In e-mail from my love first thing this morning:
Along with the other errands I have to run today, I need to pick up a mousetrap. The little fellow is running up and down the east wall near the parking lot. I suspect he has found a food source in the kitchen area and is running food to the garage somehow.
He dies today and it will be a good death.
I hate it when roommates steal my food.
Still, I joined up. I’m interested to see if they get viable candidate nominations or crazy people. Either way it will be more interesting than watching the Dems and Repubs go at it next November. Other than their views on Iraq, they’re pretty much interchangeable automatons.
Well, other than Ron Paul.
But he’s a closet Libertarian.
Now, if only I could figure out a way not to get sued doing it.
It has come to my attention that I am going to have to give up coffee. My body has made it abundantly clear it will no longer tolerate it in any quantity. Not even a single espresso shot.
About a month ago it came to my attention I can no longer metabolize sweet liquor and soda, so my favorite cocktail - rum and coke - is also on the outs.
I feel betrayed by my own body. Though I suppose it could be worse. If I develop an adverse reaction to gin and tonic …
Best not to think about it.
David Lynch’s Tips for a Great Prom
Not to mention:
A Letter to Optimus Prime from His GEICO Insurance Agent
When the creative juices aren’t flowing for me, at least there are places online to slake my thirst.
Wait, did I just say “slake?” Maybe I’m not as dried up as I thought …
Let’s see what happens when the Strongbow hits.
There’s too much in there, but it’s not leaking out as it should. That is, it’s not making it here, on the blahg. Topics occur to me then they disappear as quickly as they arrived. So here’s the mundane update:
We’ve decided to spend the weekends we’re in town finding ourselves a house, so we went to about a dozen open houses this past weekend. I know, the crash is coming, don’t buy now, yadda yadda yadda. Hogwash. The best time to buy is in the midst of a crash, when it’s truly a buyer’s market and people are in (or close to) foreclosure or otherwise lowering their expectations (read: asking prices).
Besides it’s easier to get a loan now than to try after the lenders have been burned by thousands of other customers. They tend to frown on the self-employed as it is, no sense in giving them more reason to turn us down.
For my friends and family in more expensive markets: The 3,200 square foot house in a great neighborhood, 6 bedrooms, 4 baths, and a corner lot? $305K. Just thought you’d like to know. You can afford to live here, if you can learn to drive in the snow. C’mon, it’s not that hard.
Meanwhile, I sent my love off to Hotlanta this morning for the annual business glad-handing convention. I’ve gone with him in the past - usually when it was to someplace fun with lots of distractions, like Las Vegas - but we decided this year it wasn’t cost-effective. That and two of my favorite reasons for visiting Atlanta have moved to Orlando. (Note to self: Book an Orlando trip this winter.)
I am headed out to see family this Thursday in L.A. I’m sure my niece, now 2-1/2, is a small giantess compared to the last time I saw her. I wish I could see her more than twice a year, but that’s the way life works out.
It has also been summarily decided I need to experience the State Fair of Texas. After having worked the Chuck’s Nuts booth at the New Mexico State Fair for 8 years straight, I’m pretty much over the cowboys and carnies thing. But I am promised the Texas fair is a whole other ball game.
Hot sun, fried food, giant butter sculptures, and me. Can you picture it?
Me neither.
At least I’ll be able to laugh at the big hair.
I didn’t like the ad that MoveOn.org took out in the New York Times recently. You know, the one that called General Petraeus “General Betray-Us.”
First, name-calling is immature. Second, I don’t think the good General was doing anything more than his job. Third, to make a decision about someone’s testimony to Congress before it has even happened is injust and arrogant. Finally - and this may be the hardest part for some to accept - I believe and agree with the General’s overall statement about Iraq: That the surge is working, but it’s too little, too late.
Today, I heard that the Senate took time out of their busy, busy day to condemn ” … personal attacks on the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all members of the United States Armed Forces.” (proof here)
WTF? Didn’t we all vote to bring in a Democratic Congress so shit would get done there in DC?
I have no patience for the spineless mentality of “We don’t have the votes to override a veto!” WAAAAAH. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. At least then you’d have the support of people like me who appreciate the attempt. You’d also win over folks who see you as weak because you refuse to take on the President and the Republicans directly.
Did anyone else notice that the attempt to restore habeas corpus to those being detained by our government FAILED this week? (proof here)
Yet our Congress found time to go after political organizations - and each of us - who express our First Amendment rights in a public forum. Wonderful! Marvelous! How proud the Senate makes me as an American!
Gutless wonders all!
The text of the current petition by MoveOn.org is:
I will not be quiet, I will fight back. I will keep speaking out until Congress forces an exit plan for this awful war.
I did not sign on or give a donation when they readied the Petraeus ad, but I am about to sign this one. “I do not agree with what you say, but I will fight to the death your right to say it.”
And if Congress can’t spontaneously sprout some huevos, at least the rest of us can.
Don’t make me run for office, you bastards.
I watched it three times in a row to catch it all.
Wasn’t that an 80s band?
Wasn’t that also the nickname for baseball great Carl Yastrzemski?
Now, it’s a brand of birth control, too!
Why, yes! Why not call it Yaz as well?!
Marketing is stealing my memories from me.
It’s been at least 15 years since I last met a true Xtian. Her name was Betty and she was an old-school Baptist believer, but - like Jesus himself - she let her life be a shining example.
In fact, it took me nearly a year to find out that she was a Xtian at all, let alone a god-fearing, bible-believing, twice-a-week go-to-meeting Baptist. Not that she hid it, mind you; we’d go to happy hour and she was delighted to be the designated driver. We’d swear like sailors around her and she paid us no mind. I even went to an adult bookstore with her once (!).
In short, she never once made me - or the rest of the heathens around her - feel like scum. She believed religion was personal and said so. If we ever wanted to know more about hers, we were welcome to ask, but she wasn’t going to browbeat anyone for their personal convictions, either.
Late last year, on This American Life, I caught a story about Rev. Carlton Pearson. He is an evangelical preacher in Tulsa, Oklahoma who had a revelation a few years ago: There is no such thing as hell.
Mind you, he didn’t come to this belief suddenly. Rather, he studied the Bible (in the original Greek!) and read and pondered and asked questions and read more and pondered more. His journey to this conclusion began with thoroughly educating himself about his own beliefs. Those who never ask questions never learn more than they want to know, right?
His most controversial belief: That even Hitler could be in heaven, because that is the price that was paid on the cross if you accept Jesus into your life. Only God can judge who gets in and who does not, but more than that, who knows what was in Hitler’s heart when he died?
Answer: No one but God.
For my part, it’s arrogant to think otherwise. To believe you know more than the almighty, omnipotent, omniscient, all-powerful God? Or that he/she needs YOUR help to make decisions about who gets punishment and who doesn’t? Pure and utter bullshit. Also one of the many reasons I can’t abide the church (or dogmatic religions in general).
As you can imagine, Rev. Pearson was immediately ostracized from the rest of the Xtian church, dropped by the evangelicals (which is amusing, considering Ted Haggard is the one who dropped him from that group), defrocked by his church, officially recognized and labeled a heretic, and lost the 6,000 person church he built.
I decided then I needed to meet this man in person. People who stand up for their convictions, no matter how unpopular or controversial, are worth getting to know.
Flash to last night, when we watched the profile of Rev. Pearson on MSNBC (a Dateline story rerun), and I have to say: He is quite possibly the only other true Christian I can recall seeing in my lifetime.
Some of Rev. Pearson’s quotes, for your pleasure:
It is almost as if we Christians have been and still are being raised in a home where a mean, intolerant, and abusive father terrorizes the children, threatening them with swift and painful punishment for any and every mistake made during the day, while he is away at work. We run to Jesus in the same manner children living in households with abusive and incorrigible fathers, run to their mothers for protection from him. These abusive and “impossible-to-please” fathers literally terrorize both the children and the mother, producing what psychologists call “dysfunctional homes,” (no fun in the unction).
See, if you fear God the way we’re taught to fear Him, you’ll serve Him, you’ll believe in Him, you’ll worship Him — but you probably will never really love Him.
You think Hitler’s more powerful than the blood of Jesus? I mean, I got a hell to put a lot of people in. I’d sent Hitler and every slave trader straight to hell and a few deacons in my church if you wanna know the truth — I’d send people to hell, but I’m not God. He’s the atoning sacrifice for our sins and not ours only, but the sins of the whole world. (emphasis added)
“The world is already saved, they just don’t know it!” … According to my subsequent studies of Scriptures to verify this statement as a true and a most powerful and inspiring revelation, I had to face the fact that, not only does the world not know it, but, most of the Evangelical church doesn’t believe it, and therein lies the greatest deception the enemy has ever convinced the world of, second only to his success at deceiving Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
… the Christian Evangelical church has become more indicting than inviting and should be less attacking and do more attracting of those spiritually unresolved.
Between Rev. Pearson and former President Jimmy Carter - see the latter’s book, Our Endangered Values, in which the old-school Southern Baptist argues for the separation of church and state - there may be hope for Xtianity yet.
The difference between a prophet and a heretic is often as simple as time.