And, in time, grow wings

I've been playing Spore.

It's a silly little game, awfully cute. One starts with a microorganism, collects bits of DNA and mutation potential, evolves into a beastie, then a sopont, then on into space and such.

And I'm playing it and occasionally wonder why I haven't heard of any religious-right screaming about an evolution game.

Is it because it's guided by the divine hand of the player? (I'm not sure that entirely helps, given the hubristic nature of setting oneself up as deity that I've seen at anti-cloning and GE religious objections, but maybe computer games aren't on that radar.)

Or is it the cute cartoon violence and happy fluffy dancing sex instead of Grand Theft Auto?

I'm just ... kind of amused, mostly.

A Whole Other Ballgame

My sports newsgroup has been taken over by political ranting. It's maddening, and not just because when I'm reading there I'd rather read about the pennant race than the Presidential race, damnit.

There's one thing about it that particularly bothers me, though. Not just the vicious factionalism and the screaming and the offtopicness. Not even just the name-games, though this is one of them (I hate name games in rhetoric), but...

There are a couple of folks who go on ranting about "the Obamasiah".

And I keep cringing at the anti-Christian subtext.

And I'm sure the people who are saying this would consider themselves good and proper Christians who are mocking the behaviour of others, but ...

... the others aren't the ones directly conflating a God and a Caesar.

... the others aren't the ones who are directly mocking a major religion's sacred concepts by using them as terms of derision.

... the others aren't treating politics and salvation as one and the same.


It makes me horribly uncomfortable. And I know it's tied into the attempt to dogwhistle the antichrist into the campaign, and I know I'm reacting at some level to that, but...

... mostly I'm just looking at the blatant impiety of it all, the horrible twisting of the process and symbols of religion, and wondering if I'm the crazy one for noticing it.

Scenes from a Life, Kink Edition

"This would probably make an even better photograph."

"Why's that?"

I have to think about it, my head pillowed on one of his thighs, my hand resting next to it. The other hand, with the dark rich red rope still wrapped around the wrist, curls around my waist.

He strokes my hair and shoulder while I think, and I arch my back a little against the length of his other thigh, shifting my legs a little to stop the knot from grinding into my ankle, an endeavour made more difficult by the thick band of hemp coiled around my knees.

It's an oddly domestic little picture, in my mind, viewed from the outside. One of his hands on top of my head, the other petting me, expanse of skin and several colours of rope, lounged in the great heap of pillows, this comfortable lazy-dreamy snuggle.

I finally say, "With my hands free, the choice of it all is much more obvious."

I close my eyes. It feels so good.

Flames of Incandescent Terror

"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword."

Love is radical.

It is time for us to acknowledge that our love is an act of war.

It seems distasteful to say. It feels wrong. Our love, our lives, our nurtured gardens and families, we say, these are not weapons. These are not acts of violence. To us, they are not.

Love is radical.

Love is radical, and I light a candle to shed red-glass light on Lilitu's owl-clawed feet, because today I am a child of the Mother of Demons. My love will shake the world, fan out like the peacock fan that spreads behind Her and glows in the firelight in honor of strife and compassion.

Love is radical, and its tears will extinguish Hell, but only if we burn with it. It is not enough to love quietly, mousily, in the safe spaces, because love is radically unsafe. Love will throw you through Hell and walk with you on the hike out. Love does not let you hide behind walls, it will slice you open, it will make you bleed.

Love is an act of blood. Love is an act of bone. It is your breath.

I am a child of the Mother of Demons. My love will rip up the foundations of the world if need be. It will tear apart your safe spaces. It will not let me be silent. My love is a claimed conspiracy to riot stashed in a jail cell awaiting judgement in Minnesota. My love does not wait for a permit or follow an established route. It is here now there then always not with a whimper but a bang and if your world is ending for it then remember that love will divide your families, set kith against kith and kin against kin, that you were warned and said you believed.

I am a child of the Mother of Demons. My love roars like the hollow wind. My love comes for the children. It does not listen to the doors. My love sees people married without checking their genitalia at the door, without evaluating the colour of their skin, without seeing if they have a hollowness that will be filled with a baby. My love sings and screams and goes to the ballot box dancing with the joy of holiness.

I am a child of the Mother of Demons. I walk a warrior path of love, and follow the song of my heart. I hold sunlight in my right hand and shadow and storm in my left, and am born of the serpent's dance with the falcon. I have the restored Eye and I offer it to you, that you may live.

I am a child of the Mother of Demons. I am one of the ones to fear, who goes stealthy through today in my cat-print pyjamas passing for one of you normal ones, the sane ones, the pretty children who went to school and then to the university and got put in boxes and came out all the same. I am the pervert among you, the polytheist, the deviant, the one whose world is wider than you can face, I stand at the open door in the desert from which there is no return.

There is no male or female, no free or slave, no line of race or creed or colour in love. Fear me, for I love you.