Josh Duggar's Quiverfull of Hypocrisy

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably heard about Josh Duggar, the oldest of the Duggar's brood of nineteen kids plus. He's the guy that had a job as an executive director with the Family Research Council, had helped lobby for 12 week abortion bans and was seen as a poster boy for "family values".

He's also a serial molester.

Now, the Duggar family and its allies are rather quickly trying to do spin control; they've been quick to say that what dear sweet Josh has done was just a mistake and that things are okay now. He sinned but let's just forgive and forget and put all that nasty stuff behind us. Because, you know, we wouldn't want to ruin the poor boy's life, now would we?

I have so many problems with this.

First off, his family has been known to lobby against gays and transgendered people; the family matriarch recorded a robocall that claimed if transgendered people were allowed to use a public restroom, it would put children in danger.

Yet she harbored a molester in her own home. She even forgave him. So much for "thinking of the children".

The family and its allies have claimed that this was just a sin. Jesus forgave Josh, so why can't we. There's only one massive problem with that: if this is just a sin, then it's no worse than taking a penny off the counter of a local restaurant. No harm, no foul, Jesus will forgive.

But that makes every sin equal. Stealing a penny is like rape, which is like murder and all can be washed clean. And yes, I have a massive problem with that. It smacks of this little Onion article which is supposed to be satire. I won't quote it, as it really deserves reading but I think it covers everything pretty well. But then there's the whole forgiveness thing. Why can't we just forgive and forget?

Because in this case, forgiveness is simply silencing the victims. And that needs to stop right now

--Weasel, back and bitterer than ever

COMMUNICATIONS INTERRUPT: TOO MANY DOG TAGS

WingTacker (thank Primus for the Multiforce; twelve W names with which I can run) has obviously been slacking off here. Understandable, I suppose; still filling notebooks with that horrendously illegible scrawl of hers (won't just buy the cheapest ones, either), spending moronic amounts of time looking for GTS Pokémon trades (it IS moronic when it's happening well after midnight and the alarm clock's gonna sound around 0700), mooning over the Brewers and the latest player to jump off the train (Jerry Hairston just signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers). Y'know. The usual.

Black Friday passed uneventfully for both of us. The 'open' times for stores poking into Thanksgiving late-night meant that all the nigh-solipsistic assholes, the nutbars who do all their holiday shopping then, and the people who were just looking for one or two deals and preferred not to risk missing out on 'em...they were pretty much all gone by 0300 Friday. WingTacker hadda be in at 0645. Fairly quiet shift. Me--I am a charter member of the third group listed above. No dues to pay this year, though--the entirety of Transformers offerings, this year, consisted of old stock, taped together and stickered with a fluorescent yellow SPECIAL VALUE starburst label. Shipped like that from Hasbro--I've seen the case boxes. Generally gotta put a little more effort into the repackaging to get me to bite.

So I stayed home and bought a Ninja. Hasn't arrived yet...

Took WingTacker to see Pokémon the Movie WHITE: VICTINI AND ZEKROM on Sunday. Limited engagements, bleh. Four whole theaters in Wisconsin showing it (once a day for two days), all in the Milwaukee area.

Whatever. I can drive that in my sleep BUT DIDN'T BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE IRRESPONSIBLE. Yomped around the area a little bit, afterward, hoping to find a Transformer that's been sighted in the state and is being snapped up about as quickly as its predecessor.

And BotCon just horked up the dates and location for the 2012 convention. Hopefully, Dallas in late April will be nothing like Dallas (Frisco, whatever, blah frickin' blah) in late September 2005. I'm missing DairyCon for the first time ever for this. Kinda sucks, but then, some of the behind-the-scenes drama is making me feel...somewhat less bad about it.

+++PRIME OUT+++C'EST LA VIE+++

Two Words:

Go Rangers.

COMMUNICATIONS INTERRUPT: 'WE' ARE TOO BUSY

Hard to say if you heard of the ridiculous storm that crossed Wisconsin yesterday morning. If it was mentioned nationally, I sure didn't have a lot of opportunity to hear about it.

Damn system was on a tear at 75 MPH and was blowing winds at a fair clip higher than that. As you might imagine, some trees don't take to well to such windspeeds. Powerline poles...well, duh, same thing.

Wingthing and I have no power at our house, and it's been that way for over twenty-four hours, now. WE Energies, which serves a large portion of the Fox Cities (too large, if you ask me, and I don't care that you didn't), has, I suppose, their hands full trying to restore power to everyone that lost it. Doesn't make seeing houses on the other side of the street with power at night any less an irritation, unfortunately. Unfair, I know.

The humidity was already making staying in the house a fairly miserable experience by itself by the time I returned home from work yesterday. No light but candlelight in the waning hours of the day just added to it. We both finally uttered 'screw this' and went to a fine Fox Cities establishment...well, an Applebee's...to have a light dinner and watch the Brewers game (8-2 over the Astros, yay).

Back home...still no power. This morning...still no power. And all the fallen branches are still in the backyard and on the roof (though no, I wasn't expecting them to magically disappear. Didn't have that thought at all, but now that I have, BOY IT SURE WOULDA BEEN NICE DONTCHA THINK I SURE DO).

Local library internet access results in the finely crafted blogpost you see before you onscreen. Bask in its glory, 'cus WHO KNOWS WHEN IT'LL HAPPEN AGAIN.

+++PRIME OUT+++FINALLY REACHED MY TIPPING POINT, I HATE HEAT AND NOW *RAIN*+++WHERE IS THE DAMN SNOW+++

EDIT, 1223: IIIII HAVE THE POWWWWWERRRR (and, ostensibly, so do others up the street)

(Insert Scream Here)

(Current earworm: Iridescent by Linkin Park. Love this song; it is going to be in Dark of the Moon, after all.)

The last few days have not been good, to say the very least.

Thursday, I came down with what I suspect was food poisoning: I was fine until I ate lunch but an hour or so later I began to feel like hammered slag.

Didn't work on Friday and it wasn't by choice. I had to call in. There was no way I could sit upright for more than a few seconds, so you could forget about me standing. It was a good thing I did. I spent most of the day sleeping and ridding my body of whatever toxin had invaded. It was painful as hell and I hope I never have to deal with that sort of bullshit ever again.

The only thing I could keep down was Jell-O (which I can't friggin' stand) and Poweraide. Solid food? The very thought of the stuff made me want to gag.

I am just now feeling really normal. For the last few days I've still felt a bit off, dealing with cramps and feeling like someone slammed me straight in the gut with Mjöllnir. Yeah, not pleasant don't even begin to cover this. I haven't even been doing my usual Golett rescues on GTS. Didn't EV train at all, either. I just felt too bad to even mess around with my DS.

But wait! It gets better!

Yesterday, I was doing a bit of editing, listen to some music, and perusing the web as always when Alexa-1, my darling laptop started to behave strangely. Everything seemed fine, then at around 4:50, she powered herself down. I thought at first I had inadvertently yanked a cord or something, but everything was still connected.

I shook my head, hit the power button and Alexa seemed to power up, then she shut down again. Now I was getting worried. So I tried switching her on again. She made it to the "Start Windows" screen and shut down again.

Now, I was completely panicked. Something was wrong and I had no clue as to what. I did the one thing I always do when shit happens and I'm clueless as to what may have occurred.

I called Prime.

I was all but screaming in hysteria when I told him what had happened, that something was wrong with Lexi and I couldn't get her to power back up. He told me he would be home soon and he'd take a look at her.

He fixed her. Seems she got a bit overheated, so she shut herself down. She's fine now, or else you wouldn't be reading this.

Yeah, it's been an interesting few days. I could use a few that are nothing like this, I tell you. If I go through this sort of crap again, I may end up bald before BotCon.

--Weasel, "And I thought my damn job was the biggest source of stupid on the planet. Silly me."

COMMUNICATIONS INTERRUPT: STUPIDITY IN LEGAL MOTION

I can't often say that I've seen legal documents that have made me want to take a baseball bat to somebody's head--mostly because I haven't often read legal documents, period.

First time for everything, I guess.

This, so far as anyone has been able to determine, and triple-digit-count errors notwithstanding, is not a joke, at least not in the 'never gonna happen' sense. It's either one of the more epic (and by epic, of course I mean retarded) trolls ever to come out of (and piss off) Transfandom, or there really is some empty-skulled narcissistic dumbfuck out there who thinks this motion stands a chance of being heard in court, let alone played out at length to a conclusion in favor of the plaintiff. Honestly, having had experience in other fandoms, I don't think the sort of toy collector butthurt that this pathetic wreck displays is seen anywhere but with Transformers fans.

The real kicker? This flyspeck might well find a judge who doesn't see the differences between these three toys and these other three toys as grounds for dismissal with prejudice and mocking laughter. It might then become...not quite the biggest waste of time ever recorded in the annals of the United States justice system, but damned if it wouldn't have a cozy spot in a list of the top ten.--

EDIT: March 32nd moronic antics are NOT supposed to begin in mid-to-late-March. Sweet effing Primus, I hate this day. Like there isn't enough incidental stupidity to go around, a day must be set aside for DELIBERATE stupidity.--

+++PRIME OUT+++I NEED A BEER+++

COMMUNICATIONS INTERRUPT: WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY

Shockingly enough, I got sick of seeing that three-word phrase over the course of the past four or five months. Don't get me wrong--I LIKE winter. Favorite season of the four. I LIKE it cold. It's more a case of being hype-sick...like the whole idiotic situation with Drift, except that in the case of the winter weather, the derision is deserved. Derision, here, is directed toward the ones blathering endlessly and needlessly about it. Granted, this is Wisconsin--blizzards in May are NOT an impossibility, not at all. But it lately seems that the overly made-up newsreaders and two-finger typing reporters are taking it to an extreme one would nominally expect in, shall we say, more southern states. (/unsubtle yet playful jab) Residents in those regions can be somewhat forgiven for a 'flake freakout, raiding grocery stores for every last gallon of milk and driving in a couple centimeters of slush like crazed carjackers--they don't know any better, as snow is such a relative rarity. Up here, there's no bloody excuse, yet the same seems to be happening--with frightening frequency, no less. (Certainly, they tend to drive like dumbasses during more temperate times, but in years past, people had responded to news of six-to-eight inches impending with an apathetic 'eh'.)

...

(Going back and reading the previous paragraph...sweet Primus, I think I've got to STOP reading Stan Lee's tweets. Maybe I got hit upside the head by a No-Prize or something. Tiptoeing its way into my typing, the alliteration is absolutely aggrav... ... ...AAGGHHK WHAT THE SLAG STOP IT NOW) o.O

...whatever, I'm not changing it. The point at which I was trying to arrive before derailing myself was that the overhype reaaaalllly needs stoppin'. As a rule, we Wisconsinites know to have our damn bags of salt, our shovels and snowblowers at hand, ready for use, so it'd be well appreciated to tone it the hell down when reporting the impending snowstorms. I'd like 'em to quit taking up so much newstime on 'em, or I'm gonna change the channel and watch an episode of the latest Power Rangers series or somethin', just to screw up their Nielsens...and I don't particularly care for Power Rangers.

Hm. Speaking of 'ready for use', I wonder if I'd better go buy a gallon-plus of that $3.499 gasoline for the ol' blower...then again, what's been falling is the kind of stuff that could choke damn near any unit. Looks like one of those Snoopy Sno-Cone Machines threw up all over the, uh, everywhere--

+++PRIME OUT+++

Five Degrees of Pissed Off

As of this very moment, it is taking every bit of restraint in my body not to throw my stupid mouse across the room.

I was doing a few rewrites and edits to my work and thought I had saved. Or rather, I was attempting to save when the fucking mouse pulled the "What the fuck, you don't need this shit open anymore" bullshit that it's been pulling for the past few weeks. So my file was closed out. Before I could save.

When I reopened the file, I could see the word count was off.

There went a thousand words and a shit-ton of tweaking on my part. I'm surprised I'm not mute right now, I howled so loudly. (Oh, and I have a chest cold. That'll do wonders for my slagging voice.)

Prime's pretty much under orders: New mouse. Now.
No, I have zero desire to use the damned touchpad; that's the little fucker who "helped" reformat my work several weeks ago without me asking. That was damn near a week of cursing I'd rather forget.

Here's hoping Prime can do something with Auto Recover. If not, I'm fucked. And doing this shit again tomorrow. :grumble:

--Weasel, "Me, the old mouse and a sledgehammer. That's all the hell I'm asking for..."

COMMUNICATIONS INTERRUPT: Most Wonderful Time of the Year, My Skidplate

So the first major snowfall of the year for Wisconsin has come and gone, thankfully. That was some fairly bitter scrapmetal, there, that made me wish I had had a snowblower canopy. Or a ski mask. Or a winter cap. (Well, Weasel took care of the latter pair last night. Think I'm on my own for the former.)

Damned wind could not seem to choose a direction and stick with it. North, south, east or west, it seemed whichever direction I pushed that ol' John Deere winter warhorse was against the wind, and the blown snow invariably wound up in my face and down my jacket. (Thankfully, Weasel was not in much position to lay optics upon my beardage displaying more white than usual; she would've tried to get a snapshot and I would've had to hit her in the face with the shovel I didn't want to use yet or something equally absurdly hilarious.)

Add to that the city's inexplicably quarter-assed (they're not getting credit enough for a pronouncement of half-assed from me) job of plowing the streets and I had a dammit-I-am-already-tired-of-this-slag series of moments in clearing the driveway and sidewalks. (How the city plows managed to leave several centimeters on the roads and yet create a 60cm wall in our driveway, I can't fathom.)

The city did finally make another pass-through this morning, it seems--there was a smaller wall in the driveway waiting for us to leave for work. Far easier to get Scamper up-and-over that.

I shouldn't complain too much, I suppose. This is my home state, I chose to live here, it could be said I dragged Weasel here...I may be a moron.

Just waiting for the next damned snowfall--

+++PRIME OUT+++

SON OF A---!!

I'll bet that Barricade is laughing his skidplate off about this one.

Ouch. Seriously, OUCH!

Yeah, poor 'Bee looks like hell. But both drivers were okay. Something tells me my sweet little Autobot would actually be a bit proud of that.

You know, I've seen listings for wrecked cars in one of our local Auto Traders. Mr. Bay, if you don't want to repair that Camaro, I'll take him and nurse him back to health. (Hint, hint...)

--Weasel, "I'd give him a good home."

Failure is Not an Option... It's Automatically Bundled with Windows

Just a word of caution--never assume that letting Windows Update run is going to turn out smooth as silk, peachy-keen, etc., etc.

I'm fine (now), Alexa One is fine (now),...sheesh.

--Weasel "Let's not have this shit happen again, okay?."

Dear Spiders,

Please stop doing the "drop and dangle" over my bed. It freaks me out, causes Prime to panic and results in some pretty nasty deaths for you and your brethren. If you guys have any sense (common, spider, or otherwise) whatsoever, you'll freaking stop this stupidity, all right?

Sincerely,

--The (very) Freaked-Out Weasel

Friday Photoblog: "Well, I Tried" Edition

Prime's mother's attempt at decorating a decidedly non-standard cake during Thanksgiving 2009.
(Tasted okay. Prime himself has never been a MMM FROSTING kind of guy, anyway.)

It's All Downhill From Here

It's only October and I'm about to burn out. We haven't even hit the "real" Ca$hma$ shopping season and I'm about ready to rip my hair out.

Work is going straight to hell. And there is nothing I can do to stop it.

For the past several days I haven't been anywhere near the self checks; all but one of the heads have been going out of their way to make damn sure I don't get sent to either one. Instead, they're sending people who hate being on self checks over there and it's pissing everyone off. I've had other cashiers asking me why I'm not over there: I just say that I haven't a clue.

We're short a head and a cashier, so the front end is in a total disarray, there are fucking spies who are reporting people to management on bullshit charges, the latest schedules are total messes, it's a fucking nightmare.

And there is nothing that can be done about it. The company knows that the job market is extremely tight right now, so they can abuse us and we won't do or say anything.

I don't know how much longer I can deal with this. I'm close to the breaking point as it is.

--Weasel, trying to make it to BotCon....

A Public Service Announcement

If you ever move to Wisconsin and you're looking for a credit union, stay the hell away from Lakeview. Apparently, they do not know their ass from an effing hole in the ground.

--Weasel, "It'd be easier pulling teeth with a screwdriver than dealing with these morons."

Where's My Damned Prozac?!

For the past couple of days, I've felt a little bit like House: I've had a limp and I don't really want to take people's crap. My right foot has been hurting like a bitch lately (it's better, thank Primus) but my attitude has gone straight to hell.

Tom is pissing everyone off. Including me.

A few days ago, Tom chewed me out. Why? Overtime. Where did that overtime come from? The idiots not getting out on time. But that wasn't what really pissed me off; it was his reply afterward. "This is strike two. Third strike you're out."

What.
The.
FUCK?!

Where the flying fuck was strike number one, asshole? Or did you just pull this shit out of your ass?! I had to have swung the bat a time before this, you jackass and I sure as hell don't remember swinging at jack shit. God fucking damn!

More and more cashiers are getting pissed off. There are head cashiers who are now stabbing people in the back. We're not allowed to do any pages over the PA system anymore. And we now have about a month before the Cashmas rush begins. I'm about ready to strangle an idiot. Any idiot will do.

I love my job. Really I do.


Pic from here.

Well, that was fun...

Just tangled with ordering from Hasbro Toy Shop and Matty Collector (Mattel's new webstore). I've got one word: UGH.

HTS wasn't too bad, just a few random error messages. Matty was a nightmare; I tried placing my order for King Greyskull multiple times only to have the server crash or get weird-ass error messages. If it hadn't been for Prime giving me the customer service number for Mattel, we'd probably be screwed right now.

I have to go lay down. I have a killer migraine from all the bullshit today.

Pic from LOL BOTS.

There Aren't Enough Expletives

Got a letter in the mail from the bank today. And apparently, I have to deal with some stupid bullshit concerning the car. Or rather, the title to said car.

According to the person at the bank, someone by the name of James A. Sr. is listed on the title to my car. And I have to get this dwink to sign off on the loan application for some odd ass reason.

There's just one teensy, tiny little problem here.
There is only one goddamned name on the title: MINE!
There is no James A Sr. on the fucking title, or living at my place of residence! I don't even know who in the hell James A. Sr. fucking is! So how in the hell am I going to get a signature from someone who doesn't frigging exist?

This isn't the first time I've had to deal with bullshit from this bank. I'm starting to think that this place might be run by a bunch of brain damaged chimps.

--Weasel, "That dent in my desk just keeps getting bigger and deeper thanks to all this crap."

Sweat Builds Character, Calvin.

I'm hot, I'm sweaty and I'm in a bad mood.

I've worked 6 days straight, my two days off are split (I have to go in at 11 tomorrow morning so there's no real chance of me feeling rested), the bullshit dealing with the car has my nerves frayed, and it's so damned hot that Prime and I are sniping at each other.

I often wonder just how in the hell I stay sane between BotCons. Honestly, if it weren't for the convention I would have lost what little remains of my sanity.

And right now, there ain't a whole helluva lot of sanity left. We're hitting the reserve tanks as of this moment

"The month can only get better," is what I keep telling myself.
I pray I'm right.

Urge To Kill..... RISING!

Our new car (I call him Scamper) is now at the Saturn dealership. He wouldn't start last night and we think that the ignition switch might be locked up and/or gone.

I'm stressed (this whole week has been an utter shitpile) irritated and ready to blow a gasket.
And I miss my car.

--Weasel, thinking of joining the Prozac nation