Dear Senator Corker, redux.

Senator Corker,

I heard one of your Republican colleagues on NPR this morning saying that he thought the "American people had spoken" in rejecting health care reform. This is disingenuous.

When I looked you in the eye this summer at that rally and told you about the fears my wife and I had had as a young couple just out of school with no resources to pay for COBRA and a baby on the way, I appreciated that you seemed sympathetic to our plight. You were sympathetic despite the crowd around me jeering that we "shouldn't have gotten pregnant," implying, I suppose, that we should have destroyed or rejected our precious daughter, Maggie, instead of rejecting and working to change a system in which parents like us are forced to make tough and impossible choices for the convenience of maintaining the "status quo" of a health care system that is greedily and monstrously out of control.

As one of your constituents, I have contacted you in the past to say that I am in favor of a SINGLE PAYER SYSTEM and a GOVERNMENT OPTION. I am in favor of radically reducing and curtailing the influence of health care lobbyists on Capitol Hill (including the donations they make to the campaigns of you and your colleagues), and that your poor and working constituents especially do not have time to wait while you and the Republicans obstruct and play politics.

I am writing to say that I am STILL for these "impossible" outcomes. Moreover, I know I am not the only one of your constituents writing to tell you this.

What I think, sir, is that when you and your colleagues refer to the "will of the American people," you are simply only attending to the polls you and your benefactors in the health care industry find most expedient.

I think you and your fellow Republicans' behavior these last months during the debate on health care has been shameful. We need drastic, not incremental change, and we need it now. People are dying, sir. They are dying from a system that denied them access to care and to affordability; they are dying from "preexisting conditions."

The rhetoric that has flown in the past months about "denial of choice of doctors" and "death panels" ignores the fact that these conditions are already in place with the system we have, only they are factors currently of the "free market approach" you love and esteem so much.

In rural central Tennessee and now in Memphis, as an educator and a pastor, I have seen with my own eyes the devastation the "business as usual" approach to health care has brought to honest and hard working families. At the Saturn plant, in Culleoka, in Nashville, and here in Collierville and Memphis, there are a whole bunch of hurting (and dying) folks that just want the kind of access to decent, affordable, effective health coverage and care that you and your colleagues in the Senate enjoy every day.

Whether you call it "socialism," sir, or just good merciful common sense, I am an American, and your constituent, and I am asking you to get off your kiester and work for it.

Cordially,

Dr. David Dault
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies
Christian Brothers University
Memphis, TN

More signs of the Apocalypse

As seen on CraigsList. Oh, Lord.

Erotic Writing for Pittsburgh Blog (Pittsburgh)

We are launching a new blog featuring erotic writing and photography set in Pittsburgh and its surrounds. Our goal is to make Pittsburgh the sexiest city in the United States--heightened eroticism as regional asset key to livability. We are looking for well-written short stories between 500 and 1,500 words. All works should be prominently set in Pittsburgh. Quality of writing is paramount. Stories may feature any kind of encounter or near miss (we are GLBT-interested). We are currently paying between $20 and $50/per post and over time are hoping to build a stable of two or three writers who can keep us all hot and bothered with fantastic tells of sex in the city.

Please include an erotic work sample with your inquiry.

• Location: Pittsburgh
• Compensation: Between $20 and $50 per blog post
• Telecommuting is ok.
• This is a part-time job.

Hell yeah.

Brother West, tellin' it like it is.

We're calling from the Pleiades, and we'd like to make a request...

So I was listening to NPR this afternoon and, as an aside to a story about water on the Moon, they happened to mention "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft, " a rather unfortunate hit for The Carpenters back in the 1970's. Here's a little taste of that magic, for those who don't remember:



Whew. Okay. Heavy, I know. The reason I'm even bothering to post about all this is that the NPR story mentioned The Carpenters as if they were the originators of the song. Not so. In fact, their version of the song was a cover of the original version, written and performed by KLAATU.

Now, I know. You've never heard of KLAATU. Nobody has. But back in the day, when KLAATU was, you know, doing its thing, there was a pretty massive rumor that they weren't a band at all. The rumor was that, instead, they were a front for a secretly reunited Beatles project. Srsly.

It was a nice pipedream for a culture exhausted by Watergate and such. The wish for something awesome, even secretly awesome, like the Beatles being back together, was a powerful opium for the masses. It would lull us into accepting just about anything. Even KLAATU. Even The Carpenters. So it goes.

"Our Daughter" (a poem)

Our daughter
Who art in bathtub,
Glistening be thy rump.

Thy towels come
To dry thy bum,
And then it is off to bedtime.

You had, this day,
Your daily breast
And numerous spit ups
(Though we forgive you, who spits up
Against us)
And sleep is not even temptation,
But a wager made through rocking.

For thou art the tired, the hungry, and the fussy
and not yet a Toddler. Amen.

Short documentary on Chris Marker

Chris Marker's short film, La Jetee (1962), was the inspiration for a song Thad Thompson and I wrote of the same name. His work is an all-time favorite of mine.