We Should Call Bird Poop Fewmets Because Birds Are Dinosaurs And That's Basically A Dragon.

this might sound silly but when people share pics they took on walks with me i kind of believe in beauty and humanity again like oh? you noticed a small creature? you were in awe of the deep blue of the sky? the way the light touched the houses and reflected off the windows? my heart sings we are alive we are alive we are alive

Did I just make the hardest starwars shirt of all time???

Travel Reimbursements

Overly draconian/miserly policies for funding/reimbursement of things like work travel or business purchases in gov and institutions is not be jerks.

It's performative.

To demonstrate to others, particularly working class and conservatives, that their taxes and donations are not going to fund frivolous things or being used by employees to benefit themselves. The real enrichment and benefiting is done by the rich/powerful people who make those rules and piously follow them while milking the system for contracts, kick backs, and pet projects.

It doesn't hurt them to pay a few dozen or a few hundred extra dollars here and there for business travel. The rest of us down here at the wage slave level are hurting and 50-100 bucks a day means so little to the rich, but so much to us. It means so much to me if I'm paying for my own meals or uber rides & tipping waitstaff out of my pocket.

Most of the rich travel at the per deim level anyway and could be making a little bit of spending money if they knew how to live like we do. And really, I don't care if some wage slave gets in on that action with their own job and makes an extra 50-100 bucks a day traveling for work. It sounds glamorous, but if you have a real life, it sucks. And if it doesn't suck, well, at least you have that going for you.

It means so much to me if I bring home an extra $200 for mileage. Why would we begrudge that to each other? It costs our masters practically nothing and we are so angry if another wage slave gets a little extra pocket money but don't lose our shit at the raping and pillaging the rich do to us every single day.

And it's because they are assholes and hope you will spend more of your own hard-earned money instead of using the piles of cash they keep around to wipe their asses with.

A new myth. A myth is not meant to be accurate history, but to tell a story that conveys a deeper spiritual truth. Stories are powerful.

This myth is the over-arcing story of Genesis to Jesus.

I'm not trying to save you or anything. And I don't think God is waiting for us somewhere else. God is always with us, walking with you and me and every other person through time and never turns away. But home is where the heart is. And God wants us to come home to the heart of God where there is Love, kindness, justice, generosity, Creation, the poor, the oppressed, etc. The things God loves and cares about.

I don't even really want you to believe the truths within the story. I just want you to consider the possibility and see if it resonates for you with history, our experiences, scripture, and who we know God to be as revealed in Jesus. You need to wrestle with this angel and make it make sense to you. Especially if you can't understand. The less you understand the more I beg you to listen again and sit with it.

You might hear a bit of anger or derision especially in the first few minutes. I'm not angry or derisive towards you or Christians in general or Jews at all. Any anger or derision towards people/powers towards those much, much higher up the food chain than you or anyone you know (probably).

As I tell the story, I am using lots of voice inflections to tell the story and that include sometimes a sing-song or sarcastic tone. The tone of the story is never to make fun of the reader or Christians. It's never to say that I'm smarter than anybody or put people down or anything like that.

The purpose of the incredulous voice inflections is occasionally to draw your attention to a joke, but usually it is to highlight the absurdity of the story we were given. The absurdity of the theology we were given. And the absurdity of the judgmental, autocratic, 1-strike picture of God we were given.

I really don't want to convince you of anything. If you have the eyes to see, the ears to hear, and understanding, you'll probably be able to recognize the messages in here.

Rather than looking to confirm or reject the ideas you are expecting to find, please just consider. These are brand new ideas (for you anyway) using old pictures and familiar stories. But they are not the same ideas or messages. I'm telling a different story.

See how it is different.

Consider what's different about this story & consider a few of these as you go:

-what is different from the original stories we were given (as you know them)

-what is different about the meaning

-is it more or less likely to be true than your present understanding of things, given all we know?

-Does it resonate with who we know God, humanity, creation, & the World to be?

-Does it seem truer in meaningful ways?

-Does it somehow misrepresent God or Truth?

-Does it encourage more things of God?

-Does it more things of the World?

-What do you think of the Paul and Philemon story?

a mite (Daemaeidae sp.) feeding on Stemonitopsis typhina by Barry Webb

The Blue Fairy is a Chaos Creature

One could blame Geppetto for sending Pinocchio out into the wide world his first day alive without any directions and naught but a sentient cricket to guide him. But that's what you get when you give a one-day old sentient puppet to a half-senile lonely old tinkerer who lives alone with his cat and unnaturally sexy goldfish.

Geppetto did not need a child. Giving him a child was the most irresponsible idea ever. He obviously needed a friend and maybe a caretaker.

The Blue Fairy should have just made Cleo a real woman if she was going to transform anything in that house into a person to help Geppetto. Cleo had truly cared for him for years as he cared for her like she was a regular human stuck in a bowl. And Cleo would have loved him as a friend at least. (We are all weirdly not sure that platonic friendship would be the extent of their relationship.)

Anyway that’s just one idea that is magical and actually would have fixed the old coots problems and saved a one-day old child trauma after trauma which will haunt him for life.

The Blue Fairy is an insane god. Only that could explain her unfathomable motivations for her actions. All of the main characters are victims of a benevolent yet insane incarnate great blue star powerful beyond comprehension or accountability.

if you have a long beak it must feel sooo good to hold a little red fruit in it

Email to my first year students about the career assessment the university forced on them:

A little over half of you have not taken the assessment yet and you are making the presenter on Monday nervous. Please finish your SII Assessment before the Monday class so you can have it to look at during the class.

To help you find it: on 1/10/24 the link to the Strong Interest Inventory was emailed to all [redacted] students with the subject "SII Assessment,”  sent by [redacted].

A note on the results you will get:

These results tell you about yourself now. You are not carved in stone and you will not be the same person (at least in several important ways) as you are today. The career you choose, the work you do, and the life you live will all change you and you will change and adapt to live and thrive in those places as best you can. In some places, your personality will still be stressed no matter how much you adapt. There are parts of you that won't change. The person I became in the past few years to do life in the way I do today is not the same person I was when I was happily chasing mosquitoes around and helping run our restaurant back in early 2000's. Or the person I had to be to thrive in a research lab a few years ago.

The main point is that this assessment tells you about yourself now, but not who you will become or what kind of job you must work to be happy and fulfilled. 

You will adapt, improvise, and overcome. Use the assessment to learn about yourself. Maybe you do want some career ideas. Maybe you just want to see which directions you want to grow in based on what you already know you want to do. You realize you don't spring forth from your mother's womb ready to be a nurse, doctor, or research scientist. Or father, mother, spouse, or whatever. You suck at those things in the beginning and learn to do them better. And your personality grows and changes to meet your new challenge.

Our ability to adapt and find unexpected solutions are the keys to human success. (along with being highly social and always having community/help)

If you have dreams and desires that don't line up with what the assessment says, or life goes sideways on you and you end up driving a taxi, understand that for most situations you will change and adapt and learn to become amazing and happy in that new situation. Even if it has a rough beginning.

So take it all with a grain of salt and treat it as a tool, not an oracle.

Peace,

Yours Truly