Church of the Creme Egg

with easter and passover coinciding this year, there seems to be a lot of 'interfaith dialogue' going on. Meet The Press thismorning devoted itself to such a dialogue: catholics and protestants, rabbis and professors of islam, even one of those weird feel-good non-denominational mega-church pop-psychology self-help pastor-dudes. i flicked through newscasts, wandered the internet. much buzzing over the beauty of 'interfaith dialogue', how we grow strong through diversity, how we may differ in specifics of faith, but how we are all 'people of the book', of differing beliefs, but sharing belief in essentially the same god.

which is all sort of alienating, if you don't happen to believe in a god. the passion for Tolerance Of All Faiths, unfortunately, tends to exclude those of us who don't happen to have one.

what i do have, though, is easter candy. praise be!

does anybody know much about selling things on eBay? how one sets up PayPal, how shipping works, when to place things for sale, how much to charge, like that?

this is sort of urgent, so if you do have any advice, please advise. please.

oh man

dudes
i have made
some TOTALLY RIGHTEOUS brownies
oh dudes
i mean dudes
you do not even know

not much balm in gilead these days

an interview with jack hitt, who has an article in the NY Times Magazine this sunday about the state of womens' health in el salvador, where abortion under any circumstance, including to save the life of the woman, has been criminalised since 1998. this is the abortion == murder argument played out to its logical consequences. the way it has played out, from my viewpoint, is anything but 'pro-life'. even in circumstances where the fetus cannot possibly live and where, without surgical intervention, the woman could die (like ectopic pregnancies, which are not terribly rare, which cannot result in a viable fetus and which can kill the woman or render her sterile without surgical intervention), no medical intervention may be made.

other countries do have similar laws. el salvador, though, has the strictest enforcement. el salvador has 'forensic vagina specialists' who are charged with determining whether a lost pregnancy was a natural miscarriage or an abortion. in el salvador, a woman's uterus can be considered material evidence. a judge can issue a search warrant for a woman's vagina.

make no mistake: there are those in this country who would dearly love to see this happen in the united states. el salvador is held up by some as an example. an 'inspiration'. listen to the interview and tell me if you feel 'inspired'.