And such small portions

The gizmo that calculated this (via) informs me that:

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

• missionary (4x)
• hell (3x)
• death (2x)
• dick (1x)

I'm fairly sure that those first two words were used here in their theological senses, while the last one was, I think, a mention of the vice president's name. I suppose if they'd realized I was talking about Cheney, I'd have gotten the NC-17 rating.

• Parrots not telepathic after all. (Via Regret the Error)

• Just wrong, but fun. (via Optimus Prime)

• Mike posted this on the Fourth of July: Marvin Gaye's All-Star National Anthem. (Also from my personal Top Ten renditions: Natalie Gilbert and Mo Cheeks.) More cool Fourth of July music here.

• By Neddie Jingo! on "Deer Hunting With Jesus"

On a somewhat-related note to that, this NPR story on candidates' attempts to reach rural voters provides a good enough excuse to refer back to my two cents on the subject -- a couple of policy suggestions that might help win over some rural voters but which are also, I think, the Right Thing To Do:

• Health care for farmers: a third of all farmers don't have health insurance, so sign 'em all up for Medicare.

• Regulate rent for manufactured homes: "Trailer park" shouldn't be a punch line -- manufactured homes are to much of rural America what apartments are to urban America. The difference is that it's a lot harder for the owners of manufactured homes to move when the rent on the land beneath them increases. Since moving really isn't an option for these folks, they're a captive class, unable to provide any market pressure to keep rents reasonable -- and if the market can't do the job, regulation is the next best thing. (Cue the ScotBot.)

• Gentle Prodding Dept.: I'm looking forward to "Children of the Goats, Part 4"

Comments

[the opoponax]

@ Drak Pope -- they generally get them the same way the religious folks get them. Through the particular prejudices of our era. Someone tells them "Fags Is Teh Evil", and so they keep on believing it. Religious folks will take that and build themselves a nice little wall of justificationary scripture (even if their interpretation is way off). Secular folks don't have scripture to do that with, so they usually try to approximate the same behavior with "science". Thus resulting in things like evolutionary psychology and the like.

Ultimately, even though the ballast is different (scripture vs. "science"), the source of the belief is the same.

[Steve]

Maybe such books even exist. Has anyone climbed over the piles and piles of "Christian" drivel to discover them?

Jerry Jenkins wrote a marriage book that a therapist friend recommends called "Hedges" (about setting appropriate boundaries around your marriage). I can't bring myself to read it though.

[Angelika]

Bugmaster [Mr. LaHaye] does write at length on the merits of missionary sex
I know I'll regret asking this. I know. But... what does he say ? *cowers in anticipated fear*

That's quite obvious: The better the sex with the missionary the more souls get saved :-P

[The Cynic Sage]

Fred Clark:I suppose if they'd realized I was talking about Cheney, I'd have gotten the NC-17 rating.

Ha! My blog got the NC-17 rating. I think it might have had something to do with my recent entry titled "Super Happy Fun Abortion Time".

http://cynicsage.blogspot.com/

[The Cynic Sage]

Sarah Jane: Bugmaster, have a peek at "The Act of Marriage." It's perhaps the grossest book I've ever read -- 315 action-packed pages of Tim LaHaye's* bizarre ideas on sexual relationships. It manages to be painfully strict and clinical while reinforcing nearly every sexual stereotype I can imagine. Highlights include the aforementioned passage on gender roles as defined by anatomy, and LaHaye's repeated insistence that oral sex is an aberration introduced by the porn industry, and that no good Christian spouses would ever have thought of it otherwise.

LaHaye must not be aware of the unexpurgated verses of Song of Songs (warning: link not worksafe):

http://gamahucherpress.yellowgum.com/books/poetry/songsolomon.pdf

[Fred]

Sarah Jane --

Re the sacramental aspects of marriage: Wendell Berry doesn't usually start with the subject, but whenever he writes about poetry, he inevitably winds up also writing about farming and marriage, and whenever he writes about farming, he inevitably winds up writing about marriage and poetry. (I'm single and neither a farmer nor a poet, but for some reason I can't resist his essays.)

[Jeff]

hapax: (The Mad Book Pusher What Pushes Books At Midnight strikes again!)

Spooooooooooonnnnnnn!!!!Eleven!One!!!

[Bugmaster]

Haha yeah, the Song of Solomon... Almost as good as the 1001 Nights :-)

But... oral sex was invented by the porn industry ? What ? Are they serious ?

[The Cynic Sage]

Tonio: Sarah Jane, my wedding gifts also included a marriage book written by the founder of the Promise Keepers. I can't remember the title or the author.

Was it Every Man's Marriage? (although I don't think it was written by the Prez of PK) Apparently it was originally titled "Every Woman's Desire" and was directed towards women at first, but then I guess they realized that a book written by two PK men that told women what they want in a relationship wouldn't be as big a hit as if it were directed at men. So they changed the book's title and made it the "Tranny" of the "Every Man" series.

I myself haven't read that book. But I've read Preparing Your Son for Every Man's Battle", and in one part of it Fred Stoeker argues that women "crave male headship". His source? Some women he knew from church told him that they don't like to do all the planning for dates. I shit thee not.

[Rich]

Fred:
The difference is that it's a lot harder for the owners of manufactured homes to move when the rent on the land beneath them increases.

Could somebody please explain why or how this is true? I have thought about this for the last two days, and I cannot think of a single reason why moving would be more expensive for a trailer park resident as opposed to an apartment dweller. Everything I know about the world indicates that if anything, it should be cheaper for a trailer park resident to move. I have never lived in a trailer park or tried to move out of one, so I am more than willing to be proven wrong.

a third of all farmers don't have health insurance, so sign 'em all up for Medicare.

Putting all farmers onto Medicare is a noble proposal. It's also utterly meaningless unless you propose some way of funding it.

By Neddie Jingo! on "Deer Hunting With Jesus"

I'm not sure why Fred brought this to our attention. Was it so we would visit the author of Deer Huntins With Jesus's website and realize that he is either deeply stupid, or a liar?

As for Scott's rather over the top post near the beginning of the thread, my theory is that Scott had nothing in particular to say about the issues that Fred brought up, but since Fred called him out he felt the need to post something. As a result, I suspect that his post is entirely tounge in cheek, and I for one thought it was quite funny.

[Sarah Jane]

Thanks for the Catherine Wallace recommendation, hapax. The mere fact that it's written by a woman (and is not obviously directed towards women only, nor is said author the wife of a more-established male author) makes me hopeful.

And Fred, I share your love of Wendell Berry -- poetry, essays, stories, the whole lot of it. He's both remarkably fresh and solidly orthodox in his ideas. And people say we Kentuckians are a backwards bunch of fools!

[cjmr's husband]

@Rich,

An apartment dweller, especially a poor one who doesn't have a lot of stuff, only needs a couple friends and a van to move.

A trailer park resident who owns hir trailer needs to hire a guy with a big truck to move the trailer.

This is of course assuming in both cases that they have someplace to move to. Trailer parks, with their reputation, are being torn down across the country.

Out in Teh Sticks (tm), of course, you're more likely to find people living in a trailer on land that they own; rent isn't an issue, property tax is. Which is one more reason you get people like Scott.

[Jesurgislac]

And, if you're really poor (or if you need to get out of where you are more than you need to hang on to whatever stuff you've acquired) you can pack what you need into a rucksack and just walk away from the rest.

Furthermore, if you own your own apartment, its resale value has probably gone up since you bought it: if you own your own trailer home, its resale value has almost certainly gone down.

[Tonio]

Cynic Sage, the title "Every Man's Marriage" doesn't sound familiar. The actual title was something more innocuous.

"women crave male headship..."

Must... resist... temptation... to make... oral sex joke...

[the opoponax]

Also, if you own a trailer, it's probably the single most valuable thing you have ever purchased. Which means that if you're poor and you have to walk away from it becase you can't afford to have it moved, or can't find a new place to put it, it's not really the same thing as walking away from some clothes or a set of dishes or a couch because they won't fit in the moving van.

And of course, very poor people who own trailers are probably still paying them off, making the whole thing even dicier.

[Salamanda]

@Sarah Jane & Tonio...
Among the books given to me as a wedding gift was one called "Holy Sex". I kid you not. I can't look at it without reading it as: "Holy Sex, Batman!"

Incidentally, the book was an interesting read. The folks running this ministry seem to be very stern KJV-only types, but they seem to be a little more relaxed about how sex can be done---provided it's within the confines of marriage, of course. And I don't seem to remember too much pontificating about gender roles in this particular book (although they cover that in a lot of their other material, also included in our gift).

[cjmr]

OTOH, Salamanda, they are very strict in their parenting materials. If anyone offers you any of their parenting materials, run the other way.

[Salamanda]

Yeah, so I've noticed. The people who gave us their marriage materials use their parenting methods, and the kids seem happy and well-behaved, so I'm sure a lot depends upon the attitude with which the methods are implemented...but you know what? It all just kind of gives me the jibblies.

I think, also, the disconnect between Mike Pearl as tender father-figure and Mike Pearl as strict preacher-man is just so harsh and jarring that I don't know how to respond. The prime example that comes to mind is his retelling of his daughter's wedding. It's mostly quite sweet, and his love and fondness for his daughter is evident, but then at the end he throws in a postscript that I daresay would make Dobson himself cringe:

None of my daughters or their husbands asked the state of Tennessee for permission to marry. They did not yoke themselves to government. It was a personal, private covenant, binding them together forever—until death. So when the sodomites have come to share in the state marriage licenses, which will eventually be the law, James and Shoshanna will not be in league with those perverts. And, while I am on the subject, there will come a time when faithful Christians will either revoke their state marriage licenses and establish an exclusively one man-one woman covenant of marriage, or, they will forfeit the sanctity of their covenant by being unequally yoked together with perverts.

*blink*

*blink blink*

[Rich]

cjmr's husband:
An apartment dweller, especially a poor one who doesn't have a lot of stuff, only needs a couple friends and a van to move.

A trailer park resident who owns hir trailer needs to hire a guy with a big truck to move the trailer.

Fair enough, but does renting a van to move your stuff cost that much less than renting a truck that can haul a trailer (assuming that the resident doesn't already own one)? Perhaps trailers have changed quite a bit in the last 24 years (ie since the last time I was heavily exposed to them) but in my experience a decent pickup can be used to move a trailer.

This is of course assuming in both cases that they have someplace to move to. Trailer parks, with their reputation, are being torn down across the country.

This possibility occurred to me as well, but if lack of alternative trailer parks is the problem then Fred's solution makes no sense. If there aren't enough trailer parks, why create a disincentive to opening new ones?

Out in Teh Sticks (tm), of course, you're more likely to find people living in a trailer on land that they own; rent isn't an issue, property tax is. Which is one more reason you get people like Scott.

I absolutely agree. I hate and despise property taxes, except to pay for the local fire department.

the opoponax:
Also, if you own a trailer, it's probably the single most valuable thing you have ever purchased. Which means that if you're poor and you have to walk away from it becase you can't afford to have it moved, or can't find a new place to put it, it's not really the same thing as walking away from some clothes or a set of dishes or a couch because they won't fit in the moving van.

And of course, very poor people who own trailers are probably still paying them off, making the whole thing even dicier.

That's an excellent point. I hadn't thought about the fact that once you buy into the idea of living in a trailer park you are pretty much forced to do so until the trailer is completely run down or you decide to take a significant loss on your biggest asset. That limits your options of say, moving into an apartment.

While that is a downside to owning a trailer, I don't see why it makes poor trailer park denizens less mobile than poor apartment dwellers. Poor apartment dwellers aren't, after all, likely to be able to buy a trailer*, so it's not as if they can switch to trailer parks any more readily than trailer park residents can move to apartments.

* - A quick disclaimer: I have no idea how trailer finance works. It's possible that poor people can readily buy trailers even though they couldn't buy a new car or a house.