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Open Minded Blog Award

Open Minded Blog Award

I am deeply honored to have been awarded an Open Minded Blogger Award by Hell’s Handmaiden.

VirusHead Open Minded Blogger Award

According to the American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, an “Open Mind” is defined as:

“A mind receptive to different opinions and ideas.”

This award is given to Blogs that demonstrate respect towards others, research and consideration of opposing views, free-flowing conversation with commenters, and an overall spirit of civility and openness. It is time we recognize such commendable behavior on the internet.

Open Mind Award « Politics & Religion

This award, like the “Thinking Blogger Award” asks the winners to name five others worthy of the award. It’s a subjective meme that creates a net of civility.

It’s difficult to narrow it down to just five – I will post with my five nominations soonest. Meanwhile, I’ve placed the award on the sidebar.

Dragons, Gods, Goddesses, and Nymphs

Dragons, Gods, Goddesses, and Nymphs

What dragon species are you? (Stunning pics)



Fire Dragon
Rage, passion, you burn with the essence of a powerful flame. You are powerful and majestic and dont let anyone stand in your way without a fight.
Take The Quiz Now! Quizzes by myYearbook.com
What is your Inner Dragon (neat pictures)



Gold Dragon
Your Inner Dragon is the most honorable of all. You are what one might call a Draconic Knight. Golds live by a strict code of chivalry and commitment.You like to advise humans in their affairs and shapeshift. In fact, if you’re a Gold on the inside, you might be a Gold on the outside, too – just in human form. Your favorite attributes are honor, chivalry, truth, kindness, gold, mining, protection, wisdom and If anyone threatens your humans or tries to kill you, you could could strike back with your breath weapon – Fire. But then, no one’s tried anything that stupid in the last 1000 years. Mainly because your over 54 feet tall.
Take The Quiz Now! Quizzes by myYearbook.com
Which Greek god/goddess are you?



Apollo
You are Apollo! Apollo was the god of prophesy, music and healing.He is famous for his skill with the lyre, and that he was responsible for the downfall of Achilles, a great hero during the Trojan War.
Take The Quiz Now! Quizzes by myYearbook.com
Your Greek Goddess Soulmate (With Pictures) Girls Only



Goddess Athena
You are most like Athena. She was the divine sponsor of warriors and heroes, she introduced several of the arts and crafts necessary for civilization, and she represented wisdom. Obviously, the goddess played a prominent role in Greek mythology. The poet Hesiod states that Athena emerged from the head of Zeus; indeed, she sprang out fully grown and armed for battle. The idea that she was born from a male underscores her relationship with men, both divine and human. In the human realm, Athena consistently becomes a protector of heroes; while in the divine she completely avoids sexual liaisons with gods.
Take The Quiz Now! Quizzes by myYearbook.com
What is your TRUE name?



Aegle
She’s the radiant glowing nymph who polishes the Golden Apples till they shine with Heavenly light.Aegle means: Light, radiance, glory
Take The Quiz Now! Quizzes by myYearbook.com

How ’bout them apples?

JWs at My Door

JWs at My Door

Two pleasantly plump Jehovah’s Witness women have just departed, their undelivered invitation to the upcoming District Convention in hand.

They were still huffing and puffing a bit from the exertion required to climb the driveway when they rang the bell. For a moment, I was tempted to pretend not to be home. Sigh. Nah. I instructed Ben to go play elsewhere in the house so that I could talk to them.

Follow the Christ. Sigh. I let them go through their opening remarks, and observed them closely. They were black women, a little bit younger than me – in their thirties, I’d guess. They both wore clingy dresses of artificial fabric – uncomfortable clothing for a muggy day like this. One wore glasses. They had kind, somewhat keen, expressions, and by their manner of speaking I would guess that they both had some amount of higher education – a bit unusual.

I found myself feeling sorry for them, and so my self-presentation was, I think, somewhat muted – even sad.

I told them that I was aware of the convention, although I hadn’t known where the local one was being held. I’d even blogged on the topic. That surprised them, and one exclaimed, “You blogged on it?!? Were you ever a baptized Jehovah’s Witness?” Interesting question – I wonder if they ask that now to establish whether they might be talking to an apostate. But no, I was never baptized. I told them that my father had been an elder and I was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness.

I asked them in what way they thought they were following the Christ. They looked at the invitation for clues, but it was really very general. “Well, we go out in service, like he told us to, and we oppose Satan.”

Wow. I’ve never heard the “opposing Satan” thing before. Yikes. When you consider that JWs believe that this entire “system of things” is ruled by Satan (including schools, police, government…) that’s a pretty wide-open sort of statement. They used to confine Satan remarks to insiders.

Hmmm. Where to begin.. “But there are a lot of things that Jesus instructed people to do that Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t do, and a lot of teachings he gave that JWs don’t really follow, right? Forgiveness, compassion, caring for the poor, sharing bread and wine together….” My words kind of faded off. There was so much to say, but…

They looked utterly dismayed, even stupefied. I don’t think they were ready for that kind of response.

Before they decided to start quoting, I tried once more. “If you’re Christian, and you have love and spirit amongst yourselves, wouldn’t it better to follow the Christ than to follow the governing body and the Watchtower? Look at how many times they have been wrong, how many times they have changed their guidance to you.”

Oh, they had a response to that, all right. “We are all imperfect, but the light gets stronger and they have more understanding…” They started to smile again, almost like mirror reflections of one another. There is reflective strength in the buddy-system.

“Why would you be salespeople for a very wealthy, very worldly corporation in New York, especially when – as you say – they are only imperfect men? Why would you hand your lives over to this group of men, just because they claim to be God’s channel? Don’t JWs always criticize other religions for putting priests and bishops and holy men between the congregation and God? Why would you need another mediator than the Christ? I think there are many good Jehovah’s Witnesses. I just believe that Jehovah’s Witnesses are being misled.”

Their smiles had frozen at the first sentence. Now they were expressionless. Totally blank.

“I’m sorry. I know you do what you think you are supposed to do, but I think that you are being misled. I truly believe that you are Watchtowerites, not Christians.”

I looked at them miserably, hands open. Then I handed back the invitation, and they turned, without a word, and – slowly – stiffly – started walking back down the driveway. They went directly to their vehicle, got in, and drove off.

Yea, sisters, time for a coffee break.

They will label me, they may even put that “X” over my house on the territory map at last. There wasn’t really very much in what I said to vilify me, but in another way, I said the worst possible thing: I spoke against God’s supposed channel on earth. And it may have scared them, because they are trained over and over to think that anyone who could do that is demonic, controlled, a slave of Satan.

I wonder if either one, maybe years from now, will ever read the scriptures and start thinking about the wider message that Jesus tried to deliver. They looked like strong women. What if they somehow found themselves able and willing to intervene when they saw cruelty – what if they were able to say “this is not a loving thing that we are doing.” Maybe they could allow themselves other kinds of service to others than simply preaching the end of the world. Maybe they could spread kindness. You never know.

Language is a virus. Maybe one small idea may turn out to have been contagious, mutating, incubating, ready to re-emerge later in changed form. Someday. Maybe.

“We had as our goal to capture, brain wash and establish thousands of Kingdom Publishers, making them all think alike, like robots. When in 1938 the Theocracy was decreed, all these fell down in abject submission before this newly erected ‘Image of the Beast’ of the Watchtower religion of ‘buying and selling’ (Rev. 13). All the companies of Jehovah’s Witnesses at that time voted in a resolution declaring that henceforth and always that would accept all instructions and appointments handed down by the Watchtower Society. All shreds of congregational independence was thus given up, together with every semblence of a personal Christian religion. A new world organization based on the concept of robot-like obedience and performance had now been realized and would now expand to become a New World Society. It is described by Jehovah’s Witnesses as God’s Organization or Kingdom. It is in actuality nothing more than a dictatorship of the Faithful and Wise Servant Class in Brooklyn” – William J. Schnell, Thirty Years A Watchtower Slave, p.130.

Academic language

Academic language

I wrote my Ph.D. twice. I tried to write in academic language, but I never found my academic voice. Instead, I wrote in my own voice, and then translated it over. I tried to avoid becoming completely opaque, while maintaining the level of technically-precise terminology (or jargon) that seemed to be required.

So I was delighted to see (thanks to Medusa at Professional Mirror Ph.D) that there is a random academic sentence generator from Pootwattle the Virtual Academic. Smedley the Virtual Critic will review your sentence, free of charge.

Straight to you from the University of Chicago’s Writing Program Toybox, here is my randomly-generated sentence, and its review. Heh-heh.

Randomly generated Academic Sentence

Pootwattle the Virtual Academic(TM) says:

The discourse of the unspoken (re)embodies the legitimation of civil society.

Smedley Smedley the Virtual Critic(TM) responds:

Pootwattle’s hastily published paper on the relationship between the discourse of the unspoken and the legitimation of civil society is exceptionally resistant to summary, as befits its project.

Exceptionally resistant to summary. Ha-ha- hah! Perfect! They had fun putting that together.

In my dissertation, it rarely got that bad. However, here are a few real sentences that drifted into that kind of territory:

In the thriller genre’s move from nuclear fears to viral fears, the virus functions as a figure that generates effects of horror and terror – and allows for the mobilization of contemporary discourses to simulate the real – but it also allows for the reinscription of imperialist methods of control.

The confluence of biological and technological viral language at the end of the twentieth century interacts with articulations of health and sickness, literal or metaphorical, already active in other discourses. The viral, in turn, amplifies the concept of the “virus” from the biological into the imaginary realm, drawing on beliefs and fears from the ancient to the ultra-contemporary, assimilating fragments of the rejected, and reinfusing mutated versions of itself into new communication networks.

One strand invests the virus with all our fears and the dynamics of otherness and is a function of paranoia and control, the other figures the virus as a protean bricoleur, a postmodern figure that reflects different standpoints about inherent ambiguities, contradictions, and reversals and picks up different aspects of these to create new assemblages.

There was a kind of strange rhythm – mess, bits, bits, twisted, bits, bits, new stuff. Lots of passive verbs.

I could probably rewrite the whole thing now and it would be great book. I’m probably at the point where I could stand to read it again.

It’s difficult to remember the mind-space I inhabited while writing all this. I really was a “VirusHead.”

Once it became clear that I wouldn’t be allowed to become a comparative mythologist as I had planned, maybe I should have stayed at my second university and written on “Friendship in Aquinas.” Or even “Kierkegaardian Mutations.”

Or maybe I should just have gone to law school.

All this debt, and no job. Sigh.

Video Friday

Video Friday

Today’s playlist – Yeah, I’m in that kind of mood.

The Meaning of Life, Monty Python
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66OEZ3KFRII[/youtube]

Precious Things, Tori Amos
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7NW6-2_v1k[/youtube]

John the Revelator, Depeche Mode
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaB1psXTjS4[/youtube]

Holiday, Green Day
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neHcGwCfpzo[/youtube]

Sat in Your Lap, Kate Bush
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEVMfG8z490[/youtube]

Muhammed My Friend, Tori Amos
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmS6Ywzzjtw[/youtube]

Army Dreamers, Kate Bush
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWdHOm256N4[/youtube]

Yo George, Tori Amos
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TEVCz3KKN4[/youtube]

If You Tell A Lie, Blame Sally
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEqmnB4wenU[/youtube]

Masters of War, Bob Dylan
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0ELgFGd2fs[/youtube]

Goodbye Blue Sky, Pink Floyd (The Wall)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0v07InoFiU[/youtube]

Hello Earth, Kate Bush
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeW1eY4FecE[/youtube]

Breathing, Kate Bush
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9n2VSe_lja4[/youtube]

Dear Mr. President, Pink
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DEh0eSpNvY[/youtube]

General Joy, Tori Amos
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cx55U2DS90U[/youtube]

Mother Revolution, Tori Amos
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZsthaoIgJI[/youtube]

Super Villain Hero

Super Villain Hero

Your results:
You are Mystique



































Mystique
68%
Poison Ivy
65%
Dark Phoenix
58%
Catwoman
58%
Apocalypse
54%
Mr. Freeze
54%
Venom
54%
Dr. Doom
50%
Magneto
47%
The Joker
45%
Riddler
44%
Two-Face
44%
Green Goblin
36%
Lex Luthor
32%
Juggernaut
32%
Kingpin
20%
Sometimes motherly, sometimes a beautiful companion, but most of the time a deceiving vixen.


Click here to take the Super Villain Personality Test

Ok, Mystique is a new one on me, but it seems like a good choice for the potential supervillain within.

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

























Spider-Man
85%
Supergirl
85%
Wonder Woman
85%
Green Lantern
65%
The Flash
60%
Hulk
55%
Superman
55%
Catwoman
50%
Batman
50%
Robin
45%
Iron Man
35%
You are intelligent, witty,
a bit geeky and have great
power and responsibility.


Click here to take the “Which Superhero am I?” quiz…

It’s because I’m a geek, isn’t it?