Lani posted this thing on Facebook where some kid responded to Westboro protesters by saying "God hates no one."

This annoys me. "God hates no one" seems as idiotic a statement (though 9 year olds have a better excuse for idiocy than your average Westboro protester) as "God hates fags."

Now, I would like the god of the nine year old idiots better than the god of the Westboro idiots. But if something as ridiculous as "god" exists, I don't see why the nicer one is any more likely than the asshole one. It seems to me it is the equivalent of countering "rainbow unicorns prefer zydeco" with "no, rainbow unicorns enjoy all music."

The correct response to the Westboro people, it seems to me, is not "you're wrong about god" but rather "wow, if you're right then god is an ass and rather than worshiping him we should be actively working to overthrow him. We'd probably lose in an all out war against an asshole god, but it is still the right thing to do."

Ask not for whom the bell tolls...

I have Chrome set up so that whenever I start it up it automatically opens six tabs and loads six sites. One of those is my LiveJournal friends page.

I just took LiveJournal off that list. I've only posted here twice in the last few months and then only because I noticed how long it had been since I posted. And in the last 10 days there have only been 9 posts, 7 of them by the same person (yay Cranky!).

So, sadly, either everybody really has moved on or you all finally wised up and filtered me out since all I do is reply with smart-ass, funny one in twenty times, comments.

Too bad too, because I don't actually like Facebook and Twitter better, it is just where people are. Also too bad since I haven't reconnected over there with all the people who were once active here (I'm not even sure of some of all yall's real names).

But now I'll only visit here when I remember to do so, which means I won't very often. And nobody will notice.

So, perchance, I'll end by closing the loop with a link to what was apparently my first LJ post ten and a half years ago: Post #1

Since it has been two months, a meme post.

The places I have lived.

A yellow house somewhere in Vancouver, Washington. I have no memory of it but I am told we lived there when I was a toddler.

A house somewhere in the Orchards area of Vancouver (when I was a kid it was outside of Vancouver). This is where we lived until my parents divorced. I have only flashes of memory of living there:
- I remember some older kid intentionally running me down on his bike.
- I remember that there were woods off our back yard that we would play in. I remember a gigantic dog monster that lived in those woods. I assume the dog monster is a distorted memory.
- I remember the panic after I drank rubbing alcohol I found in in the garage. Or myabe one of mys sisters did that.
- I remember the panic of my sister after I stepped on a fork in the living room, impaling my foot. This resulted in a scar that was visible into adulthood.
- I remember something of the excitement of my youngest sister being born. At home. Unexpectedly.
- I remember learning that "nigger knocking" (knocking on someone's door and running away) was not a phrase to be used. I don't remember learning that it was not an activity to be done.
- I remember going to school (kindergarten and part of first grade) at Evergreen Elementary and getting licorice for correctly doing all of the months. I also remember telling people my name was "Alexander Camel Soup" (real name: Alexander Melford Stroup) and thinking that was amazingly funny. I also remember that the playground had giant tractor tires as play equipment.

After my parents divorced we (mom, me, two sisters) moved to an apartment back in Vancouver near John Rogers Elementary School. Also just flashes of memory.
- I remember it was a two story apartment.
- I remember that there was a big tree on the hill that has some tunnels under it and an older kid convincing me that it ate people.
- I remember shortly after moving in proudly telling my grandmother that I could reach the kitchen sink faucet all by myself.
- I remember we had a giant console TV with a bad tube so that there was a black line across the screen.

3501 X Street, Vancouver, WA
Moved here after my mom took up with the guy who would become my stepfather. More flashes (I really don't have continuous memories of my childhood until early high school).
- I remember one night I apparently was sleepwalking and managed to jam myself into the space between my headboard and the wall and was woken up by my mom who in turn was woken up by my screams.
- I remember that after seeing Poltergeist (no, I don't know what my mom was thinking) I was for a while deathly afraid of the tree outside my window which looked a lot like the one in the movie. Also, for a short period I was deathly afraid of nuclear war. These two things are the last remotely phobic behaviors I remember exhibiting.
- I remember my mom telling me to do something and for some reason I hit her. We were out in the yard at the time. This is followed shortly by my memory that I learned she could still run faster than me.
- I remember that while we lived here they were still constructing SR 500, a new major highway through town only a couple blocks away. Best playground ever for young kids.
- I remember that we were having a birthday party for one of my sisters when the adults noticed that a bunch of the kids had gone missing. Search parties were sent and to the great consternation of the adults they were eventually found sitting on the half constructed edgewall of an overpass on the in progress S.R. 500, about 60 feed above Burnt Bridge Creek.
- I remember my youngest sister going missing long enough that the police were called. Only to be found sleeping under a pile of laundry. I remember another time her going missing but unnoticed until a policeman returned her home from about six blocks away (she'd have been six or so).
- I remember my other sister once not coming home until 9pm or so when she was supposed to be home by dark (she would have been 8 or 9) and then when she showed her excuse was "I didn't know it was dark" which went well with the fact that she'd been at the park.
- I remember that my memories are making my mom look horrible. But I don't think she was.
- I remember a friend up the street getting a TRS-80 computer and playing with that.
- I remember learning late on Christmas Eve that we'd be getting an Atari for Christmas because after they set it up my mom and stepdad played Pac Man and I could hear it from my room.

2212 E. 30th Street
After a couple years at the other place they bought this house. For being in town it had a huge yard (just shy of a full acre). Lived her until I left for college.
- I remember convincing my mom I wanted to learn saxaphone and then when she rented me one I'm not sure it ever came out of the case a second time and it just sat on the back porch until it eventually went away.
- I remember way to many animals of way too many types for urban-ish living.
- I remember where I hid the Playboys I told from the public library in an alcove in the crawl space under the house. I wonder if they're still there.
- I remember that I'm now bored of this so I'll stop.

Here's a good use of my first LJ post in four months:

Sometimes I am almost an ass.

Shocking I know, because most of the time I am completely an ass.

On a message board I post at there is a member who is visually impaired. And so to help with contrast he always posts in a bold font. I'm not sure how this helps (since his is generally the only post in a thread that is such, but he does it. Another person always posts in pink, maybe it reminds her of her vagina, or pop music you kind of like in the moment and then can't imagine why just three years later. Anyway, we all have quirks is my point.

So he recently started a thread and people are responding to him in bold font and some in bold and large fonts. And I composed a reply, to a thread on a topic I'd otherwise never post in, in the largest bold font possible. And then changed it to a color almost the same as the background color for the site.

And then canceled the post. See, sometimes I'm almost an ass.

Need help deciding this important question:

Are group costumes clever or tacky? 

( An example )

Unfortunately I have no real interest in writing, but I have story ideas pop into my head that I think a talented (or simply motivated) person could do something with.

Anyway, sparked by the people talking about how some force went out of its way to make sure Jerome Harrison's brain tumor was found and how this a sign of some beneficent force looking out for him. That always bothers me because it gives god (or godlike things) only credit for the good stuff while ignoring the bad stuff that they just as likely caused.

This morning I woke up with a story idea that has been bouncing around in my head all day but will never see the light of day beyond whatever I write here.

The son of Satan is getting old enough for dad to start showing him the ropes and brings him along for a "Take Your Son to Work" type day. Son is all eager to learn about the great evils dad must spend all of his time doing. They head out and the first stop is at a hospital and he's excited at the prospect of torturing some sick oldies, but all dad does is move a patient file from one doctor's slot to another. And when that doctor reads the file he sees something that had been missed and the patient is rushed to surgery that will save her life.

Next they're on a busy Chicago street and while Son is throwing rocks at office windows dad picks up a pebble and sets it down on a the curb. A minute later a nanny pushing a infant in a stroller is bumped into hard by a passerby, knocking her over and unintentionally pushing the stroller towards traffic. But it the front wheel catches on the pepple, preventing the stroller from rolling into the street just as a bus goes by.

The day continues along those lines. Son is continuously disappointed by the acts of kindness he is seeing from his father. End of the day and back at the office Satan is powering down the computer and closing up shop for the day and finally Son can't take it any more and asks "I'm so confused, you let me go out and play on normal days and I kill people, I start small border conflicts. I maim grandmothers. But you just go around helping people. Why?"

Satan shrugs and says "Oh, I don't know. God decided those people were supposed to die, and I like fucking with him. So that's how I spend Tuesdays."

Let's go over the rules one more time.

If you're going to give all credit to god (or the universe or a benevolent life force) for someone's brain tumor being found through an unlikely sequence of events, you first have to give god (or the universe or a malevolent life force) all credit for giving someone a brain tumor just to run the long con of making it look like a neat trick to find it through an unlikely sequence of events.

No half measures on the god credit.

I've been at an ebb in my "particiation" in the Skeptic community online so I completely missed the apparent kerfuffle going on about Richard Dawkins until Roger Ebert tweeted a link to this Gawker article.

Seems like everybody was worked themselves up into a fine over-reactive lather. Not at all suprised that Dawkins would be a clueless ass on some issue. Not at all surprised that some, when faced with a man embarrassing himself in the process of not understanding why getting propositioned in an elevator is uncomfortable at best (note: regardless of whether feminism is involved, making a personal request of someone in a confined environment with no means of exit is simply rude, whether it is "do you want to go back to my room and fuck" or "things are tight, could you loan me $100") and often intimidating, would equate it with dismissing the pain of rape survivors.

But, I've paid money, watched, and enjoyed movies by a child rapist (Roman Polanski), with a double murderer (O.J. Simpson), a convicted drug dealer (Tim Allen), etc.

It's going to take more than assholery and cluelessness for me to boycott someone, at least on issues not related to whatever they're an asshole about.

 Lani's off to a girl's only thing this weekend. So I'll be all on my lonesome. 

Now to think of something to do more interesting than watching golf on TV and not getting dressed.