Category: General

There’s no freakin’ financial crisis.

How do I know? Well, a spokeswoman for the Treasury just admitted they pulled the numbers out of their asses.

“It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”

And thank Invisible Sky Man that Sen. McCain has bowed out and conceded. Now the election will just be a formality and we can get on with repairing the damage 8 years of conservative rule has done to our country.

…what? McCain only suspended his campaign so he wouldn’t have to show up at the debate? I thought he was battle-tested and ready to take command on Day One?

BWAH-HAHahahahaha!

This “crisis” can definitely wait for another couple of months, when we’ll have a president who can walk and chew gum at the same time.

“Make believe, not war”

Best part? It was camo.

A trillion dollars would be enough to give every man, woman and child in the United States $3278.

…of course, we’re not getting that money. We’re being told, ordered, really, to hand it over to Wall Street.

In exchange for… nothing at all. Not even the chance for oversight of what the Very Serious Bankers will do with it.

Have you called your Congresscritters yet?

(h/t Meteor Blades @ the Great Orange Satan).

Thanks to the Mercury Blogtown, I stand in awe at the Baskin Robbins Heath Milkshake.

2,310 calories per serving.

No. Just… No. Not ever. Uh-uh.

Just say “no” to handing over billions of dollars to the same screwed-up minds that got us into this financial mess.

Just say “no” to Bush’s Plan.

It’s that simple.

The financial institutions that lent the money, and assumed the risk for lending that money, need to pay the consequences of those actions. Not the taxpayers.

Or there’ll be hell to pay.

It’s that simple.

Monday morning, wake up and start calling your Congresscritters. Be polite but tell them this isn’t going to fly.

If they’re Democrats, remind them that this is the same script that lied our men and women into dying in Iraq for no reason.

If they’re Republicans… well, it might be a wasted call, but maybe you could remind them that at one time, “conservative” meant “fiscal responsibility”, and that letting bad actors off the hook isn’t exactly responsible. I don’t know if that’ll work. I don’t really know what to say to get Republicans to act in voters and taxpayers interests, to be honest, considering that the rank and file are OK with their leaders lying.

At any rate, more Americans are progressive or liberal, so we’ve got the numbers. Let’s light up the switch boards!

Good thing most of us have cell phone plans with free national long distance. Let’s make the telcos wish they’d never offered us that option!

Charlie Kaufman movies freak me out. I blogged several times about “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” because… well, because of several reasons, including a woman I wanted to forget and remember, just like Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) in the film.

Finally getting her to watch it with me (my fifth viewing, her first, she claimed) and getting her reaction felt like a Kaufman-scripted moment. She just looked at me with a sneer in her voice and said, “That’s it? But… but it’s so obvious.” And that was that.

So watching the trailer for the directorial debut of Kaufman, entitled “Synedoche, New York”… gives me the same eerie/excited feeling.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDuumyOivLM&hl=en&fs=1]

Can’t wait to see this one.

And in case you’re wondering, a synedoche is a figure of speech in which a part of something stands for the whole thing, like, say, the cast in a play standing in for the entire human race. Uh-huh.

Update: I fixed the links to my previous posts about “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”. Thanks to Lisa!

I spent the late night and early morning being mad at my friends for not being the kind of friend I’d like them to be.

When I suggest, through indirect language and hints that probably only I can understand, how they can help me, they don’t hear me.

It’s not their fault, though, because the way I ask isn’t clear. And of course, what I’m asking for has to pass through their filters and their own needs and worries.

So I dug down deeper to figure out how I can ask for what I want more clearly. I diagnosed my need in more specific terms. If I could see my lack, I could better remedy it, right?

And I did. I do. Suddenly.

My anger at my friends disappeared, parted like a fog, and I came face to face with the hole in my soul I’ve been trying to fill.

Everyone has parents, of course, in the physical, biological sense. But since those parents are living breathing human beings, complete with their own flaws, lacks, needs, strengths, perceptions… all of that, may not match up with what our own experiences and perceptions tell us we want or need.

Our physical senses are more attuned to detect change rather than continuity. We see surfaces, hear when pitch or tone rises or falls, become used to certain scents and only pay attention when a new scent is introduced. We see the gap between what is and what could be.

The gap between all that our parents provide us, and the things we think we need, create our hole. And then we can spend a lifetime trying to fill it up.

My parents offered me all that they had, all that they felt duty-bound to give. And true to human nature, I could only react to the gap, rather than be thankful for what was given.

Support. A hand to hold to lead me towards the better path. Guidance given in advance, rather than a critique after the fact. Effort expended in creating a safe environment for me to try, and comfort for when I tried and failed. Instead of projecting expectations on me, encouraging me to set my own goals and helping me to realize when I’ve achieved them – and celebrating with me when I did reach them.

I ache for these things from my friends because, I believe, my parents did not provide them to me. I want to be clear that I do not think these things were withheld from me on purpose or out of malice! Not in the lease. They acted in the way they thought best. And yet I feel the lack.

Can I fill this need myself? I’ve been unconsciously trying for my entire life and have not succeeded. Now that I’m aware, is it more possible? I don’t know.

For now, I will simply acknowledge the hole and see it as part of my story and my experience. I can operate without this support I think I need; indeed, I have developed habits to help me get around an absence of coaching. I’m successful at avoiding this barrier. My habits have created the safe space I once painfully desired. I live alone. I arrange my home so that everything has a place. I automate my bills and finances. I frequent places where I am known, I order the same kinds of food when I am there. I exercise by running pre-determined paths, and I set out on those runs like clockwork. When I interact with people I say the same things, talk about the same safe topics, and rarely venture beyond those boundaries.

Rather than be frustrated at these habits, as evidence of me missing out, I should embrace them. They are defenses, carefully cultivated over the years, that give me what I feel I need. In those actions, in that world I’ve created, I am safe. I rarely need guidance because I am rarely confronted with a situation for which I have no pre-planned reaction. Even when I take off for parts unknown, the options are few. Continue driving or find a place of rest. Look around. Observe, reflect – but don’t interact. Dance when I hear music, but don’t join in.

I like songs I know the words to. When I don’t recognize the song, I move on.

And I tell my friends about the things I do, and secretly hope that they would want to do them next time, too. But I feel sad when they seem content to simply hear about the last time. They have their own plans and needs, so they’re unable to join me, y’know, next time.

I have to go out there… alone? Again? Fuck.

I hate doing it alone.

…but I’ve been doing it alone for so long, I’m good at it.

In a snarky and light-hearted discussion about beliefs over on Damn Portlanders, a LiveJournal community I frequent, I and others eventually got down to the subtle differences between an agnostic and an atheist. My own personal take on it appeared to oppose dave256’s views; the definition I use is that atheist belief is provisional and contingent on the evidence, and an agnostic’s belief, coming from the assumption that the existence of God or gods isn’t necessarily something we can ever know, is not really provable or disprovable.

Of course, I’d say that because I consider myself an atheist, and I’m giving myself the rational position. Heh.

dave256, on the other hand, gives the same basic definition of “agnostic” that I would give – then appends the idea that an agnostic would be the one most likely to change their mind if presented with evidence of a God or gods, rather than an atheist, which gave me food for thought.

Sure, atheists in general seem more sure of themselves on the topic, but even among atheists there are distinctions that not many are aware of. There’s both “strong” and “weak” atheism, where a weak atheist takes the position of being against the specific gods of the major world religions – the Christian God, Jesus-as-God, Yahweh, Allah, the many Hindu gods, the Norse or Greek or Egyptian gods, and so on – and a strong atheist takes the position that dave256 is suggesting, that there are, flatly, no gods at all.

More and more, I find myself pushed by the evidence (always follow the evidence is my creed and motto) to simply reject the major gods of the world’s existing religions. Might there be a god yet uncovered by human philosophy? Sure. Show me the evidence, though, so I can evaluate your claim. But the vast flavors of Christianity, the various sects of Judaism, the factions of Islam, the myriad followers of Vishnu et. al. – those all make specific claims, and those claims can be evaluated with the imperfect-but-best-we’ve-got tools of logic, the scientific method, rational thought, and always always always direct comparison to the world we actually see around us.

And those gods have always failed tests by those tools.

So, in that Damned Portlanders discussion, when existence_ltd mentioned the word “adeist”, it caught my attention:

It strikes me that in the context of this conversation — in the context that we commonly use the word “atheist” — that it might be more appropriate to use the word “adeist.” Is that a word? Should be.

I Googled the word and found that someone had apparently added “adeist” to Urban Dictionary in October 2007, so they had beaten existence_ltd to the claim of invention, but the idea itself is useful and it’s one I shall use for myself in the future as a more specific descriptor of my own beliefs.

And whether or not others see it my way or not, I can say for myself that I’m open to new evidence and willing to admit I’m wrong if someone shows me God in a Box ™.

Looks like the union office staff for the Oregon Education Association (which is itself a union for teachers and educators in Oregon) have, um, gone on strike.

For shame, OEA. For shame.

Since installing the 2.1 update for iPhone, my battery life kinda rocks. I get nervous when the little battery indicator gets low, but the damn thing just keeps on going. If I saw an indicator at 1/3 or less, I was within an hour of having it shut down entirely, previously. Now, it seems to just keep working.

I don’t know why I’m talking about this now.