Some Updates

Hello dear readers!

As you may have noticed, things have been a little quiet here on the blog. This has largely been due to husband being out of town for a few days at a time over the course of these past two weeks. His job sent him to a small town near the US-Mexico border and with him not home to watch the baby while I cook and clean, I just haven't had the time or energy to write. One good thing about his business trip is that my husband got to stay in a historic hotel. A friend recommended the restaurant in the hotel's lobby, which my husband ate at and approved of mightily. It's said to be haunted (the front desk lady told my husband that an entity from the hotel followed her home and tried to strangle her in her sleep, and the colleague my husband was rooming with in the hotel room woke up in the middle of the night screaming from a terrifying nightmare. Coincidence? You decide...), but my husband hasn't seen or felt anything out of the ordinary. His demon-meter is fine tuned, but he's also well protected by the Lord.

Boo!

I also have an update on the car. It appears that the bothersome electrical short which caused spluttering upon acceleration and prevented us from going up our friend's very steep driveway for fear of burning through yet another set of wires when going over to visit her, has finally been fixed! My husband, while diligently looking over the wires in both the engine and the dash, discovered where the insulation had worn off in some wires leading to the wiper blades. He fixed it and the car seemed to behave for a few days, even with him being a leadfoot. A few days ago, he went to visit our friend on the hill and made it up her beastly driveway with no splutter or fried wires. I still get nervous going up her driveway, but now I don't have to walk up it anymore.


Also of note, I've been getting to exercise my cooking skills lately. I made some more pita breads, this time using whole wheat flour, and I rolled them to be very thin, just like how my hubby likes them. They weren't fluffy like what I'm accustomed to seeing with pita bread, and were actually quite dense. I wonder if this is characteristic of whole wheat flour, or if I didn't let the dough rise enough, but I'll try again sometime soon. Also, after collecting the last of the harvest from our tomato garden (the damn things went absolutely gangbusters!), I made homemade tomato sauce from the overripe and sun-scarred tomatoes in the colander my hubby was using to hold them. I also used plenty of fresh basil from the garden (another plant that has a tendency to go gangbusters out here), but I used too much initially and had to take out most of the leaves once the sauce had cooked down. Once it was cool enough, I jarred the sauce up and put it in the freezer. It'll make for excellent pizza sauce or spaghetti sauce once I get around to making these respective dishes.

We knew this was inevitable. Pennywise Trump finally got his coronation and shattered the GOP while doing it

Finally, if anyone cares to know, I have been keeping up with the dumpster fire known as the Republican National Convention. Like most apolitical people, I've been kicking back with my beer and popcorn, watching the shitshow rage on. I despise the walking ballsack called Ted Cruz for a whole host of reasons, but I will give him due credit for doing the equivalent of defiantly sticking his middle finger right in front of the GOP's face at the Donald's coronation. But then again, I've always subscribed to the idea that Donald Trump isn't in it to win the presidency, he's running as a troll Republican to destroy the GOP and clear the way for Hillary. I don't support Hillary for a whole host of reasons, but she's much more qualified to run this country than Trump. Besides, if she's elected, then we won't have to flee to Mexico to escape the coming hell that is a Republican presidency. Bernie did what he was supposed to do and pulled her to the left.

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May Day

Happy Sunday, dear readers!

On this first of May, be thankful for the workers who are the real driving force behind the economy, not trickle-down-piss Reaganomics with its fetishization of the rich.

Workers of the world unite! Pic found here

But, in spite of my socialist leanings, hubby and I celebrated May Day by going to Sunday Mass at the church we were married in. After last week's trip to the Carmelite church ended with my husband coming to within an inch of knifing a rude parishioner who cut in front of us with his children in the Communion line, it was time to reevaluate where we went to Mass. As much as I love our Carmelite church, the fact is that people there do not behave reverently while in the presence of the Lord! They talk, they clap for the mariachi, they come and go whenever they please and have no respect for order. It's largely out of ignorance that they behave this way, and I have my disagreements with the homeboy padre who is the administrator there about how to go about correcting this huge problem. Our homeboy padre is a saint compared with alot of the other American priests I've met, but he's not terribly bright. I don't want to stop going there because I do feel that the Lord wants hubby and I to be there so that we can provide a good example to others on how one should behave in God's house, but it's so frustrating! It's easy to fall into despair when seeing how bad the modern church has become.
I've had a long history with the Carmelite church because I was going there for Sunday Mass long before I became a Catholic and it was there that the seeds of Catholicism were firmly planted in my heart. I do not want to abandon it because despite the bad behavior of the parishioners, they uphold traditional Mexican Catholic practices and don't deviate from orthodox Catholic dogma. That counts for something, right?

It's hard being a priest. You've got to evangelize, educate, and counsel people when they're spiritually vulnerable. It's a job made all the more difficult when your parish is ignorant of God.

Fortunately, the Lord rewarded our decision to go to our wedding church when a dear family friend came. He brought with him his good friend whom we helped move into her apartment a few months ago. The woman was delighted to see how much the baby had grown, and since it was before Mass, she got to sweet talk the baby in French for a bit (she was born and raised on the Caribbean island of Martinique, where the dominant language is French). We were worried about our friend for a while because he'd gotten himself caught up with a heretical outfit that under the guise of being pro-life, was pushing overpriced rosaries of poor quality and some condemned "visions" of the Virgin Mary to boot, but with this appearance, it helped put hubby and I at ease. After Mass, the woman told me that she had recently been attending our wedding church for the last few weeks because she wanted to come back to the Church. I knew she'd been away from the Catholic Church for a long time, but now that she is elderly she wants to have her spiritual affairs in order. She let me know that she'd recently contacted a priest at the church to arrange for a Confession, but had yet to hear back to set a date and time. This being the Year of Mercy, now's as good a time as any to recommit to living a lifestyle in accordance with the teachings of the Church and partaking of the Sacraments as often as possible.

Take that, Pebbles Flintstone!

And, most importantly, the baby got to radiate lots of cuteness beams! Her hair is finally long enough on top for me to make a ponytail of it, though the back of her head still has a ways to go before I can make a tail out of it. And to think, when she was here, my mother wanted to give the baby a haircut!

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A Tale of Two Churches

Hello dear readers. I hope your Sunday has been going well.

While I'd planned on going to our Latin Mass church today, we overslept (it's a little hard to wake up early and get to church when Mass is at 10AM) and went to our favorite Carmelite church instead. In a way, I'm glad we went there instead of our Latin Mass church. For one, there was a class that had been preparing for First Communion and today they got to participate in the Sacrament for the first time. Due to the occasion, the parking lot was overflowing and we had to park in the lot of an auto shop across the street and run through the rain to get inside and find a seat. It was lovely to see all the boys and girls wearing their white suits and fancy dresses to mark their first step towards full participation in the Church. It makes me look forward to when my daughter will be old enough to have her First Communion too. If I can't afford to buy her a fancy white dress for her First Communion, then I will compromise by getting her the nicest white dress I can afford and giving her lots of mendhi instead.

Our homeboy padre distributes First Communion

After the Mass, our homeboy padre then invested the First Communion kids with their Brown Scapular. This is a common Catholic tradition that originated from the Carmelites in which a necklace of brown string with small brown flaps made from a Carmelite wool habit is ritually placed on someone's neck. It stems from a vision in which the Virgin Mary gave the scapular to San Juan de la Cruz with the instruction that anyone who wears it (and says the proscribed prayers daily) until death will not burn in hell (the wearer must also make a serious attempt to live their life in accordance with the Church's teachings and participate in the Sacraments as well). Contrary to what some might think, a Brown Scapular is not a good luck charm. As our homeboy padre instructed us in one of his sermons, the Brown Scapular is more like an insurance policy-if you want to be protected from something bad (eternal damnation), you have to make your monthly (daily) payments.

Our homeboy padre invests the Brown Scapular on the First Communion recipients

Unfortunately, these were the only two clear images I could get of the ceremony. Every time I turned the flash off, the pictures would come out horribly blurry, no matter how still I held the camera

Once we got home and had lunch, I turned on my computer to relax and see what was new in the world while the baby took her nap. Just last night, I'd visited a "Traditional" Catholic website (which I refuse to link to and give them more traffic than they already get) and read their predictable freakout reaction to Pope Francis' latest papal work, Amoris Laetitia. Normally, I don't bother commenting on this particular website because I feel my IQ lower by a few points every time I visit (they occasionally post some good stuff, but for every one good article there are one hundred articles of pure paleo-conservative puddery. Also, playing the game "find the logical fallacies" with every article I read really makes me question the intelligence of their writers ), but I felt compelled to respond because the writer included a video of a South Indian Jesuit priest who dances bharatanatyam as part of his ministry, calling his performance feminine and heretical. As someone who is a longtime lover of India and has diligently, independently studied its many cultures, traditions, and religions over the last thirteen years, I pointed out to the writer what the priest was doing, some background on the dance, and that the priest had simply modified a traditional South Indian religious temple dance to be a tool of evangelizing Catholicism. India, as the priest pointed out in the video, has a long established tradition of dance as a part of worship unlike in the West where dance is viewed more or less as a secular activity. Needless to say, my attempt at educating the readers about something outside of the realm of the White Anglo-Saxon/northern Europe/'Murica did not go over well. So much for instructing the ignorant...

This exchange served to highlight something that has bugged me ever since my hubby and I reestablished regular attendance at the Latin Mass church. I've become more and more aware of an attitude among both the parishioners attending the church and Traditional Latin Mass-promoting writers/websites online who view the Latin Mass as an exclusive club. If you belong to a certain socio-economic strata (middle/upper-class), live in the "right" areas (the suburbs or suburban areas within city limits) and have the "right" political views (right-wing conservative/fascist), then you are welcome to come. In other words, if you are a Catholic WASP, you are preferred company and all Others need not darken the door. There also appears to be a racial element to this elitism, as anyone (or anything) that is not western European or sufficiently "White" is bad. It's not just the example of the bharatanatyam-dancing Jesuit, but closer to home, our Latin Mass parish is overwhelmingly ethnically White. There are some Mexicans and a Chinese, but I have observed that just about all of them are married to White families and have adopted the bourgeois attitudes that come with being a middle-class White person in America. The one old-school Mexican is relegated to being the usher because he's as brown as the parish will tolerate; they have him collecting the money and making sure the door to the kiddie ghetto isn't locked during Mass.

Wise words from Matthew. Pic found here

This kind of pharisaic attitude bugs the shit out of me because I love the Latin Mass. I wish it were made more available so that others like my pious Mexican neighbors and friends might know and benefit from the graces that come from this particular aspect of the Body of Christ. But, with assholes like the Latin Mass outfits I've encountered in life and online, I can see why many Catholics never hear of the Latin Mass and if they do, they perceive it as being snobby or otherwise unavailable to them. I'm not convinced, but I'm seriously beginning to wonder if the Latin Mass is being used as a front for unsavory elements to invade and split the Church. My husband believes it to be so, based on an encounter he had about seven years ago.

My hubby told me of a man he met in late 2008 who attended the 8AM morning Mass at the Latin Mass church every day. Eventually, this man quit coming to the Latin Mass church and at his last attendance, he told my husband that this church was full of freemasons. My husband didn't believe this man and continued to attend Mass at the Latin Mass church for a few more years until I came into his life. Now, he is sure the man he met all those years ago was right. My husband had his suspicions, but it took our marriage to blow the cover on everything. Our marriage, exile and return, as well as the presidential elections have combined and created a perfect storm to unveil something sinister lurking at the Latin Mass church where we first met and baptized our child. The inmates have, quite literally, taken over the asylum and driven away all but a few who have intelligence and aren't barking fascists.

So now, to save our souls and sanity, we must step back from the Latin Mass church once more. We will still continue to visit, but not as often as we did before. We will continue to attend our Carmelite church as per our usual arrangement, but now we've added the church where my hubby and I got married to our rotation. Our daughter's godmother goes there, Mass is at a reasonable time, and the priest who married us is the rector. It's painful to have to break up again with the Latin Mass church, but a big part of belonging to a church is what kind of people you go to church with. It's one thing to go to Mass, but there is a major social aspect to being a part of a parish. I could never understand why people just say "I'm just here for Mass" because by not getting to know who is a part of your faith community, you're missing out on a crucial part of being Catholic! It's good to be around people who can help you to grow in faith and provide support when needed.

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Some Thoughts on the Death of Tony Scalia

Happy Sunday, dear readers! I hope you and your loved ones had a wonderful Valentine's Day.

The infamous justice. Pic found here

As I'm sure you're all well aware by now, at least if you live here in the US, the illustrious Supreme Court justice Antonin "Tony" Scalia died yesterday at the age of 79. Widely revered as a conservative icon, his death from natural causes (or a heart attack, depending on which news source you're reading) at a hunting resort in rural west Texas could not come at a more polarizing time. This being an election year, the Republicans are gonna stall and fuck around with anyone Obama nominates to succeed the late justice until after the elections are done, at which point a successor may or may not be appointed at all.

I admit, I was a little surprised to hear of Scalia's passing. Growing up in a very Republican family, Scalia was my favorite Supreme Court justice. I admired his judicial ability to interpret the Constitution in an "originalist" fashion, his old-school Catholicism which he wore proudly on his sleeve, and his defense of conservative principles. As I got older, I moved away from the conservative political sphere because it became too consuming and was beginning to take a toll on my sanity. Meeting my husband had a lot to do with this shift in worldview, as my husband's pious Catholicism put him at odds with much of the protestant-based conservative positions. As such, my admiration of Scalia waned. I didn't hate the man, but I didn't care for his fascist politics or the government he served. I didn't appreciate his rulings against Obamacare because it was only through Obamacare that my husband and I were able to afford quality health insurance or on issues of civil rights. I strongly disagreed with his view of the death penalty because I believe one cannot call themselves "pro life" and be in support of the death penalty which takes the lives of others, as well as his many refusals to recuse himself from cases where he had a personal connection to one of the parties or other conflicts of interest. I agreed with his rulings against abortion and gay marriage because I myself happen to agree with those views, but agreeing with this asshole on two issues does not make us allies. It didn't matter if he called himself a "traditional" Catholic and went to daily Mass every morning at a TLM church or that his son became a Latin Mass priest. That's all fine and dandy, but the fact that he so ardently adhered to the Constitution, a document rooted in European freemasonry, made him an insincere believer at best and a hypocrite at worst. Numerous popes, Pope Leo XIII in particular, have condemned freemasonry and Americanism for being the heresies that they are. It's amazing how many so-called "traditional" Catholics neglect to notice this little inconvenient detail as they stumble over themselves to lick the shoes of the Republican Party...

A similarly-styled hat doeth not a martyr make, Your Honor. Pic found here

Against my better judgment, I cruised through the comment sections of a number of Catholic websites I follow on Facebook. Many of these websites I'm sad to say, given the unholy alliance between the Republican Party and no small number of influential Catholics, are quite right wing. Thousands of commentators were posting their messages of mourning for the death of Tony Scalia and calling for the mercy of God on his departed soul, as well as prophesying the impending doom of America that will happen in the wake of his death. Some people were even calling for the canonization of Tony Scalia as though he were a latter-day St. Thomas More! Needless to say, a comment I left on one of those sites reminding people that Antonin Scalia has a lot to answer for in the next life did not go over well. Don't forget, St. Thomas More served as prime minister to a government headed by a duly-appointed monarch and was put to death for refusing to recognize his king as his pope. Unlike Tony Scalia, St. Thomas More did not serve and defend a government of freemasons, for doing so would have made him anathema.

Despite the many disagreements I had with Tony Scalia and his politics and the justified temptation I feel to do so, I won't dance on his grave. To be put in a position of power and influence is a heavy cross to bear because your example can either lead people to salvation or straight down the road to hell. I really do hope in those last moments of life that the Last Rites given to Tony Scalia at least washed him enough to get him to Purgatory. Also, in spite of myself, I did say a few prayers for the fool during church today. God does not will the death of sinners, no matter how rotten they may be. It's not a bad idea to pray for him because we all will have alot to answer for at the end of our earthly lives, him included.

Giving God conniptions on the Heavenly Twitter feed. Pic found here

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What People Can Learn From Babies

Hello again, dear readers,

While tonight's Republican shitshow *ahem* presidential debate is streaming in the background, I needed some distractions to keep sober and positive. It was while remarking to my husband that the baby's full diapers have more intelligence than these fools put together that I was inspired to write this post in line with the prompt for Day 10 of the 21 day blogging challenge. Thankfully, the stream crashed and I went back to binge watching Ghost Adventures for a bit.

Send in the clowns...

My short time as a parent has taught me a number of things about children that I never would otherwise have learned. Given the astounding level of hatred directed towards children and their caregivers by the culture at large (reducing children down to an object of "choice" will do that), here are a few redeeming qualities I've observed about the little ones which even biggers like us can stand to learn from.

• They're resilient
• Children are incredibly resilient. A small bump on the head or a minor cold won't slow them down, whereas someone like me would be cooped up in bed. Even after enduring major traumas, children try to bounce back as best as they can. That's a lesson in endurance everyone can benefit from.
• Kids have a great bullshit detector
• When my daughter was a newborn, if she didn't like somebody, she would cry and raise a fuss. Though she is less apt to act up now, if she still has misgivings about somebody, she will fuss. I've also observed that older children are not likely to hold back about their impressions of people. Just like pets, babies are great indicators of someone's character. Those gut feelings aren't totally worthless.
• They take joy in simple things



Playing with a makeup brush pouch. Future MUA like mommy?

• Toys are overrated. Give my daughter some paper or cloth and she will play with that. She has some toys, but she gets bored with those after a while. She definitely prefers the grown up stuff. We biggers can learn to appreciate the imagination once more instead of having an app do our thinking for us.
• Little brains are always learning
• The first three years of a human's life are of an unparalleled explosion in brain growth and learning. At 2-4 months, my daughter would yell, pause, and resume yelling as if she were imitating the pattern of conversations my husband and I would have around her and each other. At 6 months, she had learned to sit up with some assistance and when stood up, her balance was developing. Now at 8 months, she babbles, but can say "dada" ("daddy") and "ayo" ("cat"; imitating their meows). The big lesson here is that learning should never stop. School can help, but so can our friends, family, and the internet.

I may not be able to change our cultural views surrounding children, but I hope this is a good start.

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Why Poverty Will Make You a Better Person

A pleasant Monday to you all, dear readers. Like many around the world, I too am mourning the death of David Bowie. His cancer diagnosis and death were sudden and shocking to all of us. Here at home, we've been playing his music all afternoon as tribute to his life and talents.

Day 7 of the 21 day blogging challenge is an interesting prompt. I expect this will be something of a controversial post since poverty is seriously stigmatized here in America. But as with anything else on this blog, it is from MY perspective that I write about life as an impoverished parent with a family to care for. This includes the hardships of being low income, but also the joys that come with it.

When I arrived in Arizona in 2008, I didn't have the slightest inkling that in a few short years, I would be living in poverty. I grew up middle-class in a bourgeois suburb of Chicago, IL and figured that once I graduated from college and got started on my career, I would retain my middle-class status shortly thereafter. Like a lot of America's petite-bourgeoisie, I had been indoctrinated from childhood that poor people were Others. Poor people were the fly-covered starving children in Africa or dirty slum dwellers in Latin America and the Indian subcontinent. If there were domestic poors, they got that way by being stupid and/or lazy, fit for menial tasks like flipping burgers at McDonald's or mowing lawns. It never crossed my mind that my also seemingly-middle class neighbors might be living paycheck to paycheck or relying on handouts for help.

My graduation, 2012

Unfortunately, life has a way of throwing wrenches into even the best-laid plans. I had a sinking suspicion that after the market crashed in 2008, I would have to live in poverty for a while. The right-wing squawkers I devoted myself to listening to between classes at school all said as much. I knew that because the job market was shattered, I would have to take whatever job I could find, regardless of what the pay was.

Meeting my husband that fateful October morning in 2011 cemented my foreseeable impoverished future. It was strange, here was a man who was quite intelligent with education to match, and yet he was practically homeless, heavily reliant on what sparse government benefits he qualified for to get by! Even stranger, he was genuinely happy with his life despite the crushing poverty he lived under. How could this be so?

The one picture I have of me at the hoarded out junkyard camp my hubby lived in when we met. I would come over here to play with and get familiar with kittens.

I have come a long way since that morning, both in my understanding of poverty in America and in how I cope with its existence in my life. My Catholic faith has played a crucial role in my impoverished existence by both bringing me into a deeper, more dependent relationship with the Lord and connecting me with the various charities founded by the Church to carry out its social justice mission. When I became a Catholic, I instinctively knew that I was going to slip significantly down the economic ladder because Catholicism is traditionally the most despised religion of largely protestant America (in the post 9-11 world, Islam became the recent addition to that list and has superseded Catholicism as America's most hated religion for the time being), and I accepted this fate because I knew this was what God wanted for me. Poverty can either make someone a true believer or an atheist, but not without instilling a degree of humility first. I began to appreciate why Jesus called upon people to give up their earthly wealth and follow Him, and why many Orders in the Church take vows of material poverty. With less material wealth to deal with, the less bullshit you have to put up with like the work-a-jerk mentality in which we work at jobs we hate for money we spend on stuff to please people we don't care about. You not only learn to appreciate charity, but you also begin to have empathy. In this absurdly hypercompetitive world, empathy is something that is critically lacking, relegated only to the weak willed and weak minded.

For the record, I must state that compared to the poverty of places like Africa, Latin America, India, etc. Americans have it good. Generally speaking, though exceptions exist, our homes have electricity, running water, and a means of seasonably-appropriate climate control. Electronics like TVs, cell phones, and computers are cheap with impoverished homes having at least one or more of such items. Clothes are cheap and easy to come by, but hunger still persists despite food being available nearly everywhere and with food pantries struggling to try and bridge the gap. As it stands, even the crumbs of society's wealth which trickle down to the bottom feeders like me tend to be pretty good.

Poverty can also make you a more resourceful person. Since your funds are limited, you search high and low for the best deals you can find on needed essentials or the occasional splurge. I can state with honesty that I've become a better homeowner through poverty because I've had to help my husband fix things around the trailer and I also have a better understanding of how the inner workings of a car function because we have to do our own repairs and maintenance. I've begun learning how to make cheap foods edible, thanks to poverty. To be put back into my old life where I would have had to contact contractors for home repair jobs or mechanics to change my oil would make me feel very awkward and wasteful.

My husband relayed to me a saying he heard once about how only the very wealthy and the very poor understand how the world works while everyone else in the middle is clueless. This is a tragic consequence of the deliberate concealment of the class struggle. America tried to make its society classless, and indeed in school, we were taught how we were all "equals" because our society had no ancien regime. Truth be told, America DID have its classes. It had its upper crust elite (plantation owners, powerful political families), its petite-bourgeoisie (small business shopkeepers, merchants, urban dwellers), working families, slaves (later, freed men), and untouchables at the very bottom (catch-all for anyone who didn't fit anywhere else in the society, like criminals, the extremely impoverished, Catholics, "white trash", etc) with the appropriate opportunities (or lack thereof) available for each strata of society. Just like in the Old World, those who had money flaunted it to remake society in their image, and the extremely impoverished at the bottom could see right through their tricks and refuse to have anything to do with the reconstruction.

Scene from the old trailer. Started from the bottom...

The impoverished life also makes one appreciate the little things. When my hubby and I first got married and were looking for a place to begin our married life together, we found a rotten trailer in a tucked away trailer park in an impoverished part of town. The trailer had a rotten roof that leaked when it rained, there was no working heat or cooling, no refrigerator and water could only be turned on at certain times because the RV toilet would overflow from running water due to a faulty valve. We had no hot water and when we needed to bathe, a large pot of wat

My husband relayed to me a saying he heard once about how only the very wealthy and the very poor understand how the world works while eveer had to be boiled on the stove and poured into the tub. You would not let a dog you cared about live in there, much less human beings. However, it was either move into this rotten beer can trailer cuz it's all you can afford, or sleep out in the desert and become coyote food. Under normal circumstances, my hubby, who had been housed from homelessness for about six months at that point, would have said screw it and gone into the desert. But, he did not want to subject me to that life since he knew I was not prepared to live that way. So, we took the trailer, moved in, and as I began working and saving money, we fixed up what we could to try and make our rotten beer can a bit more habitable. Friends and associates hooked us up with some small fridges, a propane water heater, food and water, a swamp cooler for the summer months, lumber, and a heater. My parents even bought the PEX pipe plumbing for the trailer, though it was presented as a bribe.

Even with all this generous help and periodic cleanings, there was only so much we could do to the trailer because it was in such poor shape. It really never should have left the junkyard it was pulled from. When my family bought this current trailer for us just prior to the baby being born, it felt like we moved into a real house! I'd all but forgotten what it was like to have working appliances and a roof that didn't leak! We also had more space in the new trailer and we could even fit a couch into the living room, something unimaginable in the old trailer. But the two years spent living in the rotten trailer taught me that I really did not need much space to live comfortably. It could get crowded with stuff, but I was never claustrophobic at any point in the trailer. All I needed was my spot on the bed, a clear path to the bathroom, a certain minimum of closet space and a place to plop my shoes and backpack when I came home from work. This was a huge accomplishment, coming from somebody who'd grown up in a two-story four bedroom, four bathroom suburban home. Even now as I write this, I'm filled with gratitude and appreciation for having a better place to raise my child.

Now we here. Taken when we viewed the new trailer for the first time just prior to our moving in

When you live in an impoverished neighborhood, an interesting dichotomy emerges. Yes, there can be high crime rates because people who have little lash out either at those who have something worth taking or out of frustration because they can't escape their socioeconomic status, but at the same time, there is a stronger sense of community. You don't see that kind of community vibe in wealthier neighborhoods where everyone's home is set up like a fortress to keep others out. When people who don't have much material wealth share a common living area, neighbors tend to look out for each other. Unusual visitors are noted and disputes are settled as well as concern raised when someone fails to come home from work or school at the usual time.

Humans are an adaptable species. From the natives in South America's jungles to the Inuits in the Arctic, humans can adapt to a variety of extreme living conditions. Life in poverty in America is hard because just like in the old days, money determines your placement in life both in terms of education and what sorts of opportunities are available for you to advance in society in addition to what products are available for you to use in life. It has always been that way. But just because life in poverty is hard doesn't mean that it has to be unpleasant. Like everyone else, you just get used to things and do the best you can with what you have available to work with. By taking advantage of what aid programs and charities we can, in addition to some strategic hoarding, we have been able to build up a comfortable existence for ourselves here. I'm not glamorizing poverty, as there's nothing glamorous about wondering whether you'll have a roof over your head next month. I'm just shining some dignity on my life as an impoverished woman because there are many lessons to be learned from poverty, both good and bad.

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6 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Food Stamps

Happy Sunday, dear readers! I hope your favorite football teams won their respective games today.

I will try and publish Day 7 and Day 8 tomorrow so that by Tuesday, I'll be all caught up and can finish the 21 day blogging challenge on time. That said, on to the show!

Chili and Encharitos, a meal made entirely of foods purchased on food stamps

For Day 6's challenge, I must preface this by saying my experience with food stamps is limited to Arizona. I am aware that other states have different rules/restrictions regarding food stamp use, but I hope my experience will enlighten you about this crucially beneficial subsidy program for the common individual.

1. Applying for them can be a pain in the ass.

Anyone who has ever applied for any sort of government benefit program like food stamps, Medicaid, Social Security, etc, knows the feeling of overwhelming dread that comes with having to dig up all your important papers and financial statements for a bureaucrat to scrutinize. It's like baring your soul to a bean counter. What makes this experience all the more nerve wracking is that if your income exceeds a certain level even by a few pennies, you will not be eligible to receive food stamps to feed yourself and your family. As part of President Bill Clinton's Welfare Reform regulations in 1996, the number of hoops applicants must jump through, whether it be verifying income levels or work requirements, as a condition of receiving benefits skyrocketed. I found this out the hard way the first time I tried applying for food stamps on my own. Having just returned to Arizona, I wanted to try and get food stamps until I could start working and building up my financial reserves. I was showing as eligible online when I applied, but when I went to the office for the interview, I brought all the documents I had with me and thought I would need, and the case worker STILL wanted more stuff to "verify". I wound up being denied benefits because I couldn't provide all the information the caseworker wanted. It was only when my husband and I got married and he added me to his account as a household member that I could get food stamps because he was already getting them.

2. You can use them to buy almost any kind of food.

Almost. As per regulations, food stamp recipients cannot use their allotment at restaurants (or at least ones that aren't authorized to do so), to buy hot foods at the grocery store, and for alcohol purchases. I used to wonder about the hot foods restriction, since I viewed it as poor shaming. However, my husband informed me that the hot foods prohibition was actually a safeguard put in place to keep impoverished recipients of SNAP (the formal name for food stamps) from being exploited by unscrupulous restaurateurs who might charge them more for a meal simply because they were using food stamps. Hot food also requires taxable fuel to keep warm, which means here in Arizona, it is taxed at a different rate than cold foods are. As for the alcohol prohibition, I'm not entirely sure of the reason for that ban. I tried doing some research to find the answer to that question, but I was unsuccessful at finding an answer. I believe it has to do with the Prohibition-era moral holdover stigma of alcohol being a devil's brew that made the the government not authorize it for purchase. Also, to my knowledge, I think you can buy certain live animals like lobster for eating, but not bunnies or chickens.

3. Your allotment is income and/or dependent based

This stands as a given, though if you have dependents like children or elderly/disabled relatives, this also factors into whether or not you get benefits. As such, when your income changes due to work or the arrival/departure of a household member, your benefit level adjusts as such. This can either be a huge source of stress or a huge relief.

4. It has some of the lowest fraud of any social safety net program in the country.

In spite of the undeniably racially-tinged rhetoric aimed at people who use food stamps and other government services, SNAP has been proven to be one of the least fraud-ridden government programs in America. Compared with the military contracts and the corporate welfare provided to CEOs of major companies which are so greased with nepotism the ooze floods the streets of DC, the fraud rate for SNAP consistently clocks in at less than 4% annually. The USDA, which issues food stamps, is pretty rigorous about making sure the benefits they issue are used appropriately. Of course, there are people out there who sell their food stamps for money and make illicit purchases with their funds, but the number of perpetrators has consistently been proven tiny compared to the vast number of recipients. Not bad for government work.

5. The food stamp allotment can be used nationwide.

Unlike its previous incarnation of actual stamp booklets, latter-day food stamps are issued electronically via state-issued debit cards, known as EBT. While the cards are issued by the state, the funds can be used nationwide due to SNAP being a federal program.

6. Your taxes pay for it.

This is obviously how food stamps are funded, but I wanted to include this point because I pay taxes on whatever measly income I make AND I benefit from the programs they subsidize! When I realized that correlation, it blew away any stigma I was indoctrinated with regarding food stamps. After all, as a taxpayer, I pay into this system. Why shouldn't I be taking advantage of these social programs? I honestly believe that if more people could see past the racial tainting of our piddly social safety net by the politicians who yell "ONLY *insert preferred brown Other here* use food stamps to buy lobster and steak!", they too would want to take advantage of it. After all, our humanity appeals to us to make resources available for impoverished people to get what they need to survive. At least I hope it does...

If there are any other facts I should know about food stamps, let me know in the comments.

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5 Socioeconomic Trends Poor People Can Expect in 2016

Welcome back again, dear readers!

Social media-I don't know what I would do without it. Pic found here

It's Day 4 of the 21 day blogging challenge. Admittedly, this particular prompt was a bit of a tough one for me since poverty makes it hard to keep up and participate in many modern trends. However, I've given my best shot at predicting what will be hot stuff for those of us on the low end of the socioeconomic ladder this coming year.

1. The expansion of restaurant chains accepting EBT

My introduction last year to Papa Murphy's Pizza got me thinking about how if this restaurant chain could take advantage of the huge federally-subsidized food stamp market to sell their pizza, how many other restaurants will follow their lead? Since wages don't show any sign of increasing to anywhere near a livable level in the near future ($15/hr is a good start, but it's still not close enough to the $20-$25/hr that the cost of living currently runs), I expect the number of food stamp recipients to steadily increase. Grocery stores do a pretty good job of offering cold foods that can be purchased with food stamps, but given the convenience which restaurant chains offer in terms of already prepared meals, I expect to see more chains offering food items for EBT purchase in the coming year.

2. Increased illegal immigration out of America

Here's one most people don't see coming-the tables have turned! Americans are risking their lives and fleeing from the poverty, violence and oppression at home, swamping places like Mexico and Canada. This scenario will depend on who wins the Presidential elections this year, so I don't expect to see masses of people teeming at the border fences or paying smugglers until late in the year if at all. Since the "shining city on a hill" that Ronald Reagan so eloquently postulated about has gone dark, succumbed to its own madness, it may well take a mass exodus of people before our government decides to do anything about improving the standard of living. Then again, maybe not. They'll crack down on whoever is left, just because they can.

3. Bartering

With wages at an all time low, the black market rises up to meet the needs of people. Since money buys so little, people will barter for their goods and services. I personally have witnessed a barter economy developing here in my very own trailer park. Neighbors will exchange goods and services, much like it was done in the Middle Ages or in parts of Mexico. For those instances where money is required, people try and negotiate to the lowest possible dollar. Just like in the Middle Ages, a barter economy signifies the collapse of a money-based economic system since trading goods and services isn't an effective way to grow an economy and it shows that people don't trust money anymore. This is not necessarily a bad thing, since bartering for your goods and services is a good way to build up a sense of community.

4. A shift in the sharing economy

Sharing services like Uber, AirBNB, etc will collapse because federal regulators have cracked down on their exploitation of "independent contractors". Rising up as a response to the economic recession, these sharing services can be likened to the MLM/pyramid scams profiled on sites like Pink Truth because top management reaps all the profits and benefits of a corporation while shunning things like FICA and offloading all responsibility back onto the employees. This collapse, however, is also not necessarily a bad thing. By classifying its drivers/homes/what have you as employees/hotels/etc and regulating them as such, it creates a more stable workforce and a safer environment for customers. People can still use their cars/homes/etc, but now the companies are on the hook for more than just their names and apps.

5. Online free schools

Education, the salvation or bete-noir of many a politician's platform, will undergo a change as well. The proliferation of the internet and portable devices would give families an alternative to sending their kids to a failing school or an expensive private school. Online schools already exist, but what I am foreshadowing is the rise of free online schools. No tuition, no risking sending your children into a dangerous or poorly performing environment, and you and your children can work together to create a curriculum so that they're actually taking classes with subjects they're interested in. It's like YouTube, but for school! Given the horrible student loan debt burden many millenials like myself are burdened with, these online free schools would be an accredited and affordable means of pursuing an education. As for how these online schools would support themselves, it would be through purchasing ad space and using affiliate links, much like how many online businesses support themselves right now. It will take some doing to figure out the kinks and come up with a working model, but it's not impossible.

What trends, good or bad, do you forsee happening this coming year?

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My 2016 Bucket List

Hello again, dear readers!

Today is Day 2 of the 21 day blogging challenge. I've never been much for bucket lists, but they do have uses as goal setters. Here are ten things I want to do before the end of 2016.

Not quite the same bucket list as you have, Homer. Pic found here

• Get pregnant. 
I want to give the baby a sibling and I plan to start trying after she turns 1. 12 months is a good age to start trying for a sibling, since the kids won't be too far apart in age and it will be easier for them to relate to each other.

• Figure out what wines I like. 
I'm primarily a beer drinker, but I've been wanting to venture into the wine side of alcohol consumption when I have the funds to do so. Wine was something I never bothered with before for reasons of class and income, but there are times when it is preferable to beer.

• Change the oil in the car by myself from beginning to end. 
Regardless of gender (though it's especially important for females), knowing how to do basic car maintenance is greatly empowering. Unscrupulous mechanics are less likely to take advantage of you if you can do the work yourself.

• Start a beauty vlog. 
Makeup and beauty are two big vices of mine because they are my confidence boosters and help make my impoverished life a bit more bearable. I also have been known to binge watch beauty tutorials on Youtube for days. I want to start my own beauty channel for women who are new to makeup, but can't afford the more expensive brands like MAC which are the staple of just about every beauty vlogger's cosmetic arsenal. If I can find an affordable video camera with good resolution, that would be a huge boon to any vlogging I do. Until then, I suppose I can duct tape my cellphone to the back of my computer and use it as a webcam. It's a ghetto solution, but it'll work for the time being.

• Get my travel papers updated.
If the Republicans win the elections this year, we may be taking a permanent vacation out of the US. My husband suffered terribly under the Bush regime, and he will not risk the wrath of whatever fascist asshole who faps to Ayn Rand and swallows the cum of certain Middle Eastern leaders gets the presidency.

• Take a trip into the mountains with my family.
I live in Arizona, which is renowned for its natural beauty. Here in Southern Arizona, there are no shortage of mountains and national parks with hiking trails within driving distance. It's not everyday that people get to live in such a naturally beautiful region. I really should take advantage of it more often.

• Work to expand my blog and any income I get from it.
This is a given. I'm still figuring out the whole blogging-for-money thing because I did it as a hobby for so long. This includes taking the time to learn all the technical jargon associated with marketing and maintaining a blog. Maybe one day, I'll be able to pay for a domain and migrate off of Blogspot for good. Or, I just might keep this account. Google and Blogspot have been good to me, and that's a big reason to stay.

• Take part in a conference.
This one has both a professional and a personal side. On the professional side, I would like to attend a conference for help in expanding my blog and making money from it. On the personal side, some of my interests like henna tattoos and makeup have conventions that I would like to attend just because the subject interests me. Of course, I would first have to be able to pay for the travel and lodging expenses, which is why I haven't gone to any conferences of any sort so far. Now if any of these conferences were to come here to my part of Arizona, I'd happily find a way to attend.

• Reconcile with some long-standing family feuds.
This is a bit of a long stretch, but it would be nice if I could reconcile some of the family feuds I got caught up in that threw my life into turmoil. Some progress has been made already, which is good. I want to take that progress further.

• Grow in faith, every way I can
Pope Francis has designated this year to be the Year of Mercy. I could use some mercy and become more charitable towards others in the name of my Catholic Faith. Our Carmelite other church and the Latin Mass church we attend can be sources of great help in this regard.

What's on your bucket list for this year?

To take part in Alana Le's 21 day blog challenge, click here.

Thank you for reading and please share, comment and subscribe to my blog

Indian Earworm: Idhi Oka Nandanavanam

Greetings!

I came across this trippy video on Facebook this morning while I was checking my feed.

This gawdy '80s+seemingly acid trip-inspired video proved to be quite the earworm. It's from a Telugu-language South Indian film called Adavi Donga. From what I could parse from the grammatically-mangled Wikipedia entry, the movie is about a man who is orphaned as an infant and raised by wild animals in the jungle; an Indian version of The Jungle Book as it were. Unfortunately, I could not locate an English translation of the lyrics to this song. It might make sense if one could actually know what the song is actually about! Indian music videos aren't necessarily presented in context with the scene, even if the song is related to the scene.

Of note, the lead actor of the film and the lone human male in the video, Chiranjeevi, would follow the path of many entertainers and venture into politics. He was an MP for the state of Andhra Pradesh in the Indian National Congress (similar to our Senators here in the US). Chiranjeevi also served in the Indian Ministry of Tourism until 2014. Chiranjeevi still remains active in Tollywood (Telugu language) media.

Have fun watching this bit of Tollywood fun. And if there are any Telugu speakers who come across this blog, would you please be so kind as to leave a translation of the lyrics to this song in the comments? I would appreciate that very much.

The Republican Debate, Round 4

With great reluctance, I watched the shitshow known as the Republican debate. It's been their umpteenth debate this year, which is appropriate cuz they have to weed out the worst clowns of the bunch. I loaded up my browser window to the Fox Business website, poured myself a tall frosty glass of beer, and sat down to watch.

Republicans, always lurking, ready to steal your soul

As I expected, it was a shitshow. The moderators did as good a job as Fox anchors could, bringing up issues on the economy. Trump the Chump was his feisty New York self and Ted Cruz had no idea what he was talking about. Rubio was his usual dumb-fuck self, and Kasich was the best sounding one on the stage, even beating out Ben Carson who should have stuck to the operating room, not a political stage. Everyone talked, but no one had any answers-just like Republicans are wont to do.

Why did I torture myself with this clown cavalcade? Mostly to stay informed of the other side. If you don't know your enemy, you can't fight them effectively. Plus, I bought a fresh bottle of Captain Morgan 100-proof rum for my birthday tomorrow. I needed to break it in with a shot, in addition to my usual beer.

Good night everyone! See you all tomorrow

The Republican Debate, Round 3

In what was a fortuitous bit of programming and availability, I was unable to watch the shit show known as the Republican debate. My liver rejoiced at this bit of news, since the beer stayed in the fridge and my trusty mug stayed in the freezer.

Pennywise the Donald, my official image for anything having to do with Republicans this election season

In a classic display of capitalist hubris, CNBC, the network tasked with airing the clown show would not carry a live stream of the debate for anyone who didn't have a paying TV package. Upon reading this, I breathed a sigh of relief and loaded the ESPN radio browser so that I could listen to the World Series. While I am a White Sox fan and the Royals are our division rivals, I hate everything from New York with a passion-especially their sports teams! Also, with the exception of the chaotic year of 2012, I have not missed a World Series since 2003 and plan to keep that tradition going for as long as possible.

Go Royals! 

The Democrat Debate

Happy Tuesday, dear readers.

Like thousands of other households across the US, I loaded up my browser window to CNN and watched the Democrat debate tonight. Unlike the previous Republican ones, I was actually looking forward to this debate. The beer stayed in the fridge and my trusty mug rested comfortably in the freezer for another time.

#FeeltheBern. Pic found here

I must say, compared with the nutters in the Republican party, the Democrats have kept their sanity mostly* intact. Hillary handled herself well and Bernie did a great job keeping the working class on the subject. Lincoln Chafee, a candidate I didn't even know was running, was soft but his answer on National Security was right in line (a warrant is required for any communications tapping). The most interesting overlooked candidate was Martin O'Malley, the former governor of Maryland and Celtic rock star. Based on his performance, I think he'd be a decent Secretary of State. Jim Webb, the final candidate on the stage, is just a Republican infitrator.

As we watched the debate on my computer, my husband remarked that we're looking at Hillary's cabinet. She'll be the inevitable nominee, with Bernie as her veep. As for the rest of the candidates on the stage, she'll find other places for them in her cabinet.

Normally, I stay as far away from politics as I can. But, my husband vowed that should another Republican come into power in 2016, we'll pack up our family and leave the US for good. He suffered terribly under the Bush regime and doesn't want to repeat that experience now that he has a family to care for. This prospect forces me to pay attention to who is doing what and saying what in power. I've learned not to put my faith in politicians, but this proud Pinko will cheer for Bernie Sanders. He's saying the right stuff and will swing Hillary ever so slightly left. As recently as 2008, I could never even IMAGINE myself saying something like that. But, 2012 was a pivotal year and it forced me to grow up and see the world for what it was.

Go Bernie! Give 'em hell!

*Mostly, being relative to the general American political atmosphere. Both the Republican and Democrat parties are heavily backed by big money corporations and Wall Street, and when the Democrats had the majority in both the House and Senate, they still couldn't get what needed to be done accomplished (Obamacare was probably the lone exception). American politics have gone very right since the 1980s, with the Democrats being less right wing than the openly fascist Republicans.

The Republican Debate, Round 2

Against my better judgement, I decided to watch the second Republican debate this evening. CNN had it streaming live on their website, so I poured myself a tall frosty glass of beer and loaded up the browser window.

This will be my official image for anything having to do with Republican presidential candidates

There was not enough beer in the world for me to deal with this debacle. This shitshow was an insult to anyone with a functioning brain cell in their head. It was all the usual blat-blat, right-wing fascist talking points with some invocations to St. Ronald Reagan (in whose presidential library this clown caravan was held). And even the ones like John Kasich and Chris Christie, who showed some tiny semblance of humanity (Kasich with Medicare and Christie with a slightly more comprehensive view of "pro-life") can't help but be overshadowed by the other turds on the stage. It just served to highlight their own sanctimonious hypocrisy.

I'm convinced that Donald Trump's whole deal with declaring himself a presidential candidate is just to troll the Republican Party. His campaign run will either publically tear down the facade on our plutocracy when Jeb Bush gets nominated, however the books have to be cooked to get that result; or send the Republican Party going down in flames when he does get nominated. My husband thinks that Trump is pulling a Ross Perot to split the vote and ensure whoever the Republican nominee is doesn't win.

Whatever the way, the end result is clear: say hello to President Hillary Clinton.

I've never been so glad that I shredded my Republican voter card when I returned to Arizona.

Slavery in the "Free Market"

Over the weekend, a friend of mine emailed me an article written by the friend of a friend, and it has gone viral among my network of friends. The article, written by an Israeli living in Jerusalem, is a well-written scathing critique about how the "free market" inevitably enslaves all those who participate in it in one form or another.

It's too long for me to post here, so I will link to it. But there was one quote that stood out from the whole piece.

We should take birth, life and death as they come, as was done by our ancestors. If we won’t stop this plague now, we shall see our children and grandchildren stripped for organ transplants to the rich bankers who want to live forever, if not bought and sold for the amusement of gay couples. We shall see children being manufactured and mass-produced for transplants, for war, for labour, as Aldous Huxley prophesied in his too-prescient book. God’s plans can be overridden only at a huge cost, a cost that will dwarf the override of Obama’s Iran Treaty.

This brought to mind a conversation my friend and I were having. My friend mentioned that while he was looking for a new job, he came across the website of a facility in Scottsdale (a wealthy suburb of Phoenix, AZ) that cryogenically froze dead people. That was not a typo-the same cryogenic freezing that you see in the movies is what this facility did (in the desert, no less!). I told him how weird I thought it was that people would want to freeze themselves in the hope of being resurrected in the future. Even with freezing to hold off the rot, you'd have to get a new brain, new nerves, basically be reprogrammed cuz if you were to be revived a millenium from now, you couldn't cope with what the world then would be like. My friend responded by saying that this sort of set up, where you could be wealthy enough to have yourself frozen and then have the failing parts changed out like a computer, is a recipe for damnation. Like fundamentalism, this utilitarian mentality spits in God's face because it tells Him "the souls You have created are not worthy of my acknowledgment! They aren't even worth life unless they have something materially to contribute."

Read the rest of this excellent piece here. It's well worth your time.

On Guns

On 8/26/15, in a style that rivaled something out of a Hollywood movie, a disgruntled former newscaster went postal and murdered two of his ex-coworkers before killing himself. Just after he'd shot and killed reporter Allison Parker and her camera man, Adam Ward, Vester Flanagan II faxed his manifesto to ABC news in New York, posted his confession on social media, and then turned the gun on himself.

Could easily be a scene from a movie or videogame if it wasn't real life. Image from here

As we enter the "why" phase that precedes any tragic event, one big issue looms like a pink-polka dot elephant in the room: guns.

This year has been a particularly bloody year for mass shootings in America. In May, a South Carolina cracker shot a bunch of people in a Black church in Charleston. Prior to that, there were a bunch of people shot in movie theaters. School shootings happened too. The list continues.

The common denominator in all these tragedies-individuals who have no business even dealing with weapons, getting a hold of a gun and using it to murder people.

Naturally, this brings up the topic of guns in America. As many know, America loves its guns. The Second Amendment of our Constitution protects individual gun ownership by calling for a "well-regulated militia", which isn't possible without gun ownership. At the state level, gun laws are variable and range from open carry (Arizona, Texas) to all but outlawed (Illinois).

With such patchwork state gun laws in existence, the safeguards that exist also vary widely from state to state as well. Here in Arizona, you can buy guns without having to undergo a background check (restricted to private sales and gun shows, while gun shops still require background checks), whereas in my home state of Illinois, the amount of paperwork and licensing requirements are so onerous that it's a pain in the ass to even bother acquiring a gun. Lobbying groups, like the notorious National Rifle Association, don't help matters by buying politicians and stoking fears of "liberals" taking away peoples guns for one end or another whenever the subject of gun control comes up.

'Murica!

I'm no "liberal" (in fact, I'm a Pinko/Magenta Catholic), but even I know not everyone should have a gun. Even if you arm the general population to the teeth, it's not going to stop mass shootings from happening.  We'll just wind up with a militarized society that's a powder keg waiting to explode in a hail of bullets and blood.

But I'm not against gun ownership. As many beefs as I have with America and the way my country is run, I realize that the right to own a firearm is one that not many other nations share. I just believe that before you own a gun, you should have to undergo at least some safety training and be subjected to a thorough background check before purchase. Some individuals should also have a psychiatric evaluation done in addition to the standard background check before being allowed to own a gun if there is something that pops up in the background check that warrants it. I'm in favor of reasonable safeguards. I don't like the idea of banning guns because they do serve useful purposes, like self-defense and hunting. Remember, a gun is an inanimate object; a human holding it is what makes it deadly.

Of course, changing the culture around guns from one of seeing *insert preferred Other (immigrants, Moslems, etc)* crawling out of the walls to one of rationality isn't easy. Guns are a hugely profitable industry, and one that is very well politically connected from the NRA to the military-industrial complex. These people get their rocks off from seeing more mass shootings happen cuz then they can increase profits off the tragedy (arming both sides means more money in their pockets!), rather than support modest changes that would help reduce the likelihood of guns winding up in the wrong hands.The Ammosexual Agenda, if you will.

Stay safe out there. And may the victims of America's gun culture find peace at last

Schadenfreude and Scandal

Since my return to blogging last month, I've made it a point not to immediately comment on a major news story until later on when all the initial rabbling is passed and the frothing at the mouth has been reduced to a drool.

And the raging carpet chewing has subsided as well

But, I can't help but tune into my inner schadenfreude at the Ashley Madison hack that's been going on. How ironic is it that a website meant for cheaters to anonymously hook up got busted and now has their shit out all over the internet for everyone to see!

I figured that government officials would have profiles on Ashley Madison cuz, well, they're government officials! What else completes them like having a piece of ass on the side? But I was just rolling over with laughter when I heard the infamous Josh Duggar had some profiles on the sight too.

To understand why I was so amused to see that a purported "family values" and "pro-traditional marriage" man like Josh Duggar had an account on Ashley Madison, it's because I have very little tolerance for sanctimonious, bah-bul thumping assholes like his sort. Those kinds of people might well have "hypocrite" tattooed on their forehead. And when their hypocrisy is exposed, I just grab my beer and popcorn and watch the fall from grace commence.

You gonna share that popcorn, Mikey?

There are two big lessons to be gained from watching the Ashley Madison scandal:

1. Do not cheat on your spouse (goes without saying, but it's amazing how many people don't get this)
2. If you're gonna cheat, don't be dumb enough to PAY for a profile on a cheating website. You WILL get caught, one way or another. 

Even the most diligently-covered adulterer can never completely hide their tracks; someone sees a credit card statement or gets a notice bounced to the wrong email, a website hack happens, the adulterer slips up and tells the spouse outright, or the spouse finds out the truth on their own. And if you've been spending your hard-earned money on this shit instead of putting it towards covering the needs of your family, well, you deserve whatever bad shit's coming. The infidelity is bad enough, but putting your family finances at stake to support that vice is inexcusable.

Before he was called to take over teaching a class at the Mt. Angel Benedictine Abbey in Oregon, my favorite priest from the other church my husband and I split time at warned us about schadenfreude. The Catholic Church teaches that to take pleasure in another's misfortune is a form of pride, one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

I know I shouldn't laugh at Josh Duggar's fall from grace. But when you know something about how bah-bul thumpers operate and the mindset they carry, when one of them slips and causes a scandal, one can't help but feel vindicated. We saw that trainwreck coming a mile before it happened.

On The Republican Debate

So the big story of the day was the clown show known as the Republican Presidential Primary Debate.

This picture pretty well summed it all up

I initially had not intended to listen to the debate, as listening to Republicans and rabid Randrian right wingers has a tendency to infuriate me. But then I figured "meh, why not". It'd be laughing material, despite the fury raising factors. Plus, my husband's tablet was handy and had the TuneIn radio app open. So I poured myself a tall, frosty glass of beer and set the app to the station carrying the debate.

I'd only listened to about 20 minutes of the debate before (perhaps fortuitously) the stream froze and hung up the tablet so bad that a reboot was needed to fix it. By the time I got the tablet booted back up, I couldn't bring myself to restart the stream. Besides, I knew where this carnival of fools was going.

Now that the shitshow is done for the night, I have two things to say based on what I heard during those 20 minutes I'll never get back. One: the Republicans have predictably shit themselves on TV in front of everyone and have pretty well handed Hillary the presidency. Two: thank God I live 2 hours away from Mexico. Border regions like mine are pretty well shielded from the chaos in DC.

Hello Mexico. I think we'll be getting to know each other pretty well over the course of the year...