You Voted For Trump

You voted for Trump because Clinton was going to be in Wall Street's pocket. Trump wants to repeal Dodd-Frank and eliminate the Fiduciary Rule, letting Wall Street return to its pre-2008 ways.

You voted for Trump because of Clinton's emails. The Trump administration is running its own private email server.

You voted for Trump because you thought the Clinton Foundation was "pay for play." Trump has refused to wall off his businesses from his administration, and personally profits from payments from foreign governments.

You voted for Trump because of Clinton's role in Benghazi. Trump ordered the Yemen raid without adequate intel, and tweeted about "FAKE NEWS" while Americans died as a result of his carelessness.

You voted for Trump because Clinton didn't care about "the little guy." Trump's cabinet is full of billionaires, and he took away your health insurance so he could give them a multi-million-dollar tax break.

You voted for Trump because he was going to build a wall and Mexico was going to pay for it. American consumers will pay for the wall via import tariffs.

You voted for Trump because Clinton was going to get us into a war. Trump has provoked our enemies, alienated our allies, and given ISIS a decade's worth of recruiting material.

You voted for Trump because Clinton didn't have the stamina to do the job. Trump hung up on the Australian Prime Minister during a 5pm phone call because "it was at the end of a long day and he was tired and fatigue was setting in."

You voted for Trump because foreign leaders wouldn't "respect" Clinton. Foreign leaders, both friendly and hostile, are openly mocking Trump.

You voted for Trump because Clinton lies and "he tells it like it is." Trump and his administration lie with a regularity and brazenness that can only be described as shocking.

Let's be honest about what really happened.

The reality is that you voted for Trump because you got conned. Trump is a grifter and the American people were the mark. Now that you know the score, quit insisting the con-man is on your side.

https://www.facebook.com/18468761129/posts/10156903323026130/

I Will Love You

I will love you with no regard to the actions of our enemies or the jealousies of actors.

I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents or the boredom of certain friends.

I will love you no matter what is served in the world’s cafeterias or what game is played at each and every recess.

I will love you no matter how many fire drills we are all forced to endure, and no matter what is drawn upon the blackboard in a blurring, boring chalk.

I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table.

I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall.

I will love you no matter how your soccer team performed in the tournament or how many stains I received on my cheerleading uniform.

I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday.

I will love you if you cut your hair and I will love you if you cut the hair of others.

I will love you if you abandon your baticeering, and I will love you if you retire from the theater to take up some other, less dangerous occupation.

I will love you if you drop your raincoat on the floor instead of hanging it up and I will love you if you betray your father.

I will love you even if you announce that the poetry of Edgar Guest is the best in the world and even if you announce that the work of Zilpha Keatley Snyder is unbearably tedious.

I will love you if you abandon the theremin and take up the harmonica and I will love you if you donate your marmosets to the zoo and your tree frogs to M.

I will love you as the starfish loves a coral reef and as kudzu loves trees, even if the oceans turn to sawdust and the trees fall in the forest without anyone around to hear them.

I will love you as the pesto loves the fetuccini and as the horseradish loves the miyagi, as the tempura loves the ikura and the pepperoni loves the pizza.

I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture.

I will love you as the doctor loves his sickest patient and a lake loves its thirstiest swimmer.

I will love you as the beard loves the chin, and the crumbs love the beard, and the damp napkin loves the crumbs, and the precious document loves the dampness in the napkin, and the squinting eye of the reader loves the smudged print of the document, and the tears of sadness love the squinting eye as it misreads what is written.

I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms.

I will love you as a child loves to overhear the conversations of its parents, and the parents love the sound of their own arguing voices, and as the pen loves to write down the words these voices utter in a notebook for safekeeping.

I will love you as a shingle loves falling off a house on a windy day and striking a grumpy person across the chin, and as an oven loves malfunctioning in the middle of roasting a turkey.

I will love you as an airplane loves to fall from a clear blue sky and as an escalator loves to entangle expensive scarves in its mechanisms.

I will love you as a wet paper towel loves to be crumpled into a ball and thrown at a bathroom ceiling and an eraser loves to leave dust in the hairdos of the people who talk too much.

I will love you as a cufflink loves to drop from its shirt and explore the party for itself and as a pair of white gloves loves to slip delicately into the punchbowl.

I will love you as a taxi loves the muddy splash of a puddle and as a library loves the patient tick of a clock.

 I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes.

I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong.

I will love you as a battlefield loves young men and as peppermints love your allergies, and I will love you as the banana peel loves the shoe of a man who was just struck by a shingle falling off a house.

I will love you as a volunteer fire department loves rushing into burning buildings and as burning buildings love to chase them back out, and as a parachute loves to leave a blimp and as a blimp operator loves to chase after it.

I will love you as a dagger loves a certain person’s back, and as a certain person loves to wear daggerproof tunics, and as a daggerproof tunic loves to go to a certain dry cleaning facility, and how a certain employee of a dry cleaning facility loves to stay up late with a pair of binoculars, watching a dagger factory for hours in the hopes of catching a burglar, and as a burglar loves sneaking up behind people with binoculars, suddenly realizing that she has left her dagger at home.

I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp, and as a gasping person loves a glass of brandy to calm their nerves, and as a glass of brandy loves to shatter on the floor, and as the noise of glass shattering loves to make someone else gasp, and as someone else gasping loves a nearby desk to lean against, even if leaning against it presses a lever that loves to open a drawer and reveal a secret compartment.

I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and until all the secrets have gone gasping into the world.

I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled.

I will love you until every fire is extinguished and until every home is rebuilt form the handsomest and most susceptible of woods, and until every criminal is handcuffed by the laziest of policemen.

I will love you until M. hates snakes and J. hates grammar, and I will love you until C. realizes S. is not worthy of his love and N. realizes he is not worthy of the V.

I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple, and until the apple hates a tree and the tree hates a nest, and until a bird hates a tree and an apple hates a nest, although honestly I cannot imagine that last occurrence no matter how hard I try.

I will love you as we grow older, which has just happened, and has happened again, and happened several days ago, continuously, and then several years before that, and will continue to happen as the spinning hands of every clock and the flipping pages of every calendar mark the passage of time, except for the clocks that people have forgotten to wind and the calendars that people have forgotten to place in a highly visible area.

I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where once we were so close that we could slip the curved straw, and the long, slender spoon, between our lips and fingers respectively.

I will love you until the chances of us running into one another slip from skim to zero, and until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your memory faced by distant fog, and your fog memorized by a distant face, and your distance distanced by the memorized memory of a foggy fog.

I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, no matter where you avoid and who you don’t see, and no matter who sees you avoiding where you go.

I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this, and no matter how I am discovered after what happens to me happens to me as I am discovering this.

I will love you if you don’t marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else – your co-star, perhaps, or Y., or even O., or anyone Z. through A., even R. although sadly I believe it will be quite some time before two women can be allowed to marry – and I will love you if you have a child, and I will love you if you have two children, or three children, or even more, although I personally think three is plenty, and I will love you if you never marry at all, and never have children, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all, and I must say that on late, cold nights I prefer this scenario out of all the scenarios I have mentioned.

That, Beatrice, is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.

--Lemony Snicket, The Beatrice Letters

This Hopeless, Vicious Buffoon

"In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and and say, "And we shall overcome." I saw Richard Nixon resign and Gerald Ford tell the Congress that our long national nightmare was over. I saw Jimmy Carter talk about malaise and Ronald Reagan talk about a shining city on a hill. I saw George H.W. Bush deliver the eulogy for the Soviet bloc, and Bill Clinton comfort the survivors of Timothy McVeigh's madness in Oklahoma City. I saw George W. Bush struggle to make sense of it all on September 11, 2001, and I saw Barack Obama sing "Amazing Grace" in the wounded sanctuary of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

These were the presidents of my lifetime. These were not perfect men. They were not perfect presidents, god knows. Not one of them was that. But they approached the job, and they took to the podium, with all the gravitas they could muster as appropriate to the job. They tried, at least, to reach for something in the presidency that was beyond their grasp as ordinary human beings. They were not all ennobled by the attempt, but they tried nonetheless.

And comes now this hopeless, vicious buffoon, and the audience of equally hopeless and vicious buffoons who laughed and cheered when he made sport of a woman whose lasting memory of the trauma she suffered is the laughter of the perpetrators. Now he comes, a man swathed in scandal, with no interest beyond what he can put in his pocket and what he can put over on a universe of suckers, and he does something like this while occupying an office that we gave him, and while endowed with a public trust that he dishonors every day he wakes up in the White House.

The scion of a multigenerational criminal enterprise, the parameters of which we are only now beginning to comprehend. A vessel for all the worst elements of the American condition. And a cheap, soulless bully besides. Watch him again, behind the seal of the President of the United States. Isn't he a funny man? Isn't what happened to that lady hilarious? Watch the assembled morons cheer. This is the only story now."

– Charles Pierce

Manic Pixie Dream Girl

For some reason, I saved a playlist on YouTube on this topic (edit: I remembered. I was looking at Cracked videos and one they have on RomComs is on this playlist). Basically, this refers to a character that exists to support the male protagonist in a story, and plays no other role than to meet his needs. So the first movie that mentioned this character type in one of the movies in the playlist was "500 Days of Summer", one of my favorite movies.

Here's one on why Summer is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, along with some insight on the movie in general.



Here's one that also includes "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" that takes the opposite view.


I'm more moved to the counter position. Summer seemed to me to be a complete person, not one dimensional. That is one reason that I liked the movie. He didn't respect her clearly stated position. Anyway. I'm sick this week. Not all my cylinders are firing and this is about all I had for intellectual stimulation this week. 

CosmoQuestx

Crosspost from Facebook.

I've mentioned that I listen to the podcast "Astronomy Cast" mostly because the female host is wicked smart and has a voice quality that puts me to sleep almost immediately. Well, a few weeks ago I went into full stalker mode and found that she does some video work for her education organization. Because I wanted to help them out due to their loss of NASA funding, I gave them a ten spot today. She mentioned it on the live stream. (linked video around the 24 minute mark.) I texted Tracy that I gave my "astronomy girlfriend" ten bucks and she mentioned it. Tracy snorted when she read it and told her coworkers, "My husband, who won't go to Burger King without a coupon, just gave a woman on the internet money so she would say his name." No, I gave a donation...sheesh.

I also told her that I put Dr. Gay's show on my phone and checked my history this morning. I listened to her for five hours and don't remember any of it. It is freaky how she puts me to sleep. Not the best foundation for a relationship, but it does work for me.

BTW, they are doing a 40 hour marathon this weekend to raise some money. Just sayin'. Good time to catch up on some ZZs

On Bill Reel's Excommunication

Bill Reel was starting his apologetic career when I was starting to question all the things I believed. I can't say that I envied his enterprise. I'd been there. I'd been there for over a decade. The more and more I learned, the harder it was to believe.

By then, I'd sat in my car two different times, with two different children crying that their parents were going to Hell because we bought a pizza on Sunday. I never taught them that. I wouldn't have taught them that. That means the church was teaching things to my children that I didn't agree with. That just highlighted the fact that my faith was very nuanced, very selective. It had to be for me to continue on. Quite honestly, I didn't know how to teach that nuance to my children. It was a serious concern for me.

The church was responsible for the best times in my life. I enjoyed college at BYU. I had met some incredible people there. Because of the church, I had a wife and family. If I didn't believe, I might lose them. I know what happened to people who disbelieved. They got divorced. I'd seen it. I knew people that it happened to.

So as I was finding my way through stage 5 of the stages of faith, Bill was entering stage 4. The people that he interviewed for his podcast, Mormon Discussions, I once held in high regard. Now, I couldn't tolerate the Cognitive Dissonance that I experienced when I listened to them. So, for the first several years of his podcast, I never listened to it. He even had the person that really fired off my faith crisis, who, trying to prove the reality of the Atonement, undercut it at every turn. So, I only really started to listen to him as he was in his closing phase of stage 4. That is when things get interesting, when a person realizes how he was deceived, and begins to crawl out of the pit his leaders kept him in.

So, like others that preceded him, he owned his life. He called out others for the gaslighting, for the ignorance that was forced upon him. His integrity could not bear being lied to, and he made it known. Mormon leadership doesn't like disobedience. Truth is a distant 5th or 6th. Obedience comes first. So, because he couldn't bow to their pressure to be quiet, they kicked him out. He could have just left, but he wanted them to kick him out for being truthful, for being a man of honesty and integrity, even if it didn't mean anything to anyone else.

Most things in life, I let God sort it out. I know what I had to do to sleep at night. I know what my family had to do for their own lives. I'll let others determine what is important for them. Yes, I have opinions. I'm sorry if I have offended anyone for those opinions. The VAST majority of members of the church I know are incredible human beings. That is why they are trying their best to be the best people they can. I just no longer agree with the medium, but we are all trying to do what is best for ourselves and our fellow man. Bill Reel did what he needed to do for his life. I did what was best for me.

And may God, if there is one, be understanding of how hard it is to figure out this life.

Another Birthday....meh.

Another birthday comes and goes. Life goes on. I don't expect anything as I already have more than enough to keep me occupied. Good thing, because this one was about as much of a non-event as I could expect.

The first of, say, 3 things that were out of the ordinary was a lunch with a co-worker. It was under the pretext that I helped her out while she was out of the country. I didn't do much, and I really just played interference for the normal nonsense that we encounter. She wanted to take me to lunch, and considering my lack of expectations for the day, how 'bout doing that on my birthday. It wasn't a fancy meal. About the cheapest that still offered an excuse to be at a "sit-down" restaurant. Meatloaf, mashed potatoes and broccoli. Exciting huh? But it is what I wanted.

I came home to a quick conversation with the family before everyone departed for their various ways. Ellie gave me the card above and mentioned that she would be making me a cake. That she did, but when I came in to get a piece of it, there was a bit of frosting on the left and right side with most of the middle of the cake devoid of anything, including the crust of the cake...or whatever you call it.
"I can't frost it, Dad."
"Before I attempt it, are you sure you put everything in it that it called for? It seems fragile."
"Yes, Dad, I made it right!" STOMP, Stomp, stomp....
"OK, I guess I'll do this then."
It was a simple matter of amount and pressure. So I iced my cake. And I ate some. Alone. Watching the latest Marvel movie to hit Redbox.

I did rent Antman and the Wasp. I can't say I was disappointed because my expectations for superhero movies are non-existent. I came to the end with the phrase, "I'm done." playing over and over in my head. I didn't like the first Antman and I really rented this for Tracy to watch. I can't suspend my disbelief anymore. The characters don't act like regular humans would. It is just all forced and the physics behind any of it are confounding to me. It's just not fun for me anymore.

At 8:30, Tracy still wasn't home from work, and I still am not recovered from the last time change. So I went to bed. I have a lot going on at work, and I wanted to hit that early the next morning anyway.

Woohoo!