Author: Mark Alexander

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Comments Have Been Disabled

When I started this blog all those many years ago I did it as a public extension of the private journals I had been keeping since the late 1980s. It was a way for me to vent my frustration at the way any number of things in life—particularly the political landscape of the Bush years—were heading.

I have been doing a lot of bitching and moaning about my personal life lately, and while those posts make up a really small portion of the overall blog, apparently some people are getting annoyed and are threatening to stop visiting my site.

My response? I don’t care. To those people I say no one is forcing you to come here, and frankly if you stopped, I wouldn’t even know. I don’t track my visitor stats, so your threats to stop reading are akin to telling an Atheist he’s damned and going to hell.

And lastly to paraphrase that famous line from The Rocky Horror Picture Show , “I didn’t make it for you.”

So until further notice, commenting has been disabled. I have enough bullshit to deal with right now without also having to deal with people whining about what I write.

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We Have Died and Gone to HELL

It’s the only explanation.

I don’t remember the exact moment of our deaths. I don’t know if it was shortly before we were scheduled to move to Denver, or if it happened en route, or if it was—most likely—February 2013, when she arrived; the Destroyer of Worlds.

As I lay wide awake at 4:15 am this morning—again—I started quietly sobbing because I realized that my friend Cindy was right a year ago when she learned that we were moving Ben’s mom up “temporarily” and told me, “She’s never going to leave.”

After five trips to the ER in the last 30 days for uncontrolled neuralgia in spite of a steady diet of beer and morphine (yes, at the same time), she’s now decided to go out on short term disability for the next six weeks. WHY? What is this going to accomplish? Are we going to see any real change—like seeing a doctor who will do anything other than rubber-stamp another scrip for pain meds or god forbid, checking herself into rehab to get off the stuff to begin with—or is it just going to be six weeks of more self-medicating and endless Judge Judy blaring from our guest room?

I asked Ben if this was going to affect her move out date since she will still be drawing her full salary and he said it wouldn’t.  As much as I’d like to believe that I have no faith it’s going to happen. She’s already talking about returning the bedding she bought for her own place, so I’m sure  something is going to happen that will prevent her from moving out yet AGAIN.

At this point I fear the only way to get her out of here is for Ben and I to move back into a one bedroom apartment when our lease expires at the end of August.

When she’s working, she’s on an odd shift so she normally doesn’t get home until around 7:30 pm, giving me a couple hours of alone time (Ben doesn’t normally get home before 7 either) to unwind from work. But now I’ve even lost that brief respite from her crazy. For the next six weeks I’ll be going directly from work to Starbucks until Ben gets home because I simply can no longer abide being around her if he’s not there.

I never believed in a real, physical Hell, but I’m really starting to question it now.

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If It Walks Like A Duck…

From The Advocate:

Sherri Shepherd, a cohost of The View, claims she’s not homophobic just because she believes homosexuality is a sin and LGBT people are going to hell.

Shepherd sought to defend herself in a recent interview withFusion host Alicia Menendez. When Menendez asked what Shepherd felt has been the biggest misconception about her has been throughout her career, she said it was that people had labeled her antigay — unfairly, in her opinion. Shepherd insisted she had no malice toward LGBT people, saying her beliefs are the result of her Christian background and though she hates the sin, she still loves the sinner.

“I think people don’t know my heart,” Shepherd told Menendez. “I think people feel I’m very judgmental. I think people feel I’m very homophobic. If they knew me, and knew my heart. … You grow up being a Christian and you grow up believing homosexuality is a sin; you’re going to hell if you’re a homosexual. This is something that they teach in churches. So it’s something that I grew up believing.”

“I might not agree with your lifestyle, but I love you,” Shepherd continued. “You may not agree with my lifestyle, but you love me … I don’t say it’s a choice. If you tell me, ‘Sherri, I was born gay.’ OK. I’m not gonna argue with you, because I can’t tell you how you feel and what’s going on inside. I’m trying to make it into heaven by the skin of my teeth … I don’t know who I’m gonna see. So if you tell me you’re born [gay], I’m not gonna argue with you. And I absolutely respect you for that. I just ask that people respect how I feel, [I] respect how you feel and we can have a great dialogue.”

All I have to say is…

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Despina, Moon of Neptune

From APOD:
Despina is a tiny moon of Neptune. A mere 148 kilometers across, diminutive Despina was discovered in 1989 in images from the Voyager 2 spacecraft taken during its encounter with the solar system’s most distant gas giant planet. But looking through the Voyager 2 data 20 years later, amateur image processor and philosophy professor Ted Stryk discovered something no one had recognized before—images that show the shadow of Despina in transit across Neptune’s blue cloud tops. His composite view of Despina and its shadow is composed of four archival frames taken on August 24, 1989, separated by nine minutes. Despina itself has been artificially brightened to make it easier to see. In ancient Greek mythology, Despina is a daughter of Poseidon, the Roman god Neptune.

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I Hate Snow

The honeymoon with Denver is definitely over. At this point I am more than ready to go back to five months of 115° temps in Phoenix rather than spend one more day driving in snow. Hell, at this point I’d even be willing to move back to earthquake country rather than deal with this crap!

When my folks divorced, my mom moved back to Wisconsin where she was born and raised. She lasted exactly one winter before returning to Arizona. Now I know why. (And Denver winters are mild in comparison!)

Back in the 80s when my tribe relocated en masse to San Francisco, not all of us took to the City or embraced it the way I did. I could not understand how Lee—my best friend in the world—didn’t love the place the way I did. Now I do. Some locations are a perfect match for your energy and some aren’t. For me, Denver has proven itself to be in the latter category. I cannot wait to get the fuck out of here and away from the stupid-ass weather and the fucking insane drivers.

There is nothing about living here that I will miss. NOTHING.

Unfortunately, leaving Denver right now—as much as I would love to—is simply not an option. It will be three more years and three more fucking winters before we can leave. But rest assured that when that day comes and the truck is loaded and we’re heading out of town, not a single fucking tear is going to be shed.

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How?

I mean seriously…HOW?

And her move out has been delayed yet again. Apparently she has an eviction on her credit report (something she never bothered to tell anyone) that doesn’t drop off it until next month, and because of that there isn’t an apartment complex in a hundred miles that will even talk to her.

If hell were a real place, I now know what it would be like.