(note: i wrote this last night, but there was no working internet last night (mon, 7/6), so i’m posting it now)

in Kansas City – KCMO, not KCK, a distinction i just learned today, because i’m ignorant. KCMO = Kansas City, Missouri, as opposed to Kansas City, Kansas, which according to our very kind hosts is not the real Kansas City; KSMO is (okay, i’m paraphrasing, but that’s the jist. it’s a decades long rivalry).

left Denver this morning – around 11am, which seems to be DC Sita & my preferred departure time-ish. spent the bulk of the day driving through the long & flat of Kansas, which gets a bad rap. okay, the first time i drove through Kansas, in 1998, it felt excruciatingly long & boring & painful; this time, however (although DC may disagree), i found the landscape quite lovely, even if each hour did seem to pass quite slowly, and i was further intrigued by the proliferation of jesus & anti-abortion billboardage. whoa, Kansas – totally upped the highway billboard ante. before Kansas, i don’t recall noticing a single anti-abortion sign (i’m sure i just missed a few) – not in California, or Nevada, or Utah, or Wyoming, or Colorado – not a one did i notice. i may have noticed a few jesus signs, but nothing extraordinary. but Kansas: shit. suddenly they were everywhere. Kansans – at least the Kansans who can afford to purchase advertising off the I-70 – are really into blaring their messaging across the state. so suddenly, there were many, many large rectangular endorsements for birth and against pregnancy-termination.

there were the standards: “thanks, mom, for choosing life”; “adoption, not abortion”; etc.

but the most captivating by far was a handmade sign, fairly large, which i read as: “Abortion Stops A Beating” – a message which i found both arresting & baffling, and sparked a whole new train of thought in my admittedly highway-benumbed brain: abortion stops a beating? is this message pro-life or pro-choice, politically speaking? i am unsure. hm…mebbe, abortion can stop a beating, because if you have some fucked up lover/husband/parent/someoneinyourlife who doesn’t want you knocked up, an abortion, without said person’s knowledge, will prevent a beating from happening. because you never have to tell them you’re pregnant, you can simply terminate the pregnancy, and hey, beating averted! that’s fucked up, but i’m interested. keep talking.

so i’m pondering the message of this sign, and actually beginning to think it’s quite subversive in its messaging & spin, when DC Sita points out the graphic of the heart to the right of the word “beating.” ohhh. abortion stops a beating heart. okay, i get it, i’m retarded. still, up until that point, i was pretty fucking interested.

there were a fair number of jesus signs, as well – one punnishly successful one, scrawled in huge letters across what i think was a barn, that said in the first line:

“no god, no peace.”

and in the second line of text:

“know god, know peace.”

holy shit; agnostic or no, that’s pretty profound. well done, maximizing on the eccentricities of the english language.  i’m sold. that’s pretty good.

other than that: so far, so good; we passed through Kansas safely into the Missouri side of Kansas City, enjoyed some delicious homemade brisket courtesy of our friend’s sister’s husband & sister, and are now settling into the night. no internet, at present time, but we will upload this later, like tomorrow sometime. “we” being a totally unnecessary use of the royal we. or maybe i just like to feel i have friends with whom i am acting in concert.

okay. i’m beat; driving through Kansas can really wear you out.

so last night i watched an interview on larry king live with joel & victoria osteen. apparently, though, this interview aired on december 8, 2008, but never you mind -

i was so entertained i kept watching and was late for a tasty pho dinner, which is totally out of character for me.
if you don’t know, joel osteen is a preacher based in houston, and his wife victoria does a fair amount of public god-speaking too. apparently, people pay thousands of dollars a seat to be at one of their public sermons.

i think what impressed me was how utterly unconvincing a person can be in an unscripted interview – yes, shades of palin, so i know it’s nothing new – but this is someone who makes a living speaking. so you’d think he could spin an argument better. even i can come up with a more christianly satisfying answer to the question “is faith all you need?” than “Well, I think you need faith to believe, you know.” uh. i guess. and you need to breathe in order to inhale. plus, you need to make sense in order to communicate clearly.

there’s a choice excerpt of the full transcript below – a highlight is when larry asks joel if he thinks marriage is a civil right, and joel responds: “Yes. I don’t — I’m not — I’m not sure I’m up to speed on it. What do you mean by that?”  it’s also fun when victoria reassures us that the gay people who come through their doors are nice people.

i know it’s too easy to talk shit about the famous celebrity preacher, but they kind of pissed me off while fascinating me at the same time. if you can, watch the interview – joel has a way of constantly smiling while he’s talking, and victoria starts to get a very tense look as the interview continues…
excerpt from full transcript:

KING: OK. In another area, the new issue of “Newsweek” — I don’t know if you’ve seen it yet — but it discusses the Proposition 8 study in California and the defeat of the proposal to allow marriage among gays. And it claims that the bible has many, many, many marriages among gays and that it does not come down on it. How do you feel about it?

J. OSTEEN: Well, the way I feel about it is I’m an…

KING: It’s an interesting article, though.

J. OSTEEN: Sure.

KING: You ought to read it.

J. OSTEEN: I have this…

KING: It’s very — written in depth.

J. OSTEEN: Sure. I’d love to read it. I’m not for gay marriage. Every — in the bible, I see that a marriage is between a male and a female. Now, I don’t know — I haven’t read this new one that you’re talking about. I’m not against anybody. I’m not against gay people or anybody else. But I just think that, you know, that’s — my faith is based off the scripture and that’s what I see in the bible that it should be between (INAUDIBLE).

KING: But this gives you other scripture to think about. I mean, it’s very interesting…

J. OSTEEN: Yes. I’d love to see it.

KING: …the new issue.

J. OSTEEN: I’d love to see it.

KING: Do you think it’s a civil right, though, marriage?

J. OSTEEN: Yes. I don’t — I’m not — I’m not sure I’m up to speed on it. What do you mean by that?

KING: Do people have the right to marry whom they wish to marry? You know, for a time in this country, blacks couldn’t marry whites in the South.

J. OSTEEN: Oh, yes. Yes, oh, I think — absolutely. I think anybody should be able to…

KING: But not gays?

J. OSTEEN: Well, I just don’t think that — you know, I don’t think that’s God’s best. And, no, I don’t think that’s — that’s (INAUDIBLE).

KING: Do you think that gay is a choice?

J. OSTEEN: I think that it is a choice. I do think it’s a choice. I can’t say that I understand it all, but I believe it’s a choice.

KING: Do you minister to gay people?

J. OSTEEN: Absolutely. Anybody that comes through the doors.

KING: Do they come and ask you questions?

J. OSTEEN: I’m sure…

KING: Or do they have difficulty dealing with a theology that runs against them?

J. OSTEEN: No. I think — anybody is welcome to come. They know what I believe. But it doesn’t mean that, you know, that the scripture can’t help them. And, you know, our church is not a place for perfect people. There’s not — you know, I can’t say nobody…

KING: Then I can’t go.

(LAUGHTER)

J. OSTEEN: Well, you know what I mean. So, there’s plenty of people that come in and have difficulties and have issues. And, you know, we probably all have something. But we’re open and, you know, want it to be a place of hope and healing.

KING: How do you feel, Victoria, about the gay question?

V. OSTEEN: Well, you know, I just — I believe marriage should between a man and a woman. And we do have gay people in our church. And then they’re wonderful people. They’re nice people. It’s just that we just don’t believe in that.

holy shit:

from today’s NYT

Medicaid Wants Citizenship Proof for Infant Care

i’m one of the very last people to ever say living newborns are more important than still-living people born thirty or forty or fifty years ago (and they’re not), but holy god, requiring proof of u.s. citizenship before helping out a less-than-a-year-old baby? again, it’s not that it’s NOT appalling for an adult to be denied health care for the same reasons, but i’m no longer surprised by the sick fucks who think claiming a certain nationality should be a prerequisite to receiving treatment. but babies? these sick fucks LOOOOOOVE talking about saving babies, and how it’s not the babies’ fault, and how we should protect the friggin babies. they’re trying to protect fetuses whose consciousnesses haven’t even winked into being (okay, that’s just by some accounts, but let’s leave that for the parenthetical for now), and they do NOT want to protect warm live out-of-the-womb little ones? what’s the Right coming to?

in some ways, though, it’s so appalling that it might send a few more people running off in the opposite direction.

for reference, the baby documentation requirements for receiving health care went into effect in july this year (first i’ve heard of it, but granted, i’m hellllsa ign’int) as part of the Deficit Reduction Act, signed by (surprise surprise) bush in february. although this whitehouse.gov press release says it was signed in 2005.
ahhh. it’s so wonderfully fucked it’s gonna inspire me to write a new collection of dead baby jokes.

because there’s nothing funnier than a dead baby, eh? except mebbe a pile of dead babies. and when those babies are undocumented? priceless, priceless…

can’t wait for that remark to be taken out of context.

RBI: can’t be taken out of context if no one’s reading it but the robots, son.

WAAC: good point.