Overheard at Table 2: Sea Turtles and Unborn Babies

Niall Carter, sitting with Millie Nagadoces, is ruminating over a mocha latte. "You know," he says, "The pastor mentioned something last Sunday that still hasn't quite seeped through the mental webbing, if you know what I mean."

"As I rarely do," Millie interjects.

"But he was on his series about the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, and you know I told you the week before the Meek are apparently those with the backbone enough to tell the government to kill Social Security, but this week was those who thirst for righteousness, and apparently we do not 'thirst for righteousness' if we live in a country where the rights of a sea turtle are protected more than those of an unborn child."

"He said that?"

"He did. Now, there's something logically incorrect about that statement, but I can't put my finger on it. There's some fallacy of logic there."

"It's simple. They're completely separate issues. I call it the False Juxtaposition. You put them together for an emotional statement. It's an emotional appeal to make people think that those who try to protect the environment want to kill unborn babies."

"i.e. 'Liberals'."

"And Progressives. Apparently we're all out to eat your fetuses. But really, the laws or lack therof trying to save a species that will go out of existence, because there are only 1300 of them left were developed in a completely different vacuum than the much more all-encompassing debate of abortion slash right-to-choose. To put them together narrowly reframes the context so that any moral human being would have no other decision, morally, than to be outraged against the abortion. But the argument should have never been framed, because there are so much more facets to each - and separately."

"I knew there was a reason why I like talking to you. Another cappucino?"

Overheard at Booth 3: Texas Senator Wipes Away Last Meals

Harold is saying, "yeah after that one guy last week ordered this huge meal and then didn't eat a bite of it, some State Senator from Houston got all bent out of shape and he said 'No more last meals in Texas!' I heard him on the radio, he was pretty fired up and all, he was saying 'This is ridiculous! They didn't give htier victims such a courtesy, they shouldn't have one either' and 'This is a waste of taxpayer money!' - never MIND that the whole Death Row is a waste of taxpayer money. Did you know that being on Death Row is twice as expensive as just locking a guy away for the rest of his life? TWICE! And this guy thinks a hundred dollars worth of food is a waste of taxpayer money. dude! the waste of taxpayer money is the wad of cash that shoved under the table for the private prison corporations to build prisons to hold immigrant women and children! The payola that they give to the drug companies for the drugs for the lethal injection - shoot, they pay five times what the drugs really cost. That's the waste of taxpayer money!

"And about the last meal anyway, you know, yeah, sure, if the guy really did it, and yeah let's face it, the majority of them did, no question, and yeah, they didn't give their victim a courtesy, but this is the last chance to tell them that we live in a civilized world. This is a 'Hey, you killed people, but even though we're gonna put you down like a mad dog, here is one single shred of decency and kindness, which you never showed, at least we can show you this!' and you can look at it like one last 'NYAH -we're better than you' or you can look at it like the last chance to show the person some shred of compassion, which might - just might - lead him to repentence in his final moments - and I know some people don't want him to have salvation at the last moment, but you know, hey it can happen! - but either way, the last meal . . .

"it's just the right thing to do."

overheard somewhere

remember this well that if you ar not agitating you are standing still, and you have to ask which is mor like being alive and which more closely reembles death.

Overread at Table 1:

270. (from 365)
1018. (from Em in the Blogosphere)

All this is
done
in the false belief that we
could have an individual voice
in a world inundated
by the roar
of 6.5 billion voices
all shouting
concurrently
at the nothing new.

Overheard at Booth 2: Biblical Meekness

I overheard those two guys talking about a sermon on meekness that seems like it went, like, way off the deep end, so I decided to look up Biblical meekness. This seems like a pretty decent essay on the topic:

http://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/PERSONAL/k/237/The-Fruit-of-Spirit-Meekness.htm

Overheard at Booth 3: Moribund Second

Dale: I'm almost scared to go back to service tomorrow.

Sandeep: Why's that?

Dale: You should have been there last Sunday. Jumpin' Jehovah in a Crackerjack box, the pastor was on fire. We're working through Sermon on the Mount and we're on "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth," and then he tells us that meek doesn't mean mild or humble, but tempered by God, "disciplined" was the word he used. Then he went on this hour long tirade about how the government is undisciplined and we have undisciplined people in government who just want to spend more than they have and oh, man it was nuts.

Sandeep: So, he just got sidetracked, you think? Veered wildly off into a tangent?

Dale: No! That's the sad thing - he had presentation slides on the display screens! Numbers, man, numbers about how much we spend on Social Security, Medicare, Defense. He was saying that we have to get rid of our entitlements, we have to be more "disciplined" It was nuts, man, seriously nuts.

Sandeep: How'd the congregation take it?

Dale: Oh, ship-to-stern, dude, that was the scariest part of all! They ate - it - up! Seriously. You know, I can understand how the congregation could be proud of the 4th of July speech, and I thought it was a bit much for the pastor to make a sermon on 9-11, but maybe he just got pumped up by their response for that, because on THIS sermon, they were cheering and clapping and ovationing at every point he made against the government. I seriously thought that if he told them to go get some torches and pitchforks they'd go burn down Washington DC. These guys were almost rabid!

Sandeep: Sounds almost like a cult.

Dale: It felt like it. I was looking toward the door, trying to see how I could get my family away from these nutbars. But I gotta tell you, my wife, man, she is one sweet-heart lady who just puts it all into perspective, and man I wish I had the sack to have stood up and told this pastor what she told me . . .

Sandeep: Kinda hard to take a stand in the middle of a 3,000-strong mindless mob, don't you think?

Dale: Which is why I stayed put! But at one point, the pastor said, "There is nothing in the Constitution about the separation of church and state." And my wife looked over at me and said, "He's right. It's in the Bible. 'Render unto Caesar that is Caesar's, and render unto God what is God's."

Sandeep: Seems like she's better as your wife than she ever was as my sister.

Dale: I dunno. She says you weren't the easiest brother to get along with.

Sandeep: But I never got her involved in a cult.

Dale: Ouch, bro!

Overheard at Booth 5: The Death of Memory

Templeton is saying, "It's a really disturbing trend, and for me it started even twenty-twentyfive years ago when I read an article that said that all the McDonald's workers were no longer reading anything on the cash register, because there were no words - there were only little pictures of the Big Mac, the fries, the drink, all that. And I thought to myself then, dang, there's the end of literacy: McDonald's just killed it."

And Howerton continues, "Totally true, and it has gotten worse, I mean, my kids, they can't cognate a coherent thought, I swear, the other day, my daughter was 'like, yeah, well, we had a good time at the mall, and it was like, so funny, this thing, like, we just laughed SO HARD, because Kayley, she like - oh here!' and she showed me the pic on her phone that she took of her friend wearing a giant styrofoam hat. I mean, she couldn't EXPLAIN the scenario to me, she could only SHOW me from the picture that she took."

Templeton agrees, "Yes, yes. Something is definitely lost here. Some sort of cognitive abilities. The ability to make coherent connections. Which is strange, because I've always felt that all this technology, designed to keep us all together, really is isolating us. I mean, if we can't describe a situation to each other in words - such as 'my friend tried on this silly hat and we laughed ourselves silly' then we really have a problem!"

Howerton says, "I showed my kids the movie Fahrenheit 451 the other day, because you know, they need it for school and they won't read the book, and in the movie everyone was losing their ability to form memories, real long-term memories, which was a side effect from not being able to read. I remember thinking that the book had so much more depth than the movie, which was odd. But then it hit me that when the movie was made, it was made for audiences who were more literate. When that movie came out, more than likely most everyone who went to see it had already read the book. Now we make movies so that we won't have to read."

Templeton says, "I read the other day that there is more information now out there than there ever was, and I think the article stated that the average man in the 19th Century had about as much information over the course of a lifetime than would fill one issue of the New York Times cover to cover. Granted, that of course isn't talking anything about intelligence or reasoning capacity; it was talking purely about amount of information that they had access to. So I've come to this conclusion: there's too much information out there. Too much. There's so much that we can no longer even BEGIN to dive into the overwhelming mass of information that is pounding us. We're tuning out. Just like the people in Fahrenheit 451 - only instead of being starved for reading, we've got so much that we just refuse to read. Taking pictures is so much easier. We don't have to think, or even form memories. We just keep them stored on our memory cards!"

Howerton says, "Kinda makes me afraid we won't remember this conversation!"

Templeton says, "What makes me sad is that if this were ever written down and put on a blog somewhere, no one would ever read it. It would simply be one insignificant drop of water in an ocean of immeasurable absurdities."