Don't Get Me Started with Linda Sharp

Onward Crasstian Soldiers

I spent yesterday afternoon half rewatching The Imitation Game while catching up on the day's news.

The story of Alan Turing, the math wunderkind who led a team in decoding the German Enigma machine, thus helping to end WWII two to four years sooner, covered far more than simply his brilliance at problem solving.

Alan was homosexual. And the mere act of being who he was was a criminal act punishable by prison or 12 months of hormone therapy.  After being found guilty of a tryst with another man, he was given those two choices and chose the hormone therapy.   A year later, he took his own life.

Dead because of who he was.  Dead because of the prurient society around him.  Dead because of religious certitude.

Sound familiar?

While the world has made strides in this area - he received a royal pardon in 2013 - and there is now in Great Britain what is referred to as The Alan Turing Law, the informal term for the 2017 amnesty law that pardons men who were cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts - the world and its holier than thou occupants are still intent on harassing, marginalizing, demeaning, and condemning those not like them.

Case in point - yesterday's announcement by head Keebler Elf, Jeff Sessions, of the formation of a Religious Liberty Task Force.  His reason?  Because America has become “less hospitable to people of faith."

Less hospitable.

Hmm, I would hazard a guess that the myriad LGBTQIA people who are constantly discriminated against would call that "less hospitable."

How about the transgender women who are murdered regularly for simply being who they are?  I'd say they would tell you that being killed is "less hospitable", but hey, lucky you, they're dead, so they can't answer.

How about the number of women in this country who have had their hijabs ripped from their heads in public?  They probably don't feel that act to be dripping with hospitality, Jeff.

Or the mosques that are vandalized, the synagogues that are threatened?  How about the innocent black people constantly having white people make 911 calls on them?  Or the parents whose children have been kidnapped by this heinous adminasstration?  I daresay they would rank their treatment as "less hospitable."

So let's just call this task force what it is, a task farce.  It has zero to do with protecting anyone but the insecure Christians who are more and more finding their brand of Christianity to be viewed as truly virulent and socially repellent.  It is not about defending Muslims, Jews, Taoists, Wiccans, Buddhists, Hindus, Scientologists, <insert any of the 6,000+ currently practiced religions.>  (Yes, I included Scientology because it is every bit as replete with man made tenets as any other, and you cannot tell those congregants they are wrong either.)

Here's the thing, Christians, or let's be honest here, CRASStians, are 140+ million strong in this country.  They are not a minority.  They are not being discriminated against, being kept out of bathrooms, denied services, finding the doors of their churches chained shut, being imprisoned for their choice of worship, having their rights stripped away. Are you listening, you hypocritical, sanctimonious, sacrilegious whiners?  Yes, you, the self professed Christian swearing at the fast food worker for having brown skin.  You, the proud Jesus lover who laughs at children being ripped from their parents arms.  How about you - the Sunday worshipper so convinced of your own righteousness you email me to condemn my son to Hell?

Your behavior has gotten increasingly unconscionable.  As your racism, your hatred, your insecurity, your victim complex, your bigotry has been given safe harbor by Trump and his disciples, you have mixed it, mired it, melded it with your identity as Christians.  As if what you believe makes your tantrums, your attacks, your targeting, your endangerment of others HOLY, ordained.

What you believe is your CHOICE.  Whatever psalm, sonnet, fairy tale to which you ascribe - I do not give FUCK ONE, nor am I required to.  I do not care if you slather yourself with mud and roll naked in thorny rose bushes.  Dance with snakes and speak in bullshit tongues if that makes you happy.  Help fill a football arena "church" to capacity and give all your money to the charlatan wearing a designer suit and a Breitling watch.  Whatever feeds your soul.

But do not deign to think it is allowed to cross your church threshold or creep out of your home and try to influence my life or anyone else's.  We are not required to entertain it, adopt it, adhere to it, or incorporate it into our lives.  Your chosen boundaries are YOURS.  Someone taught them to you and you CHOSE to incorporate them into your life, into your behavior.

I do not have to bow down to your bastardized version of "God."  I do not have to follow your cherry picked verses written by man for man.  And our secular governance is not to be baptized with your bullshit.  We have a Constitution.  We have a Bill of Rights.  And while it protects your right to worship mung beans in the moonlight, it protects my right to NOT.

The constant whine from Crasstians is insufferable.  You want to know why society is less hospitable, Jeff?  Because nothing your pew dwellers espouse is even remotely Christ-like.  It is laden with targeting, venality, condemnation, and hypocrisy.  That is why so many people are leaving the churches of this land.  Because they see the threat, they see how their fellow citizens are being treated for simply being who they are, and they do not wish to be associated with a cathedral full of the Hellbound.

Yes, I said it.

More and more, I find myself truly wishing there is an afterlife in which every person comes face to face with a Greater Power.  A place where the lava flows 24/7/eternity.  But I also find myself wishing there is stadium seating so every person who has been murdered, marginalized, discriminated against can watch as each Crasstian gets dropped kicked into the fire by the very power whose robes they have hid behind for all their filthy machinations.

I wish that a lot.

Now before you come at me with the tried "not all Christians" line - DON'T.  You know exactly who I am talking about here.  But pay attention - if you sit quietly in a pew, dropping your dollar in the basket, while a preacher screams at you to condemn my son?  You are part of the problem.  If you attend a place of worship where the instructions on who to love and who to revile are spread like butter on warm toast, yet you sit silently - you are part of the problem.  If you buy into and support a rancid orange gourd of a man whose only use for your Bible has been to wipe his hands, his feet, his ass on it - you are part of the problem.  You are the vile sewer you choose to marinate in, and you deserve to be called out for it at every turn.

Don't like feeling society is "less hospitable"?  Then keep your "deeply held religious convictions" in your churches.  That is where they were created.  That is where you decided to adopt them as your own.  That is where they are allowed to have influence.  Outside?  Not a bit.

Don't understand?  Well, how about I create the Church of Shit My Cat Says?  And I begin insisting you follow the tenets?  I get some congregants and we begin treating you as lesser than?  We grow and get more people to believe my unprovable fairy tales and start trying to take away your equal rights?

What's that?  We can't make you believe this way?  The Constitution protects you from having to believe Shit My Cat Says?  

Exactly.

Sorry, Crasstians.  You don't need a Religious Liberty Task Farce.  You need to mind your own fucking business.  Or better yet, how about actually trying to live in even a remotely Jesus-y way?  You know, accepting everyone, helping others, being kind?

Because right now, WWJD?  March you Crasstian soldiers straight to the 7th Circle Resort.

Alan Turing was targeted, convicted, tortured, and died because of religious certitude slithering within governance.  We are now playing our own Imitation Game - imitating the acts perpetrated on him and so many others for so long.

And we are losing.

This Is The Moment

Dear Trump supporters - 

Last night, as the east coast was going to bed and the sun was setting across the rest of the country, breaking news was also setting on our TV screens.  The New York Times (which incidentally is not failing) published that contrary to what your Chosen One has screeched for 18 months, he knew that Russia had hacked into our systems and had moved aggressively to sway the election in his favor.

From the article: The evidence included texts and emails from Russian military officers and information gleaned from a top-secret source close to Mr. Putin, who had described to the C.I.A. how the Kremlin decided to execute its campaign of hacking and disinformation.

Present in that meeting - a full two weeks before the inauguration - were your country's top intel officials - John O. Brennan, the C.I.A. director; James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence; Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency and the commander of United States Cyber Command, and James Comey, then FBI director.  (Incidentally, none of these men are in those positions now.)

Trump was presented with hard evidence, not just the Steele Dossier (Comey also presented that to him privately that day).  Yet that same day he went before the cameras and began what is now an 18 month siege of obfuscating, denying, screaming FAKE NEWS!, and flat out lying.

And right down the line, you have not wavered in your support of this categorically unfit specimen.  

You did not care when he rode down his escalator and called Mexicans rapists.  That wasn't the moment.

You laughed when he mocked a disabled reporter.  That wasn't the moment.

An innocent woman was run down and killed by a neo Nazi and he called them "some very fine people."  That wasn't the moment for you.

You great patriots heard him, watched him mock John McCain, a former POW and sitting Senator.  Yet, you did not waver.  That wasn't the moment.

You heard him on tape talk about grabbing women by the pussy, but you wrote it off as locker room talk. That wasn't the moment.

Nearly twenty women have come forward with stories of being molested by Trump.  You didn't care. That wasn't the moment.

Indictment after indictment of people in his circle - hell, his own former campaign manager SITTING IN A JAIL CELL - do not make a dent in your thick heads.  Those weren't the moments.

He lies as often as he breathes.  But you don't know it, or truly don't care.  Every lie, not the moment.

He spends millions of your tax dollars ($69,241,269 estimated so far) on golfing at his own properties, thereby padding his own wallet.  Meh.  Those 121 times were not the moments.

He met with Kim Jong Un for the most obvious photo op, and complimented him as "very honorable" - a murderous dictator who starves his own people.  Not the moment.  Nothing about that meeting and Trump's promises to you have come to fruition.  There is no denuclearization, in fact there are satellite images showing they are rapidly upgrading.  Where are you in this?  Never mind, rhetorical question - FOX doesn't tell you, so FAKE NEWS.  Obviously, not the moment.

His administration has separated over 2,000 children from their parents, with officials on the record saying they don't know if they can ever hope to reunite them all.  Government sanctioned kidnapping with no thought to record keeping, yet you mocked the cries of the smallest, laugh at the pain of the parents.  Not the moment, I guess?

This past week he met in private with the world's most cunning, duplicitous, cold blooded, murdering thug - Putin - called this country "stupid" and refused to confront him about the election tampering or the 12 newly indicted Russian agents.  He stood there giving aid and comfort to the enemy - the textbook definition of treason - and you cheered him.  Again, not the moment.

But then, that's what all this FAKE NEWS garbage has been preparing you for  - this moment.  

The moment when he needs you to completely turn your backs on the facts, stick your fingers in your wax holes, and start blathering blah blah blah blah because FAKE NEWS and the press is "the enemy of the people."  Trump has followed the Hitler playbook right down the line to this quote that sums it all up:  "It is not truth that matters, but victory."

And that has been your own ethos.  All you have cared about is "winning" - that the guy you stood with is now the President, thereby sanctioning, giving aid and comfort to your ignorance, racism, bigotry, indifference, aggression, violence, and hate.

But this is where the rubber meets the road, MAGAts.  This is where we will know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that you are traitors to this country, that you have given up all claims to patriotism, that you are truly the enemy within.

If you would not have tolerated a single item listed above when President Obama was in office; if you would have screamed treason! traitor! had he uttered any of these compliments and defenses of two of the world's most thieving, murderous dictators; if you would have gone to bed ill at last night's revelation that incoming President Obama knew we had been cyberattacked, in his favor, yet had lied about it for 18 months - then you must be sickened now.  This is not Deep State, this is deep shit.  You must finally see Trump for what he is, what he is not. 

We get it, no one likes to be proven wrong.  But this is no longer about your ego.  It is about our nation, its principles, its safety, its future.  You must finally open your eyes, break the spell, and cast off your red hats.  Your time is up.

This is the moment.  

Help us save this country or get the hell out of the way.

 

I Know What I Am Doing This Christmas

Escapism.  It can be as simple as disappearing into a good book, or losing yourself for two hours in a movie theater.  But when the source of your stress, anxiety, despair, or pain is just too big, sometimes the only way out is through your own mind.

Take a few minutes and travel to MARWEN with Steve Carrell.  Just a taste of the gift that is coming this holiday season. 

It's Snot Funny

I live in a state where marijuana is legal.  I live in a town where there are more pot shops than liquor stores.  Walk anywhere and before long you inhale and know someone is nearby "kush"ioning the daily stress of life.  I always smile.  Not because I get some second hand high from walking through their funk, but because I know there is inherently less danger near me.

I am serious. I will take a high person over an inebriated one any day.

Walking the streets of my small Colorado town, I have had all manner of unwanted interactions with those whose courage has been fueled by the other great recreational concoction - alcohol.  Talky, gropey, handsy, aggressive, threatening - I have been on the receiving end of them all - from the intrusive to the frightening

My husband has hundreds of employees - he will tell you that legal marijuana is not the problem, is not what he worries about.  Alcohol is.  Alcohol lowers inhibitions and lets loose a plethora of bad behaviors.

Which brings me to today's object lesson in the potential horrors released by alcohol...

Come with me to Conroe, Texas.  (Oh, come on, you knew this was going to take us to either the Lonestar state or Floriduh)  And let me introduce you to this gem of a human being, Jessica Collins.

Last Wednesday evening, she, her host (she was staying with a friend), and a neighbor of her host - a woman named Tatiana - went out drinking in the Houston area.  Not exactly history making - friends go out all the time.

Upon returning from their adventures, they found themselves at Tatiana's residence.  Jessica, however, was not ready for the festivities to end, and according to Tatiana, demanded more alcohol and cigarettes.

Denied her requests, things escalated quickly, and Tatiana asked her to leave her property.

But Tatiana was outnumbered.  It was her up against Jessica and Jim Beam.  Now, while Jessica is a slight woman, Jim is a burly mothereffer and pulls no punches.  He does pull hair though and with his help, Jessica rassled Tatiana to the ground.

What happened next would make Hannibal Lector reach for the Chianti, and even Mike Tyson say, "Dayum, gurl."

Jessica bit off a huge piece of Tatiana's nose.

AND SWALLOWED IT.

I know, I know what you're thinking.  But Linda, don't people usually bite their own noses off to spite their faces?  Yes, yes, they do, gentle reader.

But I am snot making this up.

"I didn't have time to react, to push her away," said Tatiana. "I think I was trying to fight back, but I couldn't. All I could remember was the taste of blood in my mouth."

Now, you may be trying hard to keep this off your mind's mental loop, and good for you, you are a decent person:

via GIPHY

Sadly, the truth is Tatiana would take an "Oh, my nose!" football to the face any day of the week over Jess and Jim's attack.  It is horrid, it is heinous, it makes me so angry my nostrils actually flare.

OK, ok the puns are bad.  Here's the truth - it does make me angry.  I simply cannot get in the head of someone who, alcohol or not, would throw down like this.  On what planet do you settle a grievance by grabbing someone's face and biting off their nose?  Yes, I understand that drinking lets a lot of demons out - but those demons are not created by the alcohol, they are given freer reign.  So what kind of person is this Jessica when she is sober?  

Tatiana passed out several times in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.  And what she shrieked when she called her husband is heartbreaking - "I don't have a nose. I'm 28 years old and I don't have a nose anymore."

Think about that.  Look in the mirror and really think about that.  Your nose may not perfect, you may hate the bump in the middle or think your nostrils are too big, but it's there.  Proudly in the middle of your face, balancing out your features, holding up your sunglasses.

Tatiana has been advised she needs immediate plastic surgery for any type of success.  The longer the wait, the less chance of a good result.  Unfortunately, she has no insurance.  While her friends have started a GoFundMe, (the estimated cost is $12,000) my hope is that some decent hearted plastic surgeon in the Houston area will see that the answer is as plain as the nose on his/her face and step up to help her, gratis.

But back to my original observation about alcohol vs pot.  In the pot scenario, it would have probably gone something like this:

Jessica:  Hey, pass the bong over here again.

Tatiana:  Sorry, girl, all out.

Jessica:  Fuuuuuuuuuck.  Got anything to eat?

Instead of the Jim Beam version which played out thusly:

Jessica:  Hey, gimme some more cigarettes and where do you hide the whiskey?

Tatiana:  Bitch, get out of my kitchen and my house.

Jessica:  CRUNCH. <gulp>

This is why while I do not smoke pot (yes, I have, but actually prefer edibles), it is no skin off my nose if someone does.  Mellow, friendly, and genial.  And when they get hungry?  They don't eat my face, they just follow their own noses to the nearest pizza place.

Stop laughing.  It's snot funny.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On a serious note - what happened is truly awful, and the GoFundMe is within $2000 of its goal.  While I thumb my nose at a lot of what people try to crowd fund for  - I have seen the picture of what happened to her and donated.  If you can spare a dollar or two, this is one time I encourage you to stick your nose in someone else's business.

Forget Audacity, This Is The Necessity Of Hope

Watching President Obama live from Johannesburg this morning delivering the Nelson Mandela lecture, I was enthralled.  I was uplifted.  I was in love with the sound of language; the fulfilling feeling of listening to someone use words in their most impactful way.  My heart soared at the intellect, the vision, the history, and above all, the hope.

We teeter on the edge of a cliff of despair.  We stare into a chasm of violence, oppression, hatred, and indifference.  We can feel the ground crumbling beneath us.  But there is hope.  Maybe that is all we have to cling to at this moment in time, but we have it.,  And as long as we have HOPE, we have the strength to move forward.

Watch, listen, and remember what it is like to have a leader who can inspire, who can speak, who can move you to action.  Who can make you feel HOPE again. 

(And yes, he calls Trump out without even using his name.  THING. OF. BEAUTY.)

A Ghost Of Ourselves

Watching this morning's shameful and treasonous presser with Trump and Putin, an echo from the 1990 movie, Ghost, kept playing through my mind...

"You in danger, gurl."

Or to paraphrase. 'You in danger, country."

Since November 8, 2016, it is not a stretch to say much of this country has moved through the days like Patrick Swayze's character - uncertain, frightened, angry, trying hard to understand what has happened to us, trying to make it unhappen to us, searching in vain for someone to help us, and wondering what is next?

The ascension of Trump to the oval will be remembered as one of the darkest, most criminal laden days in this country's history.  A day when 60+ million citizens stood up and cheered for vanity, hubris, pussy grabbing, a criminal past, misogyny, failure, birtherism, bigotry, and racism.  A day when, as it is increasingly being proven, a foreign country waged an electronic war to place an asset of its choosing into office. A day when all respect for the Constitution, diplomacy, leadership, norms, and checks and balances was cast aside.  

November 8, 2016, honor was replaced with deceit, integrity was pinkslipped for power, and an entire political party proudly began shredding everything that has held this country together. 

It has all been about the grift - how much can we steal while we hold onto power?  How much can we indulge our lust for the good life (looking at you Scott Pruitt)?  Trump's coffers continue to be filled as the word emoluments has lost all meaning.  And the lackeys who should be leading the charge to sustain, apply, and defend our Constitution - McConnell and Ryan - lie, obfuscate, and run away from any question that even implies they are responsible, complicit.

On Friday, 12 more people were indicted in this entire Russian election war.  Pause.  Yes, war.  Fuck words that soft peddle this action.  Tampering, meddling - NO.  It was an act of war.  A successful one.  12 Russian GRU agents.  INDICTED.  And if you would take the time to read the pages released, there is no way you could come away still buying the Trump branded Witchhunt© line.  You would understand that more shoes are about to drop, and they won't be on Russians.  These will be on Americans.  

This was made available to the United States public on FRIDAY.  We then come to find out that Trump had been made aware of this prior to his leaving for his latest abuse of Air Force One.  HE KNEW ALL OF THIS.

Yet this morning, he disappeared into a room, and was alone with Putin for HOURS.  When they emerged and took to twin podiums, like some perverse Thing 1 and Thing 2, he committed one of the most sickening acts of disloyalty, nay, TREASON, yet.

He sided with a hostile foreign government, run by a murderous former KGB agent, over The United States of America and every intelligence agency contained within.  When asked by the press whether he had confronted Putin with the evidence?   He sided with the cartoonish Russian gangster because Putin was "extremely strong and powerful in his denials." 

Fuck you, you deranged, syphilitic toad.  A toddler is extremely strong and powerful in their denials when confronted while eating a cookie they sneaked from the counter.  Ever seen a teenager lie?  Holy hell, it's an extremely strong and powerful scene worthy of an Oscar nod.  How about a cheating spouse?  Surely you understand that Emmy worthy performance, you stained, oozing cockwart.

And his minions in Congress, his toadies in the Senate, and his dirt dumb base, are defending him.

Make no mistake, MAGAts - while your behavior and defense of this cretinous piece of shit has been disturbing up to now?  There is no other way to say it - YOU ARE TRAITORS TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

We get it when it comes to reprobates like the enabling GOPers in office.  The GOP is completely drunk on power and desperate to keep it.  We know what they get out of it - money, privilege, perks.  But what do you get, Mr and Mrs MAGAt in the cul-de-sac?  You, the GOPer in the increasingly expensive MAGA hat made in tariff laden China?  How about you, the coal miner with no job who is going to die of lung disease long before your mine ever sees a canary again?  You, in the Fuck Your Feelings tshirt straining at your girth that will no longer be covered because a Cheeto addiction is a pre-existing condition?  How about you, in the back with the AK strapped around your belly?  What are you getting out of this other than a FOX boner?  

You are not part of a winning season, you pathetic pool of ignorance.  YOU ARE A TRAITOR.  You are now cheering your cult leader siding with ANOTHER foreign dictator cum madman.  You cheered his farce of a meeting with Kim Jong Un, and happily ignore the evidence that it was all a photo op and a lie that accomplished nothing.  And you cannot hide behind your chosen and willful stupidity.  At the basest level, you know exactly how you would be rending your garments if this had been President Obama.  Hell, you practically stroked out over him using mustard and wearing a brown suit.

Had that been President Obama this morning, having been fully briefed on the additional 12 Russian agents and their actions against the USA, holding a lovefest in private with Putin, and then standing at a podium next to him and deriding this country you profess to love so much, you know what your reaction would have been.  You would be demanding he be met on the tarmac with articles of impeachment when he landed back in this country.  You would be disgusted, nauseated, infuriated, embarrassed.

If ANY of Trump's behaviors, actions, lies, or proven treasonous affiliations had been done by him, you would have set the White House alight by now.  

Yet you stand there draped in an American flag defending the most heinous act we have seen a President commit - on the international stage, calling this country stupid and siding with a murderous thug whose country has provably fucked with our election system.

Remember how you tore your hair out when the Dixie Chicks criticized Bush while overseas?  You boycotted.  You burned their CDs.  You ruined their career.  Because you deemed them unpatriotic.  You now call for the heads of those who do not clap for your leader, who dare to not stand during the anthem.  Well, we see how far your patriotism extends.  Taking a knee?  BAD.  Your President running down this country and all of its intelligence agencies?  WOO HOO!  GREAT!  BUY ME ANOTHER MAGA HAT!

In Ghost, Patrick Swayze could only watch helplessly as events unfolded before him.  As he watched those he loved be put in danger.  As he saw the betrayals taking place right in front of him, unable to reach out and stop them.

That character is us.  It is all happening right in front of our faces.  Yet we are as impotent as a ghost to make it stop.  Our only chance is the ballot box.  A tsunami of voters too huge to be washed out by continued outside forces.

We cannot afford to ghost the election, folks.  If you truly love your country, your answer cannot be "Ditto."  It must be action.  

We in danger, gurl.

Give Your Spirits A Lift

With the continual onslaught of heinous news - disease and abuse of immigrants in detention centers, Trump embarrassing us on the international stage, and video after video of racists attacking people of color, it is very easy to get depressed, feel hopeless, worn out.

Self care comes in all forms, but laughter is one of the surest ways to lift the spirits, if even just for a moment.

Enjoy this lip sync by the Norfolk Police Department, float away on a simple smile, and feel the tension dissipate.  The world will still be here when you get back.