what a wonderful world it would be

if people's religious beliefs were treated as if they were as personal
and most importantly, private as people's sexual fantasies are. i
don't care what god you do or don't worship, just like i don't care if
you have a foot fetish. but i am made as uncomfortable by people
evangalizing on street corners as i am by cat calls. both are
instances of people trying ti hijack my time and attention in
unsolicited and unwanted ways. and everytime i hear a politician talk
about god i cringe in the same way i did upon hearing about larry
craig's wide stance. i want to hear about your personal jesus as much
as i want to hear about your golden showers.

--
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
Willem de Kooning

the hardest thing i've ever done

i quit smoking (again) a little more than 3.5 days ago. this is
probably attempt number 12 in the 20 years i've been smoking, and i am
more (cautiosly) optimistic about my success this time. i'm using the
gum, which tastes like ass and leaves my mouth a painful blistered
wreck, so at least quitting the gum will be easy. i haven't killed
anyone yet, or even yelled at anyone, but i do feel myself to be
lacking my normal level of sympathy. i think it would be easier to
give up food and water than to give up smoking, but it turns out i'm
not really suicidal and surprise, if i'm going to live a long life i
would rather not do it strapped to an oxygen tank. my lungs already
feel a little better. since i have 11.5 weeks of gum smacking ahead of
me, donations of nicorette 4mg gum would be deeply appreciated. it
would suck to run out of gum and have to bum a smoke to compensate.
oddly, not smoking is temporarilly more expensive than smoking, but
there is a light at the end of the tunel.

--
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
Willem de Kooning

the second victim of global warming

after the dead or displaced humans, is human compassion. i've seen so
very little info on the tv about the floods in pakistan. certainly
less info than just after the earthquake in haiti. are we suffering
from disaster burnout, unable to invest the concern and cash after
having our heart strings plucked so frequently and so recently?
but what's really stupid is that we are in afghanistan in order to
save nuclear pakistan from the taliban. it might be easier to shore up
pakistani goodwill if we were the ones helping rebuild and recover.

--
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
Willem de Kooning

have you ever noticed....

that the things we hate most about other people are things they have
little to no choice or control over? i don't mean hate on an
individual basis, like i hate libertarians and ayn rand fans, but
oppressive, institutionalized group hate. we hate people based on
race, gender, poverty, health, nationality, sexual orientation,
etc,etc. even religion, to some extent, is not a choice in most cases
(and in many cases even if you weren't a practicing irish catholic or
a practicing jew in germany, you were still treated like you were)
i wonder why that is? i wonder why our most heinous biases aren't
based on something people can control, like favorite foods or musical
taste? but maybe i just answered my own question. if we could control
the things about ourselves that make others hate us into oppression,
then there would be no way to restrict the flow of resources to an
oppressed group.

--
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
Willem de Kooning