) who busted down his neighbor’s door over a porn video.

Things against the guy:
– He lives without a phone. With his elderly mom. Creepy.
– He busted in with a sword. Not a baseball bat, not something normal, no, a civil war heirloom cavalry sword. Creepy.
– He “froze” and “freezing”, instead of not doing anything, consisted of scaring the ever-loving daylights out of his neighbor. Bad choice of words.

Things in favor of this guy:
– The neighbor admits to the cause.
– The neighbor admits to having the volume turned up way too loud.
– The neighbor watches some really messed up porn. In an apartment. With the volume blaring really loud.

Were I the police? I’d have to weigh how things were. And I’d probably conclude that this guy ought to be let off the hook, because he had probable cause to believe that someone was in danger right then and there. Calling 911? Good option, but by the time the police were there, if there were a rapist the girl could be dead.

And I’m hoping a jury will find the same, or maybe a grand jury or more sane prosecutor will just let this one pass.

Last week, there was a certain celebrity who died.

Why this person was a celebrity, except for being a train wreck and taking off her clothes for all to see, I don’t know.

I had a few people ask me “how I felt” and whether it was “sad.”

My honest return question, because it was the best way to sum up that I had heard: “If a crack whore dies of overdose, why is it news?”

All three tales you are about to read are 100% true.

Once in my life, I have been witness to what happens when someone did something blindingly stupid, and probably lost their life for it. On my way to work about 4 years ago, at an intersection that involves some ill-timed stoplights and a freeway underpass (leaving cross traffic a good 150 feet or so to get up to speed before the second intersection), I watched a small car try to run a red light.

Said small car was promptly compacted to probably 1/3 its former size by the dual impact of a Dodge Ram and a Ford F-250, both of which hit it on the drivers’ side. Said small car, after these impacts, flew forward and wrapped its remaining mass (minus almost all the glass and at least one door and a wheel) around the post for the traffic lights.

Twice in my life, I have been fortunate enough to have blind cosmic luck save my life.

The first time was in the first car I ever owned. It was a huge boat of a car, not that that mattered. It was probably about 10 at night, and I was on my way home from something I forget what. I’d just filled up at a gas station, and was getting ready to pull out to drive home when the car stalled. Half a second later, while I was trying to restart it, an 18-wheel Semi with two trailers attached to it blew right past my front bumper at probably double the posted speed limit of 45.

The second time was this morning; I was coming through Colosse’s downtown area (the freeways were all messed up) on the edge, to get to work. Stopped at a four-way intersection, checked both ways… clear. Hit the gas, let back on the clutch, and realized I’d forgotten to shift back to first gear.

While I was shifting, a car came down the road, again obviously speeding, and blew right through the intersection, right through the place where my drivers’ side door probably would have been.

I’m alive. My nerves are shot, and there’s this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that something or someone is REALLY watching out for me… but I’m alive to tell the tale, which is probably more than I could say had either event not happened, and it’s probably more than I can say of the person who ran the red light in my first tale.

As far as Will’s post earlier, one of the oddest and frankly frightening things that can happen to a person has recently happened to me; I’ve begun to feel truly abandoned by my own church.

This isn’t necessarily a new feeling; back in college, a similar state of distancing began occurring, beginning mostly with a falling-out with a former girlfriend who was in “vengeful bitch” mode (despite the fact that she dumped me after cheating on me) and who did her level best to use the rather small on-campus church community as a means to attack me, to get others to ostracize me, and eventually causing me to stop going to weekly services largely because I didn’t know who to trust and didn’t really feel like risking any run-ins.

However, that was a social aspect, a result of “even in the house of God, you find those who are not holy.” In the past year or so, my own church’s positions on any number of things have begun to make me question whether either I, or the church, have lost sight of the bible and of certain principles. Probably it’s somewhere in between, but a few things come to mind:

1) My church, unlike pretty much every one else, completely disallows the option for priests to marry and have families. With a recent changeover in church leadership, many people have hoped this would change, but the new church leadership quickly put the kibosh on that, meaning it’s likely at least 2 decades before another possible revisit. This is sad because the church is currently facing a relative lack of priests, some priests serving 4 or 5 churches and driving between them each week to be sure that weekly services happen, and one of the major reasons that people don’t enter the priesthood is that they don’t feel up to being celibate their entire lives.

2) A number of sex scandals involving said unmarried priests were revealed to have been repeatedly covered up. I can’t say anything but that this makes me worried; while nothing ever happened to me, and the priests I knew were all good and holy men, the worry that they might have done something to someone else and simply never been caught? Especially with organizational policy that moved priests away from their congregations every 5 years even if they were well liked and doing a wonderful job? Scary.

3) A major problem and controversy locally is illegal immigration. The church’s position is that immigration policy needs fixing, that it is too restrictive. This I cannot entirely disagree with. The church has outreach programs for the poor, which (for obvious reasons) attract illegal immigrants. These things I have no problem with. However, the church’s newspaper has recently been trumpeting, loudly, how the church is now organizing bus trips for the sole purpose of bringing illegal immigrants into the country, setting them up, and openly defying immigration law, and multiple churches have been giving “sanctuary” to people who’ve been ordered out of the country after violating multiple laws… and this portion of the stance I simply cannot agree with.

4) The church, too, has been relatively week on defending its own values and standing up for what’s right. In the urge to be seen as the “peaceful” church, concessions have been made to certain other (highly expansionist and not at all kind to women) religions that should not have been made. Incidents in which members of my church were killed by these other religions, simply for not converting to the violent one, have been glossed over in the name of “interfaith solidarity.” While yes, my church has a “turn the other cheek” doctrine, to ignore those who are deliberately trying to kill oneself on that scale is suicidal, and to not confront the violent doctrines of this other church is not (in my view) a good policy.

Now, is my particular church in danger of fracture? Highly unlikely. Most of its fracturing was done a few centuries ago, and it’s the fractured-off portions that seem to keep fracturing into branches, or synods, or whatever else they call themselves. However, the trouble for me is this: I grew up in this church. The basic tenets of the church, I still believe in. I can’t see myself attending any other churches, really, though I have done so on special occasions more for respect of other people (weddings, funerals, and the like) who attended those churches. But at the same time, the things above also signal to me that, at least for the time being, I really can’t attend my own either.

I’m a religious, or at least spiritual, person who doesn’t feel truly welcome in any church.