flewellyn

If, horror of horrors, Mitt Romney were to win the election, do you know what this means?

PAUL RYAN would be only a lack-of-heartbeat away from the Presidency!

Maja: what up G?
Flewellyn: Hmm...
Flewellyn: Up is the direction away from the center of a gravitaionally significant body…and G is the gravitational constant...
Flewellyn: So...
Flewellyn: *does some calculations*
Flewellyn: I would say 9.8 m/s^2
Flewellyn: More or less.
Flewellyn: How about you?
Maja: What! Let me finish. Of course, "G" was also used to refer to the "God" in another person and recognizing their divinty during the 60's civil rights movement
Maja: so put that in your computer and crunch it.
Flewellyn: *does so*
Flewellyn: "INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER"

Grant me the Serenity to accept what I can't change, the Big Damn Heroes to change what I can, and the Captain Mal to say "Screw the difference, I aim to misbehave."

Yitzak, Octoberish 1993 - January 5, 2012.

Well, it WAS a good birthday...until I found him.

So, I've been trying to get a small interest group going in my town, and I had a bunch of positive replies from various folks in the community. I had a first meeting planned tonight at our local Barnes and Noble, but, alas, nobody showed up.

It's odd. You'd think there'd be more interest in a book club for ninjas...

You folks ever heard that song "The Christmas Shoes"? Contemporary Christian light rock song from 2000, by some group called "NewSong", that I only know about from an episode of the Nostalgia Chick. And while I like the Nostalgia Chick, I almost think I was happier not knowing about this song.

In case you haven't heard this song, or heard of it... It's an "inspirational" contemporary Christian song about a man who is doing his Christmas shopping, not feeling the spirit of the season, when he spies a little boy ahead of him in line, trying to buy some pretty women's shoes. The boy doesn't have quite enough, and he starts crying and says he wants to buy the shoes for his dying mother, so she can feel pretty before she dies. And the singer buys the shoes for the boy, who then runs home, while the guy sings that "God must have sent that little boy to remind me what Christmas is all about."

Sounds like regular Christmasy glurge, but if you look deeper, you get into some really dark and awful ideas. Truth be told, I have nothing but contemptuous rage for the sort of theology that this song espouses. Without the last bit, it'd just be a bit of "I did what I could to help someone in pain, and it reminded me that I was losing sight of the true meaning blah blah blah," and that'd be fine. Saccharine, but fine.

But the last verse is where I go from "oh, come on already" to "GRAAAAAAH RAGEFLIP A TABLE!" Seriously, what it's saying is, "God sent this little boy with his horrible, traumatic parental death and his sad, pathetic attempt at a materialistic token of affection, to remind ME, yes, ME, what Christmas is all about. God put suffering in this child's life to teach ME a lesson!"

Seriously, dude thinks that God, the purported CREATOR of the FUCKING UNIVERSE, who apparently is all good and all loving and all knowing, chose to deliberately send horror into the life of this innocent child just so he, the beardy guy warbling this song, could learn a valuable lesson?! Never mind that any god which did so would be an EVIL god, unworthy of human worship, but who the FUCK are you, Mr NewSong Lead Singer Guy? What about YOU warrants the personal attention of the Creator of All Things, especially to teach you the sort of lesson you could get off any Hallmark card, and ESPECIALLY especially when the means of teaching you is killing an innocent woman, leaving this boy without his mother?!

Of all the narcissistic, entitled, myopic, egotistically masturbatory...AAAAAARGH! I HATE YOU CHRISTMAS SHOES SINGER AND I HOPE YOUR BEARD CATCHES FIRE WHILE YOU'RE TRYING TO GIVE YOURSELF CONGRATULATORY SELF-FELLATIO AND YOU DIE IN AN OUROBOROS OF ONANISTIC COMBUSTION!!!!

*ahem* So, yeah. Doesn't please me very much.

Nostalgia Chick's review is funny, though:

http://blip.tv/nostalgia-chick/nostalgia-chick-the-christmas-shoes-5810388

Today, I want to say thank you to our nation's vets. All of you.

Because of your hard work and sacrifice, all of our cats, dogs, hamster, gerbils, mice, rats, birds, and farm animals are healthier, happier, and safer.

Yes, whether it be vaccinating my cats against rabies and other diseases, or performing surgery to fix a horse's broken leg, all of our domestic animals and the humans who love them owe our vets a debt of gratitude...hang on...

*mumble whisper*

...wait...VETERANS Day?!

Oh. That's very different.

NEVER MIND!

So, foreclosures. They're happening a lot, a lot more than they should, and for bad reasons. We all know this.

I came upon this story here, in which a group of Occupy Atlanta people set up camp on the lawn of a police officer whose home is being foreclosed upon, to try and block the eviction. I applaud this move and any like it. But, it seems, the commenters were not all of the same mind.

I noted a number of posters complaining about this as somehow immoral, allowing people to "live in homes they haven't paid for" or something like that. Two things I have to say in response.

First, we know that the banks have been engaging in widespread fraudulent foreclosures. We know that the banks have engaged in fraudulent mortgage lending, and fraudulent securitizing of known high-risk mortgages. Given this fact, ANY foreclosure in today's economic and regulatory circumstances is highly suspect. So, why do they want to blame the victims, instead of the perpetrators? I suspect the "just world" fallacy, but I can't entirely rule out less savory mindsets.

Second, it is in society's best interests to keep people in their homes. Foreclosure should be a last resort, not a routine action, and loan modification, restructuring, payment assistance, even forgiveness of debt in extreme hardship are all preferable and very supportable actions by the banks, or by the government. Kicking people out of their homes and disrupting their lives is bad for society at large, and constitutes a much greater moral hazard than "letting" people "get away with" not repaying the full mortgage, if they are truly unable.

So, in closing, I say that this moralizing about "rules are rules" and "how dare someone get away with this" is entirely misguided. Contracts are not the highest moral law, and in fact, it is often necessary to abrogate them, and to forgive debts, when the social and economic landscape has become too unbalanced. The mentality that those less fortunate who need help are "getting away with" anything is highly immoral.

Remember, remember, the Fifth of November...the day Guy Fawkes tried to blow up Paraliament and replace British democracy with a theocratic dictatorship.

Who in current American politics is like him, now? Hmm...who goes around brandishing guns and screaming about overthrowing the government because they don't like that their religious beliefs are the law of the land...?

Dubbug: *watches csi* >.<
Flewellyn: You like that show?
Dubbug: soso
Dubbug: I used to watch it muchs
Flewellyn: I don't know.
Flewellyn: I just thought...
Flewellyn: *puts on sunglasses*
Flewellyn: ...it might bug you.
Flewellyn: YEAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH...