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KILL IT WITH FIRE.

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I woke up at 4:45 this morning and could not get back to sleep. I kept thinking about something my dad said to me the other day and try as I might I could not get it out of my head.

I asked how he’d been doing since my last call a week earlier. “Oh, not so good. Going downhill fast.” I asked what he meant by that and he said, “It’s these damn sinuses.”

My dad’s had sinus problems for the last couple years, and despite trying numerous prescription medications, nothing seems to clear it up.

As I lay there in the dark this morning, listening to (and quite envious of) Ben’s blissful, rhythmic breathing as he traversed the astral, it hit me.  The root cause of Dad’s sinus problems is the fact his place hasn’t gotten a proper, thorough cleaning in at least five years—and probably closer to ten. In addition, he never opens his windows to air the place out, so it’s not just dust, but probably mold and god knows what else. (He blames “the cats that come over and shit in his yard.” I find that as a source of nasal irritation highly unlikely; my dad just hates cats.)

Anyway…

The man is 86 years old. And while he’s still sharp mentally, he doesn’t have the dexterity or physical stamina he used to, so he admits that while domestic maintenance may get started, it’s never finished. He’s also become a borderline hoarder, and attempts over the years by my sister and I to get his place decluttered so that we can clean have been met with extreme resistance.

(If you watch an episode of Hoarders and see how the folks react when their stuff is being hauled off is exactly what we’ve gone through with Dad.)

A little backstory to his current housing situation is necessary: In 1994, after breaking up with a woman he’d been living with in the Bay Area for several years, he moved back to Phoenix and bought a nice mobile home across the street from his sister in what was, at the time, a decent little park.

A couple years later my aunt moved up north and in the years since the park has steadily gone downhill.

About two years ago, after a wind storm severely damaged his carport and patio covers, he said he’d had enough, and there was a brief window when he was open to the idea of moving into a proper apartment. Wrapped up in our own lives, my sister and I could never coordinate a time for the three of us to start looking for places and eventually our window of opportunity closed.

After Ben and I moved to Denver, there was even some positive discussion about Dad going into an assisted living household, but as of today, nothing more about it has been discussed.

I’ve thought about hiring a cleaning service to come in once a week to at least dust, vacuum, and clean the kitchen and bathrooms, but I can’t do that until the place is de-cluttered. Apparently the VA also has a program available to him where someone comes in and does basic housekeeping. That sounds like an even better solution since it’s free, but again—before that can happen, the place needs to be de-cluttered so that cleaning is even possible.

At this point I would be willing to go down to Phoenix and get the place in order myself—Dad’s protestations about “touching his stuff” be damned—but I don’t have enough accumulated time off yet to do that. I can’t ask my sister to undertake the project herself; not only because it’s unfair to her, but we aren’t exactly on the best terms these days. (She seems to be carrying around a whole lot of anger at the world, and resentment at me in particular for moving to Denver and “leaving Dad in her care.”)

So I don’t know what to do. It’s unhealthy for him to remain in his current situation as it stands, but I have no immediate solution to rectify that.

Any suggestions?  Certainly I’m not the only one to have ever been in this situation.

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…to losing my Arizona identity entirely.

I took Anderson in for an emissions inspection this morning in preparation for getting Colorado plates. He passed.

I’m taking Monday morning off to go wait in line at the DMV. I can only imagine what a little slice of hell that is going to be. I haven’t heard anything good from the natives about it…

Fingers crossed that my personal plate hasn’t already been used here. If it has, I have a few backups in mind.

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Tell him to back off.

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This arrived in our mailbox the other day.

Naughty thoughts. Very naughty thoughts.

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Stolen in full (oops, there’s that pesky 8th Commandment) from Spewing Truth in the Face of Lies:

First there is Genesis 1:26
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

Um, how many is god including by saying “us?” More than one god perhaps?

But it gets more interesting when the fall of man occurs.

We’ll set up with Genesis 2:9
And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

So we’ve established the trees that exist in the garden that their God set up for them. It will become more clear why I say “their” God as we progress.

Genesis 2:17 is where God lays down the law to Adam

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Above is where God tells a little lie. God conveniently leaves out WHEN thou shalt surely die.

The serpent enters the picture in Genesis 3, telling Eve a whopper.

3:5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

Genesis 3:16 really gets into the misogyny of Catholic/Christian teachings:

Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

Well, well—there we have it, the original misogynistic quote.

When God finds out what Adam and Eve did he starts the punishment:

3:22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
3:23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
3:24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

That last part, where the man is become one of “us” again. That’s that pesky construct, “us”.

Genesis 4:16
And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.

Yup, there was a land OUTSIDE of Eden. So in essence Christianity, if true, is based on an experiment performed by a God of some sort.

So just going through four chapters of Genesis you see some of the more immediate problems in the Bible.

One is that there is an almost constant reference to “us”. Perhaps it’s God and the Holy Spirit and the Angels but you’d think enumeration would have cleared it up.

Then of course is Cain in Nod, you know, East of Eden. That means that there are others outside the realm of God’s kingdom. Imagine that!

As a friend of mine likes to say, she’s one of the “others”.

So too am I, I am an atheist, the other.

Don’t even get me started on the whole God is omniscient and knows everything riff.  If this god was so all-knowing, why didn’t he know that Eve was going to eat of the apple? Or was that the plan from the very beginning? I know from past encounters that pointing this shit out to die-hard believers is like arguing with a wall. The little hard drive light on their foreheads will flash violently for a few seconds and then they’ll respond with some bullshit like, “You just need to have FAITH.”

Blargh.

I’ll definitely be following along with this author as he makes his way through this piece of fiction…

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I think the geek in me just orgasmed.

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“Everyone has the right to believe in anything they want. And everyone else has the right to find it fucking ridiculous.” ~ Ricky Gervais

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Not that there was ever any real chance of lil’ Ricky making it into the White House, but still, we godless heathens can breathe a small sigh of relief.

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From Mark Morford:

And then came the headline that surprised exactly no one and delighted a great many, even as it openly terrified countless thousands across the deep south and also Utah and Kansas and pretty much the entire GOP. The poor dears.

“Homophobes might be secretly attracted to people of the same sex,” is what the headline read, I mean obviously, I mean of course you already know what the researchers discovered, you and every conscious human within a 10,000 mile radius who also snickered, rolled her eyes and then sighed heavily with the obviousness of it all. It is not always the way?

Really, who doesn’t already know? Who among us with the slightest acumen toward self-reflection doesn’t fully understand that the more you wail against something, the more violently outspoken or hateful you are against this or that perceived indiscretion, sexual proclivity, perversion, deviance, expression, delight, taste sensation, the more certain it is that said deliciousness secretly attracts you, turns you on and makes you enormously, terrifically scared?

Case after case, priest after priest, GOP senator after megachurch pastor after spittle-flecked Tea Party zealot — all suddenly caught pants down in a bathroom stall, in a leather bar, gay chat room, in a Grindr hookup app, living out their real and honest selves even as they rail and oppose and thump their Bibles everywhere else. Hypocrisy, thy name is homophobe.

Which is, essentially, exactly what the study found. One’s level of homophobia lies, quite frequently, in direct proportion to one’s own brutally closeted desire for homosexual sex. Result: self-denial, self hatred, wailing and thrashing and Prop 8-ing against an unfair world.

But before we dance and snicker too much, perhaps we should acknowledge: there is more to this study, and the common adage, than meets the jaundiced eye. Behind the humor and the sarcasm, there’s a sadness, a brutal truism common to the human melodrama. Shall we have a glance?

It goes something like this: Perhaps nasty homophobes are, the study gently suggests, to be empathized with, to be offered a modicum of compassion and understanding, due to the abject tragedy of their ignoble fate. And perhaps this offering, particularly in light of hateful trolls like Rick Santorum and his dark coven, perhaps this is one of the most difficult challenges you can name.

See, in this light, you can say homophobes (and in a similar way racists, sexists, Islamophobes, et al), they have been indoctrinated in the worst possible way. They have been led to their shallow bloodpuddles of misunderstanding by the church, by awful parenting, by violent misrepresentations of God, by shameful media propaganda, bad tattoos and cheap beer and way, way too much professional sports on weekends. Just a thought.

For most, it probably happened early. Somewhere along the arc of childhood, many anti-everything crusaders were stabbed in the heart with a very narrow idea of how life, love and sexuality are supposed to look, feel, move. And if, by adulthood, they fail to feel that way — and more importantly, if one’s own desires, deepest longings, spiritual aches somehow fail to line up with that bogus image (as they almost always do) — well, someone’s gotta pay.

Put another way: Hatred is, we all know, a learned experience. Someone teaches you that blacks are scary, Muslims are evil, women are lesser. Someone force feeds kids the vile falsehood that gay love is an abomination, as opposed to something obvious and common across every species of animal on the planet. I say ‘force,’ because kids will never believe it otherwise.

And why would they? The human soul, far from fixed, linear and predisposed to suspicion and doubt, is instead a fluxive, malleable, infinitely evolving thing, matching the insane, kaleidoscopic sweep of life itself. To lock the human heart into a cage of timid ideology or rigid sexual conduct, to forcibly limit its capacity for love is one of the most oppressive things you can ever do. Just ask the Catholic church.

Does this all excuse the homophobe’s acts, their nasty legislation, their bilious congressional votes? Does it give Rick Santorum, Rick Warren, Rush Limbaugh some sort of pass? Hell no. Does it give it a hint of understanding, and perhaps empathy, as we all recognize those places in ourselves where we have been similarly programmed, lied to, horribly misled? It might. Depends on your whisky.

Of course, it’s not universal. Not all hardcore conservatives secretly wish for a gay romp or ten. Many just act out of purely poisoned souls, or from the unconscious demon telling them that if they’re not allowed to express their deepest selves, if they can’t live life at a more honest frequency, no one can.

“How dare you!” they then sneer, to the gay couple, to the Burning Man participant, to the hippie or the artist or the educated deviant, the meditator, the spiritual seeker, the yogi or activist or appreciator of sex and tongue and yes. “What gall you have to be open-minded, autonomous, free to love and screw and dance however and with whomever you want. Don’t you know about the rules? Don’t you know how ugly life is? Don’t you know how flawed and guilt-soaked God designed you to be?

“Here, let me stab you with this ice pick of mistrust and visceral spiritual lack. There now. You are hereby as miserable as me. We are equal. I feel better. But not really.”

Maybe this is the greatest human tragedy, more divisive than any other: We are taught how to hate, to fear. American culture offers few tools with which to perform any sort of honest self-inquiry, to feel around in the subtler realms and see what we’re really about, independent of church, media, failed parenting, Rick and Rush and Fox. We are taught to ignore our deeper selves in favor of the collective group-think, codified programming, a wrathful and disconnected God.

This is the lesson: Do not ask deeper questions. Do not tap into your own genuine needs, sexuality, fierce spiritual magma. Do not dare suggest that most fundamentalist notions of Christian God are sort of detestable and gloomy, the exact opposite of what Jesus actually intended. Do not, most of all, dare to define it all for yourself, as your sex, your soul, your internal ethical slut see fit. What the hell do you think you are, free?

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Parking is hard!!!

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I am getting exceedingly tired of the celebration and encouragement of ignorance in our culture.

Pride in one’s wanton ignorance is being worn as a badge of honor by the wingnuts on the far right, and that attitude seems to infiltrating society at an ever-increasing pace.

Like I have to actually tell anyone.

Need proof? Jersey Shore. Survivor. Justin Bieber. Michelle Bachman. Maggie Gallagher. Not enough? How about the entire fucking Republican presidential primary?

People, Idiocracy was meant to be a comedy, not a blueprint for our future. STOP IT.

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Today is the three year anniversary of my mom’s death. Even now a day doesn’t go by that I don’t think of her.  Sometimes it’s only in passing—a fleeting memory of something she once said to me, while other times it’s more of a dull ache that rears itself when I realize she’s not just living in another city (as had been the case for most of my adult life), but that she is truly gone.

And yet, I’ve never cried over her death. It’s probably because Alzheimer’s had robbed me of my mother several years before her body finally gave out, and even if there is nothing beyond this life, I take solace in knowing she’s in a better place—if only to finally be rid of the frustration and mental anguish she was feeling toward the end.

This is a small tribute I put together in 2009, scenes from her life that are set to a tune that first came to my attention shortly after her death. The synchronicity of her passing and the arrival of this music in my life was eerie.

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“Long ago, homosexuality was something refined, sublimated. Concerned with reaching for the greatest heights of artistic expression and often achieving them. Now it’s just a bunch of musclebound idiots running around in t-shirts.” ~ Fred, in Damsels In Distress.

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