This is NOT the Way the World Will End

I woke up this morning, and much to my irritated surprise, there was a damned cricket outside my window.

My demon cat, Puck Lucipurr was sitting my chest glaring at me because it was his breakfast time. And I needed to feed him like NOW!!!

Much to my disgust, there was a fly hanging out by my kitchen window.

No, the world as we know it, had not ended.

The stars were still shining in the sky. The birds were still singing. And Puck Lucipurr's litter box still needed to be cleaned.

Legalizing Gay Marriage didn't change a thing... Not one damned thing!

I didn't find any empty clothes lying around in empty chairs. And Kirk Cameron wasn't running up and down the streets yelling "I BELIEVE! I BELIEVE!" (Scary thought!)

So the day June 26th, 2015 will go down in infamy as the day immorality reigned free in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Except in the LBGTQ part of the land, it was illegal for them to get married, so they weren't so free. And the home of the brave are scaredy cats afraid of diversity.

Due to the "Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, tax deductions almost doubled for married couples. People living together, and people united through civil unions didn't celebrate this benefit.

In order for a gay couple to claim a dependent on their insurance, for coverage, they would have to be married, because most insurance companies don't recognize civil unions.

In some hospitals, gay couples were denied access to their loved ones because they weren't considered immediate family.

If a gay couple married in one state and moved to a state where gay marriage was illegal, they couldn't file for divorce, they couldn't get insurance, and they couldn't be put as a spouse on their partner's death certificate.

If a spouse dies, a heterosexual couple survivor can file to claim half of the benefits of the deceased spouse.

So technically, this is not about gay marriage at all, but about the rights that heterosexual couples have that are denied to others.

And this is where the Supreme Court stepped in.

There is this amazing piece of paper here in the United States called The Constitution. And somewhere written on this piece of paper it says: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Unitied States of America."

If you are going to give perks to the heterosexual married couples, you better damn well give them to the LGBTQ couples as well!

If you didn't want gay marriage legal, then maybe giving up those perks should have been considered as an option.

So you can blame your homophobic tendencies and bigotry on "how gross it is" to think about gay people having sex (which, concerning yourself with how "the others" have sex is sort of pervy for you anyway and you should go to gay conversion therapy). But all of this could have been fixed just by you waiving your rights to all of those perks you have celebrated over the years.

Make marriage the "unappealing option" for gays.

But you didn't. You were greedy and wanted your cake, and wanted to eat it too.

So now the big debate is when will Plumber Joe show up at the courthouse with a goat as an intended spouse?

Let's get back to The Bill of Rights for this one "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." There doesn't seem to be any mention of goats in that statement.

But let's say that Plumber Joe did show up with said goat, and the courthouse employees were scampering around looking for reasons NOT to let the dimwit get married. They may have forgotten about The Bill of Rights, The Constitution, and state laws regarding marriage.

But there are a couple of things that make marriage an institution of integrity.

1. Both parties have to be consenting adults.

2. Both parties have to have full comprehension of the obligations and  entitlements that come with marriage.

3. Both parties need to have the ability to express affirmative or negative to the questions asked.

4. Because marriage is a contract, they are obliged to agree to the contractual clauses in said contract.

In other word, show me a goat (or a child) that can meet all of those requirements, and I will approve the marriage. But wait! A child isn't a consenting adult, so it is not going to happen!

So their next argument is one of immorality. It will reign forever in our streets until God HIMSELF smotes us, just like Sodom and Gomorrah.

Except God struck down Sodom and Gomorrah because of Pedophilia and rampant sex with anyone. Even Lot tried to bale his problems out with his virgin daughters, which seems more of a sin to me than tossing the Angels to the wolves. (And I was slightly confused by his daughters that had never known men, but he had son-in-laws.)

But the reality is that the immorality occurs with promiscuity, not with marriage, unless you're promiscuous when you are married.

So why wouldn't the nay-sayers want gays to get married to save their "poor, promiscuous souls". Except I don't know a lot of gays that are promiscuous.

In the end, in my opinion, the Supreme Court decision was a disappointment because it wasn't 9 to 0 in favor of legalizing gay marriage. Because it is their job to read and interpret the constitution:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Unitied States of America."

 

Thoughts on food...

I've been watching my food a lot... Messed up as that seems. Being told that your thyroid is toast tends to mess up a love affair with food. So instead of mixing this and that, and making my glorious food inventions, I weigh, measure, analyze everything that goes into my oven or on my skillet.

My phone is my supervisor.

I have an app on my phone that gives me permission to eat or not to eat.

So instead of eating food, I watch it.

A little while ago, I decided to take a funny picture with Puck Lucipurr eating tuna out of a Martini glass with olives.

Regardless of the coaxing, the begging, the pleading, he wouldn't touch that stuff... With or with out the olives.

My oddball cat, who loved marinara sauce and onions would not touch a fresh can of tuna.

A few weeks ago, it was chicken breasts. Have you ever stared at chicken breasts?

I bought some rather large chicken breasts. They were too large to be real chicken breasts. And I bought some chicken fryers from a Carniceria down the road.

Sort of like Julia Childs, I carefully sliced that chicken down to just meat. And the chicken breast that I peeled from it's body was about one third the size of the pre-prepared chicken breasts I bought in a random bag from the supermarket.

Then I set them down beside each other and waited.

Slowly, the entire chicken breast from the fryer slowly turned grey after just sitting there for about 45 minutes.

The extra large, hybrid chicken breast turned grey around the edges, a lot slower, but basically stayed pink... for 2 hours.

Then the big questions hit me: Why do I need an 8 ounce chicken breast?

My phone was telling me that a 4 ounce chicken breast was a full serving. And it was trying to protect me from a world made of giant servings, super sizes, big gulps, second helpings, and all you can eat buffets.

And I had just discovered where they were hiding the GMOs... In the plastic bags with the 8 ounce chicken breasts.

I have been pretty lucky with produce... Until last Friday.

I picked out a bunch of organic bananas, but they were completely green and inedible. So I picked up a few non-organic to cover myself for emergencies.

The day before, I had eaten strawberries and tossed the leaves in the trash. Two days later, fruit flies were hanging out in my trash.

And on my bananas.

Let me clarify this, they were hanging out on my organic bananas, they weren't touching the non-organic bananas.

Scary, huh?

A scavenger bug having no interest in fruit.

What has this world come to that the food has become poison and the safe water has to come from bottles? Our sodas have more sugar in them than candy bars, and the fake reproduced milk has even more sugar.

Is the purpose of this fake world to create an obese society dependent on steroidal foods that induce premature puberty and cancer from putrid, saccharine-laced, drinkable urine?

Or is it just an easy way out?

Isn't that human nature? Why spend time preparing a meal with the right foods, when you can microwave everything instead?

Sad to say, that the younger generation has never experienced the true joy of pounding dough into submission, only to watch it gracefully rise in the oven as it bakes.

Have they ever planted a garden and harvested only to make the most mouth-watering salad on the face of this earth?

I have surrendered to the inevitable: I have to read every label, and even then, mistrust everything I read.

The government doesn't require that we mark the GMOs from the non-GMOs. The saccharine ingredients are listed in small enough print that we don't bother to read them, because it would slow us down.

My phone has been speaking words of wisdom to me for months, and with my eyes, my nose, my cat, and my noggin... and now I will now listen.

Living In Shame...

 

 

I remember a friend of my mother driving drunk to our house.

She got out of her car and the first thing out of her mouth was: "My daughter just had a bastard!"

It took me quite a bit of research to find out why she was upset. I was in junior high and our library consisted of teen romance, teen adventure, the classics, and a weird book I have never been able to forget "Freak Show".

There were no books about unwed mothers, illegitimate children, sex education, or the societal and economic downfalls of unwed mothers.

Nancy Drew didn't prepare me for a lot of things.

Until high school, although I knew where babies came from and how, I really didn't think about unwed mothers.

Then they started showing up all over the place.

Teen hormones raging, lack of common sense dwindling, and mixing boys with girls (not to mention illegally obtaining alcohol) will get you more than a few pregnant girls.

Still, I didn't think much about it. The girls usually disappeared about 6 months into their pregnancy and went off somewhere and got their GED. It wasn't like they were dropping babies in the hallways.

As flat out honest as my mother was about sex education, she ordered me to keep my legs closed or use birth control. I am sure that a lot of mothers did this. My mother just said it a bit more intensely than most.

So a recent comment by someone saying that we should shame unwed mothers really bothered me.

Shame is not rehabilitation. It doesn't correct the behavior. It doesn't put the horse back in the barn after the barn door is closed.

There is really no way around this. For a millennium and more, there have been unwed mothers.

I believe Cleopatra had several illegitimate children. Don't even get me started on the Greeks, the Romans, the Vikings, and England with its ancient plethora of bastard children. William the Bastard being the most notable of kings. Ptolemy Neos Dionysos Theos Philopator Theos Philadelphos, or Ptolemy XII Auletes of Ancient Greece, was also very much the son of a union between Ptolemy XI and an Egyptian woman.

Nathanial Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter detailing the shaming of an unwed mother who was impregnated by a pastor and forced to wear a scarlet letter in shame of her misdeeds.

As Hawthorne right points out, there is more blame to be carried then that of the mother.

It takes two to make a child.

But even before the child is created, there are obligations that exist at the societal and family level.

I have seen and heard of girls who become pregnant for multiple reasons:

1.      Let's face it, there are some that do it for the money. Whether it comes from the father or the government.

2.      Lack of education is a big factor. The impersonalization of sex education, with some schools even banning pictures, has a lot to do with this. My school showed us a film. I don't remember the film except for the girl and her period. I remember sitting in the back row, with one of my friends, comparing nail polish.

3.      Lack of access to birth control at a younger age. Kids are going to have sex. It's a fact of life that most are closing a blind eye toward.

4.      I heard one girl say that she was looking forward to the unconditional love of her child (Lord knows where she got that one!)

5.      And finally, Abstinence pledges. I sneer every time I see the words Abstinence pledges. It's not gonna happen. end of subject.

 

 The reality is that the pregnancy of an unwed mother becomes either a burden on society, her parents, or the father. It just costs too damn much to raise a child in the world today!

While the girl is underage, I believe that it should be the responsibility of both sets of parents and the father to pay for the upbringing of the child. This would insure that parents are very much committed to keeping their daughters educated on birth control and what it takes to raise a child.

While some schools meet the burden of teaching children sex education, as well as the burden of having children (carrying around fake babies that cry all the time and need their diaper changed every five minutes), there are other schools that actively encourage abstinence. These schools should have their funds taken away from them and be restructured from the ground up..

But I am still going to go back to the parents. Like my very diligent, tough, and wise mother, parents have an obligation to meet parts of their children's education that can't be done in a classroom.

Parents today drop their kids off at school and pick them up expecting them to be smarter than they were at the beginning of the day. Education doesn't begin or end in school.

My family read to me, and then when I was old enough, I read back to them, even before I started school. My grandfather taught me math by teaching me Cribbage, and was damn tough about it too! (I know where my mother gets it!)

When I was in school, there was always someone there to help me with my homework when I got home.

And then there's birth control. The taboo subject at the dinner table, in the classroom, or in a pharmacy, unless you are of the age of consent.

If you want to stop teen pregnancies, let's start with the fact that their hormones will rage, and we need to recognize this. If we can't put out the fire, we should be able to make sure it doesn't spread.

But more than this, why is it that the unwed mothers should be shamed? Why not the unwed fathers? Or the parents of both? Or even the schools and the churches that dropped the ball with their abstinence pledges?

It takes more than one person to make a child.

Let's have schools put banners on their front lawns saying: We failed to educate our teenagers on sex education and now we are pregnant!

We could paint a scarlet letter on the doors of the parents who don't teach their kids about safe sex.

And then we should paint a big fat A on society's forehead for being dumb enough to make this all about unwed mothers.

Ode to Brownback

 

 

 

I am originally from Kansas, and now live in Colorado. I like to consider myself liberal on social issues and conservative on fiscal issues.

There has been a lot of confusion these last few years for me. I don't like either party. I think both parties (and I am including the Tea Party in the Republican party) have become bloated and aggressive with their own agendas. Neither party compromises, and both DEMAND what they want.

I was one of the stupid few that read the Affordable Healthcare Act. It took me 3 months to read it.

The bill was so over-laden with pork barrel, that the actual reason for the bill was shadowed by the greed of each party. Pointing at either party with accusation would be a waste of time, because they were both equally guilty.

The big problem with all the wheeling and dealing behind the scenes is the fact that the vote was cut almost straight down the party-lines.

Senator McCain, tired of being the Democrats' Republican Bitch, even refused to vote for it! Olympia Snow, a very moderate Republican voted for it during the Finance Committee's submission, but failed to vote for the actual bill when it hit the floor because the finalized version was not up to expectations.

The sad part is that both the Senate and the House had a majority of Democrats, and even with the dissenting Democrats, it would have passed without the pork barrel, so why the compromise?

Perhaps it was tit for tat? So and so got this, so I get that.

The Republicans, while voting against the bill, still got their pork passed with the bill, so they got what they wanted in the long run. But voting for it meant losing face and becoming the "'other Republican bitch" for the Democrats.

So now I am at this impasse with both parties.

How can I compromise my goals and demands with what each party can give me?

Anxiously, I have been watching several states to see what fiscal policies are successfully implemented.

Kansas just so happened to fit into this category.

Brownback is about as extremely Republican as my cat is extremely demonic (always have to give that plug to Puck Lucipurr).

On the whole, he followed the Republican agenda right down the line. He cut taxes to businesses. He cut taxes period. He honed in on welfare recipients, and cut monies (also losing federal money because of the cuts). In fact, he restricted the withdrawal of monies from ATMs that are over $25.00. So a mom has two mouths to feed, one ATM EBT card, no car, and a $25.00 limit. Each day, she is trudging through the snow (and believe me, Kansas' wind chill factor is a nightmare), and trudging through the heat (we are talking HUMID, bug infested H-E-A-T) to get to that ATM every day on the bus and get that $25,00 dollars out so that she can feed her kids.

He cut spending for schools (because the mind is a terrible thing to waste money on). And because of these cuts, three school districts closed earl

y.

Brownback's ultimate goal is to privatize all schools and make parents pay $3,000 dollars a semester per child. (Something that he says the parents would later be able to deduct from their taxes.

Now, because the Federal Government is saying that Kansas isn't following policies, they have cut funding to the state of Kansas. And Brownback has found that his tax cuts for businesses are not bringing more businesses into the state.

So he has come up with this ¿GREAT? idea for covering his white ass from total political fallout. Yes folks, he is going to raise the state sales tax, because those poor folks that can only pull $25.00 out of the ATM at a time can definitely afford that buck sixty-seven that they will have to cough up for any $25.00 dollar purchase.

So let's tell those poor folks to go out and look for a job! Oh wait, Kansas' minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. Let those poor mothers try and support two kids on that wage. Here in Colorado, fast food workers get $9.50 per  hour starting, and that is considered poverty level.

And of course, according to Brownback, welfare recipients are no longer allowed to go to the movies, ride in a taxi, or go on cruises (because that is what they do with all their money... right?)

Do I want to see fiscal reform? ABSOLUTELY!

I want to stop sending money to banks so that they can give their upper management bonuses and vacations. I want to crack down on pork barrel and say a bill is a bill is a bill. I want to be able to actually read a bill in a few days!

If you want to know where our money is going, let's focus on political spending, WARS, trips abroad, and government hand outs to large corporations that while bankrupt, still have more money than most of the country!

I want Brownback to back of his political high horse and live off of $25.00 a day (equaling 252.00 dollars a month) and feed his kids and pay his bills with it. I want him to show us how it is done. I want him to lead by example, but right now he is flogging a dead, high horse.

Do Animals Have Souls?

 

 

 

For a millennia the debate has raged among man: Do animals have souls?

In order to answer this question, we have to determine why the debate is raging and what makes a soul.

In high school (back in the dark ages), a Buddhist monk came to visit my History of Religion class.

The monk stood in front of our class and said that Christians were confused about the placement of the soul. He said that our souls were in our brains, where all the thought processes occur. And then he asked everybody where they thought there souls were.

All the Droids in the class pointed at their heads like good little robots... Except this dumb writer, who pointed at her chest.

He looked at me like I was stupid, and said: "Your soul is in your boobs?"

I just smiled at him. He didn't seem to realize that I was just pointing at myself, not my brain (or boobs). I have always believed that my entirety is my soul.

Science has proved me right (raspberry to the Buddhist).

Studies on individuals with paralysis have shown that if they are put on a treadmill and held in an upright position, their legs will move and walk (ref Rob Summers/Christopher Reeves Foundation May 20, 2011). This is due to stimulation of the spinal cord.

Science also shows that every action we take is not necessarily an action suggested by the brain.

When a person is sitting at a desk and rapidly tapping his foot, or biting his nails. These are impulses and/or habits that the body does without brain activity, but the spinal cord is constantly firing.

These actions imply that there is more than just the brain to our souls.

I sincerely believe that the original thought behind pointing at the chest for our souls was not at the heart, but at the entire being.

If most humans really thought about it, and decided that animals did have souls, then eating meat would become a rarity. One can't say that one or two specific animals have souls, but the rest are lacking.

It's either all or none with me.

I must confess, I am not a vegan. I have had my days as a vegetarian, and it didn't kill me. I don't mind tofu, and I have never had a problem eating eggs.

I hate chickens. After spending a summer with my grandparents and having to gather eggs, with those malicious beasts pecking at my hands, I can quite honestly say I have no problem eating chicken, and by default, other birds.

But on the other side of the coin, after reading Bob Tarte's "Enslaved by Ducks", one has to recognize that each and every animal has their own personality. Case in point, was Bob Tarte's hero duck, Peggy, who sacrificed herself to the Raccoon Beasts so that her buddies could escape.

But the idea behind animals not having souls might come from Ecclesiastes 3:21: Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth.

To Christians, this is God's way of approving setting meat at the table. If an animal/beast doesn't have a soul, then there shouldn't be any problem with eating it.

Now I would like to deviate from my stated path and point out that Hebrews 1 says that Angels are just servants sent to attend man, the chosen heirs of salvation.

Quite a thought there. If we take this literally, angels don't have souls either.

I must confess, I fall on the side of those who believe that animals have souls. But I am okay with those that say they don't.

About 20 years ago, I lost my first pet.

Her name was Jonsi, and she was a handful. She was a bearded collie that owned my life. She even had her own song. When she sat on my lap (and yes, she was a huge lapdog) she wouldn't start cuddling until I sang "And I Love You So". She even went so far as to infringe on my shower once when she heard me singing it.

I had two cats that grew up believing that she was their mother. One of them, Hobbs, wouldn't purr for anyone but Jonsi. He would sit quietly on my lap for hours, letting me pet him. Not a purr emitted from his precious body. And then Jonsi would walk by and he would jump up from my lap and purr and rub up against her (much to her irritation).

When she passed away, my heart was shredded. I was catatonic at work. I would lay in bed and cry.

There were two things that brought me to a point of starting the healing process:

One was something that someone said to me. He said that he believed that our pets were just angels sent down to watch over us. When they had earned their wings, God called them back to heaven.

This would imply that no, animals don't have souls, but they do serve a higher purpose.

The second thing that happened about two months after Jonsi died.

I was laying in bed, bawling my eyes out, when Hobbs jumped up on my bed and laid down on my chest and began purring.

After that night, he never let me sleep alone. He would watch me sleep. When I rolled over, he would move over to the side of the bed where I was facing.

As Hobbs grew older, he taught himself phrases, like "Hello" and "I love you". I had a connection with him that could have proven either argument. Yes, he was an angel, but he had a personality that went with a soul of Mother Theresa.

There is no right or wrong way to apply this thought. You can say that animals have souls, and you are probably right. They have individual personalities and quirks that can justify that argument to the bitter end.

But you can say they don't have a soul, and know with confidence, that they were put on this earth for a higher purpose in your life.