Stardate 200902.15 - "If you would just love me ..."

It's been an interesting weekend. First off, my wife Beverly got sent this rather nasty piece of forwarded e-mail (linked here from snopes.com). This e-mail claims to show pictures of a young boy in Iran, who is apparently having his arm ran over and crushed by a heavy truck, as punishment for stealing a loaf of bread. My wife found these photos upsetting, but decided to check snopes.com out to make sure the claim was accurate.

Turns out, it wasn't! The photos are actually of street performers, the boy was doing a stunt by allowing a truck to run over his arm. How these stunts work, is that these performers will hustle money from onlookers before the stunt happens. One important picture that was left out of the e-mail was one of the boy after the stunt, his arm apparently okay. Turns out this vicious e-mail has been making the rounds since 2005, falsely implying that this poor boy was being punished under Islamic Sharia law.

When my wife saw this, she was very upset, and quickly wrote a very eloquent response to this e-mail. I won't go into any details here, except that she pretty much said, we ALL need to be careful what we forward on. This is an inflammatory e-mail with gross misinformation, and the wrong person could see it, snap, and act out violently on an innocent group of people, in much the same way that happened during a shooting at my Unitarian Universalist church the past summer. She really wrote quite well, and I hope it did some good. There is too much misinformation out there, and all too often it leads to tragic results.

My UU church holds a sci-fi gathering every month where we watch science fiction movies and TV shows. The offering this past Saturday (on Valentine's Day no less) was "Wall:E", a quite charming and romantic sci-fi computer animation about a poor lonely little trash robot left on our planet to clean up the mess after humanity has abandoned the Earth, and who falls in love with a probe robot from space named Eve who has been sent back to see if the planet is habitable again. The movie was enjoyable, but it glitched a couple of times, due to some smudges and scratches on the disk, prompting some people in the audience to remark: "FOREIGN CONTAMINANT!" (a phrase uttered by a cleaning robot on board a space liner who constantly follows Wall:E around, cleaning up in his tracks). It was very enjoyable!

I would also like to add, that musically work is progressing on my contributions to the Ninthwave Records remix compilation, but in the meantime, a new project has landed in my lap! My music friend davidmahr from San Francisco (specifically, the famous gay Castro disctrict) is releasing a music single and video called "Relentless" to protest the passage of Proposition 8 (the same sex marriage ban) in California. He has asked me to provide a remix for release along with the single, and I am only too happy to oblige, as this is a cause I feel strongly about as well. I know that I am certainly not gay (my wife will be soooooo relieved to read this!) but I feel nevertheless what has been done to GLBT people in the passage of this amendment is wrong, and needs to be stood up to. If two people genuinely love each other, and want to live within the bonds of a marriage relationship, it's not anyone's right to judge them or to interfere with their rights. In any event, this should be fun, and I hope my efforts will help out!

Stardate 200902.10 - "Will there be anyone with patience waiting?"

Featured song: Patience Waiting by Haberdashery

Some of you may know about the tragic shooting which occurred at my Unitarian church here in Knoxville, Tennessee, this past July. Well, it seems that the person responsible for ending the lives of two wonderful people and wounding six others has apparently pleaded guilty to this crime, and is apparently showing no remorse for what he has done.

Even more disturbing is the letter the shooter wrote before he went on his rampage, which has been released by the Knoxville News-Sentinel newspaper today. You can read the entire text of the letter here, but be warned ... this is really disturbing material. Especially disturbing to me, apart from the racial and anti-gay diatribes, is the fact that he is actively encouraging more violent and disgusting acts like this one.

Part of me is torn on this one, on the one hand, is the News-Sentinel's publishing of this letter just giving his hatred a free pulpit? On the other hand, I think it is important that we know exactly his motives and why this happened. What is really disturbing is that this person writes with such coherence, he knew precisely what it was he wanted to accomplish. In a way I find this more disturbing than if he had just been some ordinary mentally disturbed "wacko".

My friends at TVUUC are resilient as ever though. I went to this past Sunday's service, which marks the 60th anniversary of the existence of our congregation. We dedicated the library and the fellowship hall to Linda Kraeger and Greg McKendry respectively, the two people who lost their lives in the tragedy. I think they would have been very proud.

As a sidenote, I found out that Linda Kraeger and Joe Barnhardt (one of the others injured in the shooting) have written a book about Roger Williams, the founder of the Baptist faith in America, entitled "Trust and Treachery". Some of you may know that my Dad is an old-school Baptist ... when I say old-school, he's still traditional Christian, but he believes as the old Baptists used to believe, in the seperation of church and state. I would add that Roger Williams also established the colony of Rhode Island as a haven for people of other faiths who were at the time being persecuted by the Puritans of Massachusetts. Anyway, my Dad is a big history buff, so I may check out this book for him to read, I know he will find it interesting, even more so considering the people who wrote this.

One last note: My friend Dave Richards at Ninthwave Records (a label which has released my own Synthetik FM album digitally) will soon be releasing a synthpop compilation which I put together to honor the spirit of my fellow church friends who were affected by this. The compilation is entitled "United Synthpop Artists 2: Everyone Welcome - A Tribute to Peace" and will feature 17 songs from the electronic synthpop underground by artists from around the world, many of whom are personal friends who felt the need to help out when they heard what happened at TVUUC. Proceeds from this album, which will be released digitally, will go to the UUA Knoxville Relief Fund.

What you are hearing now (if you clicked on the music link at the top) is the song "Patience Waiting" by my good friend Stephen Pearlman (aka Haberdashery), which features on this compilation. Stephen does some really beautiful and emotional music, which draws heavily on influences by Erasure and other 80's synthpop bands. His "Aletheia" album is so mesmerizing, I often use it at night when I am having trouble getting to sleep on nights where I have to get up early the next morning. Needless to say, his music is much recommended, and I will be posting a link at the bottom of this post.

That's all for now. Until next time ...

Link: Haberdashery website