An Itch that needed some scratching

For a very long time, the Pagan community has been a community that has been under a sense of siege. Our belief systems and practices are mocked, mischaracterized and misunderstood. We are accused of all kinds of crimes against society and even humanity whether we are linked up with the Mosaic-era Egyptians, the bloody Romans or even the Hitler regime in Nazi Germany. Of course, the biggie that most of us have to bear in this age of evangelism in America is Devil Worship. Need I really quote sources that on an individual level for us, comes from friends, family, co-workers or disruptive protesters or individuals at our public events and rituals? We all confront such stereotypes. This siege mentality comes from a sense of persecution whether we, ourselves, have felt that persecution directly or whether we just read about it on Pagan news sites or hear about it from other members of our communities. I do not debate that there is a need for circumspection or out-and-out wariness when we come out of our broom closets. However, we also must be circumspect about the kinds of effects this constant guarded mindset has on our perceptions, beliefs and actions. I believe that our own preconceptions, prejudices and communal notions about our plight also can become a place where we can compose, all without our knowing it, whole volumes of propaganda against ourselves, our religions and our movement.
One of those pitfalls that we hear every year around the time of our local Pagan Pride Days is that we must all present a “united front” inspite of our diversity of belief, opinion or whatever personality differences we have with each other. I will not deny that it is a great ideal toward which we should strive in our dealings with one another. There would be nothing nicer, in my opinion, than a few million Pagans who could, indeed, present a united and progressive agenda of openness, education and strength and be able to lead by example in areas of service, environmental policies and overall societal tolerance. How nice would it be if the witch wars and personal feuds which pervade our communities could be set aside toward this greater goal . . . and maybe they can. Wouldn’t we all love to be able to speak from a position of personal and group power and leave the collective whining, powerlessness and victimhood behind us forever? However—and this is a huge HOWEVER—what are we asked to sacrifice in order to accomplish this monumental task?
In our local community, and in others and even on a national level, I have heard calls for this to happen. I also hear this call for unity at the expense of other, important issues of identity and values. Yes, values. Values! Yep, that word . . . one half of the tiresome mantra, “family values”, that has been used as a bludgeon against ourselves, our LGBT brothers and sisters and other progressives for the last thirty years or so, now. Just as some of the movements in Paganism have been reclaiming power words used against us over the years, like Witch or Pagan, why shouldn’t we be considering as a collective to reclaim the word, VALUES, as well? We have them, don’t we? Yes, we are very tolerant of others beliefs, lifestyles and worldviews as a general rule, but I don’t believe that having open minds and hearts mean that we find an abundance of those organs falling out and lying about like litter on the side of the freeway. Just as Yahweh/Allah has gifted his billions of followers with reason and minds (whether they are used or not), our gods have seen fit, even if only to keep up with the I AMs of our tiny Earth, to gift us with the same reason and minds or something close (whether they are used or not). In our thinking, reasoning and experiences, have we not also come to have some things which might be called *gasp!* values, to which we hold dear and around which have condensed the ideas, perceptions and strategies we use as tools to examine our world and act within it—as well as in other worlds?
Attend here, please. I think all of us, even those of us on a warrior path, have a strong peace ethic; that we will attend to our lives and business in a matter that eschews violence as a method of attaining one’s goals or personal satisfaction in life. Some of us believe that war and violence as unthinkable tools of personal pathworking or statecraft. Others believe that violence is only the utterly LAST possibility of action in self- or even national preservation. We are not a bunch of pre-emptive war cheerleaders for the most part. Peace is a value we have in common. Freedom of belief is another cherished value among us. Tolerance of others and our differences is also a very generally held belief among us. Not only do we learn and grow from the shared experiences of others, but our differences can enrich and wisen us in ways we do not always expect. We like to approach the world with open hearts and minds, meeting new people and experiences with acceptance and wonder and even something approaching the ideal of love we strive for constantly.
However, the world does not always approach us in a reciprocal fashion. Anyone here tried to give a wild grizzly bear a paw-shake in greeting? How about revelling in the sunshine while rolling about in a patch of stinging nettle? Maybe a lipstick-smearing kiss to a barking pitbull? Our reason and judgement tell us these things would be bad ideas, right? Then why is it we assign one set of caution toward our non-human milieu and a completely different one to the human one? We all WANT to believe that our fellow humans have EXACTLY the same values that we have. Some of us want to believe it so badly that we, to use a tired but useful phrase, “throw the baby out with the bathwater.” We want to accept people we interact with at their word, because our word is our oath, bound and honourable. We share ourselves with others in a value bath of peace and tolerance and love and goodness, or want to, without a worry that those very values can be used against us. Yet, for some reason, we meet up with frauds, abusers and schemers whose value set includes taking advantage of those better angels of our values and then bashing us with them when we cry foul. In fact, Pagans in particular, and religious groups in general seem to attract these types like moths to a flame. I think a couple of examples are in order . . .
Maybe someone comes into one of our communities with a theme or notion that brings us all together toward a greater goal. When I say “all” I mean from all of the diverse parts of the community. “Hey, let’s all get together and buy some land so that we can have our feasts and rituals without worrying about the prejudices of others!” “Hey, let’s all get some money together to help so-and-so fight their legal battle which will affect us all!” “How about the community use this space that I provide as a community centre?” Sounds great to me! Has anyone else leapt at such opportunities? Money seems to be a major Pagan pitfall for some reason. It is not because Pagans do not have it to put toward worthy causes and goals, but a lot of communities seem to want to put their money and time toward a goal or cause that has no mechanism to insure that those resources actually go toward what they are originally intended. What happens when the originator of the idea makes off with the money or diverts it toward a more personally satisfying goal? Witch wars happen, that is what. What happens if someone who has a space that is used as a community meeting space also uses that space to sexually or financially abuse those who come to use that space? More witch wars, it would seem. When a rue and cry is issued about such abuses, those who cry foul are bashed over the head with our values of peace and tolerance and love. Our united front becomes a united front at any cost, fuck the vitims! Our values are used against us very publically, to shame victims of fraud and abuse into silence so our communities can present a happy face at public things like Pagan Pride or our usual Halloween coverage. The victimizers are given a kind of carte-blanche get -out-of-jail-free ticket. The victims rail, the victimizers remain silent and free of accountability and witch wars rage. The victims suddenly become the bullies and villains in dramas that seem to overtake our Pagan communities with predictable regularity, taking advantage of our apparent disunity. Our values are being used against us by these victimizers and abusers, folks!
The vast majority of Pagan communities do not want to have to exercise their faculties of reason and judgement. Judgement is such a Christian word to many of them! Judgement has all kinds of baggage brought over from most Pagans’ former lives in Christianity. Aren’t Pagans themselves the victims of judgement in some sense from those who misunderstand us? However, judgement and reason are just what our communities are most in need of at these times. Fence sitters need to decide for themselves if their values are being used for or against them and make decisions about how to act, yet they sit on their Ghandi-like fences, pronounce great platitudes reinforcing our values of peace, tolerance and love, and divorce themselves from the dirty realities of the very real presence of frauds, con-artists and abusers in our midst. The “judge not, lest ye be judged” commandment is a Christian commandment that holds some kind of hallowed sway over our actions as Pagans. Are we judging at all? How will our lack of judgement be held against us? If we make ourselves impotent to deal with abusers, how are we to be judged? We as Pagans look to be completely impotent to deal with these hucksters in our midst and pity those who try to bring in secular authorities to deal with these matters within our legal system! We tend to judge those who do engage secular authorities in matters of financial, sexual of physical abuse as our enemies. In fact, they are judged harshly. Why is that?
Do you want to end witch wars? Do you want to end ethical hand-wringing and indecision? Then we must act. I believe that the first act we can accomplish toward the acceptance of our Pagan communities in greater American society is to demonstrate that we have some common values with the greater population. Not only do we really share our dearest values of peace, tolerance and education with all of America, but we also have values of responsibility and accountability in our leaders and institutions. This means that we actively court the assistance of civil authorities in instances of fraud and abuse. We freely give testimony against those who come to roost with us to use and abuse us. We must use our faculties of judgement and discrimination given us by the Gods to discern what is best for us and our communities and how to attain it. We also have the responsibility to create accountable bodies in our midst to handle the resources of larger, community-oriented projects which transcend our individual groups. If we choose to participate in these larger projects, there is a small element of group sovereignty that is given up toward participation. Each of our groups that participate in these larger endeavours is responsible and accountable regarding funding, policy and action. We must be transparent not only to each other, but to the greater society we reside within.
We can create a milieu, locally and nationally, in which Pagans can accomplish great things with our common values presented in a way that ordinary Americans can identify with. I believe that if Americans in general see us for what we are, we can lead in many spheres toward a nation we are all proud to be a part of, a nation where all of our voices are valued, and a nation that does not react to our presence out of ignornace and fear. However, it is paramount that we begin this great endeavour by cleaning up our own communities, removing elements of fraud and abuse that make us appear cult-like to our non-Pagan brothers and sisters, and participating in full faith in the institutions of law and political and community action and service that will open to us if we just do not stumble and fall when victimizers attempt, over and over again, to use those better angels of our nature against us. Yes, we should try to present a united front to the non-Pagan world. However, not at the expense of allowing frauds and abusers to find safe haven and even legitimacy within our communities. We need to put our “united front” into practice against these kinds of predatory individuals before it will have any credibility outside of our communities. We have a lot of practicing to do, too.
Our values can be our greatest and strongest tool—not a weapon, but a tool—to be used toward our liberation and understanding in the larger culture of the United States. We are not a Balkanized version of religious minorities in America, but another force for the ideals that the American nation was formed upon if we have the will to act collectively to clean up our Pagan act. Will we be a victim of our own values used against us, or a force for progressive involvement in the American future? It is not only something to think about in our current polictical and economic times, but an agenda to act upon if we have the collective will.

Pagan Pride Day

I volunteered to staff a booth at this year's Salt Lake Pagan Pride Day, which I was able to do after being delayed a couple of hours by one of my routine headaches. I just made sure my stomach was stable and headed out the door. Because of the blessed organization of this year's local coordinators, TaMara, Kayote and Andromeda, the booth/table I was staffing was in the shade of the main pavillion. Gods love all three of them--I know I do. The staffing part was easy for the most part. It only became involved later in the afternoon when one elderly woman came to me for answers to some very serious and intelligent questions about Paganism because her son had come out of the broom closet to her. She had a very diverse family. She had lost one gay son to AIDS fourteen years previously and PPD happened to be on his birthday. She was saturated with love and memory and grief and hope all at the same time and I gladly spent over an hour with her and her questions and concerns, all because she loves her son and wants to understand him rather than direct him. She seemed to be able to relax and confide more and more personal information to me in the course of our discussions. I really just wanted to give her a big bear hug and wash away her worries. I hope the information I gave her helped. Ultimately she was all about what the Pagan Pride Project was started for. It was not about getting Pagans, themselves, to congregate and shop for Pagan bling, but to disseminate information about Paganism to non-Pagans, to provide for a charity, and to make a place where media could get to know us.

This year PPD did not have vendors, although there were people with things to sell that were there on an informational basis (i.e. here are my wares, and here is how you can get ahold of me to buy the stuff). In my staffing of my booth for Aspen Grove Circle, there were two people who bitched to me that they had gone to the ATM before coming to PPD so they could buy some Pagan bling. I explained to them the reason for this year's lack of vending--getting the message back out to NON-Pagans. They seemed to understand and were not angry, but still no pentacle bling . . .

So, then some anonymous fucktard goes and creates a blogspot on this site to trash PPD at http://www.saltlakeppd.blogspot.com This blogspot was created three days after PPD by someone calling themselves "anonymus". Yeah, another brave soul who thinks of themselves as Pagan, but who is probably really just a scared little Christian practicing what they know. They even enabled the moderation function on blog comments, so my comment will likely never see the light of day . . . One would at least think that the person would bother to spell anonymous correctly--unless, of course, they are just fucktarded. That is my theory.

So "anonymus fucktard" starts out his rant--and I believe it to be a he for many reasons--just saying that PPD in Salt Lake sucked because no vendors were there nor would they participate because the people running PPD were part of the Utah Alternative Spirituality Substitute (UASS) group. That is a huge laugh! Anyone on the SLCPPD list could see the emails coming in about vending and being gently told that instead of vending there would be information-only booths. Let's pretend this is the old Gong Show. Can I please hit the gong about three times now, please? "Anonymus fucktard" needs to get his facts straight.

The next charge against PPD was that all of the UASS people call people from other groups junior high school names. I imagine this one is all in regards to one's perspective. Since "anonymus fucktard" obviously does not have spelling skills beyond middle school, then I guess any names that UASS calls would be of a junior high level. Anonymus fucktard might not even be able to spell fucktard, or let people post comment who could out of fear. Junior high might be an intimidating goal of anonymus fucktard. I hope he makes it, though.

Name calling? Oh yeah, there was some name calling going on, particularly in 2007 against the Sacred Circle Church (i.e. Sacred Squirrel Church) because of their diversion of a pool of community-raised funds earmarked for community land for ritual and other observance toward a yurt put on the private property of their one and only Reverend Heron. All of the accusations, name-calling, and community organizing that went on regarding this diversion of community funds in trust and it subsequent astrological and public relations spin eventually ended up in stalking injunctions being served against myself and two other community members who where the most vocal and visible critics of Reverend Heron's diversion of a community fund to her own benefit. The two other community members and myself decided to fight those injunctions in court and you can watch the court proceedings here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWHKQMRn-qg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VziZuhobvN8

Among the junior high names pointing to this diversion of funds, I think one might find on all of the local Pagan lists, words like "liar", "thief", "bitch" directed toward Reverend Heron. Well earned, if you ask me. Others thought up monikers for the most vocal supporters of the diversion of funds and its astrological and public relations spin, such as Avaloon, Lady Tara Moneydragon (Tara Moondragon financed the other half of the yurt purchase). None of these names had any purchase on PPD email and webspace as far as I remember. The Sacred Squirrels were not mentioned as far as I know. Oh yes, Sacred Squirrels . . . how junior high of me! Not so far from the truth when you consider Heron as Reverend Nutbag for showing up on the porch of some of our community members and screetching like a banshee with her foot in a fire until the cops were called. High drama, anyone? Oh yeah, that might have earned our dear, Reverend Heron, the name of "porch harpie". Maybe that is higher than junior high because it requires one to know what a harpie is and that might be beyond the intellectual skills of one anonymus fucktard.

Perhaps anonymous fucktard was at PPD, which was attended by hundreds of people despite rumours otherwise. I was there and there were at least a couple of hundred people there while I was there, with people coming and going. Some complained . . . no bling to buy. Others liked the relaxed atmosphere and informational focus. I think those stayed and participated in the workshops and rituals through the day liked the focus and stayed. I know some came by my table.

So if some little whispering fucktard approaches you and talks about the evil UASSes, just remember that it was the members of UASS stepped up to volunteer for PPD. It was the UASSes that did the work, worked with sponsors and created the event because NO ONE ELSE would step up to do the work. If one does not do the work, one cannot take the credit in the current milieu of Pagan Community and those who would take the credit for the work of others are the ones spewing the most criticism. I wish anonymus fucktard would boner up and take credit for one's words, but we are dealing with cowards here. I am not even a UASS, so I have no bones to pick with the mischaracterization of people in that group. I just want to have anonymus fucktard own up to his words.

Cheers!

Fun at the ranch

I have a lot of thoughts swirling about in my head, but not a lot of time to put them down here.

House update: The old floor is out, most of the new subfloor is in. The sink is out--mostly due to an accident. I cant do dishes. I hate that.

Me update: Well it looks like my usual September respiratory infection is back, in spite of quitting smoking. It is actually an inner-ear infection, but last year that turned into a pretty scarey bronchitis and three rounds of anti-biotics. I went to the doc when I KNEW I had an infection. I am taking Levaquin, which has some interesting side effects after just a couple of days, but my sore throat is better and my left ear is now pretty much normal. Now just need to get the right ear into the game.

Politics: I have read some stuff about how some of the Pagan and anarchist protesters at the Republican convention in St. Paul were treated. These people were subject to arrest, detention, interrogation and search, all by suspicion. If the police were trying to send a message, I think they did for the whole nation to take note of. As it turned out, these detainees, all arrested on suspicion, were released one by one when it was noted that there was no bomb-making or terrorsim being planned. So where was the evidentiary burden for probable cause on the police when they started playing Nazi on all of the hippies in St. Paul? It appears like there was none. So now does that mean that police everywhere have the duty to arrest, harass, search and intimidate whatever element of their communities scares them the most? I imagine that here in Utah that a lot of things will scare the suits and ties on Capitol Hill in Salt Lake. Let's not be naive and think that given the opportunity, the LDS majority in this state would not oppress and suppress communities which give them gas. It is like they are so ignorant of their own history of oppression and misunderstanding that the abused child has grown up to be the abuser. There is a huge and very progressive subculture in Salt Lake, itself. Less so in other places, but it is there as an "underbelly" of many communities. So what if the arrests and intimidation of those communities proceeded apace of what happened in St. Paul? Stormtroopers at Pagan Pride Day? More at Gay Pride Day? How about arresting patrons of alternative music performances? Strip searching organic gardners? How about shock troops marching against the Liberty Park drum circle? . . . oh yeah, that already happened here. Gotta keep those revolutionary pot smokin' drummers in check at all times! You never know when they might be planning to bomb the Capitol in Washington! I am surprised that they can get up the gumption to drum, let alone plan acts of sabotage and terror. I can just see the cell meeting now: after the joint has passed a few times, no one has the volition to lift an arm and make any kind of proposal. "Dude, I motion to vote this dope the best I have smoked, any seconds?"

I think that if the police are looking for crimes against the people, that they look upon the fat whiteys in their suits and ties before they bruise up someone in a tie-dye shirt and a hemp-cloth bini. It won't happen, but that is what I think. I guess this post will make me one of the first to disappear if word gets out.

Time will tell.

Nearly a month later . . .

Quick retrospective: I was cleaning my house in preparation for a kitchen upgrade when I pulled my groin and had to stop all movement below the belly button because of a lack of serious pain medications--you know, the good stuff that lets you jump on the trampoline while in traction with a broken femur?

Yeah, well that situation slowly resolved itself with only a couple of paralyzing flare ups. Eventually, much stuff was repatriated to the den, much other stuff was set aside for donating and still much other stuff was set aside in large trash receptacles for transport. There was much pulling of hair, gnashing of teeth and vacuuming of carpets. I mention the vacuuming of carpets because my cats hate it when I vacuum. Lusay and Ulysses run and hide where a vacuum cannot reach them--and NO, I have never chased them with a vacuum! Loki likes to watch the vacuum from a safe distance, about a metre away and generally above the business end of the vacuum. I am usually pretty predictable when I vacuum--back and forth, nice straight and clean lines on the carpet. If I deviate from that, say by suddenly turning the vacuum to the left and heading in a new direction, Loki has been known to jump down in the path of the vacuum, hiss at it and bat at it with his paws, as if to shepherd the errant machine back into its routine. We have all heard the metaphor about herding cats, but cats herding vacuums is a new slant on this for me. Perhaps he is so engrossed in the vacuum that he doesn't even notice me doing the driving. Maybe if he did notice, he would come and bat me around . . .

Alas, today was the day that the kitchen floor and the lower cabinets were torn out. When I moved into this house, some rocket scientist had put SHAG CARPET in the kitchen. Brown Shag. Millie, my landlady, said it was the brother of the girls that lived here before Brad and I. Someone give that guy a Nobel Prize, puhleeze! After Brad moved out, I had enough of the shag, so I ripped it out only to discover orange patterned linoleum. I put a rug over most of it and feigned colour blindness for the rest. Okay, so today, we ripped out the linoleum, a layer of particle board, then a layer of square plastic tiles that were glued down and came up with no problem, then this layer of cardboard type stuff that was a real bitch to dig up. Under all of that was some narrow wood plank floor with nothing beneath but the joists. The wood is actually in really good shape, so we are going to put our subfloor over that and then the pergola stuff. Millie got my new floor cabinets, counter top and sink today. They are so awesome! Looks like the upper cabinets will have to wait for another time.

Well, my back is singing from all the ripping, tearing, pulling, shovelling and sweeping I have done. I feel like I have done Tae-Bo for about four hours. Besides Millie and I, Travis and Cassie--Millie's kids--and Joe were all in on the festivities. Thank the Gods it was a cool September day! Joe's truck was a real labour saver, too. We loaded it up with the cast off crap and shuttled it out to the curb where it will all be picked up by Salt Lake City this coming week. Thanks, Mayor Becker! I think it is time for a nice, cool shower and a relaxing DVD. Phase two starts tomorrow!

Bon soir!

And the project gets stalled--after a certain amount of progress

Okay, BOOOOORING post here. I managed to clean up the den, vacuuming, carpet cleaning, wall washing. So now I am moving in my new office mat and office chair. Progress! Then I move back the wood shelf, now against the north wall instead of the window. Then I move back the small desk--I never moved the computer desk--I am moving it into position when there is this kind of snap-snap in my groin. It was like two guitar strings breaking. It wasn't so much painful as an interesting senstation as I was trying to push the desk into position. Within minutes, I was hardly able to walk. I knew what had happened. How many times have I heard about pulling one's groin? I have actually done this before when I was more into weight lifting. Okay, what did I do before? Ibuprofen, ice to the crotch . . . Eventually, I was able to lift my leg enough to get into the shower and clean up from my labours. I am not able to bring any more of the boxes I need to store in here because of the groin thingie. I can still hardly walk. Sitting is just fine. Ibuprofen and acetominophen are my dear friends right now. I am tired of ice. My great project is scaled back for now. I cannot move the bed in my bedroom to clean around and under it. I will have to work through the boxes of crap I moved out of closets and the den one item at a time, instead of moving them pell-mell into the office. I need to go buy one more tote for the bedspreads.

Tonight, I looked in on the Wasatch Pagan Alliance site. On this site there is a system of "karma points" where people can almost anonymously vote on the posts of the individual or on the value of the individual themselves. I used to think that this point system had value, but of late I have come to see this anonymous point system as an elitist vote that favours one certain clique in the Pagan community. A lot of the people in this clique are dear friends of mine, but I find this system of karma points unfair. It devalues individuals who have a dissenting opinion about attitudes and policy. It is almost as if individuals and their opinions get devaulued and discarded based upon their karma point score on the WPA website. I find this unfair and anti-democratic. I also think that people on the WPA vote in karma points rather than voicing support for or against various political stances in an anonymous way. I think this harms the parliament of ideas and creates a kind of popularity contest which enshrines the ideals of a certain clique or a certain majority and discounts and dismisses the opinions of those who feel differently. I think the system or karma points needs to be discarded on the WPA if real discussion and debate of ideas is going to continue and mean a damn to the all the parties invovled.

And the project goes on

Today, I awoke and looked over the chaos of my living room and just sighed. How am I supposed to fix this mess up? Well, I had an ace in the hole and his name is Joe. Joe and I went to lunch. Joe and I went shopping. Joe and I bought an office chair and floor mat. So I was primed to rip another room apart. I had not pulled my "den" apart for over two years. I yanked out a desk, I rolled out and junked Brad's old stereo cabinet for clean-up. I demolished the futon I have had in here for eleven years and hauled it to the driveway. Now I need to finish vacuuming the room, cleaning the carpets with the carpet cleaner I inherited. Then I can place my mat and chair and then clean out the living room. It is all so deadly in its planning. A couple of spiders had to die in the re-conquest of my office. They had placed the dead bodies of lots of insects all over my floor behind wood shelves and desks. It was a killing field of bodies. The bodies were sucked up in the vacuum and so were their killers. I would have let the spiders go outside, but they would not cooperate and a couple of them were black widows, so I sucked them all up in the vacuum. Their broken bodies found their way to the rubbish with all the dust and cat hair that the cleaner picked up. Whooosh!

Spring Cleaning--In August

All is quiet on the Pagan front these days. I wish Russia would lay off Georgia. We will have to see how that plays out, but I have to say that I am on Georgia's side, against Russia and against South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Okay, just sayin'.

I am on VACATION. I have things to accomplish here. One of those things is the complete reorganization of my household. I have ripped the closets in my house apart, I have put clothes I am too big to wear into totes and re-stored them. I have thrown away clothes I will NEVER wear again that were too icky to be sent to charity--torn pants, stained shirts, clothes with holes in them. Why the hell did I keep them? I guess I thought that they would be useful someday. For what? Dust rags? Someone's denim quilt? I had shoes that I have not worn for ten years that I kept because I thought I needed to wear them out some more. These shoes had holes in the sides or holes in the soles, and I thought I needed to wear them out some more . . . These shoes were one puddle away from the trash anyway. Goodbye!

My couch/futon is going away. Little is keeping it together at this point. A nail and a cinderblock, and, as Joe pointed out to me, cat hair woven in an exquisite web to hold the frame together. It will be either tomorrow or the next day that I hack the fucker to pieces so I can haul it out to the curb for pick up in September. I wish I had a woodburning stove so that I might heat the house with the remnants, but that is not possible.

Tammy has her new kitchen and mine will be coming in September, so I have to evacuate my living room, move the kitchen there, so that my kitchen can be demolished and then rebuilt from the floor up. Yeah, the floor. It MUST come out. I am expecting that when we rip the floor out that there will be a huge colony of House Centipedes, which I will lovingly transplant outside. No genocide in MY house. Anyone who cares for their young is as good as Mormons in my mind's eye.

Loki likes "My Way" by Limp Bizkit. Who knew . . . I have just played it several times and he just works himself into a lather rushing about and meowing, like there is some ground squirrel that is just beyond his claws. He is really entertaining me right now while I write this.

I just found out that my cousin, Christy, is planning to "elope" to the Dominican Republic in November. I wish I could go there. I might have been able to go to Tucson, where she lives, for the wedding, but alas . . . no. I wish her well there, though. Wish I could be there . . .

Well, back to the reorginization.

It makes you wonder just who they really are
They say money is no object and weve got a car
They kidnapped tony where did they go
They went to get it done before he got too old
Theyre incognito, theyre into fame
They think they know it all you know their familys to blame
Isnt it funny, isnt it sad
You come up empty thinking bout the good times that you had
But:I like, when they talk really loud trying to tell you what they know
I like, when it blows real hard and it doesnt even show
They say: its plain to see, life is not a mystery to me
I say: thats plain as day I hope youve got yours right anyway
They say: its plain to see, life is not a mystery to me
I say: thats plain as day I hope youve got yours right anyway
It makes you wonder bout the things they say
We are never gonna leave, we are never gonna stay
They talk for nothing, they talk for free
They talk behind your back and to youre face theyre really sweet
Check out the language, check out the clothes
Their mother buys them shoes n where she gets them no-one knows
They go to parties to steal the show
By talking really loud n try to tell you what they know
But:I like, when they talk really loud trying to tell you what they know
I like, when it blows real hard and it doesnt even show
They say: its plain to see, life is not a mystery to me
I say: thats plain as day I hope youve got yours right anyway
They say: its plain to see, life is not a mystery to me
I say: thats plain as day I hope youve got yours right anyway
I like when they talk really loud trying to tell you what they know
Say, I like when it blows real hard and it doesnt even show
Say, I like when they havent seen a thing and try to tell you where to go
Say, I like when they talk really loud trying to tell you what they know
What do they really know?

Men Without Hats