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You Might Be a Republican If…

You think doing these things result in a better society:

  • Elimination of EPA
  • Elimination of Education
  • Elimination of Energy Dept
  • Elimination of Commerce Dept.
  • Elimination of Planned Parenthood
  • Elimination of NPR
  • Privatizing Social Security
  • Privatizing Medicare
  • Lower taxes on the rich, raise taxes on the poor
  • Trying to strip Union Worker Rights
  • Trying to criminalize abortion and miscarriages
  • Executive orders to mandate 12 yr old girls take HPV vaccines.
  • Emergency Financial Manager Law that allows the state to fire city elected officials and install a dictator.
  • Running fake democratic candidates in Recalls

Yeah, Republicans sure do run on a platform for creating a better society! /sarcasm.

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This Was Me Last Night

It was a rough day. I had to deliver and set up some PCs in our Colorado Springs office.  I don't mind the COS office or going there; it's actually being in Colorado Springs that I hate. I always feel like I need to shower—in bleach—after spending any time there. It seems every car is plastered with little Jeebus fish or American flags or more commonly, both. The gay hate group Focus on the Family is based there. The Christianist indoctrination facility, more commonly known as the Air Force Academy, is located there. Constitution Avenue is a major thoroughfare.  In short, the whole "God-Country-Family" thing hangs in the air like a poison fog to this little freedom-lovin atheist homo (who actually has read the Constitution, no doubt unlike 99% of the people who live there).

It only took me until around 1 pm to get my work done, so after I said my goodbyes to the office manager and had her verify that everything was set up to her satisfaction, I decided to head out in search of lunch before returning to Denver.  I was in the mood for some Jack-in-the-Box tacos and knew there had to be a JIB somewhere in this overweight fast-food-on-every-corner town.  A quick Google search confirmed that and I set off.

On the way there, I encountered a big white 4×4 driven by an old man who was obviously functioning on only two or three brain cells.  He had a "CAIN 2012" sticker plastered on the rear window of the cab (along with with the usual jeebus fish and american flags on the bumper). Seriously? Herman Cain? The wannabe Groper-in-Chief? I only wish I had a voice that would carry far enough for me to yell out my window and ask the douchebag how he would feel if it was his daughter's skirt Cain were reaching under. As expected, when the light changed, he took off pedal-to-the-metal. Three brain cells and a small penis! It was a twofer!

But back to lunch, Ben and I have had terrible luck at the three JIBs in Denver. Service is abysmally slow (even when there's no one else in the restaurant!), orders are delivered missing items, and the people who work there just don't seem to give a damn about any of it.  I'm not sure I'd be any different if I were in that position, but c'mon people. If corporate gets enough complaints about a store you aren't going to be working at all. And encountering the same attitude at three different stores?  (Believe me, we've let Jack know how awful our experience has been.) For that reason I wasn't holding out much hope COS would be any different.

I was pleasantly surprised. It was like a JIB in Phoenix. I placed my order and the food was ready (and hot, which is also unusual) within only a few minutes.

Fighting a burgeoning headache that started earlier that morning, I arrived back at our main office at 3 pm, giving me only an hour to get caught up on whatever tasks had been accumulating in my Inbox during the day. Thankfully it had been a pretty quiet in my absence.

Right before I left for the day, Ben texted and asked if I wanted to meet him at the Starbucks on Colorado on my way home. I texted back yes, but by the time I got there the day had just overwhelmed me and I asked if we could just go home instead. He said that was fine; he wasn't making much headway on his paper anyway.

After a truly unremarkable dinner at the neighborhood Heidi's where I was asked, "Do you want that hot pastrami hot or cold?" (SERIOUSLY) we walked back home and I popped a couple Advil hoping that would finally kill the headache. Since it was Friday night (yay!) I had every intention of remaining awake and getting caught up on what was stored in the TIVO. Instead, I was sound asleep on the sofa minutes later. I think I woke up around 7:30 and sleepily told Ben I was going to bed. I was out the minute my head hit the pillow and slept for the next twelve hours…

 

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Asshat of the Day – Randy Thomasson

From Joe.My.God.

"This is training up an immoral army of soldiers to attack real marriage, the natural family, and to rope more children into sexual darkness. 'Queer studies' teaches you can do anything sexual you want without negative consequences or moral accountability to God, and that you have no ability to choose whether or not to engage in sexual behaviors. This philosophy essentially turns man into an animal, but less than an animal, because beasts follow God's natural order of sexuality." – Save California douchebag Randy Thomasson, saying that Queer Studies courses are nothing more than "gay boot camp."

In the above-linked article, Thomasson goes on to repeat the familiar lie that all gay people were molested as children. Or hate their mothers. Or something.

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'39

"Seriously, the best damn song about theoretical Einsteinian space travel-induced time dilation masquerading as a sea shanty EVER."

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Food for Thought

"Our passionate preoccupation with the sky, the stars, and a god somewhere in outer space is a homing impulse. We are drawn back to where we came from." ~ Eric Hoffer (1902-1983), American social thinker and longshoreman

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Apologies

My feeds don't seem to be updating consistently, so those of you who read Voenix Rising through some kind of RSS reader (Google Reader, Reeder, etc.) are probably missing some posts. Apologies to anyone affected, but at this point I'm not even going to try and troubleshoot it because I do enough of that crap at work and I don't want to mess with it at home too.

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Sunday Dance Party II: Tantra – The Hills of Katmandu

OMG, I've fallen down the rabbit hole! One video leads to another, leads to another…

So many in fact, that I've pre-published Dance Party posts for the next two weeks. THIS song, however, couldn't wait that long.

At the time this record came out (1980 or thereabouts), it was EXTREMELY hard to find. As I recall, I had to mail order it from a place in NYC, supposedly one of only a handful of stores in the country who had it. It was (and remains) an aural orgasm; I swear I almost wore my original copy out.

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The Stuff of Dreams

For the most part, I believe dreams are nothing more than the brain's daily method of defragmenting and organizing data.  I think this explains why in a dream something that happened when you were a child is suddenly juxtaposed with something that happened the previous afternoon.

But every once in a while, I think the imagery in a dream is so profound that it's nothing short of your unconscious screaming out for attention.  Case in point, the dream I had right before waking this morning.

A little back story: before we left Phoenix, I left all my tropical fish with my sister. Ordinarily I would've moved them with us (as I have many times in the past), but since we were initially heading for a hotel, I knew that wouldn't be possible.

I've also learned from past dreams about aquariums and their finned residents is that they are symbols for my general level of emotional comfort and well-being.  When I dream of vibrant, healthy aquariums, I'm usually in a pretty good space emotionally. When I dream of dirty or half-filled green-water aquariums and dead or dying fish, I'm not in the best of spaces.

Last night I dreamt I'd returned to Phoenix to retrieve my fish and three huge, beautiful tanks I'd left with my sister.  (In real life I have just one tank and I gave her only the fish, with absolutely no plans to return for them.)

In the dream, when I first arrived at her house, she was moving fish between the tanks because "they need to get out more." She was also providing them a daily smorgasbord of food choices.  And she flat out refused to return them to me.

I went to our Mom (who was apparently back from the grave and visiting), hoping to get her to act as arbitrator.  She said, "You're both adults. Work it out yourselves."

I pleaded. I begged. I offered money. My sister was having none of it. I went to look at the largest of the three tanks, where my prized fish—three huge, gorgeous clown loaches—were, and when I saw them snuggling up against each other (as they often did), I dropped to my knees and started sobbing uncontrollably. I woke up at that point.

The meaning of this dream is obvious to me.

It's no secret that I'm still not completely happy with Denver. I realize that we haven't even been here six months yet, but the symbolism of not even having aquarium(s) or fish in my possession (based on their known interpretation) is clear. (It also doesn't help that I come home every day to a still-empty tank sitting on the dresser, and I have no idea whatsoever when I'm going to be able to get it back up and running again.)

Secondly, the fact that in the dream my sister was refusing to return these items to me (something she would never do in real life) speaks volumes about her perceived view about my move to Denver. While she has been outwardly supportive, I've felt an undercurrent of hostility from the first mention of it, as if she resented the fact that I was giving up so much stability in my life to follow Ben on this adventure—as well as leaving her as the potential sole first-response caregiver if anything happens to our dad.

Or perhaps it's subconscious guilt on my part that I left her to take on that role?

In either case, this dream shows me that I really need to get my aquariums refilled, both physically and metaphorically…and the sooner, the better.

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Russian Unicorn

I haven't laughed so hard in ages! The folks at Bad Lip-Reading are Genius:

BTW, if you don't know what a Russian Unicorn is, go here.

I wouldn't be surprised if this video is pulled for copyright infringement, so if you want to save it, better do it soon.

UPDATE: Apparently Bubbly loved it…

(Thanks, RG!)

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Snowvember

We woke up to another winter wonderland yesterday.

But…

When I saw snow on our balcony I should've realized this was not going to be like the storm a week ago.

When I went out to the garage and saw the car dusted in snow (even though it was under cover) I should've realized this was not going to be like the storm a week ago.

I left the house at 7 am, like I always do. I like to get to work a half hour early so I can take off at 4 pm and miss the worst of the I-25 traffic heading home. I knew it would probably take me a bit longer today because of the storm, so even if it took a few extra minutes it wouldn't be a big deal; I'd still get there at a reasonable time.

When I pulled out onto Colorado Boulevard and saw that this major thoroughfare hadn't even been plowed yet, I knew leaving early that afternoon was not going to be an option.

The easy commute I had in the snow a week ago was obviously an anomaly. Yesterday was ugly. Very ugly. I'd driven in snow before moving to Colorado, but never in snow mixed with slush and ice.  This was something new, and I'm here to testify that Anderson (and his owner!) does not like driving in it. Not one bit! On the plus side, Anderson is a front-wheel drive with fairly new tires, but that offered little assurance during the multiple times I found myself spinning the wheels furiously and not getting any traction. I also learned that Anderson's anti-lock brakes work just fine, especially when approaching a stop light at an icy intersection while going an outrageous 10 mph.

I pulled into the still snow-covered parking lot at work, emotionally exhausted, at 8 am. It had taken me a full hour to go 11 miles. Normally it takes half that.

I'm sure that in time I will adapt to driving under these conditions, but after yesterday I have to say that I was relieved to see that there were no more snow days predicted in the extended forecast.