Saturday, May 19, 2012 at 6:45PM | by Otter 
Yeah, everything I need is in that red sack. Except books. And boots. And a guitar. And books.
Tuesday is mom’s birthday.
This year has been pretty unstintingly dreadful.
Saturday, May 5, 2012 at 1:12PM | by Otter
Updated on Sunday, May 6, 2012 at 7:45AM by
Otter
Responses to a question about relationship addiction lead to a decline in posts on this topic.
EXCERPT:
Diagnosing relationships as addictive takes a track-record. It has to do with patterns built up over time, not just the ones that affect the current relationship.
In my case, the patterns were pretty clear: a history of leaving people hurt, bewildered, and confused. A record of rapid attachments that moved very quickly from attraction to “relationship” status; hope of rescuing or being rescued from dead-end life-circumstances; trouble keeping boundaries between intimate, quality friendship and “relationship” without resorting to extremes like withdrawing from people; tendency to idealize relationships right from the start of the attraction. Textbook stuff.
With this latest break-up (of a relationship in which I had invested considerably more of my emotional hopes than I ever had before), I finally crossed the line from addictive / compulsive relationships into junkie, and I’m not really exaggerating."Love" Addiction, Riparian Church Thursday, May 3, 2012 at 6:22AM | by Otter 
Recent Google searches that brought people here (and I exclude the numerous searches for Christian polyamory that remain such a feature of life at RipChurch)…
Friday, April 20, 2012 at 5:13PM | by Otter Riparian Church has been offline. I wanted to explain why.
Excerpt: “I had made a rookie mistake: I had believed that good love fixes what’s wrong with us. It doesn’t, because love (like all other forms of government, ritual, and relationship) is only as good as the people who do it.
[… .]
“It’s easy to make people fall in love with you and to imagine that you’re really alright. Hey, it eases the ache: falling-in-love says, ‘You are worthy. You’re better than worthy. You’re beautiful.’ That’s been my modus operandi in the past: to heal the ache of who I am by feeling better rather than being better, to ignore the patterns in my life by sedating the ache with fulfilled desires and the good opinion of some new love. That leaves the patterns unexamined, and when you see patterns emerging, it’s best to stop blaming somebody else, best to pause before drawing in another victim, best to look hard in the mirror.”
"Love" Addiction, Eros, Love, Mental Illness, Religion, Riparian Church, Spirituality in Relationships, Spirituality, Suffering Tuesday, April 17, 2012 at 8:12PM | by Otter My birthday. Longtime reader sends me this list, along with a note to the effect that people born on this day are typically weird, and destined for careers in football or baseball, and very often lovers of words.
Daffy Duck: Born on this day in 1937. Kindred spirit. Money quote: “I’m not like other people. Pain hurts me.”
1387: Chaucer told the Canterbury Tales for the first time at court of Richard II.
1869: 1st pro baseball game
1951: Yankee Mickey Mantle’s first game. He went 1 for 4
1983: Nolan Ryan strikes out 3500th batter
1920: the American Professional Football Association forms (NFL) *how cool is that little bit o’ trivia?*
1933: first NFL game: Bears-23 Giants-21
1964: Ford introduces the Mustang ($2368)
1986: Larry McMurtry wins Pulitzer Prize for “Lonesome Dove”. *Laughed at this one…so not your style, but one of my Top Ten*
Sunday, April 1, 2012 at 4:40AM | by Otter Owing to some clutter lately in the blogs, I’ve elected to move all of my own poetry to the attic, where it can rage and set things on fire without disturbing the tranquility of RipChurch’s mission, whatever the hell that is. In the navigation bar under the banner, there’s a link to my poetry if you’re one of the thousands of screaming teenaged girls who comes here to read that. If you’re looking for a poem that was formerly in this blog, it will have moved there.
You should be able to follow the poetry pages on Networked Blogs as well, if you have nothing better to do than Facebook.
The downside is that the poetry’s tags are no longer contained in the main blog’s tags. Thus, if you’re interested in Autism, your tag-click will no longer yield up my poetry on that topic. Unfortunately my host, Squarespace, does not yet make it possible to search tags across separate blogs.
But it seems to me preferrable not to let poetry, which is not appealing to everybody, swamp RipChurch’s main goals. Naturally, I except the Haiku Movie Reviews: there are limits beyond which I will not go.
Which is to provide a Google portal for searches for M.C. Hammer.
Monday, February 13, 2012 at 10:39AM | by Otter Top Google searches this week leading to Riparian Church:
The overwhelming top search was “Polyamory,” including four searches for “Christian Polyamory” and one for “polyamorous Christian fellowship.”
Here are the honorable mentions and the pages they led to:
Sunday, September 18, 2011 at 9:36AM | by Otter Favorite Google search that sent some poor person to RipChurch: "New Orleans +Adult Acts."
I'm installing a dance-pole on this blog next week.
Saturday, July 30, 2011 at 9:44PM | by Otter 
Otter in 1984, playing for a singer and making some Deutschmarks near HamburgWhen I was a kid I would sometimes take my guitar out to the French Quarter in the afternoon after school, ride the streetcar out there and hang out on the streets or near Jackson Square. The regular musicians usually didn't like it if you set up and played... but back then you didn't have to be so rigorous about having your badges and permits. Sometimes you'd find a quiet spot and start playing, and people would just come by and say thanks.
Later when I was hitchhiking around the British Isles with my girlfriend, I'd kick open the guitar case and play in the Tube or in a train station for stray cash when things got tight.
I still feel like it's the best way to make money: you do what you really love. People say thank you with a handful of coins.
That's a lot like writing for the love of writing.
If it's worth it to you, chuck a dollar in the hat, or "Like" a post for Facebook, or tweet it to your friends.
Monday, December 20, 2010 at 8:45PM | by Otter But the devil (and the god) are in the details: it's one thing to object to something because "I cannot understand it" and quite another to object that "It makes no sense" or that "It is immoral." It isn't that I can't understand the stoning of girls who don't bleed on their wedding nights. I get it. I really do.
I just think it's totally immoral, and if God inspired those words, I want nothing to do with him.
