Monthly Archives: May 2010

What is a hippie?

Occasionally you hear about hippies. But people who call themselves hippies today, or that others call hippies, are not like the original hippies at all. Generally, modern hippies are more brown (and I’m talking clothing choice) and less stoned than the original hippies. The original hippies were making many different political statements, social statements, and fashion statements. Of those various statements, many have been incorporated into modern mainstream thinking. Other ideas were taken out into the yard, shot mercilessly in the head, and buried in a deep, unmarked hole dug in the forest….

Read On (qm)

The Evolution of Asshatitude on The Internet

Matini chewed hungrily on the cooked forearm of the monkey as I watched, thinking, “WTF, is he really not going to share?” The others watched him with looks of incredulity that told me they were thinking the same thing. Finally, Latala said to Matini, thumb pointing sideways to me, “You know, he knows the rules.”

“Huh?” Matini replied, looking up vaguely with his eyes while chewing the arm.

“You killed that monkey with an arrow he had given you. Therefore, that arm is his, according to our traditional way of dividing up the portions of animals we have hunted. But you are not sharing.”
Continue reading The Evolution of Asshatitude on The Internet

Pope: You are still not helping!

Pope Benedict XVI has made the statement that the outrage and calls for action from outside the over the sexual abuse of children within the church is a for of “persecution of the Church.” He further stated that the cause of that widespread sexual abuse of children that has been documented within the Catholic Church is caused by sin. For those of you who are not paying a lot of attention, or who prefer an appeasement strategy when it comes to El Popo, or who just don’t know, let me spell that out for you: If the problem of regular sexual abuse of children by priests is caused by sin, then it can be fixed internally, by the Pope himself or his bishops.
Continue reading Pope: You are still not helping!

The Best of Quiche: My Journey Through Race and Racism

When I was a kid, everyone in my neighborhood was divided into categories along three dimensions. There were color differences (light vs. dark hair and skin), there was the Catholic vs. Protestant divide, and there was the binary distinction of whether or not your dad served in World War II. In fourth grade and again in seventh, I attended a new school and each time encountered a greater diversity of kids and teachers and learned about new kinds of people. At the same time, I would often visit my father at work, and during the summer he and I would have breakfast downtown at the Dewitt Clinton. Then we’d go our separate ways to our respective jobs (he had a real job…I had one of those urban make-work jobs designed to get the kids off the streets), and in these contexts, I met some adults that were different from the ones in my neighborhood.

Read on.