Indigo Incarnates

With just one exception, this weekend has been pretty cool. On Friday, I led an Autumn rite at Turning Circle. The worship service went pretty well. The thing about Wicca is that there is a real focus on community and on personal spiritual development. At Turning Circle, we have two kinds of services: Circle Rites and Moon Rites. The Circle Rites are generally longer than the Moon Rites. Fortunately, it was pretty easy to shave down a Circle Rite down to the time constraints of a Moon Rite. Basically, to compare it to an Episcopalian service, a Circle Rite is like an 11:15am service while a Moon Rite is like a 7:00am service.

As a Wiccan who also attends Church at Saint John's in Ellicott City, I basically believe in two parts of the Christian Trinity. The attributes of Jesus are similar to that of the Wiccan God: courage, duty, stoicism in the face of death, sacrifice for the life of others, regeneration and new life following death. The Holy Spirit and the Wiccan Goddess in their respective faiths are described in similar ways: omnipresent, life giving, ever-loving, ever nurturing. I just don't buy into the idea that the hateful, violent, petty, genocidal War God of the Old Testament is the father of Jesus.

Saturday was pretty good. I did my Sarurday workout and I got to play a biweekly roleplaying game with Doug, Jeff, and Ritchie. I played a lizardman shaman that basically looked like a five-foot tall T-Rex. Doug played a cat humanoid that has big claws bit is usually too lazy to use them (ie., like a real cat, ha ha!)

The only drag this weekend was having another night full of nightmares about my dad. It's quite amazing how he's able to still hurt me even to this day. But since the Angry Desert God has always blessed the hateful and malevolent works my dad has wrought, I can hardly be surprised that YHVH has granted my father the ability to inflict injury from afar.

I'm trying to stagger my way through two church services today since it's handbell Sunday. I am really tired. :(

Indigo Incarnates

It’s hard to imagine a person less deserving of receiving the Nobel Peace Prize than Barack Obama. The only one I can think of is the late, unlamented arch-terrorist/thief Yassir Arafat.

When I heard that Obama was going to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, the first though that came to mind was “But… he hasn’t DONE anything!” Really. What the heck has Obama done in the past 9 months that make him worthy of this award?

Let’s see… in nine months, he broke every promise he ever made while campaigning.

Advancing the cause of the LGTB community? That’s a broken promise.
Ending the war? That’s a broken promise.
Ending “too big to fail”? That’s a broken promise.
Ending lobbying? That’s a broken promise.
Closing GitMo? That’s a broken promise.
Revoking the Patriot Act? That’s a broken promise.
Hiring only ethical, scandal-free appointees? That’s a broken promise.
The list goes on, but you get the idea.

I got it! He got the Nobel Peace Prize for having the most promises broken within the first year in office!

Indigo Incarnates

This week has been rough so far. I had to run two case books since one of the agents was out sick. I handles about a hundred cases! The horror!!! And there's some odd and sinister thing going on at the higher echelons of management. I have the dreaded feeling that there is about to be a massively unpleasant shakeup at work. Fortunately I do very detailed and comprehensive case work. Still, the stress level is really high right now.

On the bright side, I've got one of our four phones migrated to AT&T. The other three will port over on Tuesday. Doug and I are getting one iPhone and one el-cheapo phone each. We're sorta gadgety so we have one phone for Internet/email and one for talking to people. I have my iPhone activated and it is a totally awesome device. It's basiclly got a
less power than a netbook, but far more power than any regular smartphone.

Tomorrow will be pretty neat. I'm leading a worship service at Turning Circle. I'm leading an Autumn Rite. It's not a "high" rite, but it'll be nice.

Indigo Incarnates

It's been a really fun weekend, the most enjoyable one I've had in a while. It also didn't cost that much money either.Yay!

So Doug, Jeff, and I went to "Field of Screams" this weekend since it is "Haunted House Season". The owners made some significant improvements so that a lot of things catch on fire. Whooo-hooo!Propane always makes things more interesting. There was also a "Frankenstein" tableaux that featured the biggest Jacob's Ladder I've ever seen.

Last night, Doug, Joann, and I had dinner at PF Chang's. Joann is one of my friends from Pretrial Services. One of the advantages of being a vegetarian is that the veggy entries are always pretty inexpensive. And it's always fun talking trash about lazy coworkers, hee hee.

I also did a whole lot of exercise. I did 8 miles on Saturday and 6 miles today. And it was sunny today, so I was able to get some energy too.

Yesterday was the full moon. That's a good day for doing a healing ritual so I cast a healing spell on my mom's behalf. I am happy that she has outlived her diagnosis by a year. Her doctor gave her six months to live -- 18 months ago.

So... it was a pretty fun weekend.

Indigo Incarnates

By a coincidence in trial dates, I was able to jettison about 15% of my caseload in just one day! Whooo-hoo! One of the cases was my only handgun file. Yay! So now I'm back down to 54 cases. ::whew::

One of the cases was kinda frustrating. You have to wonder what the logic is behind putting on Pretrial a homeless prostitute with a long-standing substance abuse problem. The person in question had 14 convictions and 15 FTAs, so of course she never comes to court when summoned. Well, she didn't come this time either. Egads!

On the bright side, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Netflix added three MST3K movies to the "Watch It Now" library. One of them is the dreaded "Werewolf", starring Joe Estevez (as opposed to Martin Sheen or Emilio Estevez). It's got some people in it with really thick Eastern European accents, and they pronounce the word "werewolf" as "Hwuerhuwolfe". Ha ha ha ha!

Tomorrow night we'll be doing another haunted house run. Yay! I think it's going to be "field of Screams". Fun!

Indigo Incarnates

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. I think this is the time of year in which my energy level goes way down. It’s hard when it’s pitch black when I get up in the morning. Soon it’ll be pitch black when I get off work too. For the past two weeks it has been overcast or raining almost every day and has rained for the past three weekends. My energy levels are sorta in the basement right now.

Doug and I were supposed to go to Corn Maze, but of course it rained – again. We did go to Halloween Park. It was pretty cool. They combined both buildings this year so that the tour is now and hour and ten minutes. It was one of these “puzzle” haunted houses since we had to figure out a trigger in each room in order to get the door to the next room to open. It was pretty cool. Whoever designed this place sure was a fan of hydraulics!

Of course, our T-Mobile phones didn’t work out of state AGAIN. It used to. But apparently T-Mobile dropped most of their roaming agreements with other carriers so now my phone only works in the Baltimore metro area. So when I called them this morning to report yet another place where the phone no longer functioned, they finally agreed to let me out of my contract without penalty. FINALLY! Doug wants to go with Sprint since the phones are cute. Personally, I don’t care so long as they work in more places than just Baltimore.

I have to say that I’m puzzled by the fact that the fundamentalist Christians were all gushing with sympathy this week over the death of Susan Atkins. The rational person would say “good riddance to bad rubbish” since she stabbed a pregnant woman in the abdomen and ripped out her victim’s baby and killed the baby too – for no reason at all. But the fundamentalists sort of view her as a “folk hero” since she did a prison-conversion to Christianity. Big whupp. One of the other Mansion cultists converted to Christian Fundamentalism and actually got ordained even though he’ll be in jail for the next several centuries. I guess it’s okay for murderers to be pastors, but not gays. Go figure, eh?

So, now that Iran has nukes and is being run by a madman, isn’t it just AWESOME that Bush spend six years listening to the god-voices in his head that told him to attack Iraq instead? Wonderful.

Hopefully this weekend will be sunny for a change. I’d like to go with Doug to Corn Maze – especially since out friend Mav wants to go too.

Oh, I spent my allowance wisely. For $31, I got a GPS module for my itty bitty netbook. That’s a lot cheaper than spending $149 for a dedicated GPS unit. It’s also a lot cheaper than spending $2700 for an in-dash unit (which I’d never spend that much money for such a trivial thing anyway). So we used the little GPS to go to the haunted house last night and it worked like a charm :)

It’s only 11 more days until I get to lead a worship service at Turning Circle. Yay! They liked my Autumn Rite enough that I got invited to do it again. Too kewl.

Indigo Incarnates

One of my duties as a Case Agent is community supervision. So once each month I pick six people out of my case book and verify that they live where they say they live. It is nice getting out of the office for the day.

The thing about Baltimore is that it is basically a city in ruins. Once upon a time, it had almost a million people living here. Now it's about 575,000 people and still decreasing. Almost all of the big employers have gone (Domino Sugar and the baseball/football stadia remain.) And drug addiction has wiped out entire neighborhoods. So where we drove today, most of the houses were boarded up and the few that were not appeared to be heavily deteriorated. You can tell who the drug dealers are since they have Lexus SUVs parked in front of their homes. They prey have nothing -- absolutely nothing.

Here's a shock: three of the six I chose didn't live where they say they did. Ditto for my coworker. We call the boarded up townhomes "boardies".

The good news is that neither I nor my coworker got shanked, shot, or run over. Yay!

Doug, Jeff, and I did our usual El Salto thing. It's always good cheap eats :)

Tomorrow is a moon esbet service at Turning Circle. That's always fun!

halo incarnates

will not let skinny mom go hungry. will not let her run out of food. will not let her go hungry.

Ashen Incarnates

I let loose the flames of rage. That coward, cousin Carl, is a pion of Uncle Jimmy -- a spy, a lackey, an underling. He reports all that he sees to that greedy bastard. We let him know that WE know that he does this. We shamed him verbally for letting the skinny mother become so destitute and hungry while saying NOTHING to those who could have done somehting about it. Shame on him for being an honorless coward. Shame on him for doing nothing when he had to simply call us. Shame on him for covering up for Jimmy's rampand greed and heartlessness. Shame on him for lacking a shred of moral courage. Shame on him for being a spy and for attempting to gain the favor of a greedy, heartless bastard who hates him too. Shame on him for being doing nothing while someone weak and powerless went hungry. May his shame follow him from this life to the next.

Uncle Jimmy -- that bastard likely uses the Wall Street Journal as a source of masterbation material. He treats his own blood kin as nothing more than a line-item in his investment portfolio. He has no conscience. He has no moral compass. He is a millionaire that will not part with a penny of charity for blood kin in need. He robs the skinny mother of her disability check as rent, leaving her so little that she cannot afford food. And coward carl did NOTHING. He did not call us. He did not alert us. The skinny mother is sick and dying, but she should not go hungry.

It was worth it to overdraft our checking account to get the skinny mother groceries. We need her to eat. She has to eat. It is a crime against human decency that Jimmy holds the purse strings with a grip of iron and coward-carl stood by watching as this evil unfolded. Shame on carl for being a coward. Shame on jimmy for being a money-grubbing, soulless, penny-pinching despot.

We will not let the skinny mother go hungry. And we gave coward-ccarl a chastisement that he shall not forgett. Then we said "Use this phone now to report to you master what was said and what was done. Do it now, in our presence!"

The coward did not do so. He will make his phone calls of betrayal and intrigue from a place of secrecy when we are not here -- such is the coward's way.

Damn them both. Thrice damned. May they reap the bitter harvest of what they have sown. May they choke on dust and salt and ash. May they have a need and only find closed doors and hardened hearts. May they receive threefold what they have visited upon the weak and the powerless. By word, by action, by sigil: so mote it be.

Indigo Incarnates

Today is Litha Sabbat, a Wiccan holiday that celebrates the summer solstice. It's also my mom's birthday, so I visited mom for her birthday.

I bought mom a pentacle for her birthday. Every witch needs a pentacle! Mom likes hers a lot. Jenny (my sister) bought mom some good coffee. She works for Gevallia now. Yay!

We did a nice Litha rite over at Chimney Rocks park. Jenny, mom, me, and Jenny's latest boy-toy participated. It was pretty nice.

We're watching bad sci-fi right now. That's always cool.

You all may remember that I have an intense dislike of Uncle Jimmy. It's his fault, directly, that mom's health has deteriorated as quickly as it has. (He exposed mom to construction debris that had the effect of accelerating the effect of COPD so her life span is going to be measured in months instead of years). Well, Jimmy is also a millionaire. He also still intends on kicking mom out of her home in October (well, he owns the home but wants to rent it out and is apparently impatient for mom to die). My latest reason for disliking him increased yet again.

See, Jimmy is a millionaire. Mom is on disability and only has her disability check for income. She also needs to take over a dozen medications. But that doesn't keep Jimmy from confiscating most of that check for rent. Apparently, Jimmy charges her so much for rent that she doesn't have enough money to buy groceries. When I visited her, I noticed that she had no food in the house and she hadn't eaten in two days. I bought her the biggest meal I could get her at Denny's. I'm just about broke too, but I'm happy to share what little I do have (unlike Jimmy, who doesn't need to plunder mom's Social Security check but does anyway.) It really bothers me that he KNOWS that mom hasn't been getting enough to eat and yet won't give her a break on the rent. (Note to self: This is just another example of how YHVH rewards greedy sociopaths with wealth and power while trampling over the wounded and weak. No wonder mom became a Wiccan too!)

Andy does try to help mom out when he can. He agreed that mom can move in with him in October when Jimmy evicts her in October (see, Jimmy wants to rent out the house to someone with more $$$$, since that's what's sacred to Jimmy). But Andy also doesn't make much money either. He works hard, but his job doesn't pay much.

So... in a nutshell: I was very happy to see mom. I'm glad that mom got to participate in the Litha rite. I'm glad we got to eat at Denny's together. But I'm sad and angry that Jimmy insists on stepping on the neck of someone who is very ill and has very limited income.