I Need Some Advice…

For an upcoming funeral. The deceased was a Christmas-and-Easter churchgoer; most (a slim majority) of the extended family are atheist, with a mix of religions (mostly various Protestant Christian) a strong minority. And one daughter, Catholic, who wants to sing The Lord’s Prayer at the memorial.

The question I was asked, and which I am passing along to you… can you think of a compromise song? Something that won’t have either the religious or the atheist half of the attendees rolling their eyes?

Hmmm.. the lord’s prayer? Last time I was at a family gathering of a substantial number of people, just saying the lord’s prayer was hilarious, with a handful of us just looking around for the other atheists in the crowd, and two strange moments when different versions of the prayer collided–“debts” versus “trespasses”, and “for thine is the kingdom…” which only half the people said. When even the prayer named for your religion’s savior divides rather than unites the various Christian sects, there has got to be something better to sing to a diverse group.

Texas Judge Rules: Pull The Plug

The mother died back in November, remember?
She’d made clear her wishes (as all of us ought)
But, sadly, this happened in Texas, the nexus
Of Christian intrusion in government thought
Her will was denied, for a baby that maybe
Would live for an hour, with help from machines;
The state says “we’ve got to complete us a fetus”—
To rescue the baby, whatever the means.

The judge, as the calm voice of reason, who sees, in
This case there are people, not robots instead,
With that, saw some facts had eluded–concluded
Essentially, mother and fetus are dead.
The statute, though not found unlawful, is awful;
A woman’s autonomy, Texas denies
The one thing that no one’s denying is… crying.
That’s kinda what happens when somebody dies

Without ruling on the constitutionality of the law (I am of two minds here–I wish it had been slapped down [can’t imagine it would be upheld], but this family has been through too much already, and I suspect this is a quicker and quieter end), a Texas Judge has found that Marlise Munoz is dead, and that her fetus is not viable, and has ordered that she be removed from the machines that turned her body into the state’s incubator. Which is what Ms. Munoz had expressed, what her husband and extended family had wanted, but which Texas law, as interpreted by the hospital, had seemingly denied.

My sympathies go out to the family. I know this is not an end, because these things never actually end… but at least it is the close of a particularly horrible chapter. And much as I would want to see the law overturned, holding your family hostage over that is every bit as bad as what the state just did, so that will have to wait.

After all this time… only now will the family be able to begin actual funeral plans. Texas should be ashamed, but I think the politicians there are immune.

Edited to add… perhaps the saddest thing I have read in years, the testimony of the husband, as reported by the NY Times:

“When I bend down to kiss her forehead, her usual scent is gone, replaced instead with what I can only describe as the smell of death. As a paramedic, I am very familiar with this smell, and I now recognize it when I kiss my wife. In addition, Marlise’s hands no longer naturally grip mine for an embrace. Her limbs have become so stiff and rigid due to her deteriorating condition that now, when I move her hands, her bones crack, and her legs are nothing more than dead weight.”

Maybe it’s just me, but I am a very smell-oriented person. I know exactly what he is saying, and it breaks my hearts.

Your Chance To Be A (Reality) TV Star

So… I just received an email
Sent especially to me;
Cos he’d stumbled on my blogging
And he’d really like to see
If I’d like to take my chances
On reality TV,
If I’m leaving the religion of my roots

Now, he doesn’t get the concept
Of a cuttlefish, I think;
Never seeking out the limelight—
Rather, hiding in my ink.
I would sooner find a little glass
Of cyanide to drink
Than engage in any televised pursuits

I guess I should be flattered
Though for me, it’s clearly wrong
But my readers might be braver,
So I’m passing it along;
If you’d like to test your courage
(Clearly, mine’s just not that strong)
If you want to try, he’s looking for recruits!

No, seriously. I got an email inquiring whether I would like to try out for a proposed reality TV show on people who have recently made a change, or are looking to make a change, in their spiritual lives. This is clearly not a job for a cuttlefish, let alone a Cuttlefish. Sure, I’ve got the telegenic looks, the witty repartee, the quiet confidence that draws others to me, and I naturally speak in rhymed heroic couplets… but I can’t stand those shows. This show (about which, more below) is by the people who give us “Breaking Amish” and “Amish Mafia”, among other shows. Sure, the shows are on networks that pretend to be sciencey, like NatGeo and the Science network… but I would sooner chew my foot off at the ankle. I’m not even curious about the money–there simply isn’t enough in the world, even with the house needing work and the car now 14 years old.

But I know full well I don’t represent everybody, and if someone else wants to give it a shot, I would not think any less of them. It could be a really nice project, a positive look at leaving religion that will open people’s eyes to that possibility, one that many never consider. So, yeah, this could be a really good thing… just not for me.

Anyway, the blurb:

NEW TV SHOW SEEKING INDIVIDUALS BRANCHING AWAY FROM THEIR RELIGIOUS ROOTS

Have you lived your entire life devoted to your spiritual beliefs? Do you constantly find yourself following along with your religious order even if you don’t necessarily agree? Whether you simply don’t believe in the customs and traditions, or are looking to branch away from your “extreme” religious lifestyle in a quest for self-empowerment, we want to hear from you.
***
An acclaimed television production company is searching for individuals who want to leave their religious communities. We are especially seeking people with unique personalities and compelling backstories, who have the courage to stand up for what they truly believe in.

To be considered, or to nominate someone, please write to us at danejcasting@gmail.com with the following information [**if you are nominating someone else, please be sure to include their contact info, as well**]:
-Name & any nicknames
-Your city & state of residence
-Brief cover note discussing your story and religious background
-A few current photographs
-The best phone number(s) at which to reach you

Thank you for your time, and we look forward to hearing from you!

This Is Why.

There are moments that pass all too quickly
There are moments that linger too long
There are times we want heroes rewarded
And villains reproved when they’re wrong

And so we invented a heaven
And so we invented a hell
So we could be happy forever
And punish our enemies well

I wish we could talk to our loved ones,
Our family and friends who have died
But wishes are… wishes, not magic
That’s not how the world works—we’ve tried.

Instead, we invented a heaven
And instead, we invented a hell
So we could be happy forever
And punish our enemies well

Sure, maybe it’s all wishful thinking
And none of it, really, is real
But life, as it is, isn’t perfect
So the things we don’t like, we appeal

And yes, we invented a heaven
And yes, we invented a hell
So we could be happy forever
And punish our enemies well

The Good Guy who should have been noticed
The Bad Guy who clean got away
Some folks deserve blame, and some credit,
In an afterlife, if not today.

And so we invented a heaven
And so we invented a hell
So some would be happy forever
And some would be punished, as well

Of course, the bad news is, it’s fiction
No justice comes after we’re dead
We can’t trust a god to bring justice
Let’s work with the real world, instead

We’d only invented a heaven
We’d only invented a hell
We’d love to be happy forever
And punish our enemies well

And yes, we invented a heaven
And yes, we invented a hell
The world doesn’t bend to our wishes
But, honestly, that’s just as well.

So… so today, I helped my niece with something (she’s currently at Cuttlefish University, completely independently of me being here). And I wanted to tell her dad about it, because it was so outrageously… unlikely. I wanted to say “look what your daughter just asked me, and what I did for her, and how much fun this is, and how cool this is.” (I really wish I could tell you about it. Sorry, personal.)

He’d have loved it.

Long time readers, though, know… he’s dead. There is not a damned thing I can do to share her request with him. And it sucks. I love that I can help her, be there for her… but I’d have been there for her if he were still alive, and goddammit, wouldn’t that be so much better?

And that is why we, we human beings, we sad, sentimental, creatures, invented a place where we could say “hey, guess what your daughter did today; you’d be so proud!”, and laugh (or cry, or drink, or dance, or read, or sing, or … I dunno, play frisbee) with the loved ones who would still be with us if praying wishing actually did a damned thing.

My niece is a wonderful woman. I sooooooo wish I could share that with her dad.

And that is why–not the apologetics, not the “sophisticated theology”, not any of that crap–is why these ideas (whether religious, “spiritual”, or any other type of magical thinking) are just so damned resistant to logic and evidence.

And goddammit, her dad would agree, and I wish I could hear him say it.

Goddammit.

The Democrats Are Coming (And They Want To Take Your Guns)!

The Democrats are coming! And they want to take your guns!
Cos the lefties don’t believe in self-defense!
They’ll be shutting down the gun shows any moment now, you know,
And the impact on our profits is immense!
They’ll want handgun registration; they’ll want licensing and locks!
It’s the functional equivalent of war!
They’ll want magazine restrictions; universal background checks—
If you only own a dozen, buy some more!
Yes it’s time to buy more ammo—by the truckload; by the tons—
Cos the Democrats are coming! And they want to take your guns!

The Democrats are coming! And they want to take your guns!
It’s a symptom of a world gone wholly mad!
You’ll never get another chance to exercise your rights—
Or, at least, that’s what we’ll tell you in the ad!
There are shortages of weapons—though the makers do their best,
Our demand is far exceeding their supply!
The “Obama surge” is waning, after record sales this year
And we need to stir up panic so you’ll buy!
So… you know you’ll be in trouble if it’s Hillary that runs
Cos the Democrats are coming! And they want to take your guns!
Yes, our bottom line will double if it’s Hillary that runs
Cos the Democrats are coming! And they want to take your guns!

Obama’s presidency has been very profitable for gun manufacturers. His 2008 election saw a spike in gun sales, as did his re-election in 2012 (eclipsed again, though, in 2013). Stories of jackbooted government thugs confiscating your weapons, which we were promised would come to pass if Obama was elected, turn out to be the best advertising campaign in the history of firearms. That these stories are utter fiction is of little matter; we all know the burger in real life looks quite different from the burger in the ad. I do wonder, though, how long the message can be milked before it dawns that the barbarians are not coming, today or any day.

Ah. Ed has it–it’s time to paint Hillary as the gun-stealing monster that Obama turned out not to be… yet.

Constrained Writing (or, Happy Birthday, Edgar Allan Poe!)

Constraining one’s writing
Can make it exciting
Constraints make it better, not worse
It requires more thought
(Or, they tell me, it ought)
To express what you want, say, in verse.

But I’ve just seen an ode
Nearly written in code–
With multiple layers of constraints
Take a look, if you will,
At this beauty and skill…
And the literal picture it paints

So, yeah, I write with constraints. Often. Rhyme and meter are each constraining, and we can add to this the constraint of topic–my verses are usually commentary, first and foremost. Sometimes I am translating a real story into verse, and have no freedom to change crucial details. Choosing a particular verse form, like a sonnet or a villanelle (or even my own, still-unnamed, form) is a further constraint–and since today is Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday, I can also mention my verses based on The Bells and The Raven (both of which tell real stories in a very specific and recognizable rhyme and meter format). Poe also liked to hide names or phrases in the initial (or later) letters of his poems’ lines–I have done that on occasion as well (I can’t remember any examples I have posted on this blog, though)–it is a fun challenge. I’ve written (again, not here) sonnets that were constrained by having the same number of characters in each line. Verses where the number of letters per word just happened to match the digits of pi.

But (Cuttlecap tip to Pierce R. Butler via email) I’ve just seen an example of constrained writing (“The Extra-Constrained Anagram”, by Mike Keith) that puts them all to shame. And it is Poe-related, so it is perfect for today.

Consider. Take a poem written by Poe himself. Use the letters in that poem (and only those) to write an anagram (constraint 1), itself a poem (constraint 2), telling the story of the author’s pilgrimage to Poe’s grave (constraint 3), with the last 13 lines beginning with EDGAR ALLAN POE (constraint 4).

Enough? Certainly…

But none of these is the real constraint. Consider the following scheme for turning a piece of text into a grayscale picture:

(1) Break the text up into its sequence of words. This sounds trivial, but some rules have to be settled on to avoid ambiguity or illogical results. I decided on these rules as being the most natural:

(a) Apostrophes do not (of course) cause a string to be split. E.g., “love’s law” is a 5-letter word followed by a 3-letter word.
(b) The hyphen (“-“) is a delimiter. “Half-paid stone” is three words, not two.
(c) All other punctuation is ignored.

(2) Take each word of three or more letters and do the following:

First, sum up the values the letters in the word (with the usual A=1, B=2, C=3, etc.).
Then, reduce the sum modulo 9, giving a value in the range 0 through 8.
(Note that the second step is equivalent to continually together adding the digits of the sum until a single digit is left – i.e., “casting out nines” – except with that method, if the final result is a 9 it is replaced with 0.)

(3) Take the resulting series of 0-to-8 values and arrange them in a two-dimensional grid. The dimensions of the rectangle will in general be ambiguous, so it either has to be specified or you can just try various different possibilities and see if any of them are interesting. The one to try first, we suggest, is the rectangle with the largest possible size in X such that the X size is less than or equal to the Y size. For example, for 396 this would be 18 x 22.

(4) View the result as a gray-scale image, with 0=black and the other values evenly distributed up to 8=white.

That’s right, the entire poem produces a literal picture (constraint 5 through infinity). A very specific, very recognizable picture.

Take a look. Absolutely astonishing.

So, How’d The Test Go, India?

Over the past few days, I’ve had a substantial (for me, that is, a very small fish in the FtB pond) bump in page views, all coming from various locations in India. I have come to learn, over the past couple of years, that this means there is a test coming up. My verse, Time To Eat The Dog?, is in a textbook.

But the thing is, I never hear back from people (well, not true–I heard back from one, who agrees with me that it is a very simple verse, and was graded down for not having a deeper analysis) after they take the exam and get feedback on their answer! Also, I have never heard from any of the teachers!

So, If you are one of the teachers or students, I really would love to hear how people did! And if you are one of the MacMillan publishers, I am perhaps even more curious to know why you chose that verse!

Pennsylvania Voter ID Law Struck Down

A judge in Pennsylvania
Did his utmost to explain: “Ya
Gotta let the people vote—and make it easy!”
He said “Voting’s fundamental!”
And the message that he sent’ll
Go a ways to fix a process that’s, well, sleazy.
Court Judge Bernard L. McGinley
Found the state’s case spread too thinly
And the “voter fraud” more mythical than real;
Ruled in favor of the plaintiff,
Might become the voters’ saint, if
His decision isn’t scuttled on appeal.
His opinion was well reasoned,
Any thoughtful reader sees, and
You can bet your bottom dollar they’ll appeal

It’s another decision worth reading–not because it is as beautiful a smackdown as the recent same-sex marriage decisions, but because it is just so damned thorough. I especially liked the examination of different sorts of acceptable forms of ID (noting, for instance, that the requirement of an expiration date on an ID has absolutely nothing to do with whether that ID can actually verify a voter’s identity), with the conclusion that (my paraphrase) the only common factor was that they added additional hoops to jump through, barriers (to mix metaphors) between potential voters and the ballot box.

The judge also noted the history of misinformation on the part of the state, with official letters to potential voters telling them one (untrue) thing, but no official retractions, no official correct information, only uncredited TV or radio ads (without the authority of the government behind them) telling people the correct information.

Voting laws are designed to assure a free and fair election. The voter ID law does not further this goal.

Of course, comment threads are full of people who clearly have not read the decision, and who have drunk the kool-aid of voter fraud hysteria. Some of the comments can be directly countered on Snopes, they are so popular; others are anecdotal accounts of one or two alleged incidents. The real (and evidenced) threat to democracy, though, was in a voter ID law that would have disenfranchised perhaps half a million eligible voters, systematically members of particular minority groups. The patriotic rhetoric of the complainers does not match the reality of who (in this case, Pennsylvania’s Republicans) are really out to commit fraud.

(oh… given that the actual decision is over 100 pages of judge-speak, you might want the NY Times coverage instead. But I do recommend the ruling itself.)

Just Marking Their Territory

Everywhere the big dog goes, he leaves his little sign
Alerting all the other dogs, “This property is mine!”
“This is mine, and this is mine, and this and this and this!”
He makes a claim of ownership, and seals it with a piss
He roams the streets and alleyways, and all around the town
He leaves his little messages, in yellow or in brown
He’s never paid a mortgage on the land he claims as his
He doesn’t pay the taxes; all he does is take a whizz
There are signs at every crossroads, half a dozen at the mall,
In the yards of private citizens, and one at City Hall—
These little signs are adding up, with more and more each day
But whenever I complain, they tell me “look the other way”

Take a look–Searcy, Arkansas has a dog problem. No, a God problem–I always get those two mixed up. There’s been a big God sniffing around and marking His territory all over town:

Seriously, those little white crosses are aesthetically crap–they must cost the church well under a buck apiece to make, they are not imaginative, nor artistic, nor historical, nor anything but tacky little ways for this God to mark its territory.

Around Cuttletown, there are people who post signs at intersections, advertising goods or services… and there are other folks who mark these signs with large, obscuring stickers that label the signs “LITTER” (which, legally, they are). The little white crosses, if placed on one’s own property, are nothing more than a sign of your tolerance for the tacky, a Christian equivalent of a plastic flamingo or ceramic garden gnome, but cheaper. If they are a sign of your faith, the sign’s message is “I love Jesus, but not enough to spend any money on Him–just enough to put up a tacky cross everyone knows they give out for free.”

No, the crosses serve no function other than that of a dog’s urine: they say “I’m the god (or dog) in charge here.” And the sheriff of Searcy rolls over and exposes his neck to appease the church, instead of picking the litter up off of the lawn and throwing it away.