Hey Crazypants, I'm Back!

I was stunned to see that it's been about nine months since I last posted.

That. Ends. Now.

I'm going through the end of a 12-year marriage, seeing someone new, and have Little Shambles between HS graduation and college in the fall.

Lots of shit going on. And yet there's this ache in me, this looming reality of conservative fuck-y'all that needs to be addressed, and I have been truant in my mission, my thoughts, that materialized when beginning this thing.

I started it and refuse to let it drop off.

If any of my readers are still out there, please say hello. It'll help me keep to task and hold me accountable.

This week is the intro. Next week on I'm aiming for at least 3 posts a week.

See you soon - and thanks for still paying attention.

RS

This is Why We Can't Get Things Done in the USA: DEA Admin Plays Dumb

Honest Trailers: World War Z

Spoilers if you haven't seen it. Hilarious either way. And too, too true.

Jeff Foxworthy and The Lord

It was a lazy Saturday and damn it if I didn't stumble upon Jeff Foxworthy's new gig.


(click to embiggen)

I guess he just couldn't hack it with the 5th graders?

And yes, I watched some of it and, yes, it was as awkward as you can imagine.

Or maybe you can't. Here's a promo video.



I know; you're excited. They're doing re-runs now, but it's coming back for season 3 in March. Squee!

How We Should Name Hurricanes

Brilliant

That Other Blog and My Daughter Almost Dying

I'm sorry that I've let this go. It will come back in the next few weeks.

I don't know if you've seen my newest blog about my separation, but I ask you to check out my latest post at least. It's scary but with a hopeful ending, and the most important thing that has happened to me in the last few years.

Politics and van murals will resume next week.

Thanks.

Tea Party - American Taliban (The Newsroom Clip)

Worth every second because it's so concise.

APEX: Next Big Thing in Tech (Onion, NSFW language)

New Wearable Computer Also Sucks Your Dick

New Yorker's DOMA cover :)

Divorcing Kindly

Hey, if anyone wants to follow along with my personal reflections and whining while I go through this marriage break, I went ahead and started Divorcing Kindly in attempt to purge. I'm hoping it'll let me flush out the in-process stuff - and get me back to blogging some of the better CFC content I've been ignoring for the last few months.

It's in progress and will get prettier, but I just started tonight.

Thanks for sticking. Hopefully I'll be around a bit more :)

Little Inferno - Existential Game Review

I play many games online. Some are trite, some are engaging. This one made me reflect upon my life.

If you play games and would like to experience this yourself, please stop reading now and go to the website and rock through the few hours yourself. You'll thank me for it.

If you're reading but planning on playing, I'll try not to spoil anything, but have to convey my reaction, so no promises.

Little Inferno is basically you burning stuff. It's you buying things from catalogs and burning them. All of them. Everything.

It's billed in-game as an entertainment center. Here's a promo video you see a little ways in:



Did I mention it's crazy?


So you're burning things, all the things, and communicate via letter with a mystery friend while working through your catalogs and figuring out burning combos that get you stamps that can make catalog items show up more quickly. At heart, a beautiful puzzle game that will obsess you, take control of you, and drive you to the end - which is only a few hours.

But in this process of you burning things, you hear from you mysterious friend, you get weather updates, and promotional mail items from the creator of your Little Inferno. And then, while burning everything in sight, things get complicated, even sad, but you keep burning and buying, burning and buying.


And then I get all introspective about it.

This game isn't nuts at all. It's fun, but it's a commentary on commercialism and how playing games eats your time. You're buying and buying and burning and burning. You buy a doll and burn it and get more money back than you paid for it. Your purchasing power is increased by waste, by destroying what you just purchased. And then you purchase more.

And what the fuck are you doing? You're buying items, waiting for them to show up, and putting them in the fire. Because all you can do is burn. You burn or stop the game. And by burning you feed into the game's narrative of accepting your need to burn because that's what Little Inferno expects from you, but you learn that burning will bring some minor interaction as well.

You have a few little interactions, and they become so deep in their brevity that you might laugh them off, dismiss them, but at one point you will be struck, and I'll just say I was fighting tears about a piece of mail that I had no choice but to toss into the fireplace.

And then the end. Like I said, I won't spoil it, but it speaks in a very meta way to you disengaging from what you're doing and rethinking what the hell you just spent the last few hours doing.


I will play it again. I will enjoy it - and almost-weep - again. And I'll think again what the hell I was doing playing it in the first place.

There's a whole world out there.

Sorry - Life is Hard

Another sorry from me about my life.

Marriage end is being filed in the next weeks, I'm moving out in 2, and everything else just piles up. I'm trying to hold it together, get things changed over, and keeping sane.

I've not had time to even update my own journal, let alone this blog, or start the "Divorce" blog I've been considering.

In all my free time, right?

That's all I got. I have a review of a neat game for tomorrow. But that's it for now.

I'm working on it. Thanks for reading.

Gov. Kasich Insurance Pout Party

So I run a small business, just me and one other, and I don't have the resources larger companies do and as I'm soon to be single, I thought I'd check out what's going on with the Ohio Insurance Exchange.

I mean, I don't keep directly up to date on exactly what days what portions of the ACA are being implemented, so I thought I'd check it out. Here's the page. You don't have to visit it because it's useless. It's basically a government page, paid for by my tax dollars, saying Obamacare is terrible and we're not doing an exchange and the US government can just do it because Boo Obama and Boo Healthcare and why's everyone so mean?

Literally useless.

So I contacted the email address on the page and wrote the following note:

Hello,

It's difficult writing this email because I don't want to offend anyone who did not compose or direct the construction of the exchange page. This is directed at those people.

As a small business owner, I was looking to find out what opportunities might be emerging in Ohio for obtaining insurance due to the ACA. Visiting http://www.ohioexchange.ohio.gov/Pages/default.aspx and the linked pages, I was literally looking for information on where "individuals and small business owners in every state can purchase qualified coverage."

But there was no actual information about what was happening, when it was happening, and when I, as a two-person business, might be able to even begin researching my health care coverage options. What I found instead was a thinly-veiled whine-fest that amounted to "Obama is mean and we're not gonna play."

If Gov. Kasich wants to be a petulant brat about the ACA passing, let him do it in the corner, in private. This is an issue that affects real people in real ways and pouting obstruction on an Ohio government "information" page is doing no one any good or service.

By providing vague, formless information on the web page, Gov. Kasich is not slowing or stopping the ACA, but proving that a partisan grudge is more important than the people and businesses of the state of Ohio, and by demonstration is unfit to lead our great state.

And yes, I pasted the meme into the email as well.


Imagine if some brilliant new tech was invented that gave everyone - despite socioeconomic status - the ability to connect to the internet and be a part of a global community. Imagine it was relegated to the States as to how to offer access to this new technology and you hear stories from Oregon or California or Colorado like "OMG Awesome Tech!!!!" and you finally decide to dig in and see what it's all about and look at your Ohio page for the New Tech information and all the page says is "The president and the internets are stupid. That is all."

That's how I feel.

And Ohio's not the only one. There are many of us in this basket of borderline or blue at the presidential election, but locally gerrymandered into a minority in our state. It's downright scary at times, but this time it's just the governor being a whiny, weak, sad man.

Supercut of Riker (ST:TNG) Cowboy-ing Up to the Table?

Between Two Ferns/The Lonely Island - Zach Galifianakis & Spring Break Anthem

Obama Hates Jesus and Wants to End Homeschooling!

If you want the whole misleading story, feel free to visit this story, but my synopsis is probably more entertaining.

So there's this German family and they're super-duper-über-Christian and because those public schools in Germany are Christ-free zones (and teach "witchcraft and graphic sex education" - seriously, that's a quote from the article), they want to maintain full control of everything their kids see, hear, and learn. Shhh...back to your cocoon.

But Germany's all "Nein!" - which is something Hitler probably said at one point - and will be persecuted because they're Christians. What? Oh, sorry. I meant they would be prosecuted because home schooling is not recognized as a reason to keep your kids out of school. In Germany, they call that truancy. Here: freedom!, there: totally freaking illegal. Seriously, like jail, fines, and even losing your kids.

So Quotable!

“There were stories where [school children] were encouraged to ask the devil for help instead of God and actually the devil would help (in the story),” Uwe said.

“When we found out what’s in the textbooks, it’s exactly the opposite from what the Bible tells us and teaches us, and we wanted to protect [our children],” his wife Hannelore added.

So they get over here to the good ol' USA because Oh, the humanity! and a federal judge who was apparently drunk at the time looked at their request for asylum and said "Oh yeah, totally. Jeebus! 'Murica!!" That was five years ago.

Well, someone in Obama's administration decided to review some of those items and was like "WTF?" and now the case is under review. Why? Because if a family wants to home school in a foreign country and can't, just because we do it here does NOT mean they are under persecution because they can't. They live in a different country, they are not in harm's way at home, and you can't come to America and claim asylum because you don't live in America! They need to return, suck it up, review their hyperbolic bullshit, and be proper guides and parents when they're not at school.

What does that mean to right-wing Christians? Christianity is under attack! What does that mean to home-schooling parents in America? Well, nothing until the right-wing Christians declared "Imagine: Homeschooling is under attack! And ignore that 'imagine' bit!"

Oh, and don't forget that this happened not because a ruling was under review but because EVERYONE knew this was happening and was totally totally down with the happening and cool with letting the Germans hang in the US here - but then Evil Obama got wind of Unnecessary Freedom and knew it was his duty to crush both religious freedom and home schooling with a single swift blow with his giant Muslim hammer, Mjöl-jihad!

Which makes me wonder, with the answer clear in my head: What story would be hearing if this German family were Muslim? Well, we would've known five years ago, because as soon as Obama took office, Glenn Beck's goons would've picked up on it and declared "Obama Illegally Giving Sanctuary to Muslim Culture and Radical Thought!"

All I have to say to all the propaganda and bullshit machines on the right:

Conspiracy Lives: Boston Bombing

Little while back I made mention of those conspiracy theory nutjobs who said Sandy Hook was a hoax, an act, that no one was hurt, that it was a show (some say "exercise" accidentally reported as real, some say staged by the government as a "false flag" to raise to take down the Second Amendment).

Just a quick reminder that the depravity and insanity of us humans continues: there are people out there calling Boston the same thing.



Again, not linking because that would give them credit. People can be assholes.

In Short: Our Boston Week...

Today was a good day.
Both primary suspects have been stopped for their "alleged" role in the Marathon Bombings, robbery, killing, city shutdown. There is little doubt they planned and carried out this horrific act.

Today was a bad day.
All I see online is "of course they were Muslims!" and "Haha, the libtards thought they were Tea Party/Christians!" All I see online is how Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be tortured, dragged through glass, waterboarded, ...killed as soon as he can stand. I see on TV shouts of "USA! USA!" for the arrest of an American citizen.

We pull together. We celebrate success.

For those politicizing it and lauding torture: Stahp! You are making us ugly.

e-Card on Voting Republican

Imagine, An Emotional Dump

(This is an emotional dump and catch-up to the divorce posts, so feel free to skip.)

Imagine, for a moment, that you daughter has just turned seventeen. Imagine she took and passed her test and has been a licensed driver for about a week when you buy her a brand new used car the day before Easter. (It'd been planned for a while; she got a job at the local amusement park for the summer.) Best parent in the world. And the very next day, in a sudden bottleneck on the highway, in something you could not have possibly avoided, you crash into that new car of hers while she is driving, rendering both un-drive-able. (We are both okay.)

And the following day you get the sore throat intro to the worst cold you've had in years.

And the following day you find out two of your credit card numbers were stolen - probably in-person where you used it - and your personal and business accounts have been frozen.

Imagine also that your 11-year marriage (that has been decided it was moving towards dissolution of marriage about two years ago) was finally coming to a head and since you couldn't hold onto the house solo, you're going to be the one moving out. Oh, and your spouse started kinda dating some guy a couple weeks ago - and thinks that's an okay thing.

So right now, imagine you're looking at apartments because you're moving out of a 6-year home and 11-year marriage in less than 90 days, trying to consider all the pieces that go with moving, with filing with the court, with becoming alone (and learning how to love yourself) again (if you ever knew), how 11 years of marriage will split in bills and books and insurance and furniture and your daughter's time, stemming a rising tide of depression, holding a job, sorting out how you're going to pay for anything, pushing due diligence in research for the purchase of your new used car which NEEDS to happen in the next week - all while closing off the anger of your spouse dating and blowing lung cookies out your nose while attending rehearsals for the local play you're headlining in a month.

Sometimes we have black clouds. This has been my last two weeks.


Sorry, but I warned you it was a dump.