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Jer Illuminated (10 unread)

Early Thanksgiving

Posted: November 23rd, 2008, 2:06pm EST by Jer

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I had one of those moments on the drive home tonight after dropping off my girls with Christy. That brief glimpse of connectedness to everything.

It came at the end cap of a wonderful week celebrating my daughters birthday. Earlier this week, on the actual date of their birth, I was invited to join my in-laws in their celebration. I got to see a new nephew for the first time and catch up with my sister-in-law and her husband. I received a nice compliment from my father-in-law and chatted with him for a bit as well. The girls had such a great time; they were absolutely beaming by the end of the night and it was probably their favorite birthday so far.

On Friday I went out with Red, her nieces, and my sister to see the new teen vampire movie. (I don't want a million search hits by invoking the name) It had both its good and bad parts but it was still entertaining and it was fun to get away from the kids for a bit and sit in a darkened theater together. I spent the rest of the weekend with all my girls, reading, playing Rock Band 2, board games, and dancing to DDR-worthy pop music.

Finally tonight we held a second birthday celebration at my parents house. It's so much fun to sit back and see how much my daughters love my sister, how much they love Red's daughter, and to see my parents enjoy these new lives coming into theirs. We all had a blast playing with the girls new toys. (as they're spoiled, utterly, again)

After I dropped Red and her daughter off it was time to take the girls back to Christy. I stopped to chat with her a bit about our weekend. She's so excited for my relationship with Red and how much she loves our girls. I gave her a hug goodbye and as I was driving home the past week just washed over me. The complete feeling of joy because of all the wonderful people I know, all the people who make me a better me, just because my life has been touched by them.

If the religious want to know what atheists have to live for I say we live for the same thing. The wonderful family and friends we make along the journey that is our lives.
The Tyranny of the Majority

Posted: November 13th, 2008, 3:27pm EST by Jer

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The historic win of Barack Obama and the joy and hope following election day were tainted for me by the passage of Proposition 8 in California as well as anti-gay-rights bills in other states. One step forward for our nation in electing an african-american as president and two steps back in denying the civil rights of a minority group.

You can believe whatever you want about homosexuals, you can even say what you want. (though I'll personally respond by calling you an ignorant uninformed asshole if you say they choose the lifestyle or they're immoral) But the second you start pushing for legislation of your imaginary sky friend's theocratic state we've got a problem.

I'm tired of hearing the excuse that the people voted and we just need to accept the result. (we're a Republic, not a Democracy; see the title of this blog post to understand why) I'm tired of hearing that we're stepping on the rights of the religious. (nobody is making you change your hateful scriptures or saying you can't vomit your bigoted screeds from your pulpit) I'm tired of hearing the argument that we'll be marrying pets, farm animals, or inanimate objects. (because animals can give consent and lamps can sign legal documents, right?)

God damn RIGHT you're the target of protests, you took away the rights of fellow citizens because it offended the sensibilities of your oh-so-warm-and-loving-god to allow them to marry, just like every heterosexual consenting adult in the nation. You're not the target of intolerance, you ARE intolerance personified. You've put your ancient books and ancient men who murmur in the name of god above your fellow citizen. You forego compassion for blind obedience.

Until you learn to love your neighbors, brothers, sisters, children, I and millions like me will continue to vocally express our disappointment in your choices and point you to a love beyond the conditional love of a petty god.

Join me this Saturday, November 15th for a nationwide protest of Proposition 8 starting 1:30 EDT (11:30 MDT) Visit [jointheimpact.com] for more information.
Yes We Can!

Posted: November 5th, 2008, 3:33pm EST by Jer

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Forgive me my earnest title but I can't help it. For some reason the full depth of what Obama being elected actually meant didn't hit me until I saw it on TV last night. Seeing prominent public figures like Jessie Jackson and Oprah Winfrey sitting amongst a crowd demographically all over the map, all overcome with emotion, finally caused it to click for me and I was continually choked up for the rest of the night.

I was witnessing history.

For the first time since 9/11 I felt solidarity with my country. But this time it was for an overwhelmingly hopeful and positive reason. We have overcome a shadow that has been cast on our country for too long. Obama's acceptance speech set the perfect tone. It was victory but a solemn one. There is work to do and he expects as much from us as we expect from him.

Today I am proud to call myself an American. We, as people of this nation, have made the right decision in electing Barack Obama as our next president for many reasons.
Election Eve 2008

Posted: November 3rd, 2008, 4:22pm EST by Jer

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I've been fairly silent on my blog regarding political topics though I've certainly been vocal other places like Facebook. On the eve of one of the most important (aren't they all?) elections of my voting adult life I feel like I should post something.

About midway through the day today I was able to quantify why Barack Obama will get my vote over John McCain. To me McCain represents the arrogant sureness of falsely assuming you have all the answers to life's big questions. He will act quickly and assuredly and ultimately, likely, incorrectly, just like George W. Bush did before him. There's no humility, just a sense of entitlement, of righteousness. The feeling of superiority is amply demonstrated in the way both use fear-mongering tactics to try to cow the public. If you don't do exactly as they say bad things will happen.

Barack Obama represents trust and hope. Trust that he can speak to the public as adults and we will understand, humbly asking for our trust in him to guide our nation, trust that we as citizens of this nation can work together to pull out of our current predicaments and progress and prosper in the years to come. Hope that our nation has repented of it's past sins and is ready to celebrate the nomination of the first black president.

It takes a certain amount of hubris to believe you can lead a nation, and Barack's squeaky clean image has some political smudges on it, but he still gives hope for what is possible. McCain still reeks of the ethnocentrism America should have left behind long ago.
New Music - October 2008 Edition

Posted: October 29th, 2008, 11:11am EDT by Jer

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This post has been begging to be published for at least a month now. It's new music time on Jer Illuminated!

iTunes single of the week strikes again with Buildings and Mountains by The Republic Tigers. The group has an ethereal rock sound similar to Mew but they hail from Kansas City rather than Norway. After listening to Buildings and Mountains I found a few other songs off the album Keep Color and I continued to be blown away by their sound. It's less electronica and more indie rock but still a very solid listen.

I found the second group, Echo Image, maybe a year ago on either Pandora or Last.FM when listening to my usual synthpop heavy rotation. I immediately loved the song I heard, favorite'd it, then promptly forgot about the band. Something dragged them back up from the cobwebbed depths of my brain and I finally searched for their album Compuphonic. I love this album nearly as much as I love Disconnect by Iris, every song just hits the electro-honed pleasure centers of my brain. The album was released in 2001 and I thought the group had broken up until I found a blog post on their myspace page announcing a new album and new song back in July of 2007. I've got my fingers crossed that its eventually released and approaches the brilliance of the first.

The last band I found, Blaqk Audio, came up as I was hunting down Compuphonic. There was a blog dedicated to darkwave and synthpop and I recognized the members from AFI in one of the images.

I hadn't heard about their synthpop side-project and I like some AFI so I gave them a listen. It was like the goddamn second coming of depeche mode. Cex Cells is another album fit for Jer's hall of A-fucking-mazing synth albums that should be played on infini-repeat.

FSM bless the internet in helping ferret out these brilliant gems that would otherwise be lost.

In Cavedoll related news I finally had the chance to meet Knessa and Camden in person. They were both very gracious, played an awesome show, and their kids are absolutely adorable. They also recently picked up a new guitar player, Josh Emery, that helps fill out their sound nicely. You can hear the re-release of 45 Minute Dance Party including Josh's guitars on their Myspace Page.
Tagged by Knessa

Posted: October 9th, 2008, 7:16am EDT by Jer

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Being that I'm a follower of Knessa's blog, I have been tagged.

Here are the rules: I have to answer the following questions with one word answers and one word only! Then I must pass it on to seven others.

The questions are as follows:

1. Where is your cell phone? Desk
2. Where is your significant other? Home
3. Your hair color? Brown
4. Your mother? Dysfunctional
5. Your father? Enduring
6. Your favorite thing? Dirty >= D
7. Your dream last night? Missing
8. Your dream/goal? Comics
9. The room you're in? Office
10. Your hobby? Gaming
11. Your fear? Regret
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Tokyo
13. Where were you last night? Apartment
14. What you're not? Credulous
15. One of your wish-list items? Home
16. Where you grew up? Magna
17. The last thing you did? Testing
18. What are you wearing? Khaki
19. Your TV? Shiny
20. Your pet? Siamese
21. Your computer? Fast
22. Your mood? Jovial
23. Missing someone? Red
24. Your car? Sentra
25. Something you're not wearing? Suspenders?
26. Favorite store? Book
27. Your summer? Uprooting
28. Love someone? Undoubtedly
29. Your favorite color? Purple
30. When is the last time you laughed? Recently
31. Last time you cried? Buffy
Wow, uh...

Posted: September 9th, 2008, 8:52am EDT by Jer

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I guess I didn't realize how much I'd posted "Red"'s name in the past on this blog. I think I caught them all now.
Oooh You're Proficient In Exotic Weapons

Posted: September 9th, 2008, 6:20am EDT by Jer

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I think everyone's gathered by now that I'm somewhat of a geek. My geekiness goes way back. (See my 7-year-old-self's drawing of Condor Man, I loved comic book heroes even back then) I've had a regular gaming group since I was probably 14 or 15. We're talking character sheets, funny-shaped dice, graph paper, and miniature figures.

I've stuck with this group as I've grown up and still see them on a regular basis to play. There were periods of time where I took a break because of marriage or newborns but I eventually picked up and started playing again. Role-playing games mean creativity, imagination, escapism, math, Cheetos & Mountain Dew, and mostly friendship to me.

Where was I going with this? Oh yeah.

So I've had to miss a few sessions recently because of prior obligations and I've been having minor withdrawls. World of Warcraft scratches a tiny bit of the itch but it's not the same. Luckily this last weekend one of our regular GM's decided to put together a game for some of our ex-mormon friends that were interested in giving the new Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition ruleset a try. We tested it out in our normal group and even a bunch of seasoned veterans had a blast with it.

Now we get to the good part of the story. I brought my girlfriend along (we'll call her Red to protect her from nefarious googlers) and she created her own character and joined in with the rest of us. I'll repeat that. My girlfriend created a Dragonborn Fighter, rolled dice, moved a miniature around on a map, and fought monsters. Without complaint.

I know you're thinking the same thing I'm thinking. Time to install that set of shackles I've been holding off on. I can't let this one get away.
Pretentious Book Meme

Posted: August 28th, 2008, 9:14am EDT by Jer

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I've seen this called both the Pretentious Book Meme or The Top 106 books most often marked "unread" by LibraryThing's users.

Here are the rules: BOLD the books you have read, italicize the books you started but did not finish (DNF), *STAR* the books you've read more than once, underline books that are on your TBR pile, and cross out books that you hated.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible: a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers
Montana, Hey It Ain't So Bad!

Posted: August 19th, 2008, 1:50pm EDT by Jer

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I'm back from my adventures in Great Falls proper. Damn they have a lot of casinos here. Would you call a converted 7-11 a casino? It seems too small to be called that.

In driving around I was on the lookout for a grocery store, knowing the liquor laws in other states are sane and just. I stopped by an Albertsons and I found this:

This brand, Schmitt-Sohne, was one of the first I tried in my sampling of various types of wine. I fell in love with this wonderful little german wine and haven't been able to find it in any of the Utah liquor stores.

For this, Montana, I'll let you sit next to me at lunch and look cool.