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I Know I’m Preaching to the Choir Here, But…

Voting To Do List

~☆Go Vote☆~

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Americans Need to Get Out of This Abusive Relationship

From John Pavlovitz:

It’s heartbreaking to see someone you love in a toxic relationship: watching them be continually torn down and berated, treated with complete disregard, humiliated publicly over and over again—and knowing that despite how much damage has been inflicted, they will likely stay with their abuser, to their own detriment.

There is a unique kind of helplessness when a human being is so blinded by their past hopes about what the other person would become, that they can’t see what they actually are presently; when they are so consumed with the story they’ve told themselves about the heart of their partner, that no amount of evidence to the contrary will be enough to convince them otherwise.

They will be lied to and gaslit and injured—and still they will fiercely defend the object of their misplaced affections; perhaps because they do not see their own worth and imagine they will not find better, or because fear has paralyzed them into inaction, or because living this way for so long has left them unable to see another possibility.

When they are confronted by the efforts of well-meaning people, they will deny and rationalize and even lash out at the very suggestion that they are being manipulated, rather than face the possibility that they have been fooled by someone they misjudged and trusted. It is exhausting to try and help them extricate themselves from their own hearts, to show them how unhealthy this place is, to wake them up to their greater value.

Nearly 40 percent of this nation is in an abusive relationship with this President and they are the only ones who cannot see it.

He has complete contempt for them and yet they passionately defend him. They cut ties with those who attempt to reach them with the evidence of his betrayal. Though they are being daily devalued and damaged, they cannot see it through the intoxicating romantic haze of their Fox News, Evangelical, Great America back stories. They see those of us who oppose him as the enemy, when the truth is we care far more about them than he ever will—which is why we have to show up in November and help them see what they cannot right now.

This election is the chance for the sixty percent of us to rescue these people from this bitter codependence; to vote them into a safer and more stable place; to show them what it could be like if they were led by someone who actually cares for their well being, who actually works to strengthen the bonds between them and the people around them, who will not subject them to a continual toxic flood of intimidation in order to keep them close and retain their affections.

Whenever someone finds their way out of an abusive relationship, you watch them blossom: you see them embrace the wide-open life that has always been waiting for them, and they get to see themselves and the world with new eyes. Like a mighty Phoenix rising from the suffocating ashes of something that was far less than they deserved, their spirits are reborn—and they wonder how they ever let themselves be treated as anything less than beautiful. They find real freedom.

I so want these people around me to experience this, for them and for the America that I share with them. We all deserve far better than the oppressive, violent, fractured place we now live in, and until they see that we’re stuck here.

The best of who we could be as a nation is not possible while they are tethered to something so destructive and injurious, and the greatest gift we can give them is to save them from themselves.

That’s what’s at stake in this election: everything.

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Fulfilling a Teenage Dream

They have arrived…



…and in perfect (or at least advertised) condition. It was obvious they were packed by a pro. The seller knew what he was doing, and a good thing. These suckers are heavy. It took nearly a half hour to unbox the pair and get them set up.

I grabbed Madonna’s Confessions on a Dance Floor off the shelf and set it spinning while I gathered up the mess that the unboxing had created.

To be honest, I wasn’t overly impressed. Yeah, they sounded okay, but certainly no better or worse than the Infinity 1001As they had replaced, and I thought, “Well at least they’re in better condition than the Infinitys.” But once I sat down “in the zone” as it were…OMG, it was an entirely different experience and it was amazing. Old School JBL at its finest.

Even with my aging ears, I could immediately hear the difference. Today I pulled out Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, but after a few seconds of surface noise I realized that I’d grabbed the original copy I’d bought new in 1977—not the reissue I’d wanted to hear. So I took it off the turntable and retrieved the 180 gram copy I’d gotten a couple years ago.

It sounded awful. The 1977 pressing sparkled; the reissue was muted and uninspiring. Until today, I’d never heard any real difference between the two copies other than the surface noise, but it was clear as day through these JBLs.

I’m going to have some fun rediscovering all my music!

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David Lynch’s Ominous Statement Generator

BIRTH MONTH:
January – The stars
February – The owls
March – Your enemies
April – The obelisks
May – The crystals
June – The secrets
July – The crows
August – Your teeth
September – The curses
October – The eyes
November – The trees
December – The caves

EYE COLOR:
Brown – do not know you.
Green – are not what they seem.
Hazel – cannot reach you.
Bleu – are gone when you look away.
Grey – plot revenge
Other – are not lost but waiting.

BIRTH ORDER:
Eldest Child – Prepare:
Middle Child – Repeat:
Youngest Child – Sleep Well:
Only Child – So Look Away:

HAIR COLOR:
Blonde – they’ll whisper you your fate.
Brown – they, too, have teeth.
Red – they lie in wait.
Grey – they can still see you.
Black – they come even faster.
Other – the clock ticks on.

The crystals cannot reach you. Prepare: they can still see you.

 

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Here We Go Again!

Yes, it’s installed on an external drive. I’m crazy, not stupid.

First impressions: it’s very pretty. It’s fresh. The Yosemite-era UI is now six years old and was looking a little long in the tooth. The new design is probably as radical as the transition was from Mavericks to Yosemite and of course people are already bitching about it; about the “iOSification of macOS.” Deal with it. Life marches on and no one’s going to force you to upgrade if you don’t want to. As to the experience of using it right now, it’s rough—very rough. Lots of things are broken/don’t work. (Which I’ve been dutifully reporting back to the mothership as I run across them.) I now understand why it took so long for Apple to release this to the public beta testers. I can’t imagine what the earlier developer versions were like.

 

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Audio Pr0n

Vintage Teac, 1973

I wanted the top one (the 360) in the worst way, but sadly a cassette deck was not in my budget until a decade later and this model had been long since discontinued.

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You Wanna Know…

…what pisses me off about unemployed people getting a stimulus check or an extra $600 a week?

Not a damn thing, because other people who are struggling are not my enemy and their bank account or what they spend their money on is none of my goddamned business.

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