Ok, I have to say I'm proud of my son. We were watching the Daily Show's segment about the "controversy" about Chaz Bono. My son got angry about what they said and said to me "I hate the fact that after all of the money and expense and effort people spend to change genders they can't just then be "a dude" or "a chick", instead they are put into some gender purgatory where they are now a transgender. That's seriously fucked up. They deserve to just be what they chose to live as end of story." So I asked him, would you date a person who had been born a man but was now surgically a woman? And he said, "Why not? As long as they were someone I liked I don't think it would make a difference. If we decided to have kids we could always adopt or get a surrogate, any biological woman could be sterile too, so no it would not bother me I would accept the person at face value as a woman and I would date them."

I'm proud of his ability to be so open and able to see past the hate and homophobia and other BS some members of society put on people. I just had to share. He is an adult now, since I have not updated in a while. He works with the elderly and was in college but is taking a semester off right now to find himself because he is rethinking his original major.

Someone posted a link to this in one of my groups.

http://gizmodo.com/#!5755875/abandoned-on-mt-everest

The weird psychological shit is what really trips me out.
I guess you gotta look out for number 1 but it's weird, like is all
compassion fake? I've often felt that I don't feel as strongly about
other people as I should, not to say I'm not compassionate, and when I
see a problem I want to fix it and make it ok, not like I enjoy
suffering, but it has struck me that other people seem more
heartbroken about things which don't happen to them than I think I
feel. Finding out about the autism was a relief because it gave me a
reason for always feeling on the outside looking in. But then this
makes me wonder if maybe I'm not as strange as I think I am. Maybe
everyone really is an asshole, other people are just better at
pretending to care than I am. And when placed in a situation to not
care about others, they just don't. Maybe caring is just an
obligation of the social contract.

My brother always says, alone, naked and hungry is all the universe
really has for us. Everything else is just what we have set up for
ourselves. Depressing and empowering.


And just to whore it a little longer, here is the video I worked on for the last year.

The camera work and directing was me, this was my first time behind the camera and as a director.

The story was a collaborative effort with the band and the editing and heavy CG work was done by Shan.



And of course music by Element a440 Elementa440.com

I present you with my directing and filming debut.......

Direction and most camera work by me, edited by Shan, starring Halo and Erika, story was a collaborative work by all of us.



And of course music by Element a440 Elementa440.com

My brother had surgery yesterday and I babysat him afterward for the day. While loopy he told me that he thinks he may have cheated on an IQ test. When he was 13, he won every academic award in the state of California. He and 4 other students were taken to Sacramento and given a monitored IQ test. The student with the highest IQ won a full ivy league scholarship. My brother tested at 192. This puts him among the top 10-20 smartest people in the world. He won the scholarship but then refused it.

I always wondered why he would not take being set up for life like that. It turns out he felt guilty. He said he was afraid he cheated because there was this one section of the test which had specific complicated instructions. He quickly saw an exploit and a much easier way to complete the section which shaved about 10 minutes off his time vs the other test takers.

I told him I don't really think that is cheating, that is just being smart enough to notice and make use of the exploit and I thought it was probably designed into the test just for top level smart people. He doesn't know.

I wonder what his life would be like today had he either admitted then what he did to see if it was cheating or actually part of the test or had he simply accepted his score and enjoyed the benefits of it.

Not that he does badly for himself or anything but I always think he kind of wasted the gifts he was given. He says he feels being smart never got him anywhere because he just has to play dumb and giggle because trying to explain things to people is exasperating. The whole concepts he bases his reality on are so foreign to people when he tries to say something without context they look at him like he is insane.

I kind of feel bad for him. I can't believe it took him 20 years and a whole lot of drugs to admit that to me. I really don't think he did anything wrong. What do you think?

OMG, I can't believe I had to DEFEND Sarah Palin!! I think I might have to vomit. I was at a government office today filing some papers and as usual with bureaucracy it was a long, long and insanely slow moving line. Behind me in line was a very loud, very obviously gay man with another man who was probably a friend or a coworker as opposed to a partner and an unremarkable dumpy Latina. The gay man had traveled to Tucson to the memorial service yesterday and was regaling his two companions (along with most of that floor of the building) with his experiences. Obama was moving, sad, emotion bla bla...... He went on and it doesn't need to be repeated, you get the idea.

Then he continued, and was involving the rest of us in line in his discussion at this point, to broadcast his opinion about how this shooting was all Sarah Palins fault. He talked about how she was now the victim (Ok, I can give him that, she has been a bit more whiney than necessary), and how she should be killed and bla bla and how she should be ashamed of herself and how this tragedy was her fault.

I tried to bite my tongue, I hate Palin, I really really hate her. I voted for Obama over McCain and I can't say she didn't have at least something to do with that particular choice, though it felt like the old douche or turd sandwich vote ultimately, as it always does.

I was feeling ill, like simultaneously hot, cold and nauseated at the thought that I may have to take that media whores side on this. Unfortunately when someone is talking about how she needs to be killed, while going on about how her map made this schizophrenic (Per the FBI) guy commit this crime the glaring hypocrisy was burning a hole in my soul. This guy has been obsessed with the congresswoman since at least 2007 and possibly earlier, long before Palin came on the scene. Palin is an abominable media whore, a walking punch line but she does not owe anyone an apology for this, she does not deserve to be killed (for this at least, some wolves may have different opinions), and she doesn't have anything to answer for as far as this goes. She can't see into the future any more than anyone else can. If she had put up a crosshair map the day after the shooting with a victory flag over the Tucson district, THAT would have been in bad taste. But she can't see the future any more than the rest of us and there is no way to anticipate crazy. It's like trying to not be sexy. No matter what you do, gain weight, lose weight, be dirty, smelly, grimy, caustic, a horse, Amy Winehouse , dead, whatever it is impossible to be 100% not sexy to 100% of the population. How can anyone know what someone crazy might get turned on by? A quick trip around the internet should offer proof of this. By this logic rape victims are not really victims, they are evil temptresses who by existing MADE the crazy person rape them. See? It doesn't work for me.

Ugh, so I had to tell him he was a hypocrite calling for her head and tell him she wasn't at fault and that hurt. I got a cold stare from the whole group. That's ok though, he shut up and they stared around in silence after that and that was ok with me. I'm glad the line moved. And I am really pretty beside myself for having to defend someone I really strongly dislike.

Man, Arizona is really making a notable effort to unseat Florida as the state for weird/ disturbing and scary news. Not cool, people, not cool.

Though I do have to say, with some small shred of proudness for the state I call home, when the neo-nazis had their big march on the capitol, they couldn't even get 20 people to show up.


On the other hand, the commentary and politicalization of the horrible tragedy in Tucson is really sad. The shooter was: A goth, a liberal, a Palin supporter, a right winger, a stoner, a loner (ironic because of his name), disturbed, democrat etc etc. I love how everyone is trying to put him in a box and attach this huge agenda to him. From what I saw, he is probably schizophrenic or on meth. This would explain his weirdness more than blaming any political party or group affiliation at this point. It's so sad, there has been a lot of bad news lately. A lot of bad luck too. Just one thing after another.

Has the SG site been fucked up for anyone else or is there something up with my browser?

It's a mess, like the menus are bad HTML, just a tall list, the front page is a mile ling because everything is stacked, nothing is layed out like it should be.

Here is one of my friends pages.

Ha Ha ha, Murphy's law says that no sooner did I say it wouldn't get much cooler a super cold front would move in. We had snow.

Also my heater chose yesterday, a 29 degree no burn day, to break and so did my TV. Yesterday was pretty much a huge fail day. It was so cold in the house my Australian shepherd wanted to sleep under the covers. She usually sleeps on the cool tile or on bags and bottles of ice.

I tried to get an emergency fire permit but the offices to get the permit were closed for the holidays. The office to REPORT someone for having a fire on a no-burn day however were open. How is that for a kick in the ass? So I had 2 illegal fires going all day and night. Fuck them, and I will take it to court if they mail me a fine. I tried to do the right thing and get the emergency permit. I also tried to get the heater fixed.

I have a home warranty but they won't do emergencies, the guy will be out on Monday. I have already replaced the dishwasher and the recirculator pump and part of the solar without going through them just because they are such a pain in the ass. This home warranty sucks. We had one before but it was through a better company apparently. It cost only $35 for a visit and they came out any time if it was something like heat or air conditioning or plumbing. This one, costs more per visit and they don't give a shit.

I had new cable outlets installed in rooms which didn't have them (these people must not have liked TV as much as I do) but then my TV wouldn't turn on. I knew a part was on its way out before we moved and I had already ordered a new one and had it right there. I printed out the directions, followed them (it was not hard at all, barely harder than changing the light bulb in it and I do that yearly) and put it back together. The old part was shattered, I mean visibly HOSED. I hit the power button and it did EXACTLY the same thing!! WTF?!! Made the same noise, had the same lights flashing. How in the hell can I remove a shattered moving part from the TV and replace it with an in-tact part which moves smoothly and quietly when I tested it and then have it do the same thing and make the same noise!!? So I loaded it into the truck and took it to a repair shop. I wasn't even wasting another second messing with it.

I'm going for a more sciency degree now, my previous education in interior design was fairly light on the math requirements so now I have to take 5 math classes to get up to the level I need to graduate. HOLY FUCKMEINTHEASS, I am so lost with this shit. I was never good at math and I've been putting it off for so long that now all I have are the classes I didn't want to take left to take and I'm ready to gouge my brain out with a spoon because I just keep doing it wrong and I can't figure out WHERE I'm doing it wrong. I follow the book, I do the online help and tutoring and there is this one place where the numbers all change and I'll be damned if I can figure out WHY they all changed and what happened in that step. It simply boggles my mind and the thought of 5 more classes like this is not making me happy. I actually don't know if I have it in me to be able to do it. I'm beginning to feel like giving up.

I felt really bad for all of the homeless people and animals at the shelter which is not set up for this kind of weather. I went through my things and dug out old blankets and jackets and sweaters and whatever and thought I would take them and donate them. I called 100 numbers and everyplace was closed. So I even failed at helping people and animals with the cold.

I hate fail days. I hope that wasn't an omen of the year to come

The new house is like an archaeological dig of bad taste. Since the weather has been so nice I decided to start planting. I think with the El Nino this year we will not get much more cold this year. I've been wearing shorts and tank tops all winter save maybe 2 or 3 days.

My interior is a wreck and I don't have any furniture which in any way goes with the house, but I figure I can worry about that over the summer when I can't be outside as much. Plus plants take their time to grow and I love a lush yard. My fingers are cracked and bleeding but my yard looks as nice as the others on the block now. I had to tell the rip off stump grinder people to get out of my yard when after coming out and seeing what I had and giving me an estimate they set up a week later and tried to extort me for more money. I told them to go fuck themselves and get lost. It isn't like they didn't come out and SEE the situation before giving the estimate. So I'm trying to decide how confident I feel about running a stump grinder myself. The gadget looks scary, like a Langolier for trees. Then again, I'm getting sick of running off incompetent or dishonest service people.

I planted jasmine, a queen of sheba, some boxwoods and lantana and a other plants around the pool and did a general cleanup of the area. It looks way better. I also had to clean out an above ground pond which was very gross.

While doing all of this, I unearthed tons of gross yard kitch. I found a fountain, a statue with fountain, a fountain bowl and some broken cat or rabbit pottery and outdoor yard decor of the "Big Lot's" looking variety. Pretty much every hole I dug to plant something and I was digging up something tacky and hideous. I also have a fountain in my front yard which has to go. It weighs about 1000 lbs each part because it is way overstated and huge so I can't just move it and it is apparently worth a fair amount of money so I don't want to smash it. I don't know what to do with it because I really want it gone. I thought a "free" ad on Craigslist, but then I realized I was going to have people having a yard fight over it and if I and my friends and family can't move it neither can someone who trolls the free ads on Craigslist. We really will need a crane or some kind of special equipment to dismantle it and move each part. Someday I'll be done.