The Catholic Church

Bear with me this is a long post.

I am so sick and tired of the Catholic Church. It is such a hypocritical organization. It has completely lost sight of the spirituality it possibly once tried to convey. The Vatican has just unleashed a document stating that all Bishops should lobby their representatives hard to oppose all pro gay marriage/adoption legislation. What right do they have to do this, to say this? I hate how they pick and choose the verses of the Bible that they quote to prove their point.

Here's a section of a transcript of the West Wing where President Bartlett chews out a Dr. Laura-a-like.

POTUS = Pres. of the US
JJ = Dr. Jenna Jones - the Dr. Laura character

POTUS: Good. I like your show. I like how you call homosexuality "an abomination".

JJ: I don't say homosexuality is an abomination, Mr. President, the Bible does.

POTUS: Yes, it does. Leviticus.

JJ: Eighteen, twenty-two.

POTUS: Chapter and verse. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions while I had you here. I'm interested in selling my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned by Exodus 21:7. She's a Georgetown sophomore, speaks fluent Italian, always cleared the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be? While thinking about that, can I ask another? My Chief of Staff, Leo McGarry, insists on working on the Sabbath. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or is it okay to call the police? Here's one that's really important, 'cause we've got a lot of sports fans in this town. Touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean, Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point? Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother John for planting different crops side by side? Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made of two different threads? Think about those questions, will you?

There are so many allegories that are completely out of place with today's society that have been left by the wayside and they politely forget those. When's the last time you heard the "woman obey thy husband" reading at a wedding?

I believe in an over-riding power, I believe in a soul, I believe in ascension to another level of being, but I don't see why who I have sex with matters. I live my life on the belief that when my life is over, if there is some judgment, I will be judged on how I treated my fellow man, because in the end that affects everything you do.

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The point of blogs?

Well several of you have said that you liked the color changing version of the blog and I may go back to that at some point but this new one has grown on me so I'll be keeping it for a while.

A friend of mine today said that blogs were simply good for saying what you didn't have the guts to say in person. What do people think, is that true? I used to have that very opinion, which is why I never did my own blog to start with. Now, while I think there are people that use it that way, I think its a way to express some general feelings and your opinons on matters. Kinda like my own personal editorial.

Tell me what you guys think, do blogs have any point other than being a non-confrontational way to say what you want? Do blogs have redeeming value?

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The Colin Entry

I have been requested from many people, including the incredibly busy boy himself, to provide the masses with a blog update for Colin. Since I can't post to his blog I'm doing it here. You can read this if you want from the extended entry. Warning, its very long.
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Where to begin.....
Ok, well Colin returned to Worcester on the 24th of June instead of the 21st as was originally planned. Also, he neglected to tell me this until the night of the 20th at 10pm EST (9pm CST) while I was out in Boston. Nothing like finding out plans have changed less than a day before things happen, after you've cleared your calandar and made sure everything was in place to pick him up, but i'm not bitter. :-P hehe
The next big thing was taking him to his court date. For those of you who didn't know, Colin decided to bring back a replica hand gun (not an actual gun, but looks just like it) and two butterfly knives. For those of you who grew up in MA, you know that butterfly knives are strictly illegal. For the rest of you who want to give our resident Texan a break for laws that were new to him, don't. He asked me about the gun and the knives over a month before he came home and I quoted him the specific articles of the criminal code that forbade importing such items. (Colin, this is what you get for having me do a blog entry hehe) So we go to the court house, which is in Boston, and we have to be there by 8am, which means we were up by 6am. Anyone can tell you, I don't get up for WORK at 6am. We were there and thankfully his case came up pretty quickly in the rotation. His lawyer talked the DA into dealing with this out of trial and kinda negotiate it. His second appearance was the other day and they ruled that a replica gun is not an actual gun so this is pretty strong that everything will clear up and it won't touch his record. The (hopefully) finale of this saga will be in mind September some time.
Colin and I have settled into the apartment fairly well. It took until mid July for him to get a bed, and until that point he slept on my couch. Thankfully I have a very comfortable couch. We bought several things to help turn the apartment into a more liveable space for two people such as shelving in the bathroom and towel racks. He insisted we get a paper towel dispenser which is really cool and has an arm that makes it so you can tear sheets off one-handed. We also bought a grill so we can grill food during the summer.
The BYOBBQ (Bring your own bbq) that I have every year (this was my 3rd year) on the night before the 4th went off wonderfully. Colin brought Robin, the girl he met at Quizno's, and she got to see the spectacle of him being teased and harrassed by all his friends, co-workers and even his boss. We of course only tease him because he's our friend and he can usually give as good as he gets. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna catch hell for this post :). There's not much to tell of the story of Robin. Basically, there were a few habits he didn't care for and stated that those habits would be a problem if they continued. Shortly after he got the "lets just be friends" speech and then she stopped answering his calls. *shrug* You gotta give the boy credit for having standards.
Beyond that, everyhting has mostly been work, work, work. Colin is a work-study for NetOps and he's pretty much working full time at the moment. The summer is when we techies have to do the most work at a school since the students are away and it doesn't affect as many people if we upgrade things. He's also been spending a lot of time down at the house with the brothers and that's another reason why his blog hasn't been updated.
A few other things is that Colin has gotten several recipes from his mom for some good food and has been cooking a bunch. He made a really good corn soup, very tasty. Also good were the dill seasoned oyster crackers and the spinach dip.
Overall I think its going to be very good year living with Colin. Its my first roommate in about 2 years. (I had a roommate a year ago, Andrew, but he really didn't count, because he mostly lived at his girlfriend's apartment. Never-the-less, he was also a good roommate.) It's a nice change from my time 3 years ago, when there was constant bitching about cleaning everything that we both just clean what is necessary, whenever its necessary, regardless of who made the mess.
Ok, I think that's about it. If I forgot anything Mr. Lazy can write it himself ;)

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ouch

Well I'm not sure what I did but I seem to have injured myself. I somehow hurt my ribs on my right side to the point where it hurt a bit when I was breathing or walking. I was supposed to go out last night to Axis, but considering it hurt when I was walking, I certainly wasn't going to go dancing. I feel bad because everyone was going out for Jonathan's birthday. Happy Birthday Jonathan! For those of you who don't know, Jonathan is Chad's (my ex) curent boyfriend.

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FYI

I've updated a few things on the blog.

- I've updated the template so it looks a little different. Which would you guys prefer, the color changing main page or the current one?
- I've changed the comment options so that if you don't care to leave an e-mail address you don't have to.
- Updating the main template updated all the other pages including the comment page, so now you won't have an issue of white text on a white background when you first load the comment page.

Let me know what you guys think.

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LMAO

Oh my god... I just laughed more than I have in a LONG time. Colin played me this CD by Bill Engvall; it was all stand-up comedy. I was non-stop laughing almost the entire way through, Colin can attest to this. I really have to say that laughter is the best medicine. I was laughing so hard my eyes were watering, tears just streaming down my face. I'm tired and exhausted but I feel great right now. Well, time for bed but I needed to put up an update.

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6 Degrees of Seperation

Its kind of funny how people interconnect. I started my blog and told a few people, one of them Erin. She linked to my blog here, so then Gretchen found it and linked it. Colin has them both linked on his site (but not mine yet) so that has to be how Jessica found it, by going to one of their sites. Jessica is a friend of Colin's from back home in Texas whom I have never met. So since she's connected to Colin, who's connected to either Gretchen or Erin, who's connected to me, we've gotten Jessica to post a comment in my blog in 4 degrees of seperation. That's just way cool.

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Systems Administrator Appreciation Day

The site seems to be down at the moment but here's its URL.http://www.sysadminday.com/

Today is Systems Administrator Appreciation day. Take a moment and thank your Systems Administrators. He/she has the thankless job of making sure that everything works. Often times the only way you notice what we are doing is when something breaks. Most people don't realize how often we get things to work perfectly, because if we are doing our jobs well, the effect is seamless. For every outage, there are countless other times we have worked through the night to make sure that things would be ready and working by the time you need to use it. So take this day to say a special thank you to the SysAdmins that you work with.

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The Power of Words

How is it that when someone uses a term like "fag" in a sentence, and I state that I, as a gay man, find that term offensive, somehow I am the bad guy. I'm told that I'm the one who needs to take things less seriously and relax and not let it bother me.

Why does no one think that its the fault of the person who decides to knowingly use a word that is offensive and derogatory. I've been told that I need to "learn to ignore the things that don't matter." The point is that it does matter, and people need to learn to be considerate of those around them.

I think it boils down to the culture of no-responsibility that we have these days. No one feels that they should be blamed for anything. If something happens because they use a tool in the wrong way, well then the manufacturer is at fault for not considering the million ways people could misuse things and not putting a disclaimer. If someone says something that offends someone, its not their fault, its the fault of the person who had the nerve to be offended by it.

I can understand that some people take things too seriously but I have made one and only one request, that the term "fag" and "faggot" not be used in any way shape or form. Apparently that's too much to ask.

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I'm tired...

Damn, I'm tired this morning. I had to get up at 6am this morning to make sure Colin was up to get to his appointment in Boston by 9am. I was good, I went to bed no later than midnight, but since I had to get up early fate was working overtime against me.

I got a call from a drunken Nick at 1am, which I didn't realize what was going on until I missed the call so I just went back to bed. Then at 1:45 am I get woken up to someone repeatedly ringing the doorbell. I was not in a good mood at that point. I threw on some pants and answered the door, and was not prepared for what was there when I got there.

I opened my door and saw that there was a spotlight trained on the front door and there was a Worcester Police officer standing there. I opened the outside front door and he asks if I was "Mr. Marker." Imagine, if you will, how fast my heart is racing at this point with a cop at my door asking for my roommate. Turns out that Colin's mom had sent him a package and it was left by the Postal worker on our front porch and someone down the street had snagged it and opened it up. The cop had found it and was returning it. From what I could tell with Colin the next morning, I don’t think anything had actually been taken, but he has to call his mom for that.

Needless to say, with the adrenaline rushing through me from that I didn't get back to sleep until 3am. Ugh... what a night.

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Blogs...

I think the other reason I've always been leary of blogs is that I'm used to the abuse its cousin, the AIM profile, can get. For a year I lived with people where they wouldn't tell you what was wrong, or why they were mad, but they'd always update their profile to make a statment about it. It got to be so that if I wanted to know their mood I'd check their profile first. This is pretty sad when they only lived across the apartment from me. A blog or a profile is no substitute for actual conversation.

Thankfully those days are behind me but it still kind of taints my viewpont of things.

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And so it begins....

Colin was talking up blogs last night so I finally decided to give one a try myself. It seems that all my friends have them, so why not jump in myself. I've been curious about blogs for a while but never seemed to want to do it enough to take the plunge. You see I don't quite understand the appeal of it. Maybe you have to be a bit of a exhibitionist to do this. I tend to compartmentalize my life and my friends. I'll tell some of them some things but not all of them all things. There are things that I keep to select people and I think maybe its a bit frightening to have my thoughts go out to anyone and everyone who wants to read this. Well, we'll see how long this lasts and how often it gets updated.

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