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WE. ARE. ALL. GOING. TO. DIE.

Well I guess I can go back to waking up with the first thought on my mind being, “Did that fucking idiot in the White House start WWIII as we slept? We’re alive, so I guess not. But the day’s just getting started.”

With Bolton whispering in his ear, I can all but guarantee that we will be at war—or dead—with someone within the next six months, probably just in time for the mid-terms.

 

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Be Careful What You Search For…

…because you may find it.

I met Jeffrey in 1999, shortly after I’d started working at PG&E Energy Services (PG&E Corp’s unregulated energy experiment) in San Francisco.

Surprisingly, there weren’t that many out gay men working for the company, so Jeffrey and I immediately gravitated toward each other. Never mind that the boy was cute and smart and sexy as fuck. But nothing more than a friendship—despite the mutual attraction—developed because Jeffrey was hopelessly devoted to his long-term boyfriend, Leroy. Even when said boyfriend was found caught cheating on numerous occasions, Jeffrey stood firmly by his side.

Like myself, Jeffrey was an inveterate techie. We were always discussing the latest hardware and software trends. He was very above board on software licensing issues, while I was more…flexible. He always purchased his software. I, on the other hand “obtained” a lot of it. (One of the perks of being in the business, I suppose.)  One day I finally convinced him to come over to the Dark Side by providing him something that he wanted but was otherwise unobtainable.

Even after PG&EES finally followed ENRON into the dustbin of history, and went to different jobs, we still both worked downtown and managed to meet up for lunch several times a week. At his new place of employment, Jeffrey discovered the Mac and became an immediate convert, putting an end to all his Windows-based Dark Side adventures. (Just as I was forced to go legit once I joined the Church of Steve Jobs.)

Shortly after I’d returned to Phoenix in 2002, Jeffrey finally had enough of Leroy’s dalliances and they parted company. A little over a year later he told me he’d decided to move back to Texas and start his own business.

In 2004, we met up briefly as he was passing through Phoenix on his way to McKinney. This would be the last time I’d ever see him.

We exchanged a few more emails as he got resettled, but then life intervened and I lost touch. When I attempted to re-establish contact, none of his email addresses were active, and I had no phone number or old school physical address by which to contact him.

Over the years, I’d run cursory internet searches hoping to find him, but with such a relatively common name, I came up empty handed.

That is, until earlier this week.

And I almost wish I hadn’t. “Ignorance is bliss,” as they say.

Jeffrey died in 2011. No cause was given in the obituary, so I have no idea if it was AIDS, cancer, or some horrific accident. If he was HIV positive or otherwise sick, he never mentioned it. All I know is that yet another little hole has opened in my life that will never be filled.

I’m glad I had the chance to know him.

Jeffrey Laughlin 1966-2011

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White Evangelicals, This is Why People Are Through With You

Dear White Evangelicals,

I need to tell you something: People have had it with you.

They’re done.

They want nothing to do with you any longer, and here’s why:

They see your hypocrisy, your inconsistency, your incredibly selective mercy, and your thinly veiled supremacy.

For eight years they watched you relentlessly demonize a black President; a man faithfully married for 26 years; a doting father and husband without a hint of moral scandal or the slightest whiff of infidelity.

They watched you deny his personal faith convictions, argue his birthplace, and assail his character—all without cause or evidence. They saw you brandish Scriptures to malign him and use the laziest of racial stereotypes in criticizing him.

And through it all, White Evangelicals—you never once suggested that God placed him where he was,
you never publicly offered prayers for him and his family,
you never welcomed him to your Christian Universities,
you never gave him the benefit of the doubt in any instance,
you never spoke of offering him forgiveness or mercy,
your evangelists never publicly thanked God for his leadership,
your pastors never took to the pulpit to offer solidarity with him,
you never made any effort to affirm his humanity or show the love of Jesus to him in any quantifiable measure.

You violently opposed him at every single turn—without offering a single ounce of the grace you claim as the heart of your faith tradition. You jettisoned Jesus as you dispensed damnation on him.

And yet today, you openly give a “mulligan” to a white Republican man so riddled with depravity, so littered with extramarital affairs, so unapologetically vile, with such a vast resume of moral filth—that the mind boggles.

And the change in you is unmistakable. It has been an astonishing conversion to behold: a being born again.

With him, you suddenly find religion.
With him, you’re now willing to offer full absolution.
With him, all is forgiven without repentance or admission.
With him you’re suddenly able to see some invisible, deeply buried heart.
With him, sin has become unimportant, compassion no longer a requirement.
With him, you see only Providence.

And White Evangelicals, all those people who have had it with you—they see it all clearly.

They recognize the toxic source of your inconsistency.

They see that pigmentation and party are your sole deities.
They see that you aren’t interested in perpetuating the love of God or emulating the heart of Jesus.
They see that you aren’t burdened to love the least, or to be agents of compassion, or to care for your Muslim, gay, African, female, or poor neighbors as yourself.
They see that all you’re really interested in doing, is making a God in your own ivory image and demanding that the world bow down to it.
They recognize this all about white, Republican Jesus—not dark-skinned Jesus of Nazareth.

And I know you don’t realize it, but you’re digging your own grave in these days; the grave of your very faith tradition.

Your willingness to align yourself with cruelty is a costly marriage. Yes, you’ve gained a Supreme Court seat, a few months with the Presidency as a mouthpiece, and the cheap high of temporary power—but you’ve lost a whole lot more.

You’ve lost an audience with millions of wise, decent, good-hearted, faithful people with eyes to see this ugliness.
You’ve lost any moral high ground or spiritual authority with a generation.
You’ve lost any semblance of Christlikeness.
You’ve lost the plot.
And most of all you’ve lost your soul.

I know it’s likely you’ll dismiss these words. The fact that you’ve even made your bed with such malevolence, shows how far gone you are and how insulated you are from the reality in front of you.

But I had to at least try to reach you. It’s what Jesus would do.

Maybe you need to read what he said again—if he still matters to you.

[Source]

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Dear Arizona Restaurants…

Here’s a suggestion: how about designing your facilities with separate air conditioning systems for the dining area and the kitchen? Having only one system tuned to the kitchen temperature is the only explanation I can come up with as to why your dining areas are like meat lockers. ALL. YEAR. ROUND.

Leaving your establishment when it’s 65F out there and feeling warm after being in your restaurant is a definite sign that it’s TOO DAMN COLD inside.

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A Note About My Blog Headers

Fuckin’ Apple.

If you’re using Safari as your browser, I’ve noticed a bug. (A bug with an Apple product? Impossible!) If you refresh my page, the header image (which is supposed to randomly select an image from my library and display it) doesn’t refresh. I haven’t tested this with IE or Edge (and really don’t have any way to, since the only place I have access to those browsers is at work and my site is blocked there, so any of you IE/Edge users please let me know if it’s working) but it does work fine with Chrome.

UPDATE: Well apparently it isn’t a bug after all. Refreshing to get a new header only works when I’m logged in under my administrator account. So I don’t know how the refresh thing works now. Is there a time limit between new images? I guess I may have to contact the template designer for clarification.

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Quote of the Day

I think Apple has shown across multiple years and multiple products that they only care about making the keyboard thinner, and they will make some efforts to make the thin keyboard tolerable, but that they are no longer interested in keeping it a good keyboard if that means they can’t make it thinner. And so I just have to kind of resign myself to accept that.” ~ Marco Arment

PREACH, Sister!

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