So what if I am?

If you found out something you never knew about a person, would you think less of them? That is not to say, would you think less of that person if they were a murderer or a child molester. I'm talking about something that would normally never come up in the context of your friendship or relationship, whether it be casual or business. If you found out a co-worker was gay would you think less of them as an individual? Do you think that they would less capable of doing their job after you found out they were gay, or do you think that would change anything other than your perception of that person. What if the person wasn't gay, but devoutly religious. Would that change the person's capabilities? What if that person was an atheist? Would that change them in your eyes? Would you think differently about those people in said circumstances?

I am an atheist. I get tired of people declaring what they 'know' about atheists without actually taking the time to talk to those they are judging. So what if I don't subscribe to any belief system. Does that make me less of a person? Does that make me a less caring or empathetic individual? Does that make me a person without morals or a person that cares for nothing but myself?

I like to think of myself as a reasonable individual. I like to think of myself as rational. One is not always rational, especially in moments of emotion. One of the problems I have the hardest time understanding is that when some individuals feel it necessary to put labels upon people when they have no understanding of the person they are labeling. I've heard too often that atheists cannot understand love. They only lust. If you don't follow (flavor of religion), you will never understand what love is. That's what bothers me. How dare you tell me what I'm feeling unless you can be inside my skin.

I find it creepy that they project their own insecurities onto others. I don't know what love is because I'm not following your creepy death cult? I'm the one with problem? Are you feeling so insecure about your own relationships that you have to obsess about others relationships and accuse them of what you're feeling? If you spend your life living that way, I find it rather sad. It must be a terribly unsatisfying way to live, unless you get off of misery.

Personally, I don't see how my being an atheist has any bearing on anyone else's life but my own. I don't have to worry about a giant universal parent scolding me for what arbitrary conditions have been put down in some ancient book that was made hundreds of years ago by a bunch of goat herders in the middle of nowhere. I could care less about things like that. I have a set of parents. I lived according to their wishes for 18 years. I'm an adult now and I don't need parental supervision, especially of the celestial type.

I don't feel the need to go tell everyone about my good deeds or whatnot. I work with senior citizens. So what. They love me to death. They don't love me to death because I subscribe to one religion or another. I don't do favors for them and give them aid because I subscribe to a religion. I do these things not because I want to feel better than others. I do these things because it's my job. I'm paid to give these people attention and assist them when needed. That doesn't make me a good person. That makes me human. I give them understanding and aid. That's not because I have some eternal threat of punishment over my head either. It's not for some goal that will make me feel smug and superior. I don't feel smug or superior because I did my job. Why the hell should I?

The reason I ended up in this job isn't a big mystery either. I needed work. Plain and simple. I like to think I'm capable of doing my job, and the fact that I've managed to stay employed in the same place for over 11 years goes to show that I'm doing something right. I do my job. I respect those I am here to help. Respect and understanding have nothing to do with religion. Love has nothing to do with religion. Love is what I feel for my spouse. Love is what I feel for my family and friends. Honestly those who argue that atheists know nothing but lust frankly disgust me. I don't lust after my family and friends. That's just fucking wrong. I'm not going to say that there aren't times I've lusted after my husband, but hey, I'm not in a marriage to be celibate. If I wanted that, I'd have you know, joined a religion that makes one feel bad for natural urges.

And I'm sorry that you have to spend your days trying to make others feel bad. It must be nice to feel so... smug and superior about your zombie cult. It must be nice to spend your days putting down others to make yourself feel better about your own failings in life. Atheists don't know what they're missing. They'll never know how much (flavor of deity) loves them because they cannot love or care. They just know how to destroy. You know what? Fuck you. FUCK. YOU. You don't know me. You don't want to know me. You just want to sit up there on your high horse and try to make everyone feel bad. Troll harder, cuz I don't believe in your god. Hell, I don't believe in any god. I don't care to. Nothing you do or say will change that for me. Please stop wasting your breath on me. You have emotional issues? Deal with them and quit projecting them on others. I don't care if you don't think I'm a moral person. I don't care if you think anything about me. I honestly don't. I have thick skin. But so what if I don't believe in any god. What difference does that make? How has that changed any of my relationships? It hasn't. It never has had an impact on anything. Those who have a problem with my lack of faith are the ones with an issue. I'm the same person I always was. If you don't like it, you don't need to come around.

Nice...

I live in the Midwest. You'd think I'd be used to the fucked up weather by now. Lately there's been pretty much two kinds of weather. Hot as fucking hell or fucking pouring down rain like a bitch with added thunderstorm. I'm really sick of both of these. I'm also sick of Missouri and Iowa sending their fucking bullshit this way. It interrupts quite a few things to have constant lightning strikes. You have to shut down electronics so they don't get fried in a power surge if the power goes out. I've lost a CD player to a power outage before and I'm not in any hurry to replace my PS3, computer or television. The first day I was off after my first string of working nights and around midnight a fucking storm blows up outta what seemed like nowhere. I don't watch television, at least American television and seldom listen to the radio so I had no idea until the grumbles started outside. We shut down everything and I played some Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor for awhile until the storms let up as I left the television on the only channel of worth, which shows the radar and any weather warnings. There was at least one tornado spotted during the big blow up and when everything died down, I turned the computer back on. Of course, the router was wanting to be a dick so RelUnrelated had to dick around with it for a bit. It seems that the router is having hard drive issues. Time to gut my old computer for one of my old hard drives. I proceeded to try to watch Garo again, stating, once again, every time I try to watch the series in it's entirety, something happens.

At three the next series of storms began, though less intense than the cluster that had gone through around midnight. It lasted just as long and I gave up on trying to watch Garo for the night/morning. I did get to watch the rest of it and Beast of the White Night yesterday, finally. RelUnrelated did admit it was a pretty interesting series, though he did seem to think the mermaid horror did show a bit of gratuitous boob. The main audience to for toku shows seems to be males, so I don't find it all that surprising. This was a mature series, unlike toku shows like Kamen Rider and Sentai series. Hell, the almost final boss was a giant topless woman in a g-string. What do you expect? The mermaid horror wasn't gratuitous compared to her.

Anyway, I'm assuming yesterday was hot as fuck because my computer told me it was in the 90's and the heat index was over 100. Fuck that. I can't even imagine what it's going to be like in August if we're getting August temperatures right now. So I headed to work tonight, (Still working nights by the way) and it was hot as fuck. We were about halfway when the radio popped up and said that the county that got hammered Monday night/Tuesday morning was getting it again. Tornado warning. Again. Storms were heading this way again. Wonderful. Maybe it would cool the fuck down at least.

So RelUnrelated and I parted ways at the car. He went to take pics of some buildings downtown here and I came into work a little early and proceeded to get some things started so I didn't have to deal with them later. By about quarter til eight, RelUnrelated came in to see what we wanted to do for supper for him, breakfast for me. I had him sit while I ran some meds to people before we decided. By the time I got back down, the sky had changed.

It looked kinda like this:

Lovely, isn't it? That's right outside the back door at work at about 8:15 pm. The darkness is clouds. Lovely rainfilled clouds ready to dump on everyone and everything. The sky did look better... so much better. Like this, within minutes.

Holy fuck. 26 minutes later I get the fucking picture uploaded!

This is the front of the building, in the same time frame as the other two, except from the front of the building this time. It's very windy and what we didn't realize at the time was that the camera had slowed it's shutter speed down and was exposing the pictures for 1 second, which is why they ended up so blurry.

I think it's kind of neat how the flag is whipping in the wind at this point. Of course, this was before the rain started.

Before the rain could start though, I sent RelUnrelated to the sixth floor, the top floor at work here to take a couple of pictures from a higher perspective. He realized the shutter was staying open longer because of the low light at that point in time. They pictures turned out pretty cool. This is the city building.

You can get an idea how quickly it got dark and how funky the clouds were looking. You don't see the layering as much in these pictures as you do in the ones out of the back door. He didn't go to the end of the hallways to take any pictures the other direction so you can't really see the way the sky looked from that height.

It started raining after we ordered our food and RelUnrelated went to go pick it up. It wasn't wimpy splash around in puddles rain either. The lightning was at a minimum for a change, but the wind was blowing and the rain was coming down pretty hard. I got off a few pictures from the front door, but only one turned out okay.

You can't really tell the volume of rain that came down very well in this picture and I wasn't exactly outside during this. This was actually taken through the glass of the front doors. I wish I could have gotten a better view of the rain that wasn't all blurry.

And there was one other danger out. High speed buses. 

Sunday/Early Monday Music

I'm so lax about doing some things. This week has been chaotic, so I should be forgiven for that. I've gone from working the 12 hour daytime shift to the 12 hour night time shift and made the transition in a day and a half so I do have a reason for being off for a change. This would normally be my weekend off. Of course, I'm at work at it's 11:30 on a Sunday evening. I've gotten the bulk of my work done for the night and am taking a little break to cool off. I'm sure I look fucking awesome. I have my slacks yanked up to my knees to try and cool off a little quicker in this fucking brick oven. It's actually working and I'm certain I look like a total dumbass. I don't care though.


What kind of music shall I look for today? Oh hell, I have no fucking idea. I'm playing Kamen Rider OPs in the retirement home? Hell yeah, we can go with that. I missed W last week because of soccer and W came out right before I left for work, so I need some kind of fix. Sure, Kamen Rider opening music and inserts.. I can get behind that. Most of the songs are pretty damn catchy and I have at least a dozen different albums so it's not like I've never listened to the music. I'm listening to a cd of it right now. Okay, let's do this.

Well the most obvious is Climax Jump from Kamen Rider Den-O. Why? Because I have an entire album of nothing but this song. Remixed, redone, reworked... whatever. Climax Jump, like Den-O will never die. The show will never end and there will never be enough remixes of this song. All I have to say is that the suit actors for Den-O had to have a pretty damn good sense of humor. The show is a riot and the actors even did an exercise video. Yes, I own it. Nothing like an exercise video that's broken up by fighting. Awesome. And I'll be damned if the song itself isn't catchy. Tell me it isn't and I'll call you a liar.





I watched Kiva, and after watching a show for awhile, the music tends to stay with you. Break the Chain is decent, but not as catchy as Climax Jump. There doesn't seem to be a PV up for the song so I went with a fan made video of Kiva's henshins. I'm all right with this, even if Wataru is a fucking crybaby. And he is. Not the most convincing hero at all. Had the show been more about his dad, it would have been as funny as Den-O probably. It's two shows in one. One in the past, one in the present and it switches back and forth between the two, and both sets of characters end up fighting the same Fangires. It could have been better, but it wasn't "Oh god what am I watching!" terrible.





I'm not going to lie and say I've watched Kamen Rider Blade. I haven't. What little exposure to it is from Kamen Rider Decade and Decade isn't canon for anything. Hell, he doesn't even have a story. But that's got nothing to do with Blade. That's not to say that I don't have the music to several Kamen Rider series that I haven't watched yet. This song is on the cd I made earlier today to just put in and listen to at work. It sucks having to sit for 12 hours with no sound. Blade Brave is a pretty good song, so enjoy.





Kabuto is another series that I haven't watched. Once again, Decade was my first entire Kamen Rider series so my exposure is from Decade. I like the concept behind the Grongi and the characters are interesting. Next Level has the kind of female vocals that I'm perfectly fine with. Damn I hate that annoying little girl voice.





Right now Kamen Rider W is airing and my current addiction. It's a pretty good show compared to the mess that Decade ended up being. The music for the show has been pretty decent as well. This is as close to watching today's episode I'll get until I get home. This makes me profoundly sad. Oh well. Enjoy some WBX ~W Boiled Extreme~.

How the fuck do people like this even get jobs?

I wouldn't say that what I do for a living is terribly skill intensive. There is a lot of physical work and it does take an ounce of intelligence and the ability to not lose your cool in an emergency. When the director isn't here, I or my counterparts on the other shifts, be it night or day are in charge of the entire building. We are responsible for making sure that those who live here are safe in the case of an emergency and seem to have the role of a catch-all for other mundane parts of this job. I work 12 hour shifts. There is someone there 24 hours a day, seven days a week doing the same job. It's not particularly easy to fill in when others get ill. There are only 4 people in that particular role. Two of us in the daytime and two at night. It's much harder to fill in for the night shift because not that many people can stay up all night and function normally. I have the gift for negligible amounts of sleep, so it's not all the surprising that I am able to fill in for any shift because I've worked both of them. I have the most seniority however and can pick my shift.

One of my co-workers, who works the night shift on the days I am off is ill. Now I'm not even going to get into that because if he stubs his toe it's the biggest event EVAR! Needless to say, he's one of the biggest drama queens I have even had the pleasure to meet. He's fine if EVERYONE IS LOOKING AT HIM AND GIVING HIM PRAISE. And he's fine if he's not obsessing over some stupid bullshit. I, being the kind and generous soul that I am, offered to work his shift because it's far easier to replace someone in the daytime because there are other people here and if you're going to work the night shift, you had better be able to stay awake and do your work.

I can, but it appears that not everyone who works the night shift here is able to understand that when you are at work you are not paid to nap. Especially if you are supposed to be watching Alzheimer's patients. If you don't understand Alzheimer's, do you really think that you should be working with them? The one thing about this is, while the Alzheimer's unit is a secure floor, the people I work for don't run the floor. My boss is not the one who hires and fires the staff that work up there. She is not their boss. The entire floor is run by an agency. There is very little I can do when their boss won't do what she should to correct any errors her employees make. If there's one thing I've learned from working here, it's that Alzheimer's is a very bad disease. I wouldn't wish it upon anyone, ever. It robs a person of many things, including their dignity at times. Unfortunately, this young lady apparently has never had to deal with someone who is a Sundowner. Sundowners have no concept of time and as with dementia, the person can be insistent, confused and downright mean at times. I've seen people afflicted by this quite a bit. It can be dealt with. And if you're working with Alzheimer's and dementia, you have to be patient. That person may ask you the same thing a million times. You cannot be angry with that person because they don't do it to be aggravating. They don't remember. Short term memory is affected with Alzheimer's and dementia.

Now when most people come to work, they don't bring their very young children with them unless they work in a daycare and their child is enrolled there. The staff on this floor do this often. Also, not an hour after this young lady came on, she was down, scared shitless by some rain. I had to walk through the floor to reassure her that there were no fucking boogeymen up there. She also has never worked an overnight shift. I have. I know that you are here for a reason when you work overnights. You don't get paid to sneak off into an empty room and take a nap. You don't get paid for leaving the keys to the secure unit lying out in the open for the residents to pick up. And yes, that is what happened. Had I not been down in the lobby, one of the residents would have walked right out of the front door, in a rainstorm at 3 in the morning. I have patience and I know how to control my temper. I was close to asking this girl why the fuck she was here after I actually FOUND her. She expected me to deal with this resident. She expected me to do her job while I have my own to deal with.

I am very close to calling her boss right now and waking her up and asking her where the fuck she finds these people that she hires and if they are actually trained to be able to take care of the residents that are up there. The fact that she brings a child to her job while she's supposed to be taking care of the people that are up there tells me that she really doesn't care all that much. The fact that the only thing I've seen her do is sit on her ass and watch TV tells me that she doesn't do that much at all. If a resident doesn't sleep because his body is telling him he's supposed to be up, don't expect me to stay up and do your job. You are supposed to take care of those residents, not hide in a fucking empty room to sleep. If you can't do the job, why the fuck are you here? No really, why the fuck did you take the job if you aren't competent or capable of making rounds and dealing with the residents on a one to one basis to deal with their needs. If you can't do that, why the fuck are you here? That's your job!

I guess it goes to show that any fucking moron can get work, even in a bad economy like this. I fucking can't believe people like that are left to take care of those who are the least able to speak up. I suppose I should start smoking again so I don't have to worry about things like that in my old age.

To the douchebag chiropractor

I've been reading a lot lately, and not without reason, about cancer. What angers me is reading over and over that people are told that standard cancer treatments just don't work and that the only way to get better is to use 'natural' remedies. Standard treatments don't work? They don't? I guess I better tell my cousin that she's not really in remission and she better start planning her funeral because she went to doctors instead of seeing some quack chiropractor that thinks he can cure cancer with magical remedies. I better tell my co-worker that her breast cancer isn't gone and she's probably going to die soon. And for that matter, I guess I better get to mourning for my spouse who will no doubt drop dead any day now. Oh! and my boss' former in daughter-in-law... guess I better tell her daughters that I'm sorry that their mother is going to keel over and croak because their mother went to a doctor instead of using quackery. Oh wait! You mean that bogus shit that these assholes are peddling isn't real? Even the FTC has a warning page up? So it's not just the FDA realizing this? And for all kinds of health issues, not just cancer?

Bullshit cures like laetrile have been around for a very long time. They are also responsible for the deaths of many people that could have been helped with standard cancer therapies. Laetrile caused an argument between myself and a resident at my job recently. After a whole 15 minutes he realized that maybe not everything that everyone tells you is the truth. And it never hurts to take a little time to learn about a thing before you make claims. And if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. There is no magical drug that can solve everything. Most of these 'natural remedies' make outrageous claims. None of these claims are proven. As with laetrile, actual doctors did do trials on the 'drug'. The tumors did not shrink. The cancer did not go into remission. The patients showed signs of acute cyanide toxicity. Sure, they died of cyanide poisoning most of the time, but damn if that cancer didn't get them! And it's not like this doesn't only go on in the US. It doesn't. Being naive isn't just confined to one country. It happens everywhere. And claiming that Big Pharma is after your money and doesn't want this information known is weak sauce. Please. Sure you could go somewhere like the Oasis of Hope for your cancer curing woo, but just so you know, that kind of thing isn't always a good idea. It's illegal for a reason, and regulated as unsafe for a reason. It kills people. Steve McQueen was getting laetrile treatment. It worked out so well for him, didn't it? And yes, those people may have still died from their cancer, but at least if they seek medical advice and aid, they actually may have a chance. I hope so long as greedy woo-mongers are around looking to make a quick buck off of people's fears and misery that things like this continue to happen to the worthless assholes. And that these kind of people are looking out for those who don't take the time to research the claims that these miracle cures make.

Too bad soccer ruins everything

Too bad FIFA is preempting Kamen Rider W for a week. It makes me sad, especially when I see this.

Dammit soccer, go away!

Monday Music 4: Nerd Edition

It's Monday again and I've been slacking off recently. I'm at work. Everyone bugged out early leaving the place to me again. Which means I'm trapped behind the desk for the last 5 hours of my shift. Whatever shall I do? Look at goofy ass music videos on YouTube. That sounds like a good idea while this weeks Kamen Rider W downloads onto my thumb drive to watch when I get home. It saves me the trouble of you know, actually downloading it at home, which would take a hell of a lot less time to do so because of the shitty connection that we have here at work. Then again, you get what you pay for, and we don't pay shit for it, so I guess I shouldn't complain.

Well, I figure I'd go full nerd today, not that it isn't obvious that I am one. I'm okay with this. I've been a big fan of They Might Be Giants for quite a few years. I've gotten to see them in concert several times and while it doesn't seem like these guys would probably be my cup of tea, I know the lyrics by heart to everything up until they started making the kids albums. The last TMBG CD I bought was the They CD. I need to get the newest one because I like several of the songs from it. They're very nerdy.

This one is for all you fundies out there, and I think you know who you are.

I noticed they they had made a correction to 'Why Does the Sun Shine' on the new album. I still have the single and have corrupted more than one person with their catchy tunes. A former roommate's stepson became highly addicted to them, in particular this song. My youngest brother S also became addicted. I think I like the original version better. It's much quicker.

Okay, so there is a video for the original so that one must go up as well. It's much faster and happy for lack of a better word.

Okay, so there isn't much substance to this song, but DAYUM is that a creepy Jupiter. It looks like it's going to devour the kid.

Okay, this one is pretty catchy too. They should play these kinds of songs for kids. They are informative and the videos are quite humorous. I like the 8-bit awesome.

And because I wasted a few years of my life in college studying this stuff and loved every minute of it, I have to have a chemistry related song. If songs like these interest kids in science, I'm all for it.