Category: bitching

b0rk3d

March 10, 2007 / / 0 Comments

All my shit is broken, dead, or dying.

  • Laptop – The power adapter died yesterday, and I don’t have an external charger for the battery. So it’s dead until I get a new one.
  • Phone – The outside screen hasn’t worked for six months or more, and the mic buzzes and clicks unless I hold it in one particular clawed grip. It rebooted in the middle of a phone call the other day.
  • PDA – Stopped charging. Instead, a spot just below the battery gets warm. I’m assuming there’s a short somewhere. I’ve had it since college, so it’s not worth fixing.
  • Car – I hit one of Madison’s massive potholes last week hard enough to send my hubcap flying. The car stopped running, and I managed to have just enough momentum to roll into a Pier 1 parking lot before it stopped for good. I’d already spent $800 keeping the piece of shit on the road this year, so I just threw up my hands and said the hell with it. It was towed to the junkyard Monday morning.

Starting over (again)

January 8, 2007 / / 0 Comments

If any of you used to read my Diary-X blog, you’d know that I used to blog significantly more frequently, and my posts were more… significant.  Virtually everything I’ve written in this miserable abortion of a blog have been tidbits of meaningless crap.  Even I don’t want to read most of what I’ve written.

There are a few reasons for this, ordered for you in a lovely and totally unnecessary list:

  • I don’t really have much to write about.  My life is increasingly banal. Describing how I bought and installed an under-counter light above the kitchen sink to disinterested third parties–that would be you–seems rather pointless.
  • I spend way too much time watching TV, and nowhere near enough time reading.  Seriously.  It’s all I do, and it’s really sad.  I decided tonight that if something isn’t worth recording on my DVR, why waste time watching it?  The more I read, the more I want to write.  It’s already the eighth, and I don’t think I’ve picked up a book yet this year.
  • I’ve been reticent about being overly personal in my posts.  Blogs have become the essential means of saying either “Hey world, look how fucking great I am,” or “I have so much pain to unload on the world.  Thank god I have my blog to vent in… or I’d need to go cut myself while listening to Dashboard.”

    I’ve been shying away from these stereotypes for quite some time, though I don’t really know why.  On my last blog, I let total strangers see my psyche laid bare on the asphalt.  I think the reason I was so comfortable there was because I knew no one was reading it.  When I belatedly found I had a small audience, I felt the need to censor myself.  Well, fuck it.  If I’ve got something to say, I’ll say it.  I’m tired of pulling punches.  From now on, I write for me, and any readers are incidental.

  • Most of the work I take pride in is unintelligible and uninteresting to readers.  When I’m at work, I spend my time doing seriously technical work.  A good deal of it is in-depth enough that even Microsoft Mikey doesn’t know what the hell I’m talking about.

    I could easily post an entry proudly describing how I put third party firmware on a WRT54G, hacked it to act as a wireless bridge with 128-bit WEP encryption, had issues with the ARP proxying not working when I tried to netboot a headless FreeBSD client–but who’s going to understand that?

  • I spend less time drinking alone.  This is a good thing, obviously.  Unfortunately, I’ve always done my best writing while half in the bag.  The words flow smoothly and the subconscious mental blocks in my vocabulary dissolve after a few whiskey and cokes.
  • I have very few friends in Madison. Or anywhere, for that matter.  I’ve always had a hard time making and keeping friends.  No friends means I spend most of my time in my apartment, means I spend too much time watching TV, means I do nothing and have nothing to talk about.
  • I’ve spent too much time making this list.  What the hell was I talking about when I started this whining?

    :: scrolls up ::

    Oh, right.  Explaining why my posts have been crap for the last year.

So I’m starting over.  A fresh start for a new year.  I’m going to blog more often, about whatever the hell I feel like that day, and just write because I want to write.

I hope you’ll continue to read.  Chances are pretty good that my quality and quantity will increase in the near future.  I appreciate people reading my writing, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop myself from saying things you may find offensive.

Marriage in Catholicism

October 20, 2006 / / 0 Comments

While driving back from dropping off a carload of stuff at the new apartment, I caught a news report on the top of the hour: A Kenyan Archbishop by the name of Milingo was excommunicated for getting married, and ordaining other married men as bishops without papal authority. (Article)

For those of you who weren’t brought up Catholic, excommunication is a sort of religious censure imposed by the church.  Until and unless the excommunicated are willing to admit their guilt and repent, they are not permitted to take part in any sacrament.  If the excommunicant is unwilling to repent, this essentially condemns them to hell.  The inability to attend confession = stains on the soul at death = eternal damnation.  It was used as a weapon during the Middle Ages in order to exact obedience from those who would challenge the authority of the church.  If a king dared to disobey, entire countries could be excommunicated–the entirety of Scotland has been excommunicated on more than one occasion.  To me, this has always seemed like man attempting to impose his will upon God, and completely illegitimate.

This news story set off alarm bells in my head, particularly after hearing the punishment meted out to the priest who admitted to fondling former Representative Mark Foley in the 1960s.  The priest, Anthony Mercieca, has been banned from the priesthood, stripped of the ability to celebrate Mass, and may no longer wear vestments… and that’s it.  (Article)

Where’s the eternal damnation for this asshole?  How can anyone justify this as a reasonable course of action?  Let’s break this down: if you ordain a bishop without the Pope’s permission, because you believe priests should be permitted to take part in one of Catholicism’s seven sacraments–eternal damnation.  Fuck a thirteen-year-old boy–lose the robes and you’re all good.

To be fair, either Milingo or Mercieca could be redeemed in the eyes of the church by admitting their guilt and repenting.  However, I don’t think that the punishments fit either of the crimes presented here.

By allowing priests beneath him to marry, Milingo is attempting to infuse new life into the waning Catholic priesthood.  Yes, he may be working against Papal authority, but he’s doing what he believes to be best for the religion as a whole.  Mercieca, on the other hand, used his role as a trusted member of the clergy to exploit and sexually abuse at least one child.  If that doesn’t merit damnation, I don’t know what does.

Don’t try to convince me of Papal infallibility in this case–I’m a Buddhist, and I don’t believe for a second that the Dalai Lama has never done anything he’s later regretted.  You show me a man who refuses to admit he’s ever made a mistake, and I’ll show you George W. Bush.

All in all, the hypocrisy of these cases reek.  To paraphrase Archbishop Milingo (from a different article), something is wrong in the Catholic church.