One Nation Arguing

It would seem that the Federal Government didn't shut down, and they have another week to beat out the details of the cuts of 38 Billion dollars in cuts to the budget. Yay... erm, sortah.

I have been doing a lot of reading of the news lately trying to make heads or tails of what the problem is.   And it seems to come down to this.  Tea Partiers who don't believe in such silly things as Birth Control, Women's right to get to or have used birth control, and thing that climate change is a hoax, and that coal burning doesn't cause athsma, and that to regulate the mining or polluting industries is just wrong-no reason given... They don't want any oversight of the federal governmenrt on those things, and  for that matter they dont want to educate children or anyone with unbiased NPR/PBS broadcasting.  No programs about how they or their constintuents are destroying our environment for big money and sticking to more obscure bible quotations.

I undestand that they want to bring down the USA's debt, but at the same time as these massive cuts they are trying to put through, they want to give the armed services more money.... er.  They have  enough already.

So take away women's biological rights...
No more free broadcasting on NPR/PBS..
No longer teaching evolution in school, no just bibical version... which has no scientific fact base it on...
Coal and just about any other polluter can go right on ahead spewing mercury into the air...
No health care coverage for anyone with pre existing conditions... Possibly caused by pollutants...
Oh and no more FDA, those big drug companies really just want to help everyone, they wouldn't harm us... Which would mean no oversight on the food supply... bugs in meat? no problem just extra protein.... Antibiotic eating bacteria in our over horomoned milk... ummmm Yummy.

Fascist country?
It is nearing the time to move.  I'm thinking Canada looks pretty damn good.

Happy Groundhog Day

Wake up, crawl out of bed... something feels off.
Get up make tea, have I done this before exactly the same way?
Honey heads to work, I sit in front of the computer and go through the motions of waking up.
Check email... Eddie Bauer sale... unh hun. ok.
Check school email... another reminder that we have a quiz today.
Check facebook. Nothing new there.
Check my voicemail, nope nothing.

But what is this eerie feeling... is a window open?

Oh yeah, Groundhog day.  Happy Imbolc, folks.

Deja vu, every day motions repeating only difference is us defining days differently.  What really is the diference between a Tuesday or a Wednesday?  Nothing, just the name, whatever is different is only what we have inferred it to be.
It is all about the mindset.

Tomorrow is Thursday. Another day, I define it as a certain thing because there is so many things that I have planned to do, and so many things that I will have to do... But those are just my scrambleing thoughts taking place on the ever going now...

There is no moon today. Is this why I feel off kilter?

Odd thoughts...

So This is the Apocalypse is it?

I have a wide and varied amount of freinds, with wide and varied  types of beliefs.
There are:

Pagans
Wiccans
Agnostics
Coptic Christians
Orthodox Christians
Pentacostal
Born Again Christians
Methodists
Baptists
Catholics
Muslims
Jewish
Sikh
Atheists...
A fellow who believes God is a duck, and a guy who really does believe in the Potato Church.

I dont follow all of thier religions, and for the most part they have stopped trying to convert me- witness, or whatever they call it.

But one friend/ I suppose we'll go with acquaintance now/ I beleive has gone off the deep end.
I keep getting emails  with titles: "The End is Nigh! Repent Ye Sinners!" and "The World is ending on May 12th," or my personal favorite when it comes to odd, "The Apocalypse is upon you!"

Upon me? just me? really? hm.

Let get this straight, I don't beleive in any God prompting apocalypse upon us.  The only apocalypse likley to occur most likely will be human caused. Like, when we destroy our environment... which currently we are doing a really great job of doing.  And in destroying it, we have limited resources for an over bearing human population, and people start starving to death.  Oh wait that has already started in some parts of Africa.... hm.  Then there wont be enough fresh drinking water, again due to our culpability in poisoning most of it with chemicals derived from manufacturing cell phone components and ipods.  Oh and then maybe we will have a flood, caused by global warming melting the icesheets... The salinity of the oceans will drop and then there will be more massive fish die offs.  And the temperature of said water will change, and the bacteria living there will either over populate, or die off, and then  we'll have another food shortage. And since  nothing about our planet is "stable" there will be earthquakes, because therer are massive plates trying to crash over and around other plates.  And if we are really lucky the giant super volcano under Yellowstone wont erupt in the middle of all of this, and 2/3 of The United States wont suddenly be inhospitable... Not to mention, the massive gas and ash and gas cloud that would come with such an explosion, would block out the sun, and we might just get a nice little ice age.  Wont that be nice?  You like snow right?  For more than just 4 motnths out of the year?


Other than the volcano, or the earthquake... the above examples are what happens when PEOPLE poison their environment, and pay no attention to the balance of nature.  Apocalypse sure, but no God is to blame for it.  Just us.  Why don't you think on that some, eh?

Lets Hear it For the Highly Misinformed, Yet, Know-It-Alls.

 I might be crazy-there I said it, agree or disagree as you see fit- I am taking two western civ classes every monday and wednesday, and in the wrong order.  So civ 2 followed by civ 1.
It really is only the very begining of the semester so we arent that deep into the histories yet.  But today we  were being talked to about the Sumerians, and  Hammurabi's code of law.
And the idiot next to me felt the need to inform the entire class that The Sumerians were really aliens from another world, that the gods-i.e. aliens- bred with this sort of sub human thing-neanderthal- and what you got were humans, exc.ept for Gilgamesh he was 75% alien and that was why he became king.
By the way I have sat through this class before at USM, taking history classes is not new to me.  And as always dealing with complete idiots isn't new either.
But this guy just could not shut up.
He went on to say that the whole story of gilgamesh is later retranslated with new characters to become the bible, and that The Christian god is really Gilgamesh, reincarnated by the aliens...
That went over really well with all of the christians in the room.
And the whole time the instructor is standing up at the front of the class, mouth hanging open, perplexed look on his face...
It reminded me all of this fellow here: http://www.davidicke.com/

If you do any surfing on the web sooner or later you run into this stuff.
But I didn't think anyone took it seriously.

Breakfast is Rough

 It is morning, the normal routine kicks in, and I up... into the bathroom then the kitchen.  Make the green tea, and try to make the organic instant oatmeal.  Oatmeal boiling in microwave- look at  its container. Oh crap it isn't instant, this is not going to work, not at least, without one hell of a mess in the microwave.
-Toss it-
Cheerios, yum... ok.  Get it out.  Pour a bowl, get the soymilk, take the cap off- and instantly wish I hadn't.  Soy milk is on the prowl... toss down drain... and pour cheerios back into the box.

grrrr.
-open fridge-
grab and apple, and pull out the peanut butter.  Open the peanut butter-never can tell, want to make sure it hasn't morphed into something else.  It is good.
Wash apple.
Start cutting... What is  this?!  Brown gooey thing in my apple??  It is a worm!  Egh Yuck!
-Toss Apple-

I could have toast... with peanut butter... hmmmm ok.
Pull down bread off top of fridge, take out of bag... has mold on it... goes back in bag, and bag goes in trash....

-grumble-

There are bagels... but I am not hungry anymore.

Insulate Me!

 It is 26 degrees out this morning.
And while that isn't really cold-by New England Standards- for here the world may as well be covered in a glacier.  It isn't that bad out really, you just dress for the weather and you are fine.  However the Californians who have moved here are likely to get frost bitten due to the incessant need to walk around severly under dressed (short-shorts, t shirts, wafer thin jackets, flip-flops).  Seriously, it is nearly January.  Take a clue from the fact that your fingers are apt to fall off in a mo, and put some more clothes on.

Inside, we should be fine, turn on the heat for a little while, wear maybe an extra layer or a sweater, warm socks and everything ought to be fine.

I wander over to the window to peer out at the weather... See what I am up against for my long trudge to work (across the street).
'Wow, it is really cold over by the window.'  I check the other windows...  They are all freezing.  Cold windows no surprise, So I put a towel at the base of the truely coldest.  And call up maitenance.
The issue it seems, is that there have developed cracks around the frames of all of my windows.  This isn't all that surprising, they had to build this place to withstand earthquakes, the frame to the window more or less "floats" in it's mount in the wall.  So the up side is the windows wont buckle and break in an earthquake.  The downside is that the window's fram rattles all the time, and air can easily pass through.

Now, two months ago I called to have the windows re-caulked, and they came and looked at them and did nothing.  As though the thought of doing it is the same as actually doing it...
Now it is the end of December and it is cold.  And I call again, and  they have recaullked the windows.  Yay! it only took two months.   But it is 26 out.  Which means the caulk isn't so much as drying, as very slowly kind of dripping out of the tops of the frames.  It might just be too cold for the caulk to dry.

I wanted to complain about the cold air coming in through the unused outlets too, but that can be band-aided over with some outlet covers.  And since the caulking is really another bandaid, I really don't hink there is much else that can be done.
Or that they would be willing to do.

They don't insulate things out here well.  Steel walls and  gypsum walls on a whole do not hold in heat well.  Quick to build I suppose, and survives earthquakes well, but keeping the people warm in their homes, I think not.

Call Me The Grinch

Happy some sort of holiday greeting of your choosing, day.

I am not a happy christmas goer...

Here are my main issues.

Christ-whoever he was, was not born on December 25th.  But some time in September.  The chances that Joseph and Mary didn't bugger off, but spent 3 and 1/2 month hanging out in a stable waiting for the wise men to appear, seems unlikely.  Mary's supposed virgin birth is extremely unlikely, and that her husband would stay with her after her carrying another man/god/whatever's kid, and not get some bouncing in on his own, I mean come on now?!

The story of Jesus's birth and life parallels that of Horus (egyptian  god), the plot is the same  some details differ.  Sort of like if you tell the same story for years at the fireside, the telling changes as it goes from dad's version to his son's to his nephew's and so on.

The Gospels?  really?  None of these gospels were written in the time of The Christ.  All at least 100 years after the fact, and that isn't within one lifetime... that is several, people didn't live as long then... 45 was old...  women had kids by the time they were 13... so don't tell me at was Christ's word copied word for word by the disciples.

What a good time to celebrate Christ's birth... December 25th, the Roman Sun festival... this holiday wasn't a holiday untill after Rome and its citizens became Christian... tomake the switch over easier, they could keep their old holidays and celebrate however they wanted, just the words were different and the names...

This wasn't the only Pagna holiday taken over: Eostre  now Easter.  Beltane now May day. Samhain now All Siants Day.

This Christ guy, yeah he may have existed or not, he may have done some good things for his time, or he could be completly made up, but celebrating him on this day makes no sense to me.


And the shopping and craziness aka Mall idiocy... can take a tanker as far as I am concerned.