So you thought the Enron scandal was maybe about corporate thievery or the need for regulation of the energy industry, what with the Bush Administration having appointed Enron foxes to guard the financial henhouses.
Nope.
According to Ken Lay, it’s about his relationship with God.
After his conviction, Lay maintained his innocence and quoted the apostle Paul’s comfort to the persecuted (back in the days when persecution meant a slow, painful death, mind you) : “All things work to the good for those who love God.”
See, California consumers might have been ripped off to the tune of $9 billion, and Enron investors and employees may have lost tens of billions, some losing their life savings. But the real story is that it’s been a test of the faith of Ken Lay, who sees himself as Job….

So one day in 2000 Satan gets engrossed in his iPod and winds up walking into the throne room in heaven.
“Hey God,” he says, scratching a horn and turning down the Bright Eyes song, “Everything is greaat. Notice how I have had all the people in the globe under my thumb since the ’60s.”
“Not my humble servant Kenny Boy Lay,” God says. “For that, I have blessed him with unimaginable riches.”
“Yeah, but take the money away and he will curse you,” says the red one.
“No way.”
“Way. Wanna bet?”
So God sent stock analysts and accountants to create illegal offshore accounts that were discovered by the government, who set upon Enron and destroyed it.
But Ken Lay refused to curse God, even after surrendering many of his personal mansions.
A few years later, God sees Satan. “I told you, Ken Lay remains faithful.”
Says Satan: “He hasn’t had it tough enough. Throw him in prison and without his mansions and servants he will curse you.”
Thus was Lay convicted of a crime he did not commit. And still he praised God, …

Hopefully Lay will serve a long term, giving him time to ponder another Biblical precept, the one about how hard it is for a rich man to enter the Kingdom.

There are certain words and phrases that should be innocuous but are used by some people with a sneer or a snarl to show that they disdain the thing they are talking about. The most obvious example is “liberal”. (And I won’t even get into how most people are completely fucked up by the actual origin of liberal politics- but it’s why I describe myself as progressive instead of liberal). But it is not the only one.

Consider “Politically Correct”. To be politically correct means to act in a way to cause minimum offense. But whenever I hear the term used it is by people bragging about how “not politically correct” they are. I generally tend to accept these statements as meaning “I am a bigoted asswipe who doesn’t mind announcing my stupidity in public”.

Then there’s “Secular Humanists”. The conservative Christians like to tell us that secular humanists are the cause of evil and will be the downfall of our “Great Christian Nation”. But what are secular humanists about exactly? (Oh Wikipedia- how I love thee!)

Some Tenets: Need to test beliefs, reason, evidence, ethics, search for truth, and building a better world.

Wait- how is testing a belief a wrong thing? And where in the bible does it say that by searching for truth and having ethics you will bring about the downfall of mankind?

And we can’t forget the “Homosexual Agenda” that is out to destroy families and marriage. First- has anyone ever seen an actual homosexual agenda? Is it leather-bound, or paperback, or maybe just a hastily scrawled manifesto that has been zeroxed a million times and handed out at the secret Gays Against Families meetings where to gain entrance you have to produce the severed head of your wife and children? What, you’ve never seen it either?

There is no homosexual agenda. There are reasoning, ethical people (both gay and straight and everything in-between) who think that people should have equal rights, including marriage. Period. I have never met someone who supports gay marriage that wants to break up all heterosexual marriages and convert people to being gay. If you have- let me know cause I would really love to see that straw man in person.

And then there’s “Modern” as opposed to “Traditional”. This one is a little different in that it is “traditional” that is used in a positive spin way- think “traditional family values”- much more frequently than “modern” is used as a smear. However, in a comment today at another site someone bragged about being “biased against modern feminists”. (as if feminists of any period have been anything but modern- feminists are always fighting the traditions that keep them from autonomy over their own lives and bodies). But why throw out tradition? If people did it for hundreds or even thousands of years- is it really so bad?

It was traditional to wipe your ass with a handful of leaves. It is modern to use toilet paper. It was traditional to bathe once a week, it is modern to shower everyday. It was traditional to be uneducated and illiterate. It is modern to be educated and able to read. It was traditional to have your marriage arranged without your consent. It is modern to choose to marry whom you want, if you want to marry at all. It was traditional for women to marry young, get pregnant often, have lots of miscarriages or stillbirths, watch their children die young of disease, and die from pregnancy complications with alarming regularity. It is modern for women to use birth control, marry later, have fewer children but that are more likely to reach adulthood, and not die from pregnancy quite so often.

With that I will say that I am a politically correct, secular humanist and modern feminist that fully supports the homosexual agenda. But only if it’s a hardcover – paperbacks will never last through the second coming or the downfall of our Great Christian Nation.

Why, for the love of god why would someone steal my box of tissue off my desk?

Seriously, I get one box of tissue for the year. It’s not on my desk or in my lab or in the lecture hall next door. Since it would have to physically leave the building to be somewhere else on campus- I must assume that aliens have tractor beamed it into space.

I wonder if I could arm wrestle the secretary for her kleenex stash?

UPDATE- Kleenex box has been found. One of the instructors used for a visual demonstration in class this morning. No aliens or arm wrestling involved.

I was bummed that there was no Stranger Poll last week. How will we ever know if we are pro or anti- functional alcoholism?

But the poll has returned this week and The Stranger wants to know Daddy or Twink when it comes to what you want in a politician.
(Go figure- I want both a twink and a daddy- why should you only have one when you can have them both).

In other Stranger news- after last week’s Police Beat featuring the soulful stylings of my grocery store and this week’s take on the police state, Police Beat may be my new favorite column.

Can you name the band that these lyrics belong to? If you can- you get a virtual cookie (or a big fat virtual lickery kiss- your choice).

All lyrics are by the same band. Hints- I LOVE this band. I think it’s the closest thing to Dickens set to music (shut up- I know they made musicals out of Dicken’s work- but they are generally smaltzy and this band is not). The band is playing at the Gorge this weekend.

1. but you, my soiled teenage girlfriend
2. find him, bind him, tie him to a pole and break his fingers to splinters
3. But oh, the smell of burnt cocaine!

Wired has an interesting article on The Rise of Crowdsourcing. It squares with a report I came across recently from a UK think tank on the “Pro-Am” phenomenon, as well as some of the discussions I’ve been following on Longtail economics.

The original article on “The Long Tail” by Chris Anderson, in Wired, Oct. 2004, & here’s an MP3 podcast at IT Conversations: Chris Anderson – Economics of the Long Tail.

It’s interesting & exciting, but as the Wired article highlight at the very beginning, it has profound implications for professionals. What does the labor market & the economy look like as more & more tasks are broken down for distributed processing. As an artist & a photographer, I think the digital distribution trend is fantastic. But I’m not sure what things look like when design, photography, & even R&D are handled by a vast distributed network of oddball specialists who will do the task dirt cheap (or even free) because they think it’s cool, or consider it a hobby.

A quote from Scary Scarborough about Bill Clinton and the invasion of Bosnia:

“Well, I just think it’s a bad idea. What’s going to happen is they’re going to be over there for 10, 15, maybe 20 years.”

But my favorite has to be the Decider’s own:

“Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is.” –Governor George W. Bush (R-TX)

Click here for some more hypocrisy from wingnuts

Premature epostulation: When a blogger (ok- me) types too fast and is way to lazy to check typos before posting. This is followed by a post-posting state of mortification and a quick jaunt to the edit tab with the hope that said typos will not be noticed.

Ha! I added peeps that I like to read (lots o’ partiarchy blaming- in case you can’t tell)

If there is someone else I should add lemme know.