I am an exile....

 House Republicans Kick Off 2014 By Ignoring Everything the American People Want

 'Will repealing the law create even one job, contribute to GDP growth, or address the income inequality devastating the economy? Of course not, and Republicans admit the only reason for pushing the repeal effort is to “make overseas Americans far more sympathetic to Republicans and have an impact on fundraising”'

Where's the will of the people in this?

'Rape audit refers to requiring a rape victim who sought an abortion to prove to an Internal Revenue Service auditor that they were “legitimately raped” to claim a deduction under healthcare expense on their tax return.'
'However where women’s rights and healthcare is concerned, the Republican religious right will force, by legislation, the IRS to access, monitor, and audit women’s health and wellbeing. Will the “rape audit” bill create one job, boost GDP growth, or address income inequality decimating the economy? No,'

WTF?

The country that I grew up pledging allegiance too, the country I believe in, is gone.  It has been usurped and overthrown.  In its place sits a changeling, a Fascist empire, run by a psychotic, lunatic fringe seeking to control the world and enslave the majority of the population of the planet.
What I see around me, the avarice, ignorance, and apathy, the fear and division, is not the land of the free and the home of the brave.  This is more like the land of the feeb and the home of the slave.
If we are brave; why can't we tolerate people who don't look like us?  Why can't we respect people who hold different beliefs?  If we're so brave where's all the fear, anxiety, and hatred coming from?  If we're so brave why can't be comfortable with teeth that aren't gleaming white?
As for the free,,,,
Well I just paid to be able to drive my car on the public roads.  If I want to go fishing next summer I'll have to buy a license.  I have to watch where I walk, or I could possibly step on someone else's property.
This country has the highest incarceration rate in the world.
The police are gearing up for a war.... 
The United States of liberty, equality, and justice for all, has one foot in a grave and the other on a patch of oil.
What I see when I look around is the corruption and decay of the Roman Empire, not the reason and compassion of the Enlightenment.
People, the United States I pledged allegiance too was born in the free thinking of the Enlightenment, not the legions of Rome.
You want me to swear allegiance to a second rate empire?
I don't think so.
People so afraid of their neighbors that we feel the need of stand your ground laws?  People so stingy they don't want to chip in a little so their neighbor can go to the hospital after he's been shot by some rabid gun nut?  People so selfish that we'd rather pay for bigger and better bombs than help out after a catastrophe?  People so unaware and unobservant that they can't even see what's in front of their faces?  People so apathetic and oblivious that they can't even be bothered to help govern their country, when they have the opportunity?  People who think problem solving skills and a good education are elitist and suspect?
This is not my country.  These are not my people.
And these are not the citizens that the founding fathers crafted this country for.
And this is not the city on the hill.
This is a will-o-the-wisp that's gonna suck the human race right off the face of the planet.
Except for the better few who have all the resources.
I don't think anybody should pledge allegiance to that.
Stop buying, everything, the hype, the fear, the chemicals, the tooth whitener....
Just stop buying.
And start thinking about what you really want to spend your life on.
Cuz that's what those green paper slips really represent.  That's what you're selling so you can buy into the system.  That's the real currency of our grand and glorious Risk and Monopoly shell games.

Contemplation of an Ungodly Hour....

Back at the beginning of the holiday season I started ruminating on an Ungodly hour.  Which started a thought train steaming through: Ungodly hour part deux to Ungodly Hour Director's Cut Part 1.
I called that last post part one, cuz I knew the train was gonna run for awhile....
  
And it has.
Like all the other steaming thoughts it has receded to the depths to boil up at odd times.  Usually when I'm in the middle of, or on the way to, something else.
And sometimes those ideas boil over and I find yet another dimension to the subject.  Which launches yet another train of thought.
And they all simmer in the background, jostling and bumping, mixing, melding, breaking apart, and reshaping....
And the Ungodly Hour has grown.  Like a lizard blasted by 1950's SciFi atomic energy, it's grown.
And so, with this post I'm giving it a tag all it's own.  That way I don't have to spend time pondering new and different variations on the title....

And, you might be wondering, cuz I have, why a proclaimed unbeliever is pondering anything ungodly.
Well, this is where the atomic expansion enters, cuz at first blush it was just a turn of phrase.  Then the cliche got sucked in by the currents of my mind at, Christmas time....

First we have to clarify semantics.
I am agnostic.
Now yer wondering what bearing this affliction has...
 Well...
A theist believes in at least one, sometimes more, divine being.
An atheists believes there are no divine beings.
Christians believe that there is one divine being and that they know him personally.
An agnostic neither believes or disbelieves.
While most atheists believe there is nothing beyond this physical realm and the theists believe there is more than meets the senses in the universe and the christians insist there is something beyond, an agnostic weighs the evidence.
For myself, I believe that there is more to the universe than what I can see, hear, taste, smell, and touch, but I'm not placing any bets on what it is or isn't.  There's no way I can know for sure.  I accept that there might be a God.
And if there is a God, and if he is the God of Jesus and The New Testament, I'm not seeing much of him in the present Zeitgeist.  At the time of the year when the birth of the New Testament God is celebrated, I saw very little evidence of his existence in the real world.
And so the Ungodly Hour is hatched.
And I have a lot more to say on the subject.
But right now daylight is burning and I've got stuff to do...

Ungodly Hour Director's Cut Part 1...

OK, this storm’s been brewing for a while.  So it’s liable to be totally incoherent.

Thoughts and ideas are elusive creatures.  It’s difficult to fit them for cement shoes.

Which, I think, is why we have so much trouble with the concept of substance.  Thoughts, ideas, emotions are things of ether.  Bringing them into the physical diminishes them a bit.

The word bird, is not the bird itself.  The word is a symbol, a reflection.  The word is Plato’s cave.

So any word, regardless of where it supposedly came from, is not the thing itself.

I think we all need to remember that from time to time….

 

Oh for the presence of my Deary Departed.  This would have been a day of sitting over coffee, with something like ‘Art Of The Western World’ or old Loony Tunes Playing and the long conversation progressing.  He would have either made me explain the wild idea better or said something that would make the pieces click….

Left out here on my own, I have trouble finding words.

And when I find them they always seem… lacking.

But well…

There are words that readily spring to mind

Ungodly Hour

Divide & Conquer

These words have been reoccurring for a while.

Watching videos of the feeding frenzy that black Friday has become sent those rippling through my thoughts again.
The PTB have mastered Divide & Conquer.

And we are living in an Ungodly Hour.

 Interesting that they disabled the embedding on this video...

Seriously people, what would Jesus say about this sort of behavior in honor of his Birthday?

(Side note to the creator of the cartoon; I love this image, it’s got everything I need to illustrate the point.  I’ll be happy to give credit where credit is do with a citation.  If you have an objection to its use, please let me know and I'll change it

I found the cartoon at:
http://arewepayingattention.tumblr.com/post/5378601097/idolatry

Rather interesting…)

Yes, Conservative Corporate Jesus would be cool with it.

But is it his birth keeping the Christ in Christmas?

Really?
If that’s the case you need to revise your calendar cuz Conservative Corporate Jesus was born in the 80s.  His father was Ronald Reagan.  His mothers in the unimmaculate conception are the whores of New York, Hollywood, and Washington.

He’s got a lot of Mothers.

Conservative Corporate Jesus is the spawn of Capitalism.  He was conceived in the 80’s with Gordon Gekko...

Conservative Corporate Jesus is the real life Buddy Christ, fully researched, branded, and market tested.  Brought to you by the makers of your gilded cage.

Conservative Corporate Jesus is a wedge in a split.

Cuz, for the last month and all the next, while we pay tribute to the Great Gods of Greed, Commerce, and the Corporate State, we will squabble among ourselves about what it is we are celebrating.

And fight like rabid dogs for the few cheap crumbs our betters throw out of the goodness of their hearts.

Where’s the charity and good will to men in black Friday?  The day that officially kicks off the celebration of Christmas.  How is it Christian to make people work on a holiday so you can buy some cheap ass TV?

If your God is truly present in this festive spirit you’ve missed the substance of the words.

And if you shopped yesterday or any time before 9am this morning you are a disciple of Conservative Corporate Jesus and I don't want to hear any hypocritical BS about how sacred and holy the season is....

Ungodly hour part deux....

Not that I'm up at an ungodly hour today.
But some of the things that have been on my mind lately lead me to that title and they are still running around my head this morning.
Cuz we're also coming up on the annual Christian hissy fit.
And it all clashes.
And trying to wrangle all that clashing into orderly thought is not coming easily this morning.
And now there's someone ringing the doorbell...

Just had the handy guys out taking a look at the barn, kinda anxious to hear what is going to happen.  We, those of us in residence and pending residence, want to save the barn, and not for purely selfish reasons either...
Wow, stealth synchronicity kicking in.
Cuz our barn:

 Is kinda an interesting real time parallel occurrence.
Our old barn, with the sign painted, we think, 46 years ago, symbolizes what is great about the idea of this country.  It stands for all that we could and should be.
And I still don't wholly agree with the whole wording.
Yes the followers of Christ had a big hand in settling and building this country.  But so did the followers of many other beliefs.
And the guys who laid the foundation were a bunch of rational humanists and Deists, in full revolt against Christian oppression and intolerance.  Anybody that seriously believes that the guys who cobbled together the Constitution actually wanted this to be a Christian nation are seriously deluded.
And to those of you who want to argue the point, I challenge you to bring me quotes from any of the major names supporting a religious government.  Maybe the simple act of trying to find one will penetrate all the layers of delusion.
But that aside...
The barn is a symbol of our, professed, values.
And it's coming up against the modern capitalist system.
It'll be interesting to see what happens with the barn.  Will the owners decide to attempt to save something old and symbolic.
Or will they decide to cut losses and demolish it?
And it's Thanksgiving....
Jeez, this has all the making of a Hallmark Christmas special.
And that still isn't the post I set out to write.  The wild muses are still dancing around my head.  But they are slippery and elusive and I'm outta time.
Cuz it is Thanksgiving, and our Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and there's a big house to clean, and I'm burning serious daylight right now.
Tomorrow is a BIG day.
Tomorrow we're having Who for Thanksgiving!

 

Ungodly hour....

I don't know why I woke up at 4am this morning.
Yes, I have been wanting to get back onto an earlier schedule.  I like to be home before dark, and now that the time change has settled that happens a lot earlier.  I was out early yesterday to get the one job done, and I do have to go out today.  But it's not like I went to bed last night with the aim of rising before the sun.  There's no alarm set, no definite aim for the day....
I'm in an odd sense of suspension in limbo.  I want to do something, and there's plenty to be done, but it's 5:45am and the rest of the household is asleep.  Sitting here, in the dark with the space heater whirring away in the background, Jethro sleeping on my lap, the 3 dogs sleeping on the bed, and not a sound from the rest of the house, it seems like bad karma to significantly alter the peace of the moment.

But I needed a second cup of coffee...
Luckily, disturbance of the peace was limited to Jethro and Luna, and Luna's disturbed anyway so she doesn't count.  Jethro, however, really didn't want to get down.  We had a moment of anti-physics cat.  You know, that moment when you're trying to get the cat off your lap and it's clinging to you with every molecule of being, and it suddenly becomes this giant, bendable, slippery magnet?
That was Jethro.  But he's already forgiven me and resumed his position on my lap.
Usually, my second cup of coffee triggers the feeding frenzy.  I have a deal with the animals.  I drink my first cup in peace and they get fed before my second cup.  Most mornings they're all ready to spring the moment I move.  I guess it's a little too early for food.  Even for Dusty.
A few days back, I got absent minded.  Got up, went  to the kitchen, made my second cup of coffee, turned around and had the 3 dogs and 4 of the cats in the kitchen looking at me like 'what the hell?!'
Had a Keystone Cops moment with Dusty the other day...
K had the horses out grazing in the front yard.  I don't let the dogs out loose when the horses are out, Dusty's too much of a pest and there's too much potential for negative occurrence. So they stay in the house when the horses are out.  But the other day I decided to turn the dogs out into the empty pasture and let them run unsupervised.  It seemed like a good idea.
The horse pasture has an electric line running inside the fence, top and bottom, to keep the horses from pushing on the fence.  It's not much of a current, but it is enough to get your attention.
I let 'em loose and waited to see what they were going to do.  Everybody went in different directions, exploring.  Doeman got zapped by the fence and of course that scared him.  Then Dusty got zapped, right on the nose.  She yelped and jumped behind me, and there I am, turning to see if she's OK, and, like something out of an old movie, she's moving with me so I can't see her...
We need to get a good video camera out here.  Then maybe we can catch some of the moments that would make good America's Home Video fodder.  Like the time K, who HATES spiders, was walking up to the house, I forget what she was talking about at the moment, but she was walking along telling us something, and she went between the trucks and suddenly there's a blood curdling scream and she's jumping around, slapping at her hair and cursing about the spider web.
Or the time Doeman was standing behind Oz.  He sneezed and Oz levitated a good 2 feet off the floor.
Or when Jethro tried to jump up onto the back of the couch, overshot and landed on Dusty's head.

So here I sit.  Listening to the dog snore.  Watching light creep back into the world, thoughts bouncing in 50 directions at once. 

OK, I just spent an hour organizing my graphics files.
Now, we're burning daylight and I've gotta get moving and get some stuff done.  Maybe I'll come back to this later...