October 12, 2010

I noticed the other day that the word 'AMBULANCE' is printed backwards on ambulances. It made me wonder about homeland security --- don't the terrorists write backwards?

Then I thought, what if the ambulances in Afghanistan had whatever their word for 'AMBULANCE' is printed the other way? Because, if that's true, do they scream, 'Americans, Americans'?

~ A Spunkotronic Sounds Mix ~

This is my current 'default work playlist.' It's not thematic, it's got a bunch of 'same-artist' and 'same album' stuff (there's a lot of Chemical Brothers remixes/tributes and 'things that go well with those'), and it's not even all that consistent, but it consists of 100% 'songs in my headphones I can code/devops to.' Maybe some of you will find it useful or entertaining, who knows! If you don't like The Chemical Brothers or Third Eye Blind, it might not be for you.

Where Do I Begin (A Copycat Remix) - The Chemical Brothers vs. Copycat (Block Rockin' Boots 1)
I Always Begin Without You - Copycat (Block Rockin' Boots 2)
Thunderdynamix (Featuring AC/DC) - Daft Punk and DJ Clumsy (Rediscovered)
Breakfast at Tiffany's - Deep Blue Something (Home)
Semi-Charmed Life - Third Eye Blind (Semi-Charmed Life)
No Heaven - Champion (Borderlands Video Game Soundtrack)
Common People - William Shatner and Joe Jackson (Has Been)
Papa Was A Chemical - DJ Moule (Block Rockin' Boots2)
Ziggy's Lullabye - dj BC (Ziggy Stardust Remixed)
Never Let You Go - Third Eye Blind (Blue)
A Little Less Conversation - Elvis vs. Junkie XL (A Broadcast From the Computer Hell Cabin)
Oops Oh My Block Rockin' Beats - DJ Schmolli (Block Rockin' Boots 1)
FDG Florist - Don Red (Newman's Own Suicide Mind Eraser)
I Will Buy You A New Life - Everclear (So Much for the Afterglow)
1000 Julys - Third Eye Blind (Blue)
Still Alive - Jonathan Coulton (Portal Soundtrack)
Extreme Ways (remix) - Moby (The Bourne Utimatum)
Somebody Told Me - The Killers (Hot Fuss)
Candy Bottom Girls - The Silence eXperiment (Q-Unit Greatest Hits)
Walking With the Wounded - Third Eye Blind (Blue)
White Men In Black Suits - Everclear (So Much for the Afterglow)
Ain't No Rest for the Wicked - Cage the Elephant (Borderlands Video Game Soundtrack)
10 Days Late - Third Eye Blind (Blue)
Mr. Brightside - The Killers (Hot Fuss)
Crystal Baller - Third Eye Blind (Out of the Vein)
Graduate - Third Eye Blind (Third Eye Blind)
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger - Daft Punk (Discovery)
How's It Gonna Be? - Third Eye Blind (Third Eye Blind)
8 Ball - Underworld (The Beach Soundtrack)
Scribble (Radio edit) - Underworld (Scribble)
Darwin - Third Eye Blind (Blue)
The Middle - Jimmy Eat World (Jimmy Eat World)
Pop Music Is Not A Crime - Freezepop (Future Future Future Perfect)

We don't really go to church anymore. Years ago, right before my first son (Ryan) was born and somewhat after he was my wife made a concerted effort to get us to church every Sunday, going to a specific one most weeks. I was cool about it. I didn't really encourage it, but didn't discourage it, either, so's not to be an asshole or anything.

Making a long story short that fell by the wayside. By 2005 we weren't going to that church anymore. I don't think my wife was into it as much as she'd wanted everybody to believe - including herself.

Still, my god-fearing "pious" mother-in-law a few years ago started taking Ryan to church on Sundays (a different church than the one we'd taken him to... and to be honest, I think the people there might be nuttier than the previous church, but it's difficult to tell). Mainly it was for Sunday School but most Sundays she attends the actual service with him.

So here's where the dilemma comes in. And I knew I would have this problem, even before any of my kids were born. When he started out at this Sunday School he was in the class for Pre-K or Kindergartners and so everything they talked about was pretty milquetoast and they just talked about some of the nice Bible stories. I took him one Sunday (my mother-in-law does not come up every weekend - thank God) and I really didn't want to attend the adult Sunday School for fear of my mouth getting me into trouble - so I sat in his class with him and they let me. When pressed I just said "Well I'm just curious about what he's being taught." Which I was.

About a month ago I took him again. This time they moved him to the first-graders' class and he had a new teacher. I think the bad weather that day kept a lot of people home. He ended up being the only kid there. This nice lady decided to start off that first class at the beginning. Yes, the Beginning. She started off with the Creationism bull shit. Young Earth Creationism at that. Boy I had to really bite my tongue; I just sort of would nod every once in a while, whilst on my iPhone bitching about it on Facebook and Twitter. I thought it was awesome when Ryan said "What about the dinosaurs?" It tripped the teacher up for a second and she was forced to admit that they were made a "really really long time ago" and werent' around anymore. But what really got me, and where I really think she overstepped her bounds is when she made a comment something like "Don't listen to that 'Big Bang' stuff."

Now that shit fucking pisses me off. Excuse my fucking language. Just like I don't think science classes in school have any business discussing religion or religious beliefs, I don't think, by the same token, science should be treaded on in church classes. It's one thing to teach the Book of Genesis and the Garden of Eden and all that, it's quite another to actually tell the kids not to listen to science classes in real school. Well Ryan's not learning all that stuff yet, but he will. And what this shit does is driving a fucking wedge between kids and science, or kids and their faith. Now if he keeps going to any Sunday Schools, they're going to get more and more into the bull shit of religion that I don't like and I have to, on the drive home, do some immediate deprogramming, trying to somehow tell him they're wrong in terms he can understand. The problem is when they're six years old, it's a lot easier to explain the Biblical creation story than how the solar system and planet Earth really formed.

Hmmmm. That actually explains a LOT doesn't it?

In the last class he attended they started talking about how EVERYONE'S a sinner. Well, fine, if you mean, "nobody's perfect." But if they start getting into that Original Sin shit, and teach my son that he was born a dirty sinner, I will fucking lose my shit.

Ryan or my other kids going to church being taught crap I don't believe, and/or crap that is DEFINITELY not true, independent of Faith, is going to be a HUGE problem. What do I do about this? Most of my wife's family is religious. Stopping him from churching could alienate him from them. Or alienate my entire family from them.

A friend of mine suggested a Unitarian church. But the closest one is like 15 miles away. Maybe further, I haven't mapped it exactly, so we can't really go there every week. *Sigh* So anyway, that's where I'm at. I knew this day would come and it's here, where this religion bull shit would rear its ugly head. I have to get back to work so I'll have to end this here, lunch break over.

Dream log October 12, 2010

At the end of a week, on the road stumping for Medicare for all and health care money going to people's health, not profit.

I am at someone's house, in Chico, CA, on a fold out couch.

I dream that I am at my sister's. She has a brain tumor, metastatic breast cancer. In the dream, I have a brain tumor too. She has been treated with radiation, which causes swelling as the tumor cells die. The swelling has caused a seizure so she can't drive.

In the dream, I am trying to leave my sister's as soon as possible. I am hurrying, but trying not to forget anything. I have come to a horrifying realization. My brain tumor has been checked by a doctor. He says it's an old calcified meningioma, not enlarging, fixed, benign, no problem. But in the dream, I realize that I've had a seizure within the last few weeks and really just ignored it. I didn't tell anyone. It didn't even really register with me. And I am supposed to drive to the airport. As I get ready, my hand jerks a couple of times, and I realize that it is a tiny seizure. I should not drive. I should not have been driving.

I am looking for my ex. I know that I need him. I will find him and we will leave together for the airport. I will switch drivers as soon as we are away from the house. He will help me. I find him at last and grab his arm.

I wake up, drenched in horror.

Why my ex? In the dream, I don't want my sister or anyone else to know that I ignored a seizure and drove. Except my ex. It is ok for him to know.

I lie and think about that.

The people that you see in a dream are aspects of yourself. I did not see my sister. I saw my ex.

My dream is correct. My ex is the one person in the world who would just listen, calmly, if I say, "I had a seizure. I've been driving. I haven't gotten treatment. You have to drive now. I am totally horrified that I have driven after having this seizure and that I ignored it. And I didn't even realize that I was doing it! I don't know if I was in denial or I was just so glad the tumor was benign that I stopped thinking! This is horrible!"

And he would just say, "Ok. I'll drive."

He would not say "Oh my God." He would not say, "Don't feel that way." He would not make excuses for me. He would not try to comfort me or talk me out of it or dismiss it. He would just say, "Ok. I'll drive." He would let me have a fit and he would not try to stop me. He has never been bothered a bit when I am in a passion about something. He rather enjoys watching it, not egging it on, but just interested in me being all heated up and working it out. It's a bit alien to him, how I can get worked up over a failure of responsibility or over denial.

I lie there and am still filled with the horror of the dream, but I am glad that I was able to find the part of myself that would help. And how odd.

I want to go back to sleep to heal the dream. I relax with the intention, if I should fall asleep, to continue the dream, to heal it. Intention or hope.

I fall asleep. I dream, I am in my sister's house again. I am alone and much calmer. I have accepted that I drove after the seizure and that I won't do it again and that I could have killed myself or someone else. I look out the window at the California landscape. Palm trees and pomegranate trees and the sun higher in the sky than it is at home at this time of year. The angle of the sunshine is wrong, as if I have traveled through time to earlier in the year.

I am hot, overheated, longing for cool. I see the neighbors. Two, a man and a woman, slipping in to their pool. The pool is the entire back yard. Their dark heads move in the water. I long to go in the water, but I am shy. I don't know them. I look and I realize, the pool is not just their yard. It extends across my sister's back yard too, cool and inviting, with plants in pots and cool plantings around it.

I slip in to the cool water. I do not have to speak to the neighbors I am shy of. It is their pool and my sister's pool. The water cools me and welcomes me and heals me.

I wake up, healed.

Water in dreams is said to represent the collective unconscious. And how well my dream reflected that, with the pool extending from the neighbor's yard and across my sister's too, no walls, no fence. Shared. I invited sleep with the intention and wish, prayer perhaps, to seek healing. I have received a gift. I am thankful, waking, for the collective unconscious and for all water, everywhere, cooling and healing.