A gay kid looking...

Short version: Gay kid looking for a church that's supportive.

My first response is "Don't do that to yourself." But that wasn't what they wanted. They wanted a church where they could build a relationship with a loving God that accepted that they were gay. So, what do I do? I call around and try to find one for them by contacting people I know at various churches in town that I suspected would be good fits.

And that should've been the end of it, but it got me thinking. That's always dangerous. 

What is a good person? Make a list of the qualities that you believe make a good person. What values? What attitudes? What actions would you say are in the "good person" column? 

The problem with asking that is that so many people give really good answers. That shouldn't be a problem.

The problem comes in when they talk about their politics. 

If a person's politics don't align with their values, the values that they think constitute a good and moral person... what does that say about them? The politics a person espouses is an extension of their actual values. It's the way an individual attempts to expand their influence in the world and when the political candidate doesn't display any of the values that a person says, themselves, are attributes of a good person... I can't think they're actually good people themselves.

If you recognize a set of values as desirable, as noteworthy, as goals to be aspired to, but then ignore those when it comes to political decisions... that's not good. That's hypocrisy.

There's someone at work who claims to be a Randian level conservative but who has their hand out for free drinks when it's hot at work, and bitches when they're not there. They want the handouts for themselves, but they vote against any social program that they can. They want the handouts for themselves... they don't want YOU to have any, but they will take them, happily. Hypocrisy.

Super annoying.

What's this got to do with churches? Well, the values they teach... are they the ones they practice? They talk about loving god. They say we're all sinners. They say we've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But as a gay... it's hard to get past the part where I've been the gay told I was good enough to attend the church but not good enough to be a member OF the church so long as I was gay. Because some sins are more sins than others and to a lot of churches being gay is a special kind of sin that God needs help judging because He can't do it on his own so they do it for Him. 

So, would I recommend a church on purpose, to anyone? Nah. In my experience, it's just a place where people are nicer about their bigotry... usually. 

But that wasn't the assignment. The assignment was to help a gay kid find a church because that's what they wanted. I hope it works out for them.

Upped the dose

Nobody follows this which is cool. Means I can talk about stuff without anybody reading it. I process things by writing them out. Like there's a boil in my brain that needs lancing and writing is how I do that.

Roe V Wade happened and that's not great but I'm a self absorbed douche and fixated on Thomas's opinion that gay rights should be tossed out. Not just marriage but also making gay sex a criminal offense.

I have been sort of numb since then. I know how I am. I've intentionally avoided deleting everything and going full hermit but one thing I absolutely don't need or want is well meaning straight people saying to not worry.  They're not the ones being told they deserve to be locked away from normal people because their existence is an offense against society. Frankly I don't want to hear it right now. I want to look at the horizon and see plumes of smoke as it all burns to the fucking ground.

I've upped the dose on the antidepressants. Be better to be numb I think... I know. At least for a while. It's not numb as much as so jittery I can't focus on anything long enough to spiral. The hard part is knowing when to go off or drop the dose back down to a maintenance level. I normally only go up for fall, seasonal affected depression they call it, SAD. An unfortunate acronym actually. 

How long is this season going to last? Is this the season for now tho? They're lifetime appointments. How much worse is it going to get? How much is my innate cynicism and how much is reality?

But, work's a thing. It doesn't care... It just keeps happening and I gotta keep going. One of my things is I make myself go, make myself have at least one stable thing that's not fucked up. So, here I am in the parking lot early rather than sitting at home, spiraling. Five more twelve hour shifts and not enough sleep before I am off so I won't have to deal with thinking for a while. That's nice. Easy enough to coast through the rut of work and not think... The edge will be off by then probably.

I have to pee. Not because I've over hydrated in anticipation of it being hot as balls at work but because I've drank probably a pot of coffee this morning. Not a great idea. I'll have worse ones I'm sure. If that's my worst I'm doing okay, honestly.

Take care of yourself. 

Assassin's Creed: Valhalla - Initial thoughts. Hint: Not a fan.

After 8 hours of game play I have left Norway and landed on England's shores where I'm going to live now, because I'm pissy with Daddy for making a deal so somebody else gets to be king. I wish I were joking.

Yeah, that's the motivation for an entire game. Pissed off kid, stomps off, leaves home because he didn't get what he wanted so he takes his toys and goes somewhere else. Oh joy.

Am I avenging my son's death by hunting down his murderers and stumbling across a huge conspiracy across time itself like in Origins? Nope. Pissy kid doesn't get his way so he leaves.

Am I trying to reunite my family and redeem my brother and save them from a secretive cult, while battling mythological creatures, that's bent on destroying our civilization like in Odyssey? Nope. Spoiled child scoops up his toys and runs away from home in a temper tantrum accompanied by pillage, murder, and mayhem.

Want to be mayor of a town and play a city building sim? You're gonna LOVE AC:V. See, in spite of England already having a blacksmith, stable, and general store in every village and hamlet and crossroads you can find, for some reason you want to build your very own that does the exact same thing theirs does. I MEAN EXACT. And the only way to do that is to raid, destroy, and pillage, wait for it... wait for it... monasteries. Yup. Churches are the only source of the supplies I need to build a stable. Why? There's no actual logic to it. Just shut up and go burn down monasteries and build a building to fill with horse shit.

I just lost 3 hours game play where it apparently never autosaved like it claims it does. That's half my game play for the entire day. I even think I saved once but it didn't recognize it when I reset the frozen game. What was I doing that was so game-breakingly bad? I tried to stand up from a crouch.

If I were loving the game it wouldn't be that big a deal but I'm only kinda liking it.

If you're considering Assassin's Creed Valhalla wait for a sale. 

Odin Vision is useless. Your eagle is a crow, or raven, and is useless. If you shoot something in the tall grass you're not gonna find it so don't bother looking. Everything is behind a barred door which in spite of having giant axes you have to do a puzzle to get through. Sometimes I can chain assassinate and sometimes I can't with no clue why not. You'll find a cursed area with no clue or hint or indication how to fix it. Your allies are sadists and torturous assholes. England is apparently the land of 20,000 rivers. You can get tattoos but you can't actually see them because every outfit completely covers you wrist to neck to ankles. Nothing on the map shows up on the HUD until you're on top of it. Comparing equipment is meaningless because you can't see the stats if upgraded on the compare screen and there's no DPS value anywhere to be found so which axe is better? No way to know. 

Overall I completely regret the money spent on the expensive edition I got based on their last two games which I loved and have played for hundreds of hours. That money would've been better spent paying somebody to just slap me randomly throughout the day for the next week or so. I'd regret that too but at least I wouldn't be allied with people who torture folks as a hobby like I am in Assassin's Creed: Valhalla.

I'm not asking the Vikings to be nice. I'm asking the game designers to give us the option to not be torturous ass hats as a play style. 

I'm not providing an affiliate link to it because honestly. I don't want you to buy this game. I wouldn't enjoy the money I made off your bad decision. I'd feel guilty. 

I like team movies... why?

I like shows like this with teams working together... shows like Avatar the Last Airbender (series not movie) where there's Team Avatar, and Gurren Lagann, and even Naruto, the first series.

They all focus on one of the team members as the protagonist and the protagonist needs to learn to work together with a team and rely on others and they need to learn to trust and rely on him as well to achieve more than they could as a collection of individuals.

That's my favorite kind of movie. Avengers Endgame is an excellent example of that happening. That group of strong, capable individuals, all of whom are accustomed to being the coolest person in the room learning to subsume that inclination into believing that they are powerful cogs in an even more powerful machine that is the team.

Persevering against all odds to achieve great things together when you definitely couldn't do it alone. That will make me happy cry just about every time in a movie or well-done TV series.

One of my favorite things about my previous job as a store manager and as a manager of managers was to see how effectively we could work as a collective, as a team. Everybody moving in the same direction at the same time and all working to carry the whole store along, not just themselves. I feel like I did that okay, helped bring out a team feeling without saying team often at all. I think that metaphor is overused in the workplace.

It's something I miss a lot at this job. It's just me most of the time. I mean, I'm a mechanic on a press. There's not really a lot of use for more than one at a time. But I miss that feeling of being a part of something bigger moving in the same direction for the greater good of something to achieve more.

A thing I do/did... when I'm walking somewhere I pick up stuff on the floor. There's always stuff on the floor that needs picking up. If I'm talking with someone as I walk, less now than before because of my job and social distancing, etc. But if I'm walking and talking and start picking up stuff... it's not long before the other person is too. Not always, but often. I don't say anything, I just do it to see how long it takes them to do it as well... I'd like to think that something like that could be catching. That idea that seeing something needs doing and doing it because we're all in the same boat is a good one to be a part of.

I see it in the shows I listed above.

One of my favorite quotes from a TV series is from Gurren Lagann and it goes something like, "If you don't believe in yourself believe in the me that believes in you." I love that. I've said that to people before. "Do you trust me? Do you think I'm a good judge of character and of people? Do you think I'm stupid or make stupid decisions? Okay then... I believe you can do it. Trust me and believe me and act like you can because I believe in you. Trust and believe me when it's hard for you to believe yourself. Don't let fear stop you. Remember I know you can do it and do it. I know you can."

It works. Having people around you who believe in you, who trust you, who have your back and you have theirs... people are capable of so much more when that's the case. Everybody does better. Everybody wins. I love that. I love that feeling.

I'm often accused of being an idealist. I'm only an idealist because I've seen this happen. I know it's real. I know it can happen and can work. I've done it. I've been there when it was done. I've been a part of it and it's awesome. It's like "being in the zone" all the time because when one character in the show slips or stumbles, they don't even slow down their movement forward because there's someone there to catch them by the elbow and keep them moving forward toward their shared goal.

July 4th -- Independence Day

Happy 4th of July.

Independence Day.

A day in which the United States celebrates breaking off from England to become our own country. At the time we were pissed off that we were being taxed but not getting a say in the way things were done. King George made the decisions and we paid taxes but had no voice.

This year there have been lots of voices raised as people feel like they're not being heard. They feel like they have legitimate complaints about the government of our country that they feel isn't fairly representing them or speaking for them.

From the second paragraph of our Declaration of Independence, a declaration of war against our then legitimate rulers:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Our country wasn't founded by perfect men. Some signers of the constitution didn't recognize black people as actual people, but as chattel, property. And it wasn't until the 13th Amendment that slavery itself was outlawed. They weren't perfect. The country they built wasn't perfect and still isn't.

But it has, built into it, a system by which we the people, are able to make it better; not just better for us, but better for all of us. We are at our best when we are doing great things in the world. We went to the moon in under ten years. We fought a war on two fronts, and won with help from allies, chief among them, the country we had broken away from 200 years before! We are a country that builds things that are testaments to the human spirit. The Hoover Dam, The Twin Towers. Cape Canaveral.

We are at our best when we try and make things better for ourselves and for the world at large.

Sometimes we lose our way. Sometimes we hear that we aren't the best and we lash out at the person who says it. We get defensive of our country because we genuinely love her, for all her flaws. She's ours and we love her. And we can talk shit about her if we want to, but if someone else does... well... the gloves come off.

Sometimes though, sometimes, maybe we should listen. Sometimes it's okay to admit that while we're a great country full of great people who do amazing things every day... there are those among us who could do better. And we, as Americans, are at our best when we help people become better versions of themselves.

Independence day. It's about freedom. It's a celebration OF that freedom and why we have it. Think though, between now and next year's 4th... are we doing our best to help others be their best? I'm not saying we can't defend our country from legitimate attacks. I'm not saying Al Qaida has a point. I'm saying when enough American voices cry out that there is a problem... perhaps... as good Americans who love this country... we should do what we as Americans do best... perhaps we should try to make it better.. for everyone.

It's not unpatriotic to wish to do better. It's unpatriotic to tell those who are brave enough to tell us when we're falling short of our aim at being the best we can be to shut up and sit down. When we quit looking for ways to get better, when we quit trying to improve, we're done.

It's not about making America great again. It's about every day trying to be better people and a better nation than we were before. That's our job as Americans. If you don't leave your country BETTER than you found it you're doing it wrong.

She's given you a lot of opportunities here. We're a country of great wealth, great resources, and the freedom to exploit them in a way that can improve things for now, and for the future for me, for you, for everyone... but only if we make a point of doing it. Only if we value what our founding fathers valued... what they outlined in the Declaration of Independence when King George wouldn't listen to their concerns the founding fathers had this to say on July 4th, 1776...

"when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

We need to listen to these people who are unhappy. We need to pay attention to how we can get better and work to get better. It's what we, as a country, have done for generations. We don't do it quickly sometimes, and we don't do it painlessly sometimes. But we have been a nation of people who strive to be moral, honest, and to help ensure the freedom, liberty, and opportunity for ourselves, and for people all over the world.

We didn't do that by shutting down those within the country who expressed a dissenting opinion. Those times in history were not us at our best. McCarthyism wasn't our best day.

Don't take a criticism as an attack. Take it as an American duty to constantly be better than we were before. Take it as love for the country we all live in. It's okay to love something so much you want to help it be better when you think you can.

I know a lot of people won't like this post. It'll appear political and we, sadly, have reached a point in US Politics where disagreement is seen as unpatriotic, as treasonous, as "if you don't like it get out." That makes me sad. Women didn't get to vote. Black people were originally property, like a suitcase or a walking stick. But we saw that and we tried to be better. It's not unpatriotic to want to be better. It's American.

This picture was taken at my parent's house. I typically go there this time of year to sweat my ass off in Tennessee, see the flowers Mom has blooming everywhere, and eat delicious fried Southern food. I couldn't this year because of the Corona Virus. I wish I could be there. I wish I could have seen my nephew graduate from Navy Bootcamp in Chicago this spring. But, that's not where we are at right now as a world.

These opinions are just mine, they're long-winded as usual, and I doubt anyone will read them if you made it this far Happy Independence Day. Try and do better tomorrow and the next day at making our country better, more free for everyone, and a place the world looks to again for leadership and guidance, and inspiration. That's the America I fell in love with. That's the America I joined the Navy to defend.