I found a fantastic article by Jon Carroll of the San Francisco Chronicle.  It made me smile and it almost made me want to run down to the local Unitarian Universalist church to join up.  Since I went to UU churches in Chicago (a shout out to Second Unitarian in New Town!) and Denver (went to all of the UU churches in Denver, Jefferson and Boulder counties, and never could decide which was my favorite), the article brought back some great memories.  I’d reprint the whole thing here, except, you know, that’s wrong.  So quick, go read the article, and come back.

Was that great, or what?  I really think I’m going to go join the Unitarian Jihad.  In fact, my new Jihadist name is Sister Flaming Shuriken of Acceptance. If you’d like to join us, you can get your own Unitarian Jihadist name from the Naming Committee.  I have to go make some flower arrangements now.  And then I will probably bake some cookies.

Every now and again, I check the spam comments that spammy spammers leave on this here site.  Gotta say I really hate these “people.”  A couple of them recently left comments similar to “Loved your post, I’m going to copy it to my blog.”

What the fuck?  You think it’s ok to copy stuff that *I* write to your crap shithole of a blog?  I call down the curse of ages on you!  May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your genital region and crawl up your ass.  May you always have watery diarrhea.  May all your hair fall out, except for that in your nose and ears.  May your eyes cross, and stay that way until you’re dead.  No, they should stay that way even after you’re dead.  May you have hangnails on every finger… every day.  May you have paper cuts galore, and always manage to spill lemon juice on them.  May your toenails continue to grow, and resist all efforts at trimming.  And may a tattoo saying “Loser” suddenly appear on your forehead.

Ah.  I feel better now.

What the frack, guys?  The last time I had a problem with an appliance, I gave you a call.  The customer service people on the phone were polite and helpful.  The service person arrived in a timely fashion, and fixed the problem.

This time, however, you completely fucked up.  When I called, the “customer service” representative was robotic rather than polite, and couldn’t be bothered to find a technician who could fix my washing machine in a timely manner.  I should have picked up on this clue.  I should have started calling all the other appliance repair people in the area right then and there.  But no.  I made an appointment for a service call a week and a half in the future.

When the day of the service appointment arrived, I drove home at lunch time to meet the technician (who was supposed to arrive between 1pm and 5pm).  Because I’m apparently a little bit psychic, I decided to check the voice mail messages (I generally only do that a couple of times a week).  Oh gosh!  The “customer service” people had called at 11:30am to tell me the technician wasn’t going to make it that day.  WTF?

So I called them back to find out when I could get my washing machine fixed.  This “customer service” representative was even more robotic than the initial one, and couldn’t have possibly been less interested in helping me.  He wanted to reschedule the appointment for yet another week in the future.  Uh… no.  I requested an appointment for the following day.  Robot Man simply kept repeating, “I can reschedule this appointment for next week.”  I reiterated that I had already been without a washing machine for 10 days, could not wait another week to get it repaired, and really needed to get it fixed immediately.  Instead of transferring me to his supervisor (which I understand is what you are supposed to do with irate customers — and believe me, I was IRATE), Robot Man HUNG UP ON ME.  Hung up on me.  Yes.  He did.

Once the thoughts of stuffing Robot Man into the washing machine passed, I started calling repair people.  On the fourth call, I found someone who will actually come out early on Saturday morning.  If he actually does get my washing machine working on Saturday, he will totally be my go-to guy for appliance repair!  And if he doesn’t, I’ll have to go shopping for a washer.  Bah.

But rest assured, I will never call Sears again for any reason.  I probably won’t even shop there anymore, either… because, hey, it’s not like it’s convenient or anything to get there.

I’ve been watching Psych with the Offspring the past few weeks.  I had watched maybe a half dozen episodes of the first season when it first aired, and then stopped watching it… probably for some silly reason like I needed to go to sleep early.  But I had a coupon from Amazon for a Video On Demand offering, so I bought the first season of Psych.  We’ve been watching it on the internet-capable Blu-Ray player Santa brought us for Christmas.

So here’s what I don’t get: why the hell did I stop watching Psych in the first place?  It’s freaking hilarious!  Shawn and Gus crack me up, and at least half of the time so does Lassiter.  We’re done with season one, on to season two.  We’re going to watch another three or four episodes tomorrow night, so leave us alone.

There are some people who sing with such purity and emotion that their voices reach right into my heart and squeeze.  k.d. lang is one of them.  Her performance at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics is testament to her astounding skill.  When I read the words to Hallelujah, I thought, “Meh, ok, might be a nice song… but might not.”  But while listening to k.d.’s rendition, I had tears streaming down my face.  That’s not a nice song, that’s a shatter your heart into a million little pieces with the longing of it all kind of song.  She did the same darn thing to me the first time I heard her singing Crying, too.

I think I’m going to have to dig out all my k.d. lang CDs today.

It would seem that Amazon delisted all the books from Macmillan over the weekend.  I’m not going to pretend I have any knowledge of publishing or bookselling, so I’m going to refer you to John Scalzi’s analysis of the situation.

I have a Kindle.  I’m rather fond of my Kindle.  But if I can’t get the book I want to read for my Kindle, I’m not above buying those things made from tree mulch.  At Barnes & Noble or Borders or the local independent bookstore.  Or even the newly-renovated public library up the street!  I go to Amazon for convenience.  If they take away my convenient, it’s their loss when I jump in my car and visit their competitors.

Also?  Why I’m not getting an iPad:

According to the decidedly bizarre people at Westboro Baptist Church, God pretty much hates everything and everyone… including the good ol’ U. S. of A.

This brings all manner of thoughts right to the forefront of my mind, causing a collision that makes it difficult to write about any one thing.  But I’ll work on separating it all out.

First, can you say “hubris”?  Wow.  Going with the assumption that the Entity Known As God is greater than anything a mere mortal could comprehend with the three-pound (give or take) lump of goo in our heads, how could a mere mortal say that he or she knows anything about the mind of said Entity?  On a tangent to that, how do we even know whether or not something godlike even has emotions?  The honest answer is, “We don’t.”  Also tangentially, it would appear that mere mortals have a fondness for anthropomorphizing, well, everything, really.  So the Entity Known As God has emotions because we mere mortals have emotions.

I’m not arguing for or against the existence of the Entity Known As God, by the way.  But all mythology makes the Entities Known As Gods look and act and think and feel an awful lot like the people who are writing the stories about the ENAG.  I’m just saying that we mere mortals are kind of arrogant in thinking we might know what the ENAG is or is not thinking or feeling.

Next, I think I’ve figured out those bizarre people of Westboro Baptist Church.  Since they say that God hates America, they themselves must be anti-American, and not even Americans at all.  But I don’t think ENAG cares much about arbitrary geopolitical borders on this, or any other, planet.  Kind of like how I don’t care what the ants in the colonies are doing under my lawn… as long as they don’t put their little piles of sand in my driveway, I won’t run them over.

And then there, “God hates…”  Wait.  What?  No.  Jesus loves me, this I know for the Bible tells me so.  (Catholic grade school… give me a break.)  Does that mean that Jesus isn’t God?  Well, some people believe that.  But I thought Christians believed that Jesus is God.  So that means that the bizarre people of Westboro Baptist Church aren’t Christians.  Ah!  Now we’re getting somewhere.  Now it all makes sense!

Being the happy science fiction loving nerd that I am, my theory about the bizarre people of Westboro Baptist Church is that they’re aliens from another planet (atheists, of course) that have come here to sow negativity and dissent so we mere mortals are ripe pickings for their evil overlords who will show up here one of these days to harvest the lumps of goo in our heads as a gourmet appetizers.  And then they’ll build a galactic bypass.

There were some Russian scum ditty pus balls who had been trying to post spam comments here for a couple of weeks.  These posts were all in Russian (and Google kept offering to translate them for me… I naturally declined), and they all something like 100+ lines long.  There were a lot (like almost all the lines) of links, and I’m pretty sure it was all porn.  At first, only two or three of these spam comments would come in each day; then 25 or 30.  That may not seem like a lot to some people, but I’m not sure there are that many legitimate readers out there.  Then there was the day I received 85 spam in one day.  On one post.

While it was extremely annoying to see all those comments in the Akismet spam folder, I really appreciate the fact that Akismet is so diligent in keeping them away from those of you who are real people.  I say, “Three cheers for Akismet!”  Oh, and “Thank you.”

And since I closed comments on that post, I haven’t received a single spam comment at all.  Ah, spammers.  May you all rot in hell.

I had my quarterly checkup with my fibro doc this week.  He’s not one of my insurance company’s providers, so I have to pay for everything out-of-pocket.  He’s got me taking one prescription that I get from a compounding pharmacy.  All the other supplements, I get from him.  Normally, my office visits run close to $500 every three months.  Thank goodness I can afford it!  And thank goodness for my Health Savings Plan, so the cost of visiting him is from pre-tax dollars (every little bit of savings helps).

This time around, I got a couple of new prescriptions… both generics, both covered by my insurance, and both available at the pharmacy around the corner.  One is for pain, the other to help me sleep.  We’ll see how that goes.  I also need to get some blood drawn for my semi-annual blood tests.  Looks like he added about eight extra tests, so I’m hoping to have some blood left to donate to the Red Cross.  My weight stayed the same, which pleased me because I haven’t had the energy to exercise and pleased the doc because he seems to think “the holidays” are a mad food fest for everyone.

Since the last appointment, I had a slight decrease in severe-pain days, but an increase in absolutely-no-energy days.  The lack of energy is typical for this time of year, and is exacerbated by lack of sleep.  Since the last pain medication made me puke all day, I’m hoping this one will be better and knock the severe-pain days down to zero.  The last sleeping medication made me wake up feeling like I was extremely hung over, and I’m also hoping for better results from this one.  As I’ve said before, good sleep is something I yearn for.  I’m pretty sure getting sound sleep every night (or at least most nights) will go a long way towards alleviating the feelings of hostility I feel towards the world.  I know I would appreciate that, as would my family, friends and coworkers.

Oooh, and maybe if I get more energy, I’ll be able to exercise again.  I really do feel better when I spend 30 to 40 minutes on the treadmill in the morning!

I hate them.

There.  I said it.  I hate compact fluorescent light bulbs.  They all buzz in my ceiling fixtures, and that’s going to drive me mental.  I can’t use them with the dimmer switches, and some previous owner of the building seemed to think nearly every freakin’ room needed a dimmer switch.  I even have one light fixture that eats up the bulbs in anywhere between one and 10 days.  This light fixture is not saving me any money, that’s for sure.  So I think I’m going to go back to regular incandescent light bulbs.  Well, except for the kitchen and the garage, where they actually seem to work.  And don’t buzz incessantly.  Oh, and the laundry room and the one bathroom that has the regular fluorescent light bulbs.

With the damn buzzing, I’m spending more on alcohol than I’m saving in energy anyway.