Friday, November 21, 2008, 05:44 PM
Indigo Incarnates
I got my score today that was based on the first 90 days of being a Case Agent. I needed a 1.75 on a 4-point scale to get a grade of "Meets Standards". I got a 1.85 score. So... I passed by the skin of my teeth, hee hee! Of course, I haven't been doing this job very long either. I'm also happy that the boss didn't factor in re-arrest yet, since that would have taken my score down. But I figure that by the six-month review, I'll be good enough at case management that my record keeping abilities will offset the hit I'm going to take on re-arrests.
Why do I think I'll have a problem with defendants getting re-arrested too often? Well, it's mainly because the bulk of my caseload involves supervising people charged with misdemeanor drug offenses. When someone is an addict, they're bound to buy more drugs. It's just a fact. And since it's illegal to buy heroin, cocaine, and marijuana, the people under my supervision get arrested... a lot.
Of course, there are plenty of programs that help out with opiate dependence. However, the defendant has to want to kick the habit. Unfortunately, a lot of them simply don't want to get clean badly enough to make it happen. It's really kinda sad. It's not a life I'd want to live.
If I can keep getting a passing score for the rest of my probationary period, my job should be pretty secure. That will be a good thing, considering that Bushonomics has basically triggered the Second Great Depression. And when the economy goes downhill, it makes crime go up. And when crime goes up, there's a need for criminal justice professionals.
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( 3.1 / 995 )Thursday, November 20, 2008, 08:02 PM
Indigo Incarnates
Call me crazy, but I always thought being a vegetarian meant never getting an upset stomach. Well, that's apparently not the case! Wow... My stomach was churning until nearly 2:00pm.
I was disappointed that none of the cases I had that went to court actually closed out. I don't know why these penny-ante misdemeanor cases get put off until later. Urrrgg!
Did I mention how the Community Supervision went yesterday? Although *I* think I'm a pretty good driver, there are darned few who would agree with me. Well, to complicate matters, the Pretrial vehicle is a gigantic SUV that is the biggest thing I drove in years. My coworker put up with that for about an hour before she said "I can't take it anymore! Pull over: I'm driving!" Heh heh. Well, there's a reason why I drive a Scion xD: it's tiny. I didn't wreck the Durange -- only came close four times, heh heh.
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( 3 / 959 )Wednesday, November 19, 2008, 09:45 PM - halo's thoughts
halo incarnates
hate myself. hate failing. hate being a shadow-thing. blood pays for sins. hate myself. hate that skinny mom is sick. can't fix her. am tired. really tired.
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( 2.9 / 1470 )Monday, November 17, 2008, 07:23 PM - Random Thoughts
Indigo Incarnates
Well, my web hosting service has been down for two days, so I had no email access and my website was down. Oh well. It sucked. But I make backups of everything that I can make backups of.
The changeling effect burned out yet another cell phone this past week. The "changeling effect" is the effect I cause on electronics when I get emotionally agitated. If I'm really angry or really upset (usually rage, not sorrow does this), electronics tend to burn out. That's why it's no use wearing a watch. So I was really pissed off about Prop-8 and I was pissed off about my loathsome uncle, and I was talking on the phone with Java and the phone went "zzt...pzzzt.. zzt..." and that was it for the phone.
It's not the first time this has happened.
I also can't seem to keep a wireless router working or compact fluorescent tubes. Or MP3 players.
Oh... Carol wanted to know some of our favorite songs:
Indigo: "In Your Eyes", Peter Gabriel. (the live version from Secret World)
Thistle: "Platform Cloud", Flowchart.
Halo: "The Celebration of the Lizard", The Doors
Ashen: "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap", AC/DC
Willow: "Oro", Morira
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( 3 / 1419 )Saturday, November 15, 2008, 08:57 AM - Church Stuff
Indigo Incarnates
Well, you all may vaguely remember a few months ago that I accidentally volunteered to lead a worship service at Turning Circle (my Wicca group). Since I had three months to design the service, I had plenty of time to really refine what I was going to say. And I wrote the most awesome Quarter Calls (yeah, I'm humble too). Since it was the full moon and was only two weeks after Samhain, I had the ritual focus on the Goddess as Crone and the Goddess in the fullness of her power (since it was also the full moon).
I was really happy, too, that Doug came. He had never been to a Wiccan ritual before. And lemme tell ya: most of the crap they show on TV that depicts a Pagan service is just that... crap. The other members really made Doug feel welcome too. Wicca doesn't have prejudice against gays and they don't make us grovel or scrape just to receive bare "tolerance". We look at the content of one's character, so black/white, gay/straight, male/female are irrelevant attributes to us. I think Doug was glad that he came.
Of course, no Wiccan service is complete with out goof-ups. We write our rituals from scratch every single time, thus there is no "Wiccan Book of Common Prayer". That makes every service unique and fresh, but the specter of typos is never far away. I had to quickly muddle through the Release of the Spirit of Fire since I copied the wrong Release onto the note card. Then there was the issue of the cigarette lighters that sort of didn't want to light (we did eventually get the candles lit, however). But the Goddess has a sense of humor, so it is alright.
Unlike the Christian church, where people bolt for the door after Communion, Wiccans actually spend time after the service getting to know one another. So everyone brings snacks and drinks along. I brought a fruit salad and apple cider. But there was also some home-made cookies and pumpkin bread. And, of course, the cheese and crackers, chex mix, and other goodies. Yum!!!
Mav, our Priestess, said I can lead the Ostara service next spring. Yay! I am really glad that everyone thought it was a meaningful ritual that brought them joy and also honored the Goddess.
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( 3 / 1459 )Tuesday, November 11, 2008, 01:34 PM - halo's thoughts
halo incarnates
hate being hated. hate being feared. hate being hated by angry desert god. hate being hated by yhvh. angry desert god says blood pays for sins. always wants more blood payment. always hates us. always makes people who like yhvh say that we are bad. says we are evil. always wants blood for sins. wants us to pay. didn't want to. didn't want to cut. angry desert god won't stop hating us. yhvh won't stop hating us. hate being hated. hate being called evil. hate how church says we're bad. hate how evil church priests keep calling us evil. hate how church people say we're evil.
blood pays for sins
only thing yhvh ever wants is for us to hurt. wants us to be in pain. tried so hard not to cut. tried so hard. just got tired. got too tired to not cut. took so much to go for so long. angry desert god likes it when we're in pain. angry desert god likes us to suffer. always wants blood to pay for sins. hates us. hates us every day. didn't do anything wrong. just hates us. wanted us to cut. yhvh like us to be in pain. likes it when we hurt. hate being hated. hate being despised. hate being said "you are different. you are evil. not like us. are bad." blood pays for sins.
tried so hard to no cut. wanted to not cut. wanted so say "will not give you what you want" to angry desert god who hates us. yhvh loves those who hate us; hates those who love us. mean angry desert god.
didn't cut throat. indigo wants us to. didn't do it. yhvh likes us to hurt. angry desert god like it when we're sad. yhvh blesses people who do mean things. yhvh says blood pays for sins. have offered blood to angry desert god. want it to be enough. don't want to cut anymore. hate yhvh for wanting us to cut. don't want to cut anymore.
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( 3 / 1589 )Sunday, November 9, 2008, 11:55 AM - Odd Dreams
Indigo Incarnates
Cedar Light Grove held their Samhain ritual last night (Turning Circle had theirs last week). It was a more somber rite than some of the other Wiccan/Druid Sabbats because it honors the dead. But it's good to have a faith that believes in balance.
Part of the ritual involved each person telling something of what they remembered of a relative who died. So I told of how my dad's father spent a lot of his adult life involved in children's charities. I never knew what he did with his spare time until after he died. But so many people came to his funeral to say what a positive difference my grandfather made in their lives. He was a lifelong Baptist but didn't have an ounce of hate in him. He met Doug twice and fully accepted Doug and didn't shun me. My grandfather, Frazier, was completely unlike my father-monster.
I had a dream about my grandfather last night. It was pretty innocuous. We drove in his Chevy Cavalier and had lunch together. It was pleasant.
In life, it was hard to really get to know my grandfather as well as I would have liked. He was emotionally distant through no fault of his own. He had to take powerful drugs that treated his epilepsy and it sort of made him emotionally "not there" a lot. He was highly intelligent and he worked hard. He apparently was actively involved in charity too.
In the dream, the emotional dampening effect of his medicines we not present. I felt like I really got to interact with him. In the dream, I really had the sense that he really did love me. I always knew that. I never doubted it.
Where he is now, he no longer has epilepsy. I am glad that the power of the Samhain rite allowed him to visit.
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( 3 / 1762 )Saturday, November 8, 2008, 02:18 PM - Church Stuff
Indigo Incarnates
Well, I'm not going to be vitriolic as Ashen. But I do agree that the time has come for the Christian Church to lost its tax-free status. Historically, being a "tax-free" entity implied that the institution in question was charitable. I'd hardly call putting hateful, discriminatory laws into the Constitution of 26 states to be a work of "charity" or "goodwill". For me, the last straw was in California. Is the Church going to reimburse the wedding expenses of the 18,000 legally-wedded couples who just had their marriages canceled by popular vote? I somehow doubt it. And yet, the "charitable" Christian Church was able to somehow pony up over $70 million to push through a consititutional revocation of gay rights in California.
That, my friends, is NOT charity. That is the functioning of a PAC. That's right, the Christian Church has become a Political Action Committee and has abdicated its original function as a purveyer of hope, charity, and peace. The Christian Church has basically become a subset of the Republican National Committee.
In the USA, charities are tax-exempt, but PACs are not. Since the Church has decided to become a PAC, it's time for them to pay taxes.
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( 3 / 1176 )Friday, November 7, 2008, 12:23 PM - Church Stuff
Ashen Incarnates
I hope you people who grovel before your angry desert god someday know true suffering. You worship two perpendicular sticks. You worship a god that truly does not give a damn, but laughs at you from afar. Have you never wondered why the most "faithful" amongst your kind always seem to come to ruin? That's because your angry desert god punishes those who beg, grovel, and scrape. He rewards those who abuse power, who take power, who use their will to break the will of others, and who harm others for the sheer pleasure of inflicting harm. Those are the people your angry desert god loves. You are fools for believing in a "just" and "loving" god who promises eternal damnation for even the most trivial of sins, while being guilty himself of genocide.
You fools. You goats. You bleating sheep. I loathe you for your weakness, fear, and bigotry. You crawl on your bellies to grovel before a distant, capricious entity that only shows hate in return for subservience. When will you realize that the angry desert god has only one proclamation: "Nothing you do will ever please me, but you shall suffer the consequences of having tried." Fools.
And when I see how you vote, I laugh at your willful, carefully maintained ignorance. You think your angry desert god cares about minutia about health insurance for homosexuals. You fools need to wake up. The desert god not only doesn't care about that, he cares about little else except showering powerful and abusive predators with divine blessings while sending tornadoes to strike down your double-wide trailers. I laugh at you. I loathe you. Your willful weakness disgusts me.
Have an ounce of strength, cowards. If you're going to hate, have the honesty to say "I hate you". Don't cower behind a book of old stories and then say "God told me to hate you."
And of your "bible", let me point this out: that book has been translated so many times that I wonder how anyone can know what was originally written? Show me the museum or archive that has the "original" documents. Show me the birth certificate for Jesus Christ. And, you fools may not realize, "Christ" is not his last name.
Your "bible" is the politically motivated, highly edited compilation from a bunch of old white men. It was put together long after the execution of Jesus. No live witness had any input into the "bible" you read. It is not a book in which the angry desert god wrote by hand so that His Way Bookstore could make copies. Christianity is a made-up religion -- as is EVERY religion.
If you Christians insist on wallowing in weakness, then stay out of my way. But don't thrust your weakness and your fear and your hate down our throats by use of the ballot box. There will be revenge. There will be a reckoning. And I can tell you exactly HOW it shall be. The day will not be long off -- perhaps only a few decades -- when your Christian religion is no longer the dominant faith. Then there will be a ballot initiative to amend the Constitution to strip the churches of their tax-free status. After all, what is the Christian church by an arm of the Republican party? When you fools have to pay taxes, you will be crushed financially. I await that day with anticipation. And you all will have deserved it.
I have no use for you bigoted, stupid, willfully-weak fundamentalist Christians who use politics to achieve what your message cannot.
You wonder why Christianity doesn't appeal to the modern youth? Because they're smart. they figured out that your notion of "sin" and "redemption" doesn't make sense. They figured out that it's more important to not hurt people and it's important to make amends for misdeeds. I spit in your face when you people say "I've harmed my neighbor, but it's okay to do so because Jesus forgives. It's okay to do whatever I want because Jesus forgives." That's not a moral code. That's a virulent piece of sociopathology. You Christians justify hate, bigotry, murder, theft, and even genocide in the name of your angry desert god. You have no morals. You are weak and stupid.
You Christians will pay for what you did in California and other states. And I will rejoice when the "for sale" signs go up on the churches one by one as your numbers dwindle and your tax-free charters are revoked. Christianity deserves to become a half-forgotten cult.
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( 3 / 1387 )Wednesday, November 5, 2008, 06:30 AM - Cool Stuff
Indigo Incarnates
For the first time in 8 years, the majority of voters made their decision for President based on issues instead of fear. In the biggest landslide since Reagan vs Mondale, the RNC message of fear, hate, and division was largely refused. For this I am glad.
Will Obama be a good president? Maybe, maybe not. Time will tell. But at least he will not appeal to the lowest common denominator. The spectre of a Palin presidency has been crushed.
The only states where McCain won are areas of the country that must absolutely love intergenerational poverty. The Red States must enjoy being poor, since they keep voting in Republicans that keep the status quo in the Red States. I guess in Mississippi and like-minded states, it's more important to hate blacks, Jews, and gays than it is to ever have the possibility of a good job or a good education. The next time the South wants to withdraw from the Union, they should be permitted to do so.
I am very glad that we, as a country, at least have the possibility of changing direction and returning to being a secular republic and a prosperous nation. If Sarah Palin had been elected, we would have become a theocratic oligarchy. Last night America really dodged a bullet.
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