The Artist D’s Neighborhood

This much cute in one place might be dangerous. CimC could implode under the combined weight of DG's good looks and the incredible cuteness in this video. I only got a B in Physics, so don't hate on me if this blog suddenly gets sucked down some black hole of adorableness.

Squeeeee!

it's cold...

This weekend was devoted to the loft bed that has been sitting in pieces around the bedroom and apartment. We've been sleeping on a mattress on the floor in an unfinished loft bed frame for about two or more months now. Quite the eyesore. I thought we would have gotten around to fixing up our bed a lot sooner than we had, but when you work a lot, many things suffer. Beds, social life, hygiene, sleep schedule, etc.

The bed was a whole lot of drama we just didn't want to deal with, I guess.
It was given to us. It's from Ikea, but Ikea doesn't make this design anymore.
And as luck would have it, we lost some important hardware that Ikea ALSO doesn't make anymore.
(We found that out halfway through constructing the bed, which is why we were sleeping in a frame.)

Anyway, we figured out another way to make things work.

And here you go:

our 'new' loft bed

There’s a rather steep, winding road I take on the way to work that understandably narrows to a single lane on the downhill side. The speed limit correspondingly drops a little, as well. This all occurs shortly after a traffic light and for the next mile-and-a-half drivers are relegated to whatever position they were able to aggressively acquire during the furious Competition Merging that invariably occurs at this type of juncture.

It is the right lane that merges into the left, so you’ll usually see the BMW and CRX drivers choose it, particularly when they end up (oh-so-egregiously) stopped at the light. Their logic is simple: only the right lane provides the opportunity not to get stuck behind one of the left-lane lame-asses who lacked the foresight to buy a car that stuck to the road like an AFX* slot car. They crane their necks to watch for the cross-traffic light to turn yellow; it’s their cue to take the RPMs up to 1200 and shift their clutch-foot to the very edge of the pedal for instantaneous release.

Me, I’m one of the lame-asses, I guess. I seldom worry about my spot in the bizarre, unwritten hierarchy of competitive commuting. I’m of the opinion that making it to my destination alive, undamaged and sans citations is far more desirable than getting there seven seconds before everyone else. But you already knew I was a bit strange.

Anyway, this morning I did play the game because tooling down the hill was a dirty, fume-belching truck with a giant tank on the back proudly emblazoned with The Shit Bilge: We’ll Pump Out Your Poop! (or something like that; I didn’t have anything to write with at the time). The huge coil of corrugated PVC tubing verified what was inside that tank. I’m not sure if moving so slowly was also directly related to his occupation, but the fact wouldn’t surprise me.

For the record, I wasn’t the only one to pass him. I was behind at least a half dozen drivers making the same sensible move.

Here’s the thing, though. As I changed lanes and sped up to squeeze in front of him just before the guardrail could cave in my passenger door, I felt a little like an impatient teenager for whom driving like an asshole has become a requisite personality trait. But the guy in the sewer truck didn’t speed up to force me back behind him the way so many people do, nor did he tailgate me the rest of the way down the hill. He just took his time transporting his contaminated cargo, seemingly unmoved by the growing distance between himself and the crowd of cars in front of him.

I guess if you make your living sucking putrid body waste out of other peoples’ septic tanks, you’ve pretty much already broken and tamed your ego.

*Yeah, that’s right, I was an AFX kid. Big time. Had to save up just a little more chore money, but it was worth it not to settle for Tyco’s second-rate, schlocky slot cars.

Cats panting.

I didn't leave the house today.

Two penniless brothers who are so poor they live in a cave could be set to inherit a share of a £4 billion fortune.

Zsolt and Geza Peladi live in the cave outside Budapest, Hungary, and sell scrap they find on the street for pennies.

Now they and a sister who lives in America are said to be on the verge of inheriting their grandmother's massive fortune after a life of poverty.

They learned of their good fortune after homelessness charity workers in Hungary were contacted by lawyers handling the estate of the brothers' maternal grandmother who died recently in Baden-Wurttenberg, Germany.

"We knew our mother came from a wealthy family but she was a difficult person and severed ties with them, and then later abandoned us and we lost touch with her and our father until she eventually died," said Geza, 43.

Under German law however direct descendents are automatically entitled to a share of any estate.

Geza added: "If this all works out it will certainly make up for the life we have had until now - all we really had was each other - no women would look at us living in a cave.

"But with money maybe we can find a partner - and finally have a normal life. We don't know yet if she even told our grandmother about us - I understand it was only while they were carrying out genealogical research that lawyers found we existed."

Volunteer Gyula Balazs Csaszar - who works for Budapest's Maltans charity - told ATV television: "We were contacted by a lawyer asking us to find the brothers. He claimed he could help their lives with a large sum of money."

The grandmother's name was not revealed to prevent fraudsters trying to cash in on the inheritance but a spokesman for the legal firm said: "We know who we need to speak to and that is the two brothers who we are pretty sure are the grandchildren - there is no need for anyone else to be informed."

Now the brothers are obtaining copies of their mother's death certificate and proof of their family connection before travelling to Germany to claim their inheritance.

Karin and I have been into this show called It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia since it started.in 2005. It's a tad lowbrow sometimes and silly and Amanda absolutely despises it. Her refusal to even be in the room when it's on should probably be some sort of barometer for me, but the thing is, every time I watch an episode of this show I nearly bust a gasket laughing.

To wit...

This is a crosspost from ...was i there?

So yeah. It's (ugh) Holiday time. How's tricks? I'm doing alright, thanks for asking. I figured I'd... yanno... blog tonight.

I know.

So here's one! Remember how the past three years I have been forced to work 6 days a week from Thanksgiving to New Years? Well.. Heh. This year, not so much!! I am soo zen about this Holiday season I can't even tell you. It's a nice feeling knowing I get my days off. Really nice. Although there are no weekends off. But hey, I can drink on a Monday! Woo hoo!

That said, tonight's really our Wednesday so no going out to play for us. One of our best gal pals came over though! Now how awesome is that? Sitting home with us on a Friday night cause we have to go to bed early... We have awesome friends. Like, srsly. And OMG what is
THIS
. LOL. My friends rawk. I wanna know what picture that was tho, I had my "new" facial hair in that. OMG.

We signed up for this once we got here. Association Holiday dinner (and meeting) was open to the 300 homes or so in this area. We were sure we would be wanting to leave as soon as we got there. We were wrong!

What the hell!?

Now, you just know I have some choice words to share about this. Please make yourself comfortable as I proceed to illuminate just how little these Conservapedia nitwits know about the real world. I’ve bashed them before, but their offense then was downright innocuous compared to this mess.

For those of you who can’t visit Conservapedia without donning a Haz-Mat suit, I’m happy to republish their silly content for you here because few things are more fun than cramming Fair Use straight up the collective asses of a bunch of idiot fascists.

Screen Crapture

Basically, what this self-appointed scripture Gestapo wants to do is alter the Bible so that Jesus doesn’t come off so cotton-picking liberal. Evidently, far-right extremists like Conservapedia founder Andy Schlafly* are made very uncomfortable by Jesus doing things like condemning the rich, turning the other cheek, and forgiving those who crucified him. Those things just don’t jive with their black-and-white, might-makes-right, fright-with-spite mentality. How are they supposed to subjugate the poor, amass enormous wealth and power, suppress all opposing viewpoints and still get though the Pearly Gates if the rulebook for their faith contains messages of love and compassion and warnings against the woes of material greed and unchecked hubris? Action must be taken!

Their solution is to go in and “fix” God’s word.

Thing is, just by suggesting this project, they’ve created a massive contradiction that reveals the inherent guile of their intentions while fully obliterating any cogency of their their so-called religious beliefs.

See, as ironic as it is, the Bible wasn’t always a book. It’s second half, for example, started out as oral recitations composed and continually repeated by Christ’s disciples. Generations later, those recitations were committed to paper by men who never actually met their Messiah. Then, over the span of a couple thousand years, these writings were translated a gajillion times by people of dramatically variant levels of intelligence, bias, and mastery of ancient Greek.

As a kid growing up in a Christian household, I often wondered how anything written in the Bible could convey an idea that was even remotely similar to its original meaning. Considering that the phrase “typically nasty weather” becomes “tickle your ass with a feather” by the time it’s reached its twelfth set of ears, the very idea the Bible had any validity seemed impossible to me.

Then my mother explained to me that the reason the Bible was not subject to the errors of men was because God was all-powerful and would not allow it. She told me that the Bible was “the eternal and unerring word of God” and that I ought to avoid doubting the Lord. That satisfied me for many years. I have since come to find it is the go-to response to the Bible translation question.

Until now, that is.

What is so beautiful about the Conservative Bible Project is that it is based on the assumption that God is a fuck-up – that he is incapable of keeping us silly humans from bastardizing his Word. The defining statement of their mission is that “Liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations.”

Another way they could have said this is: “The single biggest problem with the Bible is that God has been unable to keep man from distorting it.”

So right off the bat, they admit their God is a failure. He can’t even stop us from putting words in his mouth, for crying out loud!

Too easy? Fine. We can go deeper. Let’s assume that Satan was cleverer than God gave him credit for (a lesser offense on God’s part, if still indicative of imperfection). We’ll say for the sake of argument it’s the devil’s fault there are “liberal” translations of the Good Book and that some remarkable Christian needs to step up and defend the integrity of his Savior’s conservative intentions.

 What qualifications, I wonder, does Mr. Schlafly have in translating ancient Greek texts and how many of the original scriptures has he personally studied at length? Does he have any renowned Bible scholars on his team? Can he readily see the glaring flaw in the logic employed by Thomas Aquinas to prove God? What is his IQ? (If that last question seems unfair, consider that he wants to call the Holy Spirit the “Holy Force”. o_O Bothered by this Yoda is… distresses him, it does!)

Hell, does he even know how long a cubit is and, if so, just how important does he consider that data to be? I have to ask because, from the standpoint of having to contain two of every single living thing for water transport, one would hope the Bible’s definition of a cubit would be a liberal one.

There’s no shortage of lunacy in Schlafly’s project to keep me going for a while. I could go off on how anti-intellectual it is to get rid of holy names like Yahweh and Jehovah or how revealing of their hypocrisy it is that they want to remove passages such as the one wherein Jesus tells a crowd to “let him who is without sin cast the first stone” at a suspected adulteress. I could tear apart the idea of hell as a direct contradiction to freewill or simply point out how Conservapedia denizens are so stupid and confused the notation “disfavored here” had to be added next to their link to their own Feminist Bible page.

But, the thing is I have a project of my own in the works I need to get back to. I’m currently in the process of fixing all the silly conservative rhetoric in Gray’s Anatomy. I personally think it’s time we gave things like tapeworms and corsets and lead makeup another chance.

*Andy Schlafly is the son of Phyllis Schlafly, a failed politician who did her hypocritical best in the 70s to stop the ERA even as she enjoyed a lofty career as an attorney.