Indigo Incarnates

I played hookey from choir last night for two reasons: I didn't have enough gas to get there and back (and it was the day before payday so I was flat broke) and the weather was just too nice to stay indoors. I did, however, have enough gas to get to the NCR trail (it's only 5 miles away from my house.)

I was really happy to see what difference just a few days make at this time of year. Most of the trees are sprouting leaves, the grasses are green again, and I saw lots of flowering weeds. It was very pretty. I saw plenty of squirrels and birds. I even saw a cardinal.

Since it was evening and the middle of the week, there weren't too many people. I was happy for that. The world has *way* too many people.

It was also good to get sunlight. Chanhelings need sunlight.

So, the eight mile walk was fun and it was great exercise. Yay!

Indigo Incarnates

So... Doug ordered a Futon a few weeks ago. The sales dude told Doug that when it arrived that it would be in three pieces and only require four bolts. Lemme tell ya: when it arrived it had about 100 pieces and three dozen bolts and two dozen other fasteners. Whoo-hoo! There ought to be a Time/Life series called "When Salesmen Lie", har har har.

But I'm happy to say that I actually got this beast put together and I'm lounging on it right now. Yay! I'm not mechanically inclined at all. This is actually the most complicated thing I've ever gotten successfully put together. It was a real confidence booster for me.

I The father-monster always called me a loser because I wasn't good with tools. Of course, if I had been good with tools as a child, the father-monster would have found some other reason to hate me.

But I feel like I had a real accomplishment :)

Indigo Incarnates

It's been over a year since I began studying Wicca. I'm an initiate now and I've officiated at four worship services, two of which I wrote the liturgy for. I have to say how glad I am that I found this spiritual path (or maybe I was found?) It's wonderful to feel loved when I pray.

One of the things I find so appealing about Wicca is how the religion recognizes the balance of forces. In Christianity, I've run into people who have said illness is a judgement by God, or poor finances is a judgemennt by God. But in Wicca, it is ssimply nature that there are times of disease and times of health; times of poverty and times of plenty; times of sadness and timees of joy. Without the one, appreaciation for the other would be lessened. In my life, I am in a time of health (good) but in a time of financial distress (not so good). But I would probably grow overconfident and less thankful if everything was going right at the same time. But in Wicca, I have been learning to appreciate the balance.

When I pray to the Goddess and God, I feel loved. I never had that when I followed YHVH. Maybe YHVH could not love me because I am not human, or maybe because I'm homosexual, or maybe because I'm not perfect. But the Goddess and God seem to love all life -- human or not -- and I can feel their spiritual presence when I pray, whether things in my life are going well or if my life is in chaos. They do not abandon. I am really grateful.

Is Wicca the "one true path"? Nope. It's the path for me, however. Wicca is not a religion that claims to be the ultimate moral authority or the one true faith. It is simply *one* source of morality and *one* true path among many true paths. For those who find spiritual fulfillment and connection with deity through Christiannity or Islam or any other faith, I'm happy for those people since it's good to be walking the right path that fulfuills one's spiritual destiny.

Blessed be :)

Indigo Incarnates

As another "perk" of living in Baltimore, Doug and I learned this weekend that the police department no longer makes non-emergency responses on weekends. Our white-trash neighbors across the street decided to through an unreasonably loud party on Saturday night. It was really, really loud! So 11:30pm rolls around and Doug calls 311 (the non-emergency police number) to see if an officer could be dispatched to gett the crowd to stop disturbing the peace. Well, the 311 dispatcher said they no longer do non-emergency calls on weekends.

What a riot.

Of course,that means that if your car is stolen on Friday night, you can't report it to the police until Monday morning in Baltimore. Lovely.

Anyway, the party was still going on at 6:00AM. It was a long, long night.

Indigo Incarnates

Usually I post more often than this, but it's been a particularly uneventful week.

I did see that there is a defendant on Pretrial Supervision with a firearm charge -- and his name is "Raygun". What a riot!

Doug got his state tax refund back so he got us tickets to a broadway show for next month.

I've been having a blast playing Sacred-II, a cool game that Doug gave me. It features an Angel that goes around kicking the crap out of highwaymen, orcs, zombies, and werewolves. She has a holy handgun too. Whoooo-hoo!

I do community supervision today. Hopefully I won't get shanked by a junkie-bum!

Indigo Incarnates

From a religious perspective, it was a pretty fun weekend. On Friday, I went to a drum circle at Turning Circle. I don't actually own a drum, so I brought my rain stick. I think my rain stick added a nice sound to the group. Another member brought a finger chime. The ritual was pretty energetic. It was a lot of fun.

Saturday was a Full Moon service at Turning Wheel bookstore. My Wicca teacher actually let me lead the service. It was pretty cool. I am really glad that two different Wicca circles accept me and trust me enough to compose liturgy for worship services and also to officiate. And to think: the dreaded Rev Shifflet (now retired) made it a point to tell me how unworthy he thought I was for any kind of ministry. Go figure!

This morning was Easter Sunday. I'm in handbell choir so I rang bells for both services. Thistle likes church a lot. I don't mind too much (I like Jesus but I don't have any warm fuzzy feelings for YHVH. But Jesus is good). The new rector got told by the vestry to keep her sermons to 10 minutes or less. Yay! Easter music is always so cheerful!

Thistle also had an interesting analysis of the Eucharistic Rite. By Thistle's account, the Catholic Church sort of interpreted the ritual of the bread and wine. What Thistle thinks happens is that the bread and wine are empowered with life energy by Christ, but they never have been turned into flesh and blood. That works for me, since I'm not big into eating flesh!

So it was a pretty spiritually fulfilling weekend!

Blessed Be!

Indigo Incarnates

Well, I'm afraid it's time for one of my periodic TechnoRants. You know, when I gripe about technological things that should work a lot better than they do, but don't.

--- Internet Explorer 8
Wow! What a piece of garbage! IE7 was faster. IE6 was faster still. So I guess Microsoft doesn't consider a browser fully "updated" until it runs at only half the speed of its predecessor. The new thing I've noticed with IE8 is that you get an awful lot of "This page cannot be displayed" errors unless you're running a broadband connection of 384 kbps or higher. Whenever my phone switches to EDGE mode (115kbps) this new browser is essentially crippled. Oh, it also consumes an inordinate amount of processing power. When IE8 is loading a page, the processor utilization gage is at 100% the whole time. Oh, and it has a hard time closing. I usually have to do a manual application termination through Task Manager to close IE8.

--- When "Unlimited" actually means "10 Gb"
So, I was finally able to get T-Mobile to keep letting me use my SonyEricsson phone as a modem (since I had a contract that explicitly said I am permitted to). However, the cell phone service provider came up with a new hidden limitation. Apparently once a user has exceeded 10 Gb of data transfer in a 30-day period, the carrier disables the 3G data stream (384kbps) and only allows the phone to connect on the EDGE channel (115kbps). To add insult to injury, the phone chimes on the hour, every hour, with a message that reads "You have exceeded a 10 Gb limit. Your data speed shall be reduced for the remainder of the billing cycle). Since the service isn't actually terminated, T-Mobile can still technically say it's "unlimited". I am not impressed.

--- Fake 3G
Word to the wise: There are actually two kinds of 3G phones. Mine is a HSPDA device, which connects in the 350kbps-650kbps range. Then there are the inferior UMTS devices, which connect at 150kbps-300kbps. If you plan on subscribing to T-Mobile,they now only let new customers tether UMTS phones to their computers. The only reason my faster phone still works is because they implemented this policy after I signed the contract -- and I still had to fight them about it for two weeks. So, if you want broadband service and you think T-Mobile is going to be as fast as AT&T or Verizon, think again. UMTS is only *slightly* faster than EDGE. If T-Mobile really had it's act together, I could get 1.2 Mb/sec. That's never going to happen on this network anytime soon.

am willow

was pretty today
windy and cool
pretty sky
some trees have flowers now
pink and white
so pretty
am glad the trees are waking up
saw yellow and purple flowers

Indigo Incarnates

I got tagged with a MeMe by Whimsical (via her Facebook account). Since I can never resist these, I'm posting them below. I'm tagging Java, Joan, Tiger Yogi, and Doug!

---------------

Tag 15 people to do the same thing (and me, too). 1. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? Considering that I'm an alter that replaced someone else, I'm guessing the answer is "no", ha ha.

2. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED? When my friend Jewel died.

3. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? It's pretty good.

4. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT? I'm a vegetarian!

5. DO YOU HAVE KIDS? Oh hell no!

6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON, WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? I just don't know.

7. DO YOU USE SARCASM? Yes, all the time!

8. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? Yes

9. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? I doubt it. I've done hang gliding, parasailing, motorcycling, but - don't want to do bungee jumping.

! 10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL? Reces Puffs

11. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? Yes

12. YELLOW LIGHT: SPEED UP OR SLOW DOWN? Depends on how close I am to it, but generally I floor it!

13. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM? Peanut butter

14. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE? Attitude, then whether they have their teeth.

15. RED OR PINK? Red

16. WHAT IS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF? I hate how I so often feel incomplete.

17. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? I'm not sure. I've never had really close relationships with my family.

18. DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO COMPLETE THIS LIST? Only if they want to.

19. WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING? Blue denim, old Rebocks..

20. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? A Mystery Science 3000 movie.

21. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE? SOne of those funky ones that write in a bunch of colors at once.

22. FAVORITE SMELLS? Church incense.

23. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE? My friend Jeff.

24. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON/PEOPLE WHO SENT THIS TO YOU? Yes

25. FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH? Uh... I'm a gay man. Sports? Ha ha ha ha!

26. HAIR COLOR? Mostly brown with some white.

27. EYE COLOR? Blue

28. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? Nope, they bug me

29. FAVORITE FOOD? Vegetarian Indian food, super spicy.

30. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS? Scary movies that have happy endings!

31. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED? "Support Your Local Sheriff"

32. WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING? Black.

33. SUMMER OR WINTER? Summer

34. HUGS OR KISSES? Depends on the person
35. MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND? Probably Java.

36. LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND? Not sure.

37. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW? "Dead Beat", by Jim Butcher (a Dresden novel).

38. WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? I use a digitizer tablet, so I don't have a mouse pad.

39. WHAT DID YOU WATCH ON TV LAST NIGHT? I didn't watch TV last night.

40. FAVORITE SOUND(S). The wind, bird song, a powerful thunderstorm.

41. ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES? Is there a third option?

42. WHAT IS THE FARTHEST YOU HAVE BEEN FROM HOME? Grand Caymen, when I was on a cruise.

43. DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT? Hmmm.... I'll have to think about that one.

44. WHERE WERE YOU BORN? The body was born in Huntingdon, PA. I came into being in 1982 when the person who used to have this body lived in Marietta, GA.

45. WHOSE ANSWERS ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO GETTING BACK? Anyone I tagged

46. HOW DID YOU MEET YOUR SPOUSE/SIGNIFICANT OTHER? We met in Borders' Bookstore..

Indigo Incarnates

Today is Palm Sunday and it occurs to me that, other than technology, not a lot about the human condition has changed in two thousand years.

If you really want to read between the lines, Jesus was essentially executed for what would today be considered "disorderly conduct" at the very most (and even that would be thrown out). But in that day, the politically connected religious right of that day persuaded the government to kill Jesus because he had a religious message they disagreed with.

I have to wonder: Would Pat Robertson, Pope Benedict, or Fred Phelps *really* acknowledge Jesus as their lord? I doubt it. I find it more likely that those three would denounce Jesus and try to get him arrested on trumped-up charges. After all, Jesus preached about charity, inclusion, and equality. He didn't condemn gays. He didn't preach that a woman's place is in the home. He certainly didn't preach any sort of "prosperity gospel". No, he called the religious right a whitewashed tomb. He said that the selfish rich who ignored the poor would have a hard time getting into heaven. Jesus has but one commandment: love God and love each other.

That's something the religious right of that time just couldn't tolerate. Two thousand years later, the religious right still rejects Christ's message of love, charity, inclusion, and social justice. The religious right is still an instrument of the ruling government.

The modern-day church still tolerates the murder of homosexuals and pagans,. Likewise, the church still blames disasters (911 and Katrine just to name two) on unpopular minorities. The church teaches people how to hate and who it acceptable to kill and who deserves to die.

I don't think Jesus would recognize the Church as an institution based on his teachings.