Lately I’ve been feeling like

Lately I’ve been feeling like I live in an episode of “That Darn Cat.” We are taking care of a kitten for a couple of months and it is driving me crazy. Last night (cats are so damn nocturnal), the kitten did nothing except lay on my pillow above my head and try to lick my scalp! Imagine sleeping peacefully and all of a sudden someone rubs wet sandpaper on your head. Mmmm…feels good.

Don’t get me wrong, the kitten is extrememly cute and I kind of like her. It’s just that I don’t think I am or ever will be a cat person. I like dogs. Did I mention that the kitten’s litter box is in the corner right next to my side of the bed? It’s got this hood on it with a fan that sucks the air through a filter that is supposed to get rid of the smell. But, of course the fan mostly succeeds in blowing a nice whiff of cat pooh into my nostrils as I try to sleep while the kitten gently gnaws at my skull. Fun!

Can you tell I didn’t get any sleep last night?
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This morning I was getting

This morning I was getting dressed as I do almost every morning. I noticed as I was buttoning my shirt that one of the buttons was barely hanging on. Well, it was too late. I was already commited to the outfit. I had already put on my pants, socks, shoes and matching belt. There was no turning back now. I buttoned my shirt very carefully and fortunately the little string holding that button on my shirt didn’t break. Currently (11:56am EST), the button is still on my shirt, but I have to be very careful at lunch to not either a) eat too much or, b) snag the button on something.

Wish me luck.
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This was sent to me

This was sent to me today.

Dear Friends,

As the unfolding drama of the election continues to stun and astound, thought you might find this an interesting, if rather disturbing viewpoint.

From an article in which a Zimbabwe politician was quoted as saying that children should study this event closely for it shows that election fraud is not only a third world phenomena….

1. Imagine that we read of an election occuring anywhere in the third world in which the self-declared winner was the son of the former prime minister and that former prime minister was himself the former head of that nation’s secret police (cia).

2. Imagine that the self-declared winner lost the popular vote but won based on some old colonial holdover (electoral college) from the nation’s pre-democracy past.

3. Imagine that the self-declared winner’s ‘victory’ turned on disputed votes cast in a province governed by his brother!

4. Imagine that the poorly drafted ballots of one district, a district heavily favoring the self-declared winner’s opponent, led thousands of voters to vote for the wrong candidate.

5. Imagine that that members of that nation’s most despised caste, fearing for their lives/livelihoods, turned out in record numbers to vote in near-universal opposition to the self-declared winner’s candidacy.

6. Imagine that hundreds of members of that most-despised caste were intercepted on their way to the polls by state police operating under the authority of the self-declared winner’s brother.

7. Imagine that six million people voted in the disputed province and that the self-declared winner’s ‘lead’ was only 327 votes. Fewer, certainly, than the vote counting machines’ margin of error.

8. Imagine that the self-declared winner and his political party opposed a more careful by-hand inspection and re-counting of the ballots in the disputed province or in its most hotly disputed district.

9. Imagine that the self-declared winner, himself a governor of a major province, had the worst human rights record of any province in his nation and actually led the nation in executions.

10. Imagine that a major campaign promise of the self-declared winner was to appoint like-minded human rights violators to lifetime positions on the high court of that nation.

None of us would deem such an election to be representative of anything other than the self-declared winner’s will-to-power. All of us, I imagine, would wearily turn the page thinking that it was another sad tale of pitiful pre- or anti-democracy peoples in some strange elsewhere.

It’s good to see that

It’s good to see that in the midst of all this election hoopla, people are still COMPLETELY INSANE. Read this article and laugh at the people depicted in it. They deserve it.

This article reminds me of something I witnessed a few years ago. The band I was in at the time was playing a club in Pensacola, FL. We had heard some talk that Pensacola was an extremely religious town, but I didn’t think too much of it.

Anyway, we went for a walk around the town and saw a group of people massed on one side of the street. As we got closer, we realized that they were trying to convert people who were going into a bar across the street. It was about 7pm and the scene was really weird. I felt like I had been transported back to the 50’s. Everyone was dressed in the standard religious garb: white short sleeve button down shirts with black skinny ties and black dress slacks. I swear a few of the men had Brill Cream in their hair. The women were wearing modest, conservative dresses. A few of them had protest signs and all of them had bibles that they were waving in the sinners’ faces.

I’m pretty sure the bar was a gay bar and the people had signs like “God Hates Fags” and stuff like that. The mob was screaming at the people that they were going to hell, the usual stuff.

We chatted with a couple of the younger members of the church and they were alot less pushy, but still had that glean in their eyes of the overly religious. These kids were about 15-17 years old and you could tell that the more vocal religious zealots made these younger members of the church a little nervous, but the kids tried to smile and make it seem like their church loved everyone even though it was very obvious they didn’t.

The whole scene was surreal and I won’t ever forget it. It was amazing to me how these people just couldn’t handle the fact that there were people in the world different from them and felt like it was their duty to convert all the sinners. This really is my only problem with religion. I think religion plays an important role in alot of people’s lives. But the second you start preaching to someone else about how they should live their life, you are pretty much in the same frame of mind as anyone who has killed someone else in the name of god, allah, or whatever. It is idiotic. Live and let live. Jesus fucking christ is that so hard to understand? Jesus? I’m talking to you…

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. We rocked Pensacola’s ass that night in case you were wondering.
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