Ramblings of a mental patient

So some of you are way more political than I am. Besides writing scathing letters to my representatives, what can I do to make my anger at the health care industry known? I’m so sick of being (mis)treated by doctors its not funny. These guys treat you like they know it all, but they’re constantly wrong. Quality health care is a joke (even if you actually have health insurance). Prices are out of control given the quality of service. I have a more personal relationship with my mechanic than my doctor. Between insurance companies trying to control what doctors do, and doctors treating patients like they’re inanimate objects, I’ve had it.

There’s a great article on The state of linux graphics over on freedesktop.org. Its by one of the guys who was working on Xgl. Even though linux isn’t my primary desktop any longer, I’m still interested in the state of graphics on it. The fractured community tends to slow things down, but creates wonderful diversity of choice at times too. Certainly lots of fun stuff to look into over there.

Shamelessly ganked from , I bring to you an alternative to both creationism and evolution.

I bring you the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. There is hope yet for our burger flipping progeny.

Kat & I watched Constantine again before bed. I guess I like the movie because it was my idea to see it again.

I had really weird dreams inspired by the movie. My dreams centered around religion, demons and angels. I dreamed that Kat saw my succubus again[1], only this time she woke me up and I fought the beast.

I had a dream that all organized religion was an insidious plot by nameless evil to drive humanity further from the truth and enlightenment, and I had the proof. In my dream I was hunted down and killed by a mob of people.

All in all, it was fun.

1.
To this day she swears she saw something that night. A woman in braids with an ageless but ancient face staring down at me with pure malevolence. This was when I was staying with a friend and she’d spend the night now and then. She says she woke up and saw the apparition staring at me. Then it saw her and she hid under the blanket.

So I clued in and learned that there’s this band called Children of Bodom that are totally my style. They kinda remind me of Strapping Young Lad meets Samael with a little Dark Tranquility thrown in.

I really need to ipod my car.

Today someone found a small garden snake in front of one of our conference rooms. He was a tiny little dude, about 5″ long and no bigger around than my pinkee. I haven’t caught a snake since I was a kid in vermont. I have no idea how he got into the office or how he managed to not get stepped on, but I saved him.

Everyone was all giddy about it and dancing around when he’d try to hide under their shoe. So, I put him in an old coffee creamer box and let him go in the wooded area behind our industrial park. That was pretty much the highlight of my day.

I think the root cause of my considering cutting back on red meat is my heightened awareness of my own mortality at the moment.

Certainly cutting down my fat intake will result in a lessening of the flab, so its all good.

Its been boiling in my head for a while now, but I think its nearing completion. I may be forced to give up eating most meat. This isn’t because I care deeply for animals and feel its wrong to eat them. This is because I’m convinced that there are inadequate safeguards in place in this country. I don’t feel that the meat I chose to eat is safe. This all boils down to mad cow paranoia.

There’s tons of info out there. I really don’t think the government is quite as evil as most sites make them out to be, but I do believe they’re stupid, short sighted and easily swayed by money. Given this, its not much of a stretch for me to believe that its well past time to abstain from red meat. This leaves fish and fowl. I suppose that can be good enough, but Kat hates fish.

So. I know some of you are vegetarians. What are your staples? Where do you get protein and amino acids? What do you eat to keep things interesting? I’m having a hard time envisioning what my monday-friday lunch is going to be.

Who knows. I’m a big slacker. Maybe I’ll just chose certain death. Then again, on a long enough time line…. it’s already chosen for me.

Trawling usenet produced this nugget:
The Accused : The Return of Martha Splatterhead

I’ve been looking for this album for years. I used to have the tape in the late 80s. Its no longer in print, the band isn’t around and not many people remember the Accused. They were this splattercore skate punk/metal band from seattle. This is before everyone in seattle started wearing flannel shirts and doing heroin. They rocked. High energy noise. They make bands like Cradle of Filth sound absolutely orchestral. Kat’s in for such a treat……

Oh, and I got my powerbook back. No data loss. There was much rejoicing.

Last night’s bbq rocked. I’ve decided that the reason its been so long since I played axis and allies is because I’m not just bad at strategy games, I don’t care for them. Just not my thing.

Now getting drunk and hanging out with the wife…. now we’re talkin. Kat got me to try DDR last night and as comical as it was, I didn’t do too badly on my first try. Certainly the beer helped keep it interesting.

Its a shame, because if they had better music for it, I think I’d actually like the game.

I’m not sure what time we got home, but the kitty alarms went off extra early. In fact, when I stumbled out of bed at 7:30 to see what was the emergency that had snowbear screaming her head off in the kitchen, I didn’t find a wasteland of empty bowls as I expected to. No, there were still 2 full bowls, so I stirred the kibble around and put out some fresh food in the other bowls. I gave the cat a stern look and she was like “What? I know there’s food, you two just looked too happy.” At least I wasn’t hung over.

Tonight, off for more bbq with Nick & Stacy. Some delicious kabobs and wine… Mmmmmm…… I love summer.