Mr. Crankypants is announcing his candidacy for presidency. No, silly, not the United States presidency, but the presidency of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA). Mr. Crankypants is running on the Complacency and Status Quo platform. Thus, you will vote for Mr. C. in 2009 if you believe that everything about Unitarian Universalism is just fine […]
Dan, my stupid alter ego, is on the train to General Assembly. Time for Mr. Crankypants to tell you what’s what…. Mr. Crankypants’s denomination, the Unitarian Universalist Association, is currently facing up to the fact that the denominational bylaws require us to review Article 2, the principles and purposes — that in fact we’re five […]
New to this blog? Below are links to some typical entries, to give you a taste of what you’ll find here. About this blog. Typical entries from 2009: A true story… about a secret. Research into the first African American Unitarian minister, which turned into a sermon, and then morphed into a chapter of a […]
‘Tis the season to hate Christmas, and your pal Mr. Crankypants is right out there in front of the crowd of Christmas-haters. The two different stories you can read in Matthew and Luke are just fine (though it does irk Mr. C. that Christmas-lovers continually get their angels mixed up with their magi, and their […]
Mr. Crankypants loooves Ms. Peacebang, who writes the blog Beauty Tips for Ministers — she is smart, snarky, funny, and calls people out for wearing those clunky hippy Birkenstock sandals in the pulpit. Anyone who can rid the world of even a few public displays of Birkenstocks gets Mr. Crankypants’ undying devotion. However, Mr. Crankypants […]
In a comment, children’s librarian Abs notes that parents “insist on calling the children’s librarian ‘Miss Abby’.” Abs lives in New England, so this form of address is not sanctioned by any cultural norms. Furthermore, Abs is married and calls herself “Abs,” making this completely nonsensical. What’s going on here? Why do people use such […]
Five years old on Monday, I was taking a lunch break in my office in the Unitarian Universalist Society of Geneva, Illinois, a stone’s throw away from the little stone church building built by Unitarians in 1843, just a few years after the Illinois frontier had opened up after the conclusion of the Blackhawk Wars. […]
Mr. Crankypants just came back from a stroll through downtown San Mateo, where, to his surprise, he saw a few smokers standing outside a bar. You hardly ever see smokers any more, and now that they are a strictly controlled species, Mr. Crankypants feels an odd sort of affection for them, especially when they are […]
Mr. Crankypants is watching as people write about their resolutions for the new year on their blogs, and on Facebook. Mr. Crankypants says: Hah! half these resolutions will be forgotten within a month, and another third will be forgotten by next Wednesday. And the remaining sixth? — forgotten by tomorrow morning. Despite that law of […]