Another idiot with a blog: Liberal Atheist Rantings

Night

2013-04-27T16:48:00.001-05:00

A dark room. I sit in it alone.

A knock at the door. I get up to answer. It’s not my door.

I pick my book back up. A beep from my phone.

Sale at Sears.

I put the book down.

I can ease the pain for one night. But tomorrow will just be that much worse.

I could die all at once, but instead I die just a little and go to sleep.

After all, I have tomorrow to get through.

Goodbye, Mr. Ebert

2013-04-05T00:15:00.001-05:00

Roger Ebert died today. I haven’t talked about him much, but in recent years he’s become a real inspiration for me. I knew he was sick, but I didn’t expect that we would lose him so soon.

I forget the exact article I read that keyed me into the fact that Roger Ebert was so much more than just a movie critic, but I began reading his blog. My favorite posts was the ones where he was not writing about movies, but pondering on our polarized political climate, gun violence, and other issues. I think one of his most powerful posts was one of his last, this one: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2013/03/a_shooting_in_harsh_park.html

He doesn’t posture, he doesn’t preach, he simply relates yet another senseless killing by gun related violence. The power of the post comes from the fact that it’s short, for the most part simply relates an incident most of us probably didn’t hear about, and most importantly the final paragraph. You can sense his frustration with humanity, almost defeat in his tone. There’s a world weariness that comes through. He sees this incident through a lens that most of us don’t. This is a story that should have made national news. It should have dominated headlines across the country for weeks. But it didn’t. It was lost in an onslaught of other, equally tragic, gun related murders that happen each and every day. We, as a society, as a people, as humans, should all be working together to find a solution, but we don’t. The only discussion that every happens is political posturing. One side shouts “guns don’t kill people, people kill people!” and the other side shouts “gun control now!” All any of us seem interested in is winning an argument, but in the meantime we continue to kill countless numbers of ourselves every single day.

Gun violence is a complex issue without a single simple solution, but we as a society seem incapable of having a serious honest discussion about it and implementing any kind of solutions at all. It kills one’s faith in humanity.

Gun control is almost certainly part of the solution. What the second amendment actually says aside, I don’t think it’s necessary to ban all weapons, but there is no reason that average citizens in a civilized society need assault weapons designed for combat. An AR-15 has one purpose and one purpose alone, to kill lots of people quickly. It is only being used properly when being used to kill lots of people quickly. Whatever else my be true of the Sandy Hook killer or the Colorado movie killer, they were using their weapons exactly as they were meant to be used. There is no justification for weapons of this sort to be made available to the general public.

But there are so many other factors that factor in to the issue. Poverty, poor education, and economic inequality are all factors that are rectifiable, but we can’t have honest discussions about these issues either.

In short, I share his frustration when watching Americans posture and shout and sling old tired memes around rather than trying to find a way to make life better for anybody. I identified with the man. More than I even knew. Michael Shermer reposted this article written by Ebert then I had never read before:

http://www.salon.com/2011/09/15/roger_ebert/

I didn’t know he was an atheist. It honestly never occurred to me to wonder. He didn’t blog about religion much. He was simply Roger Ebert, human being, supporter of the philosophy of Kindness. I respected and identified with him without even knowing that he was religion-free just like me.

That’s how it ought to be for all of us.

I will miss Roger Ebert. I will miss his thought-provoking insights, his desire to see humanity rise above itself, his powerful intellect. And yes, dear sister, those times when we were kids and would all sit down and watch Siskel and Ebert review the new movies together.

Good-bye, Mr. Ebert. The world was made better for having had you in it.

Masks

2013-02-06T00:27:00.001-06:00

We all wear masks. Each of us. You’re not quite the same person you are when you’re hanging with your old college friends that you are when you’re sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner with your parents. We play roles.

Some of us are better at it than others. Some of us go further than others.

There’s a raging internal torment going on inside me. There might be one going on inside of you too. I don’t know. Why don’t I know? Because you hide it.

Just.

Like.

Me.

My masks are well defined. I’ve even given some of them names. I’ve taken this to an art form. As I arrive at work in the morning while my internal monologue is screaming at me about how pointless everything is, how empty and rancid my life has become, a friend texts me to ask how I’m doing. I look down at the screen and imagine replying

“I’m desolate. Hollow. Empty. Hopeless. I want nothing more than to die right the fuck now. How are you?”

I look over at Antonio and say “I think you had better take this.”

He says

“I’m wonderful, darling. How is my favorite beautiful princess this morning?”

Send.

Cheesy. Over the top. Flirting so obvious that it can’t possibly be taken seriously. That is Antonio. He comes in handy for certain people. The reply comes back “You’re in a good mood this morning!” No, I’m not. But I want you to believe I am, and I succeed.

I studied acting when I was younger. I was good at it. I think I was good at it for a reason. In method acting, you create a character in your mind. A living, breathing, thinking person that lives in your mind. This character is part your invention, and part you. You put it on like a costume, and you become the role. You don’t just say the lines in a convincing manner, you literally become the character you’re portraying. Their thoughts become your thoughts. Like an add-on module to yourself.

I have several of these characters. They don’t have lines in a play to read. They’re characters that I’ve created over the years to get me through day by day. People who can pretend to be normal for me so that nobody sees the empty pathetic shell behind the curtain, only the great and powerful Oz.

Heath Ledger died from this, by the way. He was so disturbed by the character of the Joker he had created that he overdosed while trying to cope with it.

Sometimes the masks come instinctively. I don’t even notice myself putting them on. I can’t help it sometimes. It’s like I can’t interact with any other humans without finding a role to play. Like my entire life is one long bizarre stage play with a multitude of roles all played by me.

But there’s one problem: sometimes, when nobody else is around and I have no role to play, when it’s just me, I wonder if there’s a real me under there, if any of these characters I play are in any way comprised of my real personality. If I have a real personality…

The answer: I don’t know.

I think your plan backfired…

2013-02-01T21:27:00.001-06:00

Ok, I wasn’t necessarily going to write another blog post today, but I went to go look at my stats since I haven’t really been caring for the blog for a while, and I noticed something weird, the page hits were really high.

Even stranger, a lot of the hits seemed to come from here: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/01/11/how-bout-we-stop-this-trend-in-its-tracks/

Um… That’s PZ Myers’s blog…. WTF is he doing linking to me? To, of all things, this blog post: http://taocowboy.blogspot.com/2007/11/reflections-on-devconnections-part-i_10.html

Well, as it turns out, the blog post was about booth babes at tech trade shows and a policy at the most recent Skepticon that discouraged booth babes. So I checked it out. I kind of stopped reading PZ a while ago, There’s a very negative vibe over at his blog and he seems to attract a very hateful crowd. I don’t give people a pass for being asshats just because they’re atheists. If you want to have a rational discussion with me, I’m game. But f your response to dissenting opinions is to be an asshat, I have better things to do with my time. That’s why I don’t spend any time reading PZ anymore. He and his readers seem to thrive on the very vitriol we insist to theists that we don’t spew. I want no part of that, so I choose not to participate. Don’t get me wrong, PZ is brilliant and I enjoy reading his explanations of science, but the vitriol gets old. It’s the same reason I decided not to participate in Atheism+ but rather dropped out of the atheist community. I have another blog post on that topic in the works, but the short version is Jenny McCreight came to Kansas City and changed my mind about Atheism+, but there’s still a lot of vitriol in that community, so while I agree with the virtues they espouse, I choose not to participate.

So back to the blog post: PZ didn’t link to me (ah damn). But one of the commenters did. Round about comment #140 a commenter with the unlikely handle of nightshadequeen posted a link to my post from five years ago about my trip to DevConnections and my experience with booth babes. The link read “*sigh*” and then she posted a large excerpt from the post without comment (without my permission, I might add. That content is technically copyrighted, but never mind that).

The interesting thing about this is that as far as I can tell nobody responded to her (I assume it’s a “her”), but quite a few people followed the link. That much I can tell from my blog stats.

My first thought is “how long did you scour Google looking for that? Couldn’t come up with something original on your own to say?”

My second thought is that she completely and totally entirely missed the point. Had she been inside a barn with a shotgun she would have missed the inside and blown her own foot off. I’m not condoning booth babes. Had she actually bothered to read the post instead of just copy/pasting it into a comment to get a little attention from the Pharyngula crowd, she might have gotten the point. She strikes me as somebody looking for a misogynist to fight. I suggest she contact my ex wife if she wants to pick a fight with somebody setting the women’s movement back by decades. Or centuries. Millennia, more accurately.

The point to the post was to chronicle my experience and my thoughts at the convention. I didn’t hire the booth babes, and they’re not why I went. It was an experience. I expounded on the fact that these vendors that do that sort of thing do so purposefully, and it works. It’s a normal biological reaction for a male to be attracted to an attractive woman of the variety that you normally only see on TV and to go butt-ass stupid around them, and they played me beautifully like a violin. It doesn’t help that I was married to a psycho bitch at the time and that I’m a geek who doesn’t normally attract attractive women. Honestly I wasn’t offering any opinion for or against booth babes, but I would be just as happy at a convention without them. The vendors, however, would not. It was also FIVE FUCKING YEARS AGO. My views have changed so dramatically since that post it’s not even funny. I didn’t even consider myself an atheist at the time.

So the total net result here is that my stats shot way up and I think I picked up a few new readers. Not, methinks, what nightshadequeen was aiming for. I find this kind of funny. It’s nice to have a few new visitors but the regulars at Pharyngula aren't necessarily the kind of readership I was looking for. I’m not entirely sure I want to get noticed by those people. I like the open comment policy I’ve had so far and would had to have to get my own “ban hammer” as they like to go on about over there.

O Hai! I haz a blog!

2013-02-01T20:24:00.001-06:00

I’ve been mysteriously absent from my blog lately. Well, not so mysterious. Many of you know I fight depression. That’s pretty much the explanation in a nutshell. I’ve fought it for years. I was on medicine for it earlier that ironically made my mental state more unstable than I was without it. The rest of 2012 got kind of fucked up for me. I had my heart broken in a way I don’t think it ever has been, not even that girl from high school compares. I went in to kind of a downward spiral. I’m still at the bottom of that. I’d like to say I’m clawing my way back up, but I’m not. Not yet. I’ve driven nearly all of my real life friends away leaving me alone with my cats. Yep, I’m the crazy cat lady now.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time on Twitter, and I’ve found a few like minded people there. It’s strange getting support and encouragement from people I’ve never actually met when my real life friends all ran away. Welcome to the 21st century. Maybe this is better. When I was in high school there was no internet. We didn’t have cell phones. There was no mechanism for people having similar experiences to connect. Today there is. While I’m concerned that we seem to be spending less time actually connecting in person these days, I’m not so sure this is all bad. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. It is what it is.

I’m still having dreams about my ex girlfriend. It’s like I’m tapped in to some strange alternate reality where we never broke up and we’re happy together. Deliriously happy. I hate those dreams, because I wake up from them. They make real life seem like a nightmare. I wish I could stop having them. I have a few theories about why I’m still hung up on her, and why I fucked it up in the first place, but I’ll save those for another blog post. I intend to start writing here again some more. I apparently completely missed January.

Hello February. Fuck you, people who blew me off then expect me to write “Happy Birthday” on your Facebook page. You can suck it.

What I wanted to say…

2012-12-25T19:27:00.001-06:00

What I wanted to say:

You suddenly decided (on no less than Christmas Eve) that you can no longer keep my son’s dog, and that unless I immediately take him you’re going to put him in a (non-no kill) shelter. I not only offered to drive out to your house to get him but did, where you refused to answer the door. I gave you the option of leaving him at my parent’s house, but you ignored all of that and informed me that you were leaving him in a house that neither of us have any legal right to enter anymore due to your refusal to pay the mortgage and the house being repossessed, forcing me into a situation whereupon I must commit criminal trespass in order to prevent my son’s dog from starving to death even though I warned you beforehand not to do that. My only resolution possible was to call the local police and report the situation to them, whereupon they allowed me to retrieve my son’s dog. On Christmas Eve.

Explain to me again how I’m the one being unreasonable here.

What I actually said:

[…]

You can’t argue with batshit crazy.

Gun Control

2012-12-16T12:45:00.001-06:00

I’ve been very disappointed in Americans and in particular my friends recently. In response to the recent tragedy everybody is spouting the same old tired clichés.

“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people”
“Cars kill people too, but we don’t ban cars”
“This violence is because we took God out of schools”

The stupid, it burns.

Guns kill people. Period. Yes, a human has to pull the trigger and point it, but the gun is what kills them. This argument is bullshit.

Yes, cars kill people too, but there is a significant difference here: cars are a tool designed to transport people from one place to another. They are not designed to kill people, and only do so when used incorrectly. Guns are a tool designed with one purpose and one purpose only in mind: to kill people. That is what they were made to do. The killer in Connecticut killed 26 people using a tool EXACTLY AS IT WAS DESIGNED TO BE USED.

I can give you a valid reason I need a car: to get somewhere. I can give you valid reason I need hammer: to build something. I cannot give you a single valid reason for needing to own an assault rifle. It is not legal, nor do I have any need of murdering large numbers of people. That is what assault rifles are for, killing large numbers of people. It has no other use.

And taking God out of schools is also bullshit. Nobody took God out of schools. Nobody is preventing children from praying to whatever God they believe in, they’ve only removed people’s ability to force children to pray to a particular God. That’s all. If your children were forced to pray to Allah in the morning at school and study the accomplishments of Mohammed, the outcry would be enormous. Yet these people see no hypocrisy in forcing Muslim children to pray to the Christian god.

Furthermore, implying that your god allowed children to be murdered out of spite due to the enforcement of the freedom of religion clause in the constitution should be offensive to all Christians. This is making the claim that your god is an asshole. I’m astounded that no Christians are offended by this implication.

On The Murder of 26 Teachers and Children in Connecticut

2012-12-14T23:15:00.001-06:00

My son, who attends an elementary school, is a little freaked out by the fact that someone would go to an elementary school and gun down little children.

I’m freaked out too.

I don’t understand this. This is quite possibly the single most horrific thing I can imagine a single person doing. His only connection to the school was that his mother was a teacher there. I come from a family of teachers. My mother is a teacher. I’m an empathetic person, but I still cannot fathom someone who could do this. My empathies go to the children who at ages 5 to 10 had to fear for their lives, and many lost them.

What happened today is a wound on our collective psyche, more deadly and more horrific than Columbine. And already the pundits are turning today’s events political. I’m disgusted by this.

Today is not the day to cry out for gun control, although I have strong feelings on that issue. Today is not the day to talk about God in schools, although I have strong feelings about that as well. Today is not the day to make your political argument on the backs of 20 murdered children. Keep it to yourself today. We can talk about these issues another day, but today, go to your children and hug them. Appreciate that you have them, and that they’re ok. I just did.

I’m a what???

2012-10-07T01:29:00.001-05:00

I find that sometimes people assume that because I unabashedly and vocally support gay marriage and homosexual equality, that I must be gay. I find this incredibly amusing. That is similar to saying that if I support racial equality, I must be black. Or if I support gender equality, I must be a woman. Or if I support animal rights, I must be a dog.

I am a white heterosexual middle class [human] male. I am privileged in every conceivable way with the exception of my lack of religion. I have nothing tangible to gain by supporting equal rights. I do so because it is right. I reasoned myself into this viewpoint, because I can find no logical reason that any human because of their race, religion, gender, sexual orientation or any other method by which we arbitrarily segregate ourselves should be denied any rights that are given to others, including myself.

I support equal rights with no expectation of a reward in an afterlife, but ironically those who do believe in an afterlife tend to be those who do not support equal rights. By accident of birth I receive that which should be given to every human regardless of the genetics of their own birth.

If you do not support equality in any of the forms in which it has had to be fought for, why?

Dear World,

2012-09-27T23:31:00.001-05:00

You win. I’m too tired to fight you anymore.

Humans is dumb

2012-09-26T23:39:00.001-05:00

To be honest, I don’t blog here for you, I blog here for me. I enjoy getting a little attention just like everyone else, but if I never got another page hit, I’d still keep blogging. It’s like therapy. I put the innermost thoughts and feelings out here for the world to read, knowing that nobody (or at least mostly nobody) I know reads this shit.

That said, every so often I’m a little curious if anybody is reading it, and if so, how they got here. One of the nice things about a blogger account is the fact that they give you those stats for free.

But then, of course, I’m inevitably disappointed, as life is wont to do. How do most people find my blog? One of three ways.

That stupid metaphysical post from a couple of years ago. I fucking hate that post. I’m tempted daily to delete the fucker. That one seems to get the most hits.
You may have noticed that many of my pictures from older posts are missing. That is, unfortunately, permanent, and the reasons are complex. Well, not that complex, but I’m not going into it today anyway. Even so, I seem to get a lot of hits on my Religion series of posts, where I made a series of demotivational posters titled “Religion: I’m not afraid of gods, I’m afraid of their followers” and put several images of religious abuse including the twin towers. One of them gets a lot of hits. Which one? the stack of naked men from Guantanamo. Seriously? You sick fuckers.
I get a lot of hits for some combination of the words “Lindsey Lohan nude”. Because a while ago I put up a joke post titled that which had basically no content. Yep, I get the guys looking for nude pictures of Lindsey Lohan. You sick fuckers.

I was hoping to get a mild following of people with similar issues, possibly people who want to engage in dialogue. As you can see, I have almost no comments whatsoever. It’s not the kind of thing to drive me off from writing this blog, like I said, I don’t do this for you people, but I was hoping for a little reassurance that the rest of the human race isn’t made up of a bunch of sick fuckers. Still waiting.

Why can’t you…

2012-09-26T23:17:00.001-05:00

To those who say “Enough already, just get over it!”

Fuck you.

To those who say “Just move on already!”

Fuck you.

To those who say “Geez, why can’t you just deal?”

Fuck you.

To those who say “I don’t have any problem getting up in the morning. I don’t have any problem moving on. What’s your problem?”

Fuck you.

It’s that fucking easy. Some of us have a little more shit to deal with than you do. For some of us, just getting the fuck out of bed is a challenge. Some of us have to find a reason to live EVERY FUCKING DAY.

Instead of judging everyone else as inferior to yourself, stop being a fucking dick.

You want to know why? Fuck you, that’s why.

Meh…

2012-09-18T23:55:00.002-05:00

The blasé I’ve been feeling lately seems to be total. A handful of events have happened over the past few days (a couple of them just today) that would have normally (normally being within the last year or so) have made me ecstatic and bubbly or emotionally devastated me. But they didn’t. It really is like just sort of watching a movie that I’m not emotionally invested in. It’s actually kind of cool, I’m just kind of taking everything as it happens. A mere decade ago this was something I was striving for. I believe the Taoism concept that embodies this is Wu Wei, but I could have those concepts mixed up these days. It’s basically the idea that lies at the heard of Taoism which translates into western philosophy as “go with the flow”. I’m kind of doing that over the past few days without even trying, it’s just happening.

I would best describe this as emotionally numb. The irony of this condition is that with the severe anxiety and depression I’ve been feeling over the past month and half or so, I was actually about to ask the doctor if there was medication that he could prescribe that did exactly this: made me feel nothing. Not nothing, that’s not quite accurate. Just numb my emotions. Make me more or less stoic. Numb the pain.

And all I had to do it was drop my depression medication. How’s that for irony?

I described this condition to a close friend, one who I can usually confide in, and she seemed to think this was a bad thing. I disagree. After the emotional roller coaster I’ve been on for months now, a quiet leisurely raft ride down a calm river is an incredible relief. I don’t think being emotionally numb is a bad thing for a while. I’m sure this isn’t permanent, but it’s a nice change for now. I feel so much calmer.

What prompted this post, though, is the fact that I sat down to do my evening twitter and/or blog rant, and I couldn’t work up enough irritation to rant about anything. Quite honestly, at the moment I just don’t fucking care. Politics, religion, the ex wife, none of it is really provoking an emotional response from me that I can translate into a good rant. It’s a little weird, but I’m going to roll with it. So, no rants tonight. Sorry guys.

It’s gonna hurt like a sonofabitch when…

2012-09-17T23:43:00.001-05:00

So I finally did it today.

Anybody that’s been following me on my blog or on twitter knows that I’ve been struggling with a recent break up. What’s been hardest about the breakup is the abruptness and the finality of it. Not even a post break up “hey let’s get together for coffee and talk about this” sort of thing, just a “go the fuck away” e-mail and then pretty much nothing.

Well, not completely nothing, that’s not fair, but a fair amount of surfacy shit. Frankly that kind of crap pisses me off. If we’re going to try to be friends afterwards, be my friend. Don’t give me small talk. I hate that shit. If you want to talk surfacy bullshit, find someone else to talk to.

But that’s neither here nor there.

I’ve been trying for weeks, nay, nearly two months now, to try to get a little time to talk about things. She seems dead set against that. Having dropped the meds that seemed to have been giving me extreme anxiety and obsessive tendencies, I’ve returned to a slightly more normal frame of mind. It’s a good thing, but there’s been a few side effects I wasn’t happy with. Like the good memories starting to fade. I wanted to keep those, but… well, what the fuck. I think trying to keep them was making things harder for me to handle.

I had a bizarre dream about her last week as the meds were starting to fade. It was very strange. I don’t often remember my dreams, so when I do, you know it was somehow kind of jarring. In this dream, we were actually having the post-break up talk. We were in a house, for some reason, I think this was a house we were going to move in to. Don’t ask me, I had no plans or intentions to move in with her, but there it is. In the dream, she told me she had been pregnant, and she had an abortion. Within the context of the dream, this hurt. In fairness, I had mixed feelings, but the strongest one was that she had kept this from me. It’s the sort of thing I would have wanted to know, know what I mean? She was a little harsh about telling me this too, like there was some kind of simmering anger just under the surface. It wasn’t apologetic or caring at all. I’ve kind of come to see her this way somewhat. Side effect of the last couple of months, I suppose.

So as little as a few weeks ago, I would have woken from this dream and immediately felt despair. That was me from a few weeks ago under the meds and obsessing and anxious. When I woke up, I was a little sad, but mostly annoyed that I had had another dream about her. I kind of want that shit to stop already. I’m ready to move on now. Would my subconscious please fucking cooperate now thank you very much?

So I’ve written a couple of notes to her, but I never sent them. I waited, then deleted it later. I wrote several of these. Each successive one a little less crazy than the last. Finally I lost all desire to do this at all. Until today. In my therapy session today I told the therapist about the dream. Basically what he said was that everything in a dream is some kind of metaphor for what’s going on with us. His best guess was that the pregnancy and abortion was the relationship. It started suddenly, and just as suddenly she ended it. Yeah, I can see that.

At the same time, I’ve been starting to see how me-on-the-meds must have seemed to her. In a way I can’t really blame her for freaking out and cutting me out of her life. I was probably a little…. ahem… intense. That’s not me so much on a normal basis, so at the same time I kind of feel like I didn’t really get a fair shake, but who the fuck said life was fair, eh? I had my shot, I blew it, it’s over. Too bad, so sad, get the fuck out.

So I wrote one last note today, basically saying that I get how I must have made her feel, and apologized for it. Sent it, and now, well, I think I’m done. That’s as close to closure as I’m going to get. I doubt she even read it, but that wasn’t really the point. I had my say finally, and she’s free to respond if she wants to. I always make time for people who are important to me. The opposite isn’t always true though.

What’s most surprising about the last week or so is how my attitude has basically turned to “Meh”. It’s over, I know it’s over, and it doesn’t really bug me all that much anymore. I’m finally starting to move on with my life, do a few hobbies, actually get work done at work. Somewhat. The open office bullshit at work is fucking killing me. I need a little privacy to get anything done, but that’s a whole nother rant.

The “Meh” attitude is cropping up in other places too. Without going into too many details for various reasons, someone else did something that just a few weeks ago would have hurt me severely. This last week, it bothered me for a little bit then I pretty much said “meh, fuck it” and moved on. Another potential relationship was shut down I was ok with it. Well, not ok, I just feel sort of numb to it all now. Sort of like watching this shit happen to someone else in a movie.

I’m still suffering depression, but it’s just depression now. More of a general malaise. The meds I was on increase dopamine, which might be good for me a little later down the road, but I need heal now, so I’m going to stay off of them a little longer.

So, I suppose that was my good-bye letter. I’m ok with this relationship ending as much as I can be, and I wish her well. I hope she finds that right guy she’s hoping for, but I think she’s got her own issues to deal with first. I would have been happy standing by her side as she did so, but she didn’t want me there. What’cha gonna do?

But women, one parting piece of advice. If you’re going to break up with a guy, for whatever reason, fucking talk to him. Don’t break up over e-mail then refuse to talk in any form with him other than text. That’s fucking bullshit, and it’s chickenshit.

You do not have the right to not be offended.

2012-09-17T00:51:00.001-05:00

Facebook is always an interesting place, where an eclectic assortment of ideas tent to bubble around the surface. I just saw a picture go by of a woman holding a sign (it’s a popular meme) which read something to the effect of

I’m an American, but I would never make a video that mocks your faith. I am offended by that. Yadda yadda, don’t remember the exact words.

So my initial gut reaction is

Yeah, let them know how kind and understanding and tolerant Americans are.

Then I think

The fuck we are…

Then I think

The fuck! I don’t agree with that sentiment at all.

Call me an asshole. I am. But I haven’t been following the events that have occurred in the middle east recently too closely, but as I understand it, it goes a little something like this. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong on any of this.

Some yahoo makes a video that mocks Islam.
Muslims across the middle east are mortally offended by it.
Said “peaceful” Muslims riot in response to their offense at the video.
People die.
Video maker is now a bad guy, Americans everywhere condemn him

I have a slight problem with this. To illustrate my point, let’s take this same scenario but turn it on it’s side a little bit. Let’s say it went a little like this:

Some religious yahoo makes a video mocking Atheists, or makes false claims about them. Say, something like this:
Atheists across the country are mortally offended by it.
Atheist riots occur across the country in response to the offensive video.
People die.
Who is/are the bad guy(s) now?

Bill O’Reilly would shit himself with pleasure if that happened. His “War on Christianity” would hit non-stop status.

The point is this: You do NOT have the right to not be offended.

I don’t care who you are or where you live or what bronze age myths you believe or choose not to believe. You do not have the right to kill because you’re offended by something. A few years ago I condemned a nutjob pastor from Florida for threatening to burn a stack of Korans which set off a set of riots in the middle east which put American lives at risk. I was wrong. I take that back. While I still think he’s a dipshit and should not have done it, the blame for this was put squarely on the wrong shoulders. It should have gone on the shoulders of the people actually doing the killing, not the fuckwad who pissed them off enough to do it.

I don’t know what the content of this video is, and I don’t care. It could show Muhammed being prison raped for all I care, that’s not the point. The point is that no video gives anybody the right to kill. And only religion seems to get a pass on this. Only religion could inspire someone to be offended enough to kill. Only the assault of someone’s precious religious beliefs make us sympathize with murderers. I don’t give a fuck what was in that video, those people who killed others are murderers, period.

Alone in a roomful of people

2012-09-13T19:45:00.001-05:00

The last week or so has been a little bit of a roller coaster ride for me. I’ve been introspective lately, and that’s usually not a good thing for me. It has a way of deepening whatever depression or anxiety I might be feeling at the time, but it also tends to produce some interesting insights into the human condition.

Sometimes I’ll send these insights out into the the twitterverse. Sometimes these tent to resonate with people. When it does, it has a way of making me smile. Yeah, I don’t get it either. Maybe it’s just nice to know that I’m not the only human on this little rock who feels this way. Misery loves company I guess, but it makes me feel a little better to know that I’m not alone.

It does confuse me how there can be so many people on the planet and so many of us have absolutely nobody to keep up company. I can sit in a coffee shop for hours and speak to nobody except the guy who takes my order.

Before recorded history, when we were tribal bands roaming the plains, we stayed together for safety. Our need to communicate with other humans was served by the very fact that our small tribes were always together. Now we put ourselves in little boxes and never talk to each other. This is better somehow. Personally, I kind of miss the plains.

I desperately want something to happen. Anything. I would make something happen, but I don’t know how or what. Sometimes I can’t stand sitting in my little box any longer, so I get out and go somewhere. Today it was a coffee shop. I sit here reading and writing for hours, hoping someone, anyone, will want to connect with me in some small way, but that’s not how we work anymore. I’m an introvert, and this condemns me to solitude.

Maybe tomorrow will be different.

Please let me keep this memory, just this one…

2012-09-13T02:09:00.001-05:00

I’ve noticed something over the past couple of days as I’ve stopped using my depression medication and my anxiety and obsessiveness have slowly dissipated, so have my memories of my ex girlfriend. That was an unexpected side effect. I had some great memories of our short time together, and I wanted to keep them. But, inevitably, I remember less and less of it. Maybe this is what’s helping me to move on, but it’s not how I wanted to do it.

I wonder if the anxiety was helping me to remember those memories. Perhaps my obsession and constant remembering of everything I wanted to hold on to was what was keeping me from moving on. I frequently wish I were a psychologist, so I could understand these things. I’ve always found the study of how the brain works to be fascinating. And everybody knows that any good psychiatrist/psychologist is quite crazy themselves, so I totally fit the bill.

I’m a little sad about this. I truly felt happier with her than I had in, well, as long as I can remember. I didn’t want to lose that. I feel a little like Jim Carrey’s character in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, as he’s undergoing the procedure to have the memories erased, he sees ones that he doesn’t want to lose, and he tries desperately to hold on to them, but they’re still gone. I know that I’ve lost some of the better memories already, but obviously I don’t know what they were anymore, only that I know that I’ve lost them. Unfortunately, since she won’t see me, I can’t make any more to replace them.

Maybe this is how all relationships work. You gradually lose memories over time, but in the successful relationships you make more to replace them. In the unsuccessful ones, you eventually heal because you gradually lose nearly all of your memories of the relationship. This seems like a terrible tragedy of the human condition. As I think back over other relationships that I’ve had, I notice the same thing. I’ve lost most of my memories of them. Even with my ex wife I know there were some good memories even there, but I can only remember a handful of them. Even the girl who broke my heart when I was a teenager, I can barely remember that relationship at all, only how it felt when she left me.

It’s funny how the negative memories stick with us better than the positive ones. I can still remember clearly the pain and hurt I felt over our confusing and abrupt breakup, but only vaguely remember waking up next to her and holding her. Kissing her neck in the morning… So much is gone already, but with it goes much of the pain. Perhaps the pain of a breakup is really just the pain of loss. As my memory of what I’ve lost fades, so does the pain. The only thing that seems to stick with me is the memory of how much it hurt when the memories were still fresh.

The Force is Strong with This One

2012-09-12T21:20:00.001-05:00

Today was a noteworthy day. There were two main things I wanted to write down, mainly for myself to be able to look at later. I know, it’s a blog, so this shit is all public and whatnot, but let’s be honest: this blog’s primary reader is myself. It’s cool, I’m not out here to become famous. Does one become famous for blogging anyway?

So the biggie was an on again off again thing that I wasn’t sure was going to happen, but it did. My oldest son, who was still being homeschooled due to wishy washy court rulings, told my ex wife (may the fleas of a thousand camels infest her pubic hair) that he wanted to return to school. Surprisingly, she enrolled him, and today was his first day back in school. This is awesome news, because once he’s returned to school, she can’t take him back out. This is the only fucking issue I won on in the divorce. Well, that and holiday time. On every other issue, mainly financial, I got fucked up the ass with a telephone pole. Still, this whole thing was about my kids from day one. I didn’t expect that the price for protecting my kids would be so steep, or that I wouldn’t be able to actually get custody to protect them from indoctrination into extreme religion, but you take what you can get. I won on a couple of fronts where it came to my kids. That makes the ridiculously insane amount of alimony I pay worth every penny. That and actually being divorced. That’s so worth it too. Jesus fuck if I was still having to live with that woman I would gouge my eyes out with a circular saw.

The second is really only important to me. I’m two days off the depression meds and my obsession with the ex girlfriend is waning quickly. I think the therapist is right, they were making the anxiety worse, not better. Today, for the first time in over a month, I was able to concentrate on something other than her, even if only for a while. Seriously, it’s been major fucking with my life. My house is a cesspit, I’m pathetically behind at work, and I haven’t been able to focus on anything I like to do as a hobby, which is sad given that hobbies are about all I have left now when my kids aren’t here. Today I got some work done, I looked at my phone a lot less, and I actually smiled and joked with people. I was even able to carry on a small meaningless conversation about pumpkin spice lattes with the insanely hot woman from two rows over who I can’t figure out if she’s with someone or not. Someday I might even work up the courage to ask her out for coffee. Maybe.

This is significant though. My feelings about her have changed dramatically in the last two days, I finally feel like I’m moving on. I still think about her a ridiculous percentage of the day, but it’s not this constant mopey “oh I wish I had her back I don’t know how I can go on without her” bullshit I’ve been stuck in for the last month. I’m starting to put it in perspective and see her a little more realistically. That’s a good thing, by the way.

It’s still kind of sad, she’s had more or less no good relationships, and I really thought I could be the good one. I wanted to try, anyway, but now I really don’t anymore. If she called me up tonight, I would still be tempted, but I don’t think that will be the case a week from now. She’s not going to, it’s just one of those things I obsess on. My resolve won’t get tested on this issue.

There’s one drawback to this though, I think the meds were actually helping me to quit smoking. It’s an antidepressant that’s actually the same thing as Zyban. Being off of it for two days has sort of thrown me for a loop on the smoking issue. Maybe once I’ve got this whole ex thing in place I can go back on them to quit smoking again. We’ll see. The main thing is that I really feel like I’m pulling back from the brink of absolute disaster. I need to get that under control so that I live long enough to quit smoking.

All in all, a pretty good day though.

9/11/2012

2012-09-12T02:12:00.001-05:00

I wrote a blog post on 9/11 of last year. I think what I said in that post still pretty much sums up my feelings about 9/11. I’m still continually disgusted at how politicians try to politicize 9/11. The truth is, It’s just another day now. For 11 years we’ve commemorated 9/11, but I think it’s time for us to collectively move on as a nation. The resulting fallout from 9/11 is some of the most frightening things I’ve seen in my lifetime. I’ve seen our liberties eroded, our young soldiers killed, foreign civilians killed, foreign leaders overturned and executed, and our country tip towards the brink of fascism without even knowing it.

9/11 has often been compared to Pearl Harbor. It’s not quite the same, but even so, we commemorate Pearl Harbor quietly these days. The pain of that attack has subsided. World War II was fought and ended. We fought and toppled fascist governments, discovered unthinkable crimes, and tried and convicted those responsible. What happened after 9/11 was a little different. We entered a war, but not with the foreign power who attacked us, because there was no foreign power that attacked us. It was a ragtag band of religious zealots living in the deserts of Afghanistan. The government of Afghanistan refused to cooperate with us, and we entered into the nation’s single longest war (that isn’t really a war because it was never declared by congress) with that government. We almost immediately lost sight of the criminal who murdered 3000 of our citizens, and turned our attention to another despot who hadn’t really done anything to us. That conflict cost us dearly. but no matter how dearly it cost us, it cost the citizens of Iraq much more dearly. We are not popular in that part of the world, and there is a reason for that. And no, it is not “because they hate our freedoms”. But recently we’ve found the criminal who murdered our citizens, and he was killed in the event. I will not entertain conspiracy theories about that event either.

9/11 will forever remain for me the epitome of what religious extremism can lead to. Unfortunately, it can get far worse. The crusades were a religious war, and they were fought with middle ages technology. Imagine if the crusades were fought today. That is the future we must avoid. Religious zealots are constantly trying to control our government, and the moderately religious are encouraging them to do so. This is the danger of even moderate religion, as Sam Harris points out. If we fall to fascist powers and become a religious state, the world as we know it will be in danger.

It is time to return to the ideals that made America great in the first place. Our freedoms and liberties must be restored from erosion of the last 11 years. Our adherence to the separation of church and state must be absolute. The balance of powers must be restored. And we must once again strive to be an example to the rest of the world as we once were, not the bully that the rest of the world is afraid of that we are now.

The last year has been very eventful for me. Around this time last year I had just started dating the first girl I had dated since I met my ex wife. Since then I’ve had quite the emotional rollercoaster. My divorce has been finalized. My children finally know that there are alternatives to extreme religion, and they’ve returned to public school. I’m alone, but I’m free of my ex wife to as much of a degree as possible. My house has been foreclosed on and soon to be repossessed. My apartment is overrun with cats whom I’m desperately trying to find homes for. I’ve returned to the job I had 11 years ago, as much as that job still exists, and I was with and lost a woman I’ve been secretly in love with for over a decade, and whom I consider to be my perfect mate. Sorry, fairy tale endings don’t happen in real life. It’s amazing how much can happen in just a year. I haven’t even covered everything that’s happened in my life, I’m sure yours has been just as eventful.

A year is a long time. When 9/11/2013 rolls around, it would be nice if we didn’t have to once again call for the freedoms we’ve lost to be restored again.

Dear World

2012-09-08T23:50:00.001-05:00

Fuck you.

Sure, Let Me Debase Myself And Lie Down In This Puddle So You Can Walk Over Me My Dear.

2012-09-07T00:51:00.001-05:00

This is going to be another post about my relationship issues. If you don’t like those kind of posts, feel free to go somewhere else. You know what, fuck you. This is my fucking blog, and I’ll blog whatever the fuck I want.

So basically I had a really shitty day today. I found out that not only had the short sale on my house fallen through, but that today was auction day. In other words, I found out exactly too late to do anything about it. Even if I could have done anything about it. So I am no longer a home owner. In fairness, I hadn’t lived there in two years anyway. The worst part about it is the major hit my credit rating is going to take. Foreclosures stay on for ten years, not seven. My ex wife fucked me pretty good on this one. She did it intentionally, I’m sure, but the best part of the whole thing is where she says it’s my fault. No, I’m not kidding. She refused to find any kind of work whatsoever, or to support herself or her children in any way whatsoever, stopped paying the mortgage, and made sure the house went to foreclosure. And it’s my fault. You seriously can’t make this shit up.

Add to that the fact that she wants to move out of district so that she can move somewhere she can afford to. The unbelievable injustice of the fact that a father who wanted his children and was perfectly capable of supporting them and could have easily kept them in the good school district in which they live lost them to a mother who refuses to support herself or her children in any way shape or form and cannot afford to keep them in the school district, but wants to move them to a poorer school district. Somehow she has been determined to be the better parent. Again, you can’t make this shit up. If somebody put this in a book it would be deemed implausible. But yet, it happened.

And just for good measure, I found out my copay for my therapist is so high that I can’t afford it. So not only am I dealing with a ridiculous divorce, an insane financial situation as a result, and a difficult breakup with my ex girlfriend, but I can’t even afford therapy anymore. At times like this I start to wonder if there is a god, because if there is, she hates me. It seems implausible that all of this could happen to one, basically good person. Yet, it did.

So moving on, my ex girlfriend and I are occasionally talking again. Yesterday she had some crap happen, so being the good friend that I am, I stopped what I was doing and made time to listen. Because that’s what I do. It actually wasn’t all that convenient for me to do so, but I did anyway. And not just because some part of me still hopes that I can salvage a relationship out of this. I would do this for pretty much any friend.

Then today all of this happens, and I need someone to talk to. Guess how many people were available for me? Yep. Nobody. Not even my therapist, because… well… fuck you republicans and your fucked up privatized health care. This system only works for the wealthy. Fuck you. And if you’re not wealthy and support these fuckers, fuck you too. You’re fucking me as well as yourself, and that makes you a fucking moron. Fuck you.

So I’m thinking tonight, because, well, the only person I have to talk to is myself. So if you say I’m crazy for talking to myself, fuck you. You weren’t here for me either, fuck wad. And I realize something: that was my whole relationship with her. She would get frequent headaches, I would rush over there and give her a long backrub. Number of backrubs received: 0. Even my ex wife had a better record than that. Every time she had something going on, I would patiently sit there and listen to her. When I felt the need to unload about something, I got some variation of “shit or get off the pot”. If I got irritated about that, her feelings got hurt.

And then I think “Exactly what about this relationship am I missing?” It was a little one sided. Actually it was a lot one sided. Yet, I still miss her and would probably go back if I could. Fucking why? What about this woman am I missing? Why am I so drawn to her? These are questions I can’t answer. My only guess is that there was more to it than that for me. She was at least an intellectual equal, and probably an intellectual superior. She had her own career and life. She was independent and strong. She made a difference in peoples lives. She was good at what she does. And something about her is magic. Her voice, her mannerisms, everything. I can’t explain it. Basically it’s not a good relationship for me. I know this intellectually. My heart will catch up eventually, I just have to be strong for now. That’s the real trick though. I’m not strong.

Anyway, just random thoughts. I had nobody to share this with, so of course it goes out to the world on my blog. I suppose it’s all part of learning to be alone. Being alone sucks ass, by the way.

The Question I Never Got A Chance To Ask.

2012-09-03T01:32:00.001-05:00

I was despondent for days, weeks, months. I was alternately angry, dejected, and confused. I believed every lie you told me wholeheartedly. I trusted you and gave you my heart unconditionally and without reserve, and you tossed it aside like a dirty rag without looking back. And up until about 20 minutes ago, at the slightest word, the merest mention that you would want to start again, to spend even the smallest amount of time with me, I would have gladly thrown my pride to the wind and followed you around like a stupid puppy. Because I’m just that fucking pathetic.

But I’m not stupid. I won’t vie with your other ex for your attention. He wins. Congratulate him for me. I no longer want to see you. I no longer want to hear your voice lie to me. I no longer want to know about the trivial interactions between you and your cats. Why, you wonder, the sudden change? I’ll tell you. Because fuck you.

You took the kids WHERE???

2012-09-02T09:00:00.001-05:00

I’m going to a picnic at Darrel Ray’s this afternoon. I find it kind of cool that I actually know the author of The God Virus. If you’re a member of the KC atheist community, you’ll realize that it’s not all that big of a deal, he knows all of us. But still…

I’m taking my kids too. Part of me.hopes the ex finds out. I can already see her doing a Rumplestiltskin type angry dance similar to when I embarrassed her lawyer during the trial.

Why yes, as a matter of fact. If you didn’t already know, I am an asshole. To those who’ve earned it.

Oooh, I HATE that guy…

2012-09-02T00:39:00.001-05:00

I’ve been reading a book called Quiet about the introverted/extroverted personality types. My ex girlfriend had recently read it and described it to me, and the topic interested me. Anybody who gets to know me intimately knows I’m an introvert, but it’s not always obvious to everybody. I’m certainly not the “Hi how ya doin lemme kiss your baby” type of extrovert, but I try to not be too soft spoken at work. Maybe it’s more obvious than I think. When I told my ex girlfriend that I was an introvert, her response was “Duh!”.

What’s most interesting though, is that I’m getting a better handle on exactly what kind of introvert I am. It’s not all good news. The most recent chapter revealed to me that I’m the kind of introvert who adjusts to social situations based on cues. I get my ideas about how to behave and interact with others based on cues I receive from them. In other words, I’m a different person to each person I interact with. Kind of like that salt monster from the early Star Trek episode. Put me in a room with too many people and I don’t know who the fuck to be. This is one of the reasons I have this blog and my twitter account, it’s about the only time I really get to be the real me, however pathetic that might be.

I found myself in orchestra rehearsal the other night being the extrovert. Socializing with this person, then with that person. To be honest, I hate socializing. I’m not half bad at it when I have to be though. I can be quite animated and entertaining when the situation calls for it.

I have to wonder if this is a factor in my string of failed relationships. It’s certainly something to bring up with the therapist. This personality type can be viewed by others as deceptive and deceitful. I really don’t see myself that way, but I have to wonder if that’s how my personality type comes off. It’s really more about trying to fit in and not do social faux pas. A basic fear of rejection. An extreme fear of rejection. And I take it hard when I am rejected, like my recent break up. This could be a factor in why I stayed in a marriage that was obviously broken for almost the entire duration for far longer than I should have. Long enough to have two kids, and for those kids to grow up to be big enough to be damaged by the ensuing brutal divorce.

I’ve noticed a trend recently: people don’t seek me out. Let me try to explain that more. If I don’t try to start some kind of interaction with my friends, the interaction tends to not happen. It reminds me a little of the game The Sims. In the game, if you don’t constantly call up your friends, the relationship atrophies and they stop being your friend. However, in the game if you don’t call your friends for a while, they’ll call you and say “what the fuck, dude?” In real life that second part doesn’t seem to happen with me. The relationship still atrophies, but it seems like if I’m the only one interested in preventing that. If I don’t call for a while, nobody calls me.

This worries me a little. Is there something in my personality that repulses people? Is it this quirk of adjusting my personality to each person? Does this drive people off? Am I really that guy? The guy nobody really wants to hang out with but is willing to put up with so that they don’t come off as a jerk? Introspection never goes well for me. I keep coming up with this kind of crap.

I would really like to know, though, why this seems to be the case. There seems to be some basic flaw in my personality that makes people like me ok but not really want to be around me more than they have to. I don’t know what it is yet, or how to fix it. I need to fix it though, or I’ll never have a successful relationship. I don’t count my ex as a successful relationship. She was wasn’t in it for any kind of interest in me, she was in it because she could live off of me without having to have a life of her own. She still does. Thank you, state of Kansas.

Anyway, no great revelations in this post, just questions that I don’t have answers for yet. Maybe I’ll have some in the weeks to come.

It’s Wabbit Season!

2012-08-31T23:17:00.001-05:00

I started therapy yesterday.

Let’s face it, I’m fucknuts. I was watching Looney Toons with my kids earlier, and we watched Rabbit Fire. That’s the one where Daffy and Bugs go back and forth with the “rabbit season” “duck season” bit. It’s hilarious, and I’m reminded of the time during an improv group when I basically did that scene by myself. There was one guy who ended up playing Elmer Fudd, and my spastic self played both Daffy and Bugs. He was a bit shy, and didn’t seem to know what the fuck to make of me. I think I scared him a little, but the end result is it was fucking hilarious. I was awesome.

Was.

I remember the guy who did that. The guy I was back then. 17 years of bad marriage will fuck you up, and that guy is gone now, and I can’t get him back. I know, I would be a different person now even if I hadn’t married the batshit crazy church lady, but I think there would be more of that guy left.

I’ve thoroughly trashed three relationships since the end of my marriage. Well, in fairness to myself I had a little help trashing them, but still… I can’t seem to pull off a successful relationship. Maybe I’m not dating the right people, but I was absolutely sure the last one was right. I’m still having trouble reconciling it a month later. I should be past it by now, one would think. But I have a fuckload of baggage, and I think I didn’t realize just how much until yesterday.

The therapist seemed to catch on immediately just how much the cult fucked me up. This is something that I don’t think anybody else ever has understood about me. These people did more damage in the couple of years they had me than my wife did in 17. I’m still dealing with it in many ways. On the other hand, had it not been for the cult I might have never examined my own belief systems, and realized that the whole thing is bullshit. I suppose I should thank them for that. But fuck if I will.

Most people seem to blow the whole cult experience off as trivial, except for one or two other people I know who went through the same thing. It’s not like we talk about it though. Former cult members don’t have conventions. We don’t chat on facebook about it. “Hey, remember that time that the one kid crashed his car because he was so tired from sleep deprivation and almost died? Yeah, good times!” There are exactly 0 people that I’ve been able to talk to about this over the last decade. My ex didn’t go through the exit conversion the same way I did. In fact, I’m not sure she ever went through it at all. She’s been looking for a replacement for the cult for the last decade, and I’m pretty sure she finally found one.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is I think this is going to be good for me in the long term. I may not be able to save my last relationship, but maybe I can make the next one not crash so badly. I’ve already realized about myself that my dating experience pretty much consists of my teenage years, a couple of years in my 20s, and the last year. I haven’t had a lot of time to figure this shit out. My marriage was pretty much fucking awful for most of it, so I don’t have a lot of experience in how a good relationship works. I do know that I really wanted the last one to. But first I have to straighten out some shit in my head.

I may not be that guy from 20 years ago anymore, but maybe I can be someone else just as good.