Fwd: FW: Be careful: New robbery method (must read for ladies)

By the way, do you know how to check if an email sent to you is true? In the past few days I've received forwarded emails about a Muslim "Christmas" stamp, a robbery method that leaves women naked in bathroom stalls, and which leading cosmetics companies have lead in their lipsticks. There are many websites you can check, but I went here:

www.snopes.com

and typed key words into the "Search" field (like "robbery women bathroom"). I got a screen full of urban legends, found the one I was looking for and read the background and truthfulness of it. I was eventually able to confirm that all of these forwarded emails were crap. There really is a stamp commemorating a Muslim holiday, but it's not a "Christmas" stamp and was never marketed as such. There are no robbers leaving women naked in bathroom stalls with an "Out of Order" sign on the door. Et cetera.

Just letting you know about this very convenient website that can keep you from looking like an idiot to your online friends (at least it'll keep you from looking like an idiot for this reason).

Atheism Is The Way

Atheism Is The Way, originally uploaded by regrodriguez.

Raised Catholic, I’ve wandered through a few religions. After leaving the Catholic church and trying atheism, I spent a couple of years in a synagogue, also sang in a gospel choir, then settled into a New Age church for several years, then wandered back over to Catholicism, and have finally declared myself a born again atheist. I’ve tried to avoid atheist arrogance: most are so sure they’re right while the prayerful are deluded. I’ve maintained a more neutral position. Maybe I could call it “the milk rationalization.” I feel about religion the way I feel about milk: it’s no good for me, but I know it has benefits for others and I’d never suggest it should be outlawed.

Today I’m ready to consider a more controversial stance. Maybe religion is the problem. People say it’s wrong to blame Islam for 9/11, just as it would be wrong to blame Christianity for the fighting in Northern Ireland, but can’t we blame Christianity for the fighting in Northern Ireland? And more? I’m going to go ahead and say that Pope Benedict XVI’s quoting of a 14th-century Christian Byzantine emperor who called Islam “evil and inhuman” was right on target. Spreading faith by the sword is a twisted idea. The pope just failed to acknowledge that Christianity has a dark side, too: the Crusades, the Inquisition, forced conversions, etc. The problem isn’t that an entire religion has been denounced. The problem is that all the others weren’t as well.

Does anyone want to argue that throughout world history Christianity and Judaism haven’t been just as bloody as Islam is today? Religion is violent. Any marginalized people that has suffered at the hand of a dominant religion can testify to social and economic ostracism, forced conversion, property destruction and physical violence. Millions have been murdered in the service of divine will.

Maybe it’s time to stop making room for everyone’s beliefs. Maybe it’s time to stop teaching our children that we worship the true god, but be nice to those who have it wrong. Maybe it’s time to stop pretending that faith produces more good than harm. Okay, I’ll go first.

Religious beliefs are f@!&-ed up! Faith is killing us! We’re destroying each other in the name of peace and love. We’ve got to stop Believing before the world is reduced to a bombed-out shell of what it used to be.

How do religious beliefs benefit us, anyway? Maybe they establish morality and make us better people. Except that even people who don’t believe in god tend to be decent people. British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, asserts that empathy, charity and pity evolved in human beings the same way the opposable thumb did. Taking care of each other in community was critical to our survival as a species, and still is. This is why we’re content to agree on a system of law that supports not murdering and attacking each other. We’re all not good every second of the day because we learned that’s what our god wants. I feel certain we’d still have charities and volunteer activities even without religious belief systems in place.

If we could still be good without religious faith, how do I know we wouldn’t be just as violent without it? Well, I don’t, but how many violent attacks have been carried out by atheists on people who didn’t agree with us? I think different cultures have enough reasons to hate each other. Why not eliminate the god reason? How much truth can there be in religious belief systems that are all mutually incompatible, anyway? If they can’t all be “right,” I don’t see how any of them can be.

Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, asserts that the Q’uran "on almost every page ... prepares the ground for religious conflict" and says we’re not at war with terrorism, we are at war with Islam (see Sept. 11, 2006 Newsweek article "The New Naysayers"). But he also points out that much of the Bible calls for violence and punishment. American Christian fundamentalists have shown the same commitment to taking "the holy word" literally and the same fervor and violence we fear in Islamic jihadists. Since more rational Americans believe creationism does not belong in the classroom, why don’t they also believe that the Bible is an outdated and bloody tract that it’s time to supplant with science?

Maybe because science can never match religion when it comes to the most compelling reason religion exists: to give us comfort as we contemplate our place in the universe, especially after death. Science plods along century after century, but the answers it yields are slow to come. People need to feel all right about why things happen, about burying our dead, about the nature of the soul. Religion gives us much faster and more comforting answers than science probably ever will. If what you want is a reassuring story to fall asleep to, religion is the way. For those who need that, science will never measure up. So maybe religion takes some of the fear away, but I still think it causes a lot more fear than it’s worth.

A minority of American atheists want to get “In God We Trust” off of the dollar, but they’re just as guilty of imposing their (lack of) beliefs on others as are the people who put that stamp on the dollar. Most of us aren’t that political. I’m not offended by “Merry Christmas.” To take offense at that is to try to argue others out of their faith, which is hypocritical if I don’t want them trying to argue me into theirs. Atheists remain one of the least trusted groups of people in the U.S., but while Pope Benedict is trying to back out of his anti-Islam comment and blood is spilling all over the world in the name of justice and peace, atheists aren’t taking up arms against anyone.

McBlog

I just have to say another word about Fatty McBlog. There is so much prejudice about overweight people, especially those who fit the description "morbidly obese." I know I have some of that prejudice, too, however much I wish I could be free of it. But her post of Sunday the 17th really struck me. I know what it's like to be on an airplane and see a large person getting on and hope they don't sit next to me. I've felt the annoyance of the righteous. But her post presents the humiliation of being that large person. People like me tend to assume that really huge people are selfish and uncaring of those around them, but Fatty McBlog exposes how wrong those assumptions are.

McBlog describes how hard she works to not inconvenience her flightmates. Can you imagine being a very self-conscious person who hates being the center of attention and having to walk into a small space where every single person will be looking at you with dread and disgust? Can you imagine the ache of sitting for several hours with your thighs squeezed tight and your shoulder muscles hunched and contracted? Can you imagine having an ongoing problem that you are doing your absolute best to handle, struggling every day and using the full extent of your resources, but still having to face the humiliation of people staring at you as if you're just a selfish, pathetic person?

From reading Fatty McBlog, I have much more sympathy for people who struggle with obvious weight issues (as opposed to those of us who struggle with "unobvious" weight issues, like whining over losing four pounds). I think her (their) blog is amazing (two women actually write it).

Striving for Good Health

Reg in sunglasses, originally uploaded by regrodriguez.

I should accept that I am absolutely unable to see what my body looks like in the mirror. It's only when I look back on photos of myself that I'm able to truly see if I was thin, carrying a few extra pounds, carrying 10 or 15 extra pounds (which I have done), etc.

It's photos like this one, in which I weigh 122 pounds (taken two months ago), that make me doubt the experts who would have me believe I should weigh the same as on my high school graduation day. On that day in 1984, I weighed 105 pounds. I should try to drop another 17 pounds from the weight I have in this photo??

Living Will

Ever since I attended a workshop on living wills two weeks ago, I have been slowly working on mine (a living will is a document that lets you decide whether or not to be kept on artificial life support and appoints someone to make health care decisions on your behalf if you're unable to do so).

This is the perfect task for me. It feeds my love of the macabre, my inner death wish, my fixation on details and my desire to be in control of my life. I have gone beyond the standard appointing of a Health Care Agent and clarifying what treatment I would and wouldn't want. I've even attached extra pages to my living will that give:

1. A list of people to be informed if I'm ever close to death.
2. What I want done to my body (donate, donate, donate!)
3. What I'd want posted on my blog.
4. A list of people to be invited to my memorial service.
5. My preferred music and readings for my memorial service.
6. How to distribute my possesions.

A friend of mine who's a nurse says she sees incapacitated people every day being put through various life saving techniques that feel like torture to them and it's because their loved ones feel too guilty to pull the plug. Agonizing over these decisions, a family will say that what happens in God's will, letting the person who is near death linger indefinitely and painfully. Avoid this nightmare by making decisions about your care and putting it in writing.

Aging With Dignity is an organization that has created a document called Five Wishes. The wishes in this living will refer to the following:

1. The person I want to make health care decisions for me when I can't (my "Health Care Agent").
2. The kind of medical treatment I want or don't want.
3. How comfortable I want to be.
4. How I want people to treat me.
5. What I want my loved ones to know.

Each section contains statements such as "I wish to have people with me when possible. I want someone to be with me when it seems that death may come at any time." If you agree with the statement, you do nothing to it. If you don't agree with it, you cross it out and it won't be followed (I don't agree with this statement, so I crossed it out). It's an excellent document and makes creating your living will easy. You just change or add anything you want. After I finish tailoring it for my preferences, I'll sign it in the presence of two witnesses (who also sign it) and distribute copies of it to my doctor and the people involved (some states require that it be notarized, but not Illinois). Each year (maybe at the new year) I'll review it and revise it. It's not written in stone. I can update it at any time, specifying that the version with the latest revision date be the valid one.

To order copies of Five Wishes, go to the Aging With Dignity website or call 1-888-594-7437.

Anyone who has ever had to make life or death decisions for someone else, without any idea of what that person would want, understands why a living will is critical. If our culture weren't so squeamish about death, it would be so much easier to handle. BE BRAVE: MAKE A LIVING WILL.

High School Weight

I have heard from someone I haven't seen since we graduated from high school together (he found me through my blog). We've sent back and forth the usual information about work, career and family. Of course he's married and I'm not. Of course he has a respectable job where he's been for more than a year, which I'm not. But the most disturbing thing is that he says he wears the same clothing size he wore in high school. Of how many people is this true?

My friend Robert, the New York jazz pianist, also says he's about the same size he was when he graduated from high school. I'm further disturbed to know that high school graduation weight is the ideal maintained by medical research that shows that women who have gained a certain amount of weight (can't remember the details) since age 18 have a higher risk of breast cancer. Horrifyingly, we are not supposed to gain any weight after we graduate from high school.

It's horrifying for me because when I graduated from high school I was 5'3" and weighed 105 pounds. A hundred and five pounds. It takes all my exercising and dieting efforts to keep my weight close to 120 pounds, but really I should be aiming for 105 pounds? In order for me to do what it takes to get my weight down to 105, I'd have to lose muscle as well as fat. Maybe even bone. Jesus, I'm 40 years old and 5'2" and on a really good day I weigh between 120 and 123, but really I should be aiming for 105? Really?

But I guess the answer is yes because my friends have managed to keep their weights down to high school levels. Why? How? Is it a guy thing? What should I do?

(At the age of 18 I also wore a size 5, and I'm talking 1984 sizes, not the bloated sizes we indulge in today. These days I think I'd need surgery to fit into a 1984 size 5 pair of jeans.)

No longer (a carrier like) Typhoid Mary

When I was very depressed, but before my doctor and I figured out the right medication, I wrote a lot of songs and performed very regularly. There’s a myth of creativity that the best art comes out of the worst suffering and while I don’t think that’s always true, I think it often is. It’s like the way the best wines come from grapevines that survive the most difficult growing conditions, struggling through clay, limestone or - the most extreme example - the soil of the Châteauneuf-du-Pape district in France’s Rhône Valley which is just stones. An artist living a sucky life is like a grapevine trying to derive nourishment from a pile of stones.

Maybe it is or maybe it isn’t a fact of life that artists get good by-products from bad experiences, but unlike sad songwriters who write sad songs, in my misery and confusion I wrote a lot of upbeat songs with postive messages. I did this not because I believed those things, but because I wanted to believe them. I wrote the songs I needed to hear. Because I constantly worried about the future I wrote “Be Here Now.” Because I was always sizing guys up, hoping the next one would be Mr. Long-Term Relationship I wrote “Get Rid of 'Forever.'” Because I needed to lighten the hell up, I wrote a song based on Mark Twain’s quote, “Happy are we who can laugh at ourselves for we shall never cease to be amused.”

I wrote those songs in an attempt to make myself feel better, but what happened was that they started making others feel better. Strangers would see me onstage and assume I was the cheerful persona my lyrics conveyed. Friends would comment on the difference between my energetic performances and my daily gloom. I, too, thought the contrast was odd. Singing my songs did make me feel better while I was singing them, but my struggle with depression and loneliness never stopped.

Friends and strangers alike gave me the same feedback: my songs made them happy. I, with my depressed, gloomy life, was spreading cheer. I began calling myself a "carrier" of happiness, able to convey it to others without exhibiting any of the symptoms of having it myself. I asked myself - was that enough? Could I go through life unhappy, knowing I was at least making others happy?

The answer was NO. I wanted to be happy. If only I could attain a state of true contentment with myself and my life, I didn't care if I never wrote another note. I maintained that conviction for years.

And now it has come to pass. After months of not touching my electric bass, I finally put it away in its case today. Maybe my music career is over. Or maybe not since I could - one day, eventually - get married.

To hear some of my songs, go to www.myspace.com/reginarodriguez or www.purevolume.com/reginarodriguez

So this is happiness

I asked some co-workers, "Do you sing more when you're happy or when you're sad?"

They each said "When I'm happy."

I asked my boyfriend the same question. He said, "Happy."

I said, "That's what everyone has said so far. I sing more when I'm sad."

He said, "Why?"

"Because singing makes me feel better."

And then I froze as a realization struck me, "Oh my god."

He turned to look in the same direction, to see what had changed my expression so completely. "What?"

"That's why I haven't been singing for the past eight months: because I'm not sad!"

I finally have an answer to the question of why, after years of being devoted to writing songs and performing, I've had no interest in music since January: it's because I've been dating Bob since January. This is happiness. Of course, it also means that for me happiness includes all the stress, gloom, depression and freaking out that I've done at various points over the last eight months (about employment, unemployment, Bob and life in general). But at some basic level, the fundamental flavor of my life seems to have shifted from sad to happy because I'm happy with Bob.

So back in my depressive, desperate manhunt days, I guess I was correct in my assumption that everything would be all right if I only had a boyfriend. Which is a bit disturbing since, in my more lucid lonely moments, I figured that obssessive assumption had to be distorted and incorrect. At least, I hoped it was.

Nope! It turns out having a man does make it all better. So much for Spinster Power.