"My Sweet Lord!"

From this news report:

The Easter season unveiling of an anatomically correct chocolate sculpture of Jesus Christ, dubbed “My Sweet Lord” by its creator, has infuriated Catholics preparing to observe some of their holiest days of the year.

The 6-foot sculpture by Cosimo Cavallaro was to debut Monday evening, four days before Christians mark the crucifixion of Jesus Christ on Good Friday. The final day of the exhibit at the Lab Gallery inside Manhattan’s Roger Smith Hotel was planned for Easter Sunday.

“This is one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever,” said Bill Donohue, head of the Catholic League, a watchdog group. “It’s not just the ugliness of the portrayal, but the timing — to choose Holy Week is astounding.”

Go and take a look at the picture -- it's quite remarkable, and completely un-tasty looking (I'm probably thankful for that).

I got this from my online community, BookTalk.org, where the woman who posted it pointed out:

"I can understand Christian groups being hostile towards this sculpture. There's lots of "art" to which I am hostile. However, the statement that there is an additional problem with the choice of Holy Week to display the sculpture reeks of the privileging of religion. Do Christians own the week between their Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday? A week that changes on the calendar from year to year."

Very good point.

Lori

UPDATE: The gallery caved -- before it even opened its doors, it has canceled the exhibit. Did they not think? Did they blithely assume there would be no uproar? (Here is the discussion at BookTalk.org)

Since we've been rather cat-themed lately...

here's the funniest thing I've read in awhile: the Sneeze on cats in heat.

It's like the old saying goes. "Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach that man's cat to fiddle with its cooter, and it'll stop rubbing up on stuff."

Lori

Pilling the Cat -- Revisited

Now that I no longer have to pill my she-demon, I find a very good blog entry (with pictures!) with what seems to be a very good method. I'm sure it would work. Thank you All Tips & Tricks!

Cross my fingers that I won't need the info.

Lori

Save the World Before Bedtime

Have I told you folks that I married a man who has a Powerpuff Girls fixation? (And I married him a year and 2 days ago, to be precise...)

But then, it's an easy show to like. The puns are often over the kids' heads, with a fabulous 'gotta have something for the poor parents' attitude. I think my favourite episode so far is:

Episode 18
Beat Your Greens
When Broccoli Aliens from space invade Townsville, it's up to the Powerpuff girls and all the children to take a bite out of crime.

And yes, we have episodes at home. Metro is a true Powerpuff fan.

The other day, he sent me this fabulous (tongue firmly in cheek) academic treatise on the PPG. Here's a sampling:

This creation (re-creation), then, coupled with an obvious virgin birth (note the reference to a virgin birth, for it shall become important soon) to a single father (a man of science, it is worth noting) with no mother in sight, is an obvious criticism of the christian Jesus birth myth. In short, a rejection of many of the more organised religions of the day.

And it's followed by threads and threads of discussion! I love this stuff!

Go watch some PPG today...you won't regret it.

Lori

International Women's Day

To quote a great woman's post today, here's a bit of the Nag:

If you're female and...
...you can vote, thank a feminist.

.....

...you can get or give birth control information without going to jail, thank a feminist
...your doctor, lawyer, pastor judge or legislator is a woman, thank a feminist.

.....

...you own property that is solely yours, thank a feminist.

There's more to be thankful for, at her post.

Today is also a day to think about what's still wanting:

• women are still subjected to violence and injustice in many parts of the world
• women are not included in the decision-making processes of their countries (or in their homes)
• women around the world often don't have the right to work, or if they do work, they are paid very little
• girl children are more likely to not be in school than boy children

And what about at home? So many young women today recoil at the word feminist, but they still

• are often hired on their looks alone ("You can see they don't hire over the phone here!" is a line I hear from Metro a lot...).
• get paid less than their male counterparts.
• do the majority of the volunteer work (that governments at all levels have come to lean on for so many social services, but that's a different post). A man is more likely to expect to be paid for their skills than a woman.
• are subject to eating disorders arising from societal expectations of how they look -- but then to be fair, so are young men. We've regressed utterly in this.
• are raped at a disgusting rate

So, here's to International Women's Day....may it outlive its usefulness one day very soon!

Lori

Aaawwww!

From Casa Az, the Random Kitten Generator:


I mean, really. How can anyone resist such cuteness? Is this how cats have come to win the evolutionary lottery? A life of no purpose except play, sleep, eat, shit, and look cute, where they have us trained to look after all of their needs?

Lori

Still trying to find a system

As you all know, if you've been reading my blog, I have 3 fixations: the absurd, cats, and gadgets. The latest gadget-focus is on a system to be productive.

How difficult can that be? Well, if you type "GTD" [Getting Things Done] into a search engine, you'll be innundated with options, ideas, and lifehacks. For a start, try the Ultimate GTD Index.

Tips and tricks abound, and there are loads of web applications all vying for your attention, trying to be your solution.

Well, I'm narrowing down my solution. Wanna hear about it?

First
I use Gmail. If you haven't found it yet, go get thee an account. Huge memory, archiving, Google searching of emails, conversation management, great labeling system.

I've added the GTD Extension to my Firefox, which is really just a ramped-up system of labeling your emails. A couple of added shortcuts that I've come to like, but they're only available if you're on a Firefox that's got the extension.

Second
My start page is Netvibes. Sign in from any computer, and all your settings are there -- your email accounts, bookmarks, to do lists, feeds. I'm turning it into my office.

Third
The viable To Do lists. This is a hard one. I'm still toying with just using Netvibes' to do list capabilities, but now I can put a Remember the Milk module on my Netvibes page -- and there's just so much more you can do with its functions. And I've added IMified to my gmail contact list, which enables me to send my To-Dos directly to Remember the Milk. Very simple and elegant!

Fourth
Dealing with documents. This is a tricky one. Do you need a place to just store docs online to access them yourself, or do you need to share them? Or is it bigger than that? Perhaps you need to create an Excel spreadsheet or a PowerPoint presentation, but you don't have these programs on your computer. Two options: Get the OpenOffice suite on your computer -- free and easy to use. Or, get an account with ThinkFree, where you can make these docs online. (I've had some problems with ThinkFree, some recent changes have made it less intuitive, and I couldn't access a spreadsheet. In all fairness, the support people got right back to me, but I've been too busy to follow up on the problem. My bad.)

I would really hesitate to use Google Documents and Spreadsheets (accessed through your gmail/google account) -- it looks really sweet...open docs right from your Gmail account, but then once you change them, you have to download them to the computer you're on, then email them. You'd think, being so closely tied to your email account, that you'd be able to email the docs directly (What if you're on a computer where you don't want/can't download?) -- but no, they want you to invite your people to sign up to a Google account to be able to share the documents.

At the moment, I'm partially using Zoho Projects for one of my jobs. I say 'partially' because I'm working with people who don't function like I do, all online, so they're not using it with me (and I can't make 'em. Boo hoo!). But it has a nice feature where I can upload files with no fuss.

Fifth
The Internet is always there, but the providers fail. I'm not always in front of a computer, so yes, there is one dimension still needed: the paper standby. I still use my daybook, the Polestar Business Calendar, to keep track of appointments and on-the-go notes...with help from the ubiquitous post-its.

Does all this obsess you as well? What are your solutions? I wanna know.

Lori