Culture: July 2004 Archives

The Catholic Church felt the need to tell us all that Modern Feminism is dangerous for the family. Especially this pesky habit women have if asking why women can't be priests:

The Church teaches that it cannot change the rules banning women from the priesthood because Christ chose only men as his apostles.

Which is interesting, because one of the apostles who went around spreading Christianity after the crucifixion was Mary Magdalene and she would undoubtedly be considered an official apostle except that she was female, so obviously she couldn't be one. So it was the Church itself who chose only male apostles, not Jesus. You'd think the Church would be willing to acknowledge the work of somebody so devoted to spreading the Word, but instead they'd rather cling to modern tradition and alienate young women.

Their loss.

George, Christo, and I went to the San Francisco Symphony's free concert in Dolores Park today. It started at 2pm, but we decided to arrive late because the earlier bits on the program were kind of boring.

They started out with Glinka's "Overture to Ruslan and Ludmila," then Greig's "Piano Concerto in A minor, Opus 16" with the talented Yundi Li on piano. We arrived halfway through the Grieg, and found a seat not too far from the stage.

Unfortunately, we were very close to a flotilla of ice-cream trucks (little hand-pushed ones, not full-sized), so the entire program was accompanied by the tinkling of the bells every few seconds.

After the Grieg there was a 15-minute intermission, then they started up with Borodin's "Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor," which was actually quite charming and accessible. Unfortunately, somebody made the supremely bad decision to put Stravinsky's "Firebird Suite" at the end of the program. In an outdoor concert, playing a piece that starts out very quiet and slow is a bad move. I suggested to Christo that they put it there to encourage peope to leave slowly at the end of the concert, instead of all at once, because people began to file out when they realized they would never get to hear the whole thing.

Afterwards, we walked back up to Christo and George's house, then had dinner at La Mediterranee. It was only 6:50 when we finished dinner, but I felt sleepy (I got up at 6:30am) and still had two chapters of law homework to do, so I excused myself.

Here's in interesting little tidbit, a piece of news that makes people who already feel like paranoid conspiracy theorists feel more panicky. The government (um, that would be the government run by the guy who might lose this election) is looking at how to delay a vote if there's a terrorist attack).

No, really:

Homeland Security Department spokesman Brian Rochrkasse told the magazine the agency is reviewing the matter "to determine what steps need to be taken to secure the election."

...for George W. Bush.

One of these days, it'd be nice to see those people who drive around with American flags draped all over their cars actually do something to preserve their supposed liberty.

We just sent our houseguest to bed.

Paul Sartin is here from England for a couple of weeks -- this is the fellow whose family we stayed with in England in April -- and he managed to stay up a full 24 hours between the time he woke up in England and the time when we finally sent him off to bed with orders not to set his fucking alarm clock because he's resting.

Tomorrow night we're having musical dinner with our dear friends George and Christo, and then Paul and Noel will be off to English week while I languish about the house for a week alone. ALONE, I TELL YOU.

Actually, as is traditional, I will be redecorating while Noel is away.

Me, the dog, a couple pots of Benjamin Moore paint, and a case of $2 Chuck. We are unstoppable.

Our nutso former landlady has apparently been served with papers by the San Francisco sheriff. I say this with confidence, because she called our house (on our unlisted phone number that we deliberately never gave to her, but which we had to put on the service papers) and left an incoherent message about how evil we are for trying to get "blood from a stone." She claimed to be bankrupt, but this is not a person who was terribly honest with us for the two years we rented from her, and who has hoped we would ignore the fact that she still owes us money, so who knows what the real story is.

Interestingly, it ties in with the lastest chapters for law. If she has mysteriously declared bankruptcy, then she has to list us as creditors in order to get her debt to us discharged. Since we haven't gotten a notice from the court about any such listing, then either she didn't really declare bankrupcty, or she did, but she didn't list us. If she didn't list us, then the debt won't be discharged just by ignoring it. It's funny how some people just want to avoid acting like adults, and think they can get away with that forever.

We drove by the old house the other day, and the FOR SALE sign was down. The big awful cactus hasn't been pruned since we moved out and is showing it; those things need pruning every three months or they fill with trash and grow badly. The Mexican sage I planted is doing well, a given as the stuff thrives on neglect, which was why I planted it in the first place. Somebody (maybe the new owners) had put up a weird fence alongside the driveway, in such a way as to make getting out of the car difficult, and to make it impossible for the neighbors to use the driveway to access their back yard (which they were given to doing, folding in my car's rear-view mirror for their convenience, even though it was not their driveway -- GOD were they assholes).

I always felt badly for that house, being stuck with such a neglectful owner. I knew that when the landlady told us she wanted to put it on the market, she wanted us to want to buy it, but I figured that if I were going to spend $200,000 (hah!) renovating a house, it had better start out with a lot more potential to be a great place, and I was tired of living on a busy street with lots of crime.

Also, with the hostile, unpleasant neighbors, there was no damned way I was paying money to stay in that house when we didn't need to. I think that when we didn't respond to her suggestion that she was ready to sell the house, that was the beginning of the "you're not my friends any more!" transformation (complete with retracted decision to sell and 25% rent hike). As if we'd ever been her friends.

With any luck, this will mostly be over in August. Collecting on a judgement is not going to be easy, though.