All being loyal ever gets you is a good kick in the rear. It's nothing but pain. You're just a whipped dog returning to an abusive owner because you have nowhere else to go.

Depressive thoughts are no fun to deal with at all. I figure I'll get them out here rather than keep them in my head.

Anyone can do it!
You can make it if you try!
Anyone can do it!
Spread your wings out and you'll fly!

But when it comes your turn,
All you do is crash and burn.
You took off to the sky
But found out you can't fly.

Won't you help me?
I'm in so much pain.
Won't you help me
To get back up again?

You're just lazy!
You really didn't try!
You're just lazy!
You gave up and didn't fly!

So you're stuck back on the ground
And all the people just look down.
And they don't care to see you cry,
Because they think you just won't try.

Someone help me!
Can't you see that I'm not well?
Someone please help me!
I can't get up since when I fell!

But they all just say the same
That you've only yourself to blame.
And they all just pass you by
And leave you there to die.

I'm just worthless
I'm just useless

Who could want me?
Do I just pretend?
No one wants me.
It's just a lie when I make friends.

And it's all my fault
And it's all my fault
And it's all my fault


Today would have been Charles Schulz's 100th birthday. I think we have much to remember him for, especially his Peanut's comic strip.

Given the possibility of Twitter imploding, I can be found both on cohost and Mastodon.
https://cohost.org/Indagare-Reperio
https://meow.social/web/@Indagare

If anyone following me sees this,  WontoonRoo is in rather dire circumstances. Further details may be found here. If you can do nothing else, please spread the word.

One of the greatest linguistic tricks was making worth and price near-synonyms when they are basically antonyms in essence. If you question this, just try worthless and priceless. Not synonyms, eh? So why should their base forms be nearly so?

People generally don't think too much of asking how much something is worth when what they mean is how much something costs. This is a difference along the lines of "can" and "may" which, while pedantic on occasion, is a reason to pay attention. The instant the conflation begins people start forgetting there's a fundamental difference between the two.

Price is simple cost. It is an arbitrary amount placed on something to indicate trade value.
Worth is intrinsic value. This cannot be measured, generally, though it can be questioned.

People have worth. The hardest thing in the world, sometimes, is convincing someone of their worth. Of the value of just them being around. This is because they will compare themselves to folks who have "made it" -- to folks that have fortune or fame.

People should never have price. That's slavery.

One of the weirder aspects of getting older is how memory and perception twist, but it seems to me like it was a lot easier to try and find folks to build a shared world with when I was in college than it is now.

Then again, there could be lots of college-age students creating their own shared worlds and I'm just out of the loop because I'm old enough to be their parent.

I just love being right about horrible things I don't want to see happen. Love it, love it. love it.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.—Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

It's hard to express just how exhausted I've been lately. I remind myself my family and friends need me, but it's hard to want to stick around and watch things continue to get worse. It'd be nice to have faith or hope in the future--goodness knows I've been trying hard to find and share good news stories--but I still have a hard time doing anything because I end up not seeing a point. Even if it's not erased by the government, it'll simply be forgotten and erased by time.

I can't even count on my faith to protect me. The Catholic church wants gays the way every other Conservative does: invisible and silent as the grave.

This tweet has an image that succinctly describes my feelings about both the Democrat and Republican parties as a whole. It is a "clean" image but not an inoffensive one.

It's hard to express how tired I am of Democrats doing nothing once elected. More specifically, when they have the majority and fail to do anything meaningful in terms of legislation to help people. They love nothing better than to blame the voters when voters become too disgusted at their lack of leadership. Increasingly they are basically the mafia party. "That's a nice democratic republic you've got there; be a shame if something happened to it."

Republicans are even worse. Too many are still sycophants for Trump and the lie about the election. Even more have given up any pretense of "small government" that used to be their party's slogan. No "small government" wants to control everything! Certainly those wishing to establish some kind of religious government seek the same things the Puritans did long ago. And anyone that thinks that they will be safe just because it's "Christian" and they are too is deluding themselves. Christians like nothing better than outlawing one another given the power to do so.

Eli Erlick is writing on Twitter about the similarities between Nazi Germany and what's going on in the US. Before you dismiss this as panicked rhetoric on my part, I would ask you check out the link.
https://twitter.com/EliErlick/statu.....ROtOjem1sjKDjg

Hope everyone has a great day today, whether you celebrate Easter or not!

Here comes Peter Cottontail:

New, artificial pancreas:

https://www.newscientist.com/articl.....with-diabetes/

For Lent this year I've been trying very hard to avoid the news. This hasn't been easy as it seems to pop up everywhere.

Among the "fun" things lately has been the association of noncishet folks with pedophiles. Calling us "groomers" whenever we interact with children and, especially if we answer any questions about basic biology the kid might want to know or even mention we have a same-gender spouse.

What's really "fun" is that in Tennessee they're proposing a law to remove age restrictions from marriage. So the same crowd accusing us of being pedophiles is eager to allow adults to marry children but, somehow, that's not pedophilia. Likely because it'll almost certainly be an older man marrying some girl and thus heterosexual which, as we all know, is the only "normal" relationship, right?

Now, the bill is only proposed. I hope it fails utterly. If it passes, though, it'll just be another example of hypocrisy when it comes to sex and sexuality.

"Oh hey, I'm totally sick today."
"Well, you can't call off. You need to work."

-Goes in to work, gets sick at work, gets yelled at for being sick at work-

Alternatively

-Goes in to work, is too ill to properly focus on work, gets yelled at for poor performance-

"Maybe I could get paid to stay home while sick?"
"Well, anyone could abuse that! People are lazy and just don't want to work!"

"Maybe all the work I put in should mean I'm not living at or below poverty levels?"
"HA! You're just too lazy/inept at money! Here's the 20 ways I pulled myself up. Let's start with the condos my family owned..."

Capitalism is always about punishing the poor. Keeping them poor. Blaming them for their poverty. And, if you're Christian, ignoring the Christ that tells you to give up your riches to the poor and follow Him. Because it's much easier to buy into the idea the poor are either ordained to be poor by God or suffering the consequences of their choices than to buy into the idea it's your responsibility to help people out.

Men and women tend to have opposite issues as far as society's expectations:

Men are but rarely praised for their appearances, yet are expected to (at least) 'look professional'. That said, a guy can generally get away with looking like a slob and still be considered competent at his job.

Women are constantly praised for their appearance. In fact, it seems to be about the only thing that matters. Let a woman be as smart or strong or swift as she can, if she doesn't match the "beauty ideal" it won't matter. If she looks other than pretty people will mock her abilities or say some sort of backhanded compliment. And heaven forfend they look "homely" as they'll just be utterly ignored.

Men are expected to like "manly things" like mechanics, sports, and hunting. Let them express an interest in cooking, decorating, art, or flowers and suddenly they're suspected of being gay.

Women are expected to like "womanly things" like cooking and decorating. Let them express an interest in mechanics, sports, hunting, or engineering and suddenly they're suspected of being lesbians.

No one gives men flowers the way women get flowers, even though many men love flowers as much. My favorite flower is the lilac: I love how it smells.

With Lent starting today, I'm going to be trying to do (and not do) a few things. I'm trying to keep these as things I think I can reasonably manage:

1) Avoid news as much as is possible. I've already been doing this, but I'm going to put some extra effort in it for Lent. It's not that I don't care about world events, particularly as they affect noncis/nonhet folks like myself, but as far as I can tell there's actually very little I can personally do about them. I can as angry and horrified as posible at Texas for targeting the loving parents of trans kids instead of going after abusive ones, but I can't do anything to actually stop it.

2) Meditate more. Mostly through walking and in parks when possible.

3) Focus on acts of kindness, spread good news, and be a source of positivity. Again, this is something I've been trying to do but will make extra effort for Lent. Bad news is not that hard to find, nor people who are negative. I want to be more positive. Not because I'm unaware of all the negatives out there, but because it's important to keep up hope.

Some of the things I'm hoping to accomplish within the next 365 days (in no particular order):

1) Practice on Blender.
2) Practice being more hopeful.
3) Exercise a little every day.

For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life—namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. . . . Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things.

Consequently, Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere, he can be cured and made human again.

The real test is this. Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, “Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,” or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker.

If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally, we shall insist on seeing everything—God and our friends and ourselves included—as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.

published in 1952

Besides the possibility of the Supreme Court taking a right away (which could cascade to other rights being removed), I've been feeling overwhelmed by a lot of things and ended up snapping at someone, which I feel bad about.

Despite the songs, this is almost never the most wonderful time of the year. It's usually the most stressful and I'll be glad once it's over.

This is apparently happening.

The denial of what happened to Jews, Romas, and LGBT folk under the Nazis is nothing new. In fact, I don't think a lot of people realized that the Nazis also killed the Roma and LGBT. But I can think of two people here who would be really okay with this, since they're okay denying the genocide of Natives.

BTW, feel free to not comment here. I want no genocide apologists around.

I've been trying to think of something to write, but I think I'll just link to articles instead:

https://nativenewsonline.net/curren.....us-peoples-day

https://indiancountrytoday.com/newscasts/10-08-21

https://indiancountrytoday.com/opin.....day-mean-to-me

https://www.npr.org/2021/10/11/1044.....icans-columbus