Rumination in Book Six: Trying to Hold On 2019

If you wish to know my feelings on the hot button political topic of the day, read one entry prior. If you’re looking for a TL;DR version: Alabama is a state that has consistently defunded schools and other programs that would keep children healthy, educated, or alive. Alabama is a state that has consistently gone after Birth Control by attacking Family Planning Facilities and by outright calling Birth Control pills an Abortifacient which is so medically incorrect as to be offensive. Now, they will open a criminal investigation into a woman who has had a miscarriage; they have made it illegal for a woman to LEAVE THE STATE to get an abortion (which is so unconstitutional from every single perspective as to be insane); and have criminalized the very act of seeking an otherwise legal abortion.
And please don’t tell me, “They’re not serious about the law. They just wrote the most restrictive and offensive one that they could in order to make sure the Supreme Court had to deal with it.” I am already aware of that. I was aware of that before Alabama even started debating the bill as I live in Iowa, where a Heartbeat Bill was passed for much the same reason. BUT TO THAT I SAY:
So, you’re stating that a political partisan procedural end run is more important than the actual people that the law will actually impact? In other words, you believe so strongly in your POLITICAL EXPEDIENCY that you don’t care if it ACTUALLY HURTS PEOPLE?



Man who raped 12-year-old awarded joint custody of her child




AOC: This law would force children - 12 year olds - to carry a pregnancy by their rapist.
This law would force people w/ mental disabilities to carry pregnancy by rape to term.
This law forces people to be pregnant against their own consent. It’s horrifying.

R. Warren: just to say: wealthy women will still be able to afford access to a safe abortion, in secret, regardless of a ban. This happens all the time, around the world.
Yes the law in Alabama is an attack on women - but more specifically, it’s an attack on poor and marginalised women.

The amendment to add rape and incest exceptions failed 11-22. Alabama will make abortions a felony, in all cases, from the moment of conception, punishable by up to 99 years in prison.

L. Bassett
There is no punishment in this bill for the man doing the impregnating, except presumably the obligation to pay child support in some cases. (Therefore, this is directly attacking women)

Speaker: Just so we’re clear, now in Alabama, a man who rapes a woman and gets her pregnant will serve less time (if even convicted) than the person who removes the embryo that was forcibly put inside his victim.

Jameela Jamil: I had an abortion when I was young, and it was the best decision I have ever made. Both for me, and for the baby I didn’t want, and wasn’t ready for, emotionally, psychologically and financially. So many children will end up in foster homes. So many lives ruined. So very cruel.
The anti-abortion law is also especially targeted at those without the means/ability to move state. Women who are marginalized, poor or disabled will, as ever, be the ones to suffer the most. The wealthy will have so much more freedom.

Chris “Captain America” Evans: This is absolutely unbelievable. If you’re not worried about roe v wade, you’re not paying attention. This is why voting matters!!

Speaker: there’s not a single thing in this world a male could experience that would even come close to the indignity of being legally forced to carry your rapist’s baby to term

Speaker: Make no mistake, this law makes it a crime for a woman to LEAVE THE STATE to get an abortion. This means that a State Law will travel to punish someone seeking a legal medical procedure in a different state. The Alabama Legislature just said, “Women are property of the State” make no mistake!

Now… with that out of the way… well, except for all of you who ran to the comments section to lecture me on how I should “be a Christian and stop letting liberals kill babies!” And yes, I will have a faithful, compassionate response… it goes a little something like: You can’t prove when or if a creature is “ensouled”; therefore, if you are going to claim life at HEARTBEAT, you should be able to remove the fetus and (say) put it on life support. Most laws require more than heartbeat to indicate LEGAL LIFE, requiring either/and respiration or brain activity. Therefore, if an ADULT/CHILD LIFE is said to only exist when Heartbeat AND Respiration; why is a FETUS LIFE only a heartbeat?

BUT… I’d like to speak something more than this Fucking Dystopian America has created for itself. Not because I don’t think it is important to talk about but because… I’ve been talking about it for a long time here. Apparently, it takes something catastrophic to make other people passionate about a system that was circling a toxic drain for the last 13 months. And nothing I say will change anyone’s hearts or minds. I’ll still be deep in Steve King Country. I’ll still be surrounded by people shouting “Trump is the greatest president of all time”. And I’ll still be surrounded by people that can’t come up with one GOOD reason why they believe that.

SO… if you’ve stayed with me to this point… let’s try to discuss something… anything else.

And my thoughts turn to my Wife as she’s pretty much the person I see most. On Tuesday, she came to my office to drop off my phone. I had forgotten my cell phone at home and she wanted to make sure I had it since I needed to drive to Des Moines for an eye appointment. She surprised me by also bringing a lunch she had made for me. Small things, small things that tell me I occupy her brain in some capacity are good. But of course… that was all kind of bollocks-ed up when I returned from my drive/eye appointment (6 hours in total) as she was “feeling tired” so was spacing out all evening… like… wouldn’t respond to me in conversation or asking questions or anything. It is very frustrating when she gets like that and we’ve discussed it often. If I’m in the same room with you, not more than 4 feet away, not responding to me is offensive. If you don’t want to talk, just say, “Chris, I’m sorry, I’m just really tired right now. Can we not talk?” or something. I’m an understanding and compassionate guy and I’ll shrug my shoulders and be okay with it. Completely ignoring me.... never an acceptable alternative.

While Wife was dropping off my phone/lunch, though, she got to meet our New Hire at the office.

Later, the new hire remarked that Wife was “very attractive and so tiny!” To which I replied, “Thank you! I keep telling her that, but she’s focused on turning 40 next year and won’t hear any of it.” The new hire’s jaw hit the absolute floor. “She’s HOW OLD?! Okay… now I’m just impressed!” Yes. That is correct. A beautiful woman. If only she’d hear it.

And you can say a million times that what I say and do DOES or DOESN’T matter because I hear both sides all the time. “You complimenting her on it doesn’t have any effect. She’s got issues within herself that she needs to deal with before she’ll be able to accept it from you” versus “You watching Porn and looking at girls is probably destroying her. She’s got issues that you’re probably exacerbating with your behavior.”
But here’s the skinny.
When my Wife was 123 pounds, going to Tae Kwon Do three times a week, and clubbing every Friday… she thought she was “a fat, hideous freak.” Obviously, she wasn’t. She was fucking breathtaking. Now my Wife is 155 pounds, sitting around the house, going to work out three times a week… she’s convinced that she is a “fat hideous freak with no value and gray hair.” Obviously, she isn’t a fat, hideous, freak. She’s a tiny woman with a great face who is loved.

Whatever loving or flirtatious or communicative or… all of my attempts to convince her that her husband loves her, values her, and wants her? All of those attempts are ignored, or fail, or are criticized… after dating from 2005 to 2011 and being married since then… I can tell you with tragic confidence… nothing I do or say will make a difference.

And I thoroughly believe that this is where a large portion of our marital strife resides. I was thinking about this yesterday:
Imagine a map to some GIANT amusement park. Like Disney World.

Now… I don’t know which rides are going to be awesome or which are going to suck… I don’t know what portions of the park Wife is going to love more than others. But I’m excited to explore the park with my wife! It’s why we got married… there’s this vast thing to explore and we decided that we wanted to explore it together! But… for some reason… reasons I’m not entirely aware of… it feels like we got out of the bus, walked up to the entrance, and then Wife froze. It took a long time to convince her to just go through the entrance and so now we’re in Main Street USA and Wife keeps visiting City Hall and the Town Square Exposition Hall. Now… yeah… Main Street USA is a fine place to use as Home Base as you explore the park but… let’s start exploring the park!! But she won’t. She thinks we need to sit down, plan exactly how we’re going to explore the park, make sure that nothing could possibly cause a deviation of that plan, and then go home… happy to have discussed exploring the park without ever actually exploring the park. And I think it has everything to do with how she views herself, her own self-confidence, and all of that mess. And here’s the funny thing… I know me. I know I don’t have awesome self-confidence either. But that’s the difference between us right now, I think. Wife looks at something and says, “I’m going to fail. I shouldn’t even try.” Whereas I look at something and say, “I’m probably going to fail. But let’s see if I surprise myself.” Which I blame entirely on the acting background. When the curtain goes up, it doesn’t matter if you want to try… you have to try!

At least, that’s what I’m hoping to mention at counseling. Because… it really does feel like I’m willing to try every door in the building to find what we’re looking for… and Wife is sitting in the living room trying to figure out how she should start looking.

Nala is doing okay… ish. She runs to me when the vacuum or auto-sweeper comes on. She tends to go to sleep in her bed (next to Wife) but during the night migrates over to the floor beside me. She still wags her tail furiously when I come home from work and she jumps up trying to get to my face to lick me in expressing how happy she is that I’m home. But her biting is getting… way too much. I’d say that considerably more often than not… she’s biting. I try to pet her, she bites the hand. I get up to go to a different room, she jumps up and bites the hand. I’m eating or drinking and she tries to bite the freehand. Tragically… I’m fairly sure that I know what the problem is. Wife will walk Nala (occasionally) and will put Nala outside and will sit on the couch and Nala will rest leaning against her. But Nala is a 5 month old puppy (on May 18th, I think) and she needs some legitimate playtime! Hell, we’ve got two nylon bones, a nylon loop tug toy, a Ducky stuffed friend, a NylaBone Treat Brain Game, two tennis balls… play with the dog! She loves it. When I come home, if I have time, I’ll play tug of war with Nala and throw the rope across the house for her to run, grab, and bring back for more tug of war. Yes, she could play that for three hours straight… I do understand that. But she needs stimulation.

I am hoping that when we get to the Trainer on June 3rd, that will help Wife in the Dog Arena. As she’s never owned a dog before, this may be more of her timidity and inability to consider another living thing’s needs naturally. SO, if the trainer teaches Nala “Sit, Stay, Down, Come” in that first training… things that Wife really wants Nala to know anyway… I’m hoping that having a structured training task will help. Something where I can just flat tell her, “Wife, you need to be working with Nala a lot on these commands. Because they aren’t ‘tricks’ they are important things she needs to know for all three of us to live better.”

And yes, that is Wolverine.

I heard something interesting on the Comics News. X-Men and Mutants in general have been… struggling… due to bullshit Industry Politics. You see, Marvel Studios basically wanted to kill off the X-Men Franchise. Fox Studios owned those movie rights and Marvel wasn’t going to do a damned thing to help a rival movie studio.... even though the X-Men Comic Book Properties were Marvel Property still. All of this became much worse when Disney bought Marvel. Disney had considered several times to simply stop selling ANY comic book featuring X-Men or Mutants because fuck Fox Studios! Well… now Disney owns Fox Studios’ Entertainment Division. Disney also bought Hulu, ever getting closer to becoming a MultiMediaMegaMonopoly, but that is a different story. With Marvel’s acquisition of Fox, what awaits the X-Men???

Allegedly, a complete re-boot. It was reported this week that the X-Men and all associated characters and story lines will be brought to a “permanent and final conclusion” in order for a single author in Disney/Marvel to begin a brand new X-Universe. Taking bets now on (1) how long until the author is required to bring on screenwriters to make sure every X-Universe story-line is Cinema Friendly; (2) how long until the series returns to featuring fucked up time travel paradox continuity shattering ridiculousness; and (3) how long until they put a “permanent and final conclusion” in place for the current X-Men movies in order to do a cinematic reboot aligning with the new X-Universe franchise(s)?

I’m genuinely a fan of a good coverup tattoo. I mean, I’m a straightlaced white christian midwest prosecutor… but I have tastes other than vanilla… and a good coverup that isn’t being cheeky about being a coverup? That’s awesome.

AND JUST FOR FUN................. CHIVE/CRACKED HYBRID

I have to admit… I tried these. Mostly, they increased my heart rate and made an already Super Sweater into a damned Faucet.
I love how passionately Jameela Jamil goes after these products and celebrities
This reminds of Teen Titans Go and, on the definite chance that it isn’t mentioned; Teen Titans Go (especially when compared to Teen Titans and Young Justice) is like taking Christopher Nolan’s Batman Franchise and turning it into Adam West’s Batman Franchise.











This one reminds me of READY PLAYER ONE, too. I mean.... I get why the author changed a bunch of stuff to make it more into a Spielberg Film but in so doing, he ultimately changed and betrayed massive points, themes, and important development from the book.


Unforgivable, perhaps one of the DC Animated Universe’s biggest mistakes ever.
The very first time the people at Warner Brothers/DC should have said “Zack Snyder doesn’t understand comic books or comic book characters.”

Explain this to me… as I was reviewing Chive Photos, I saw an entire gallery of “Sexy Women!” and I’ll tell you this… some of those bodies were good… some of those outfits were RIGHT UP MY ALLEY. But ultimately? I will never be a guy that is okay with Cut Off Head Pictures. Oh, I understand the need for them on the internet in a big way!! I especially understand the need for them when you’re submitting a sexy “Look at my body, look at my outfit” picture to a site like Chive. But for me? I need face, man. Face is primary. And I think I can explain it. I think ultimately… I know, understand, and accept that life happens. The woman with the Cut Beach Body at 20 may have the Soft Mom Bod at 40. But the face? The eyes? Wrinkles and life may cover up some of it, but it doesn’t eliminate it. A person’s face is where the beauty is. Maybe I’m an idiot for saying that… and I have an absolute illness about good legs… but even excellent Leg Photos… I don’t know. The shot’s not as hot when it cuts off the top.