Seems the world is going to end! Within ten years the world could cease to exist. HOLY CRAP!! Why? Why is the world going to disappear?

• Environmental rape?
• The eternal fiscal serfdom placed on the many by the elite oligopoly?
• Never ending pointless wars in which the majority of the victims are the innocent and uninvolved? I’m looking at you, Sudan.
• The continued apartheid of the Palestinians?
• The billions and billions of people murdered in acts of genocide since the beginning of time?
• High fructose corn syrup? (please please please let it be ADM that is causing the death of the world!)
• Panda bears???

No! NO! NO!!!
This world, our home, the planet earth will “cease to exist in 10 years” if the Minnesota legislature passes a bill changing the wording of the marriage laws to be more gender neutral and therefore allowing gays to get married. That’s it! Really! Here, look! See! You can murder, abuse and systematically eliminate those you hate and the planet will be fine, but if the state sanctions a relationship between two consenting adults who happen to have matching genitals then the entire planet will cease to exist.
Wow! Who knew? Gay marriage is legal in all kinds of places, Norway, South Africa, Canada! But it would seem that those nations are not nearly important enough in terms of planetary stability as the little state of Minnesota. I knew Minnesota was pretty damned awesome, but I had no idea what power we held here. We have the ability to destroy the planet with one tiny piece of legislation. Simply amazing.
As most people know, I’m an atheist. I’m not a particularly fervent atheist, I do not want to argue someone out of their faith, I have no problem with people praying or believing or expressing their beliefs. All I want is the same consideration, don’t argue with me about my lack of faith, don’t tell me what I should believe and certainly don’t make laws that give comfort to your beliefs while trampling on the rights of others. When you do that then I have to get all pissed off and say unkind things.
If ever I thought religion was packed with horseshit, this is it! That you would stand there and say unequivocally that sanctioning the relationship between two consenting adults is far worse than the systematic and brutal rape of children in the Congo? worse than the actions of the few to throw the many into poverty? worse than the killing fields in Cambodia, the largest autogenocide in the history of the world? Slavery? Murder? Hatred? Abuse? Those acts get a pass but gay marriage will destroy the entire planet?

“If everyone is a gay, this world will cease to exist in 10 years,” said Ikram ul-Huq, the imam and religious director of the Muslim Community Center of Bloomington.

“This is not a political issue, or an issue of choice or rights. It is an issue of life,” said Andre Dukes, pastor of Shiloh Temple Ministries in Minneapolis.

You who claim to represent the Yahweh, God, Allah, Christ, Muhammad of your holy texts are nothing but shameful. You do not teach love or compassion or forgiveness, you do not teach people humility or faith.

And so the Lord says, “These people say they are mine. They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far away. And their worship of me amounts to nothing more than human laws learned by rote.
ISAIAH 29:13

Those you claim to worship and represent would look on you with shame and disgust. You do not teach their lessons. You peddle fear and anger to those you know will use it as a weapon against all who do not believe you. You use your positions of false power and false self righteousness to create an enemy that does not exist so that you might hold the hearts and souls of those around you hostage to your false words. You are serpents speaking with split tongues in order to advance your own interests.
You cherry pick through your texts to find the snake oil you sell, you ignore much and focus on little and because of you, people suffer. Let me say that again… Because of YOU people suffer. You could work hard to end actual suffering, protect refugees from rape, help implement safety standards for those that need them, fund life saving research. You could do something that would make a real difference to people…Instead you CHOOSE to be false, to take the easy path. You poison the minds of those who would listen and then you ask them to carry you.
Get out of my laws! Get out of my legislature! Spread your fear and hatred somewhere else. Let those of us that choose to, live in peace.
ETA: and while we’re on the subject, I think we should thank the Pope for setting the fight against the spread of AIDS back 30 years. Thank you. I’m sure that those who die in the coming decades will appreciate your efforts.
(I know I said I was going to avoid the news but…I lied, what can you expect from me, a godless pervert?)

Let’s not help the poor or middle class, no! that would be terrible! We don’t want to help people who made bad decisions or were lied to or fell on hard times! No no no! That would be bad. It would be bad to help this ever increasing sector of the population. Terrible!
But instead, lets just keep tossing billions and billions at the very very tiny sector that caused this gigantic clusterfuck in the first place.
And I’m not referring solely to short selling, credit default swaps or subprime mortgage slight of hand. I’m talking about stuff that started 30 years ago or even longer.
You have a company, the people in charge want a lot of money for being in charge. They want to be paid for their ‘talent’. Everyone wants to get paid a lot of money, so I can understand the urge. The awesome thing about this, however, is that because they are in charge, they get to decide that they can make lots of money! What are ways that companies make money? They increase the price of the product or service they sell, usually by creating demand in the form of an awesome product (ice cream) or leading people to believe that they have an awesome product (budweiser). More people want this, raise the price because they will pay it and woo, profit.
This is good and fine, this is how the system works. You don’t have to pay the increased price if you don’t want because there are always alternatives (ice milk).
But these guys not only wanted to make more money, they wanted to keep as much of it as they could! Wages decreased! Wages decreased, benefits decreased, unions were fucked sideways over and over again. The cost of living continued to rise because board members and CEOs wanted to make more money, and wages steadily fell away from the incline because those same board members and CEOs wanted to keep all that money.
BUT THAT’S OKAY! because you can have this credit card and get what we say you need right now and don’t worry, you’ll be able to pay for it because the american dream promises you great wealth! It’s the american dream! and if you find yourself unable to attain the american dream it’s not because we are charging you more for things and also paying you less for the work you do, it’s because you just don’t believe! it’s your fault because you make bad bad choices!
We complain about how we’ve turned into a consumer culture but it’s much worse than that. Teenagers live in a consumer culture. Adults struggle with consumer slavery. Labor movements, unions, collective bargaining, that’s all been turned into a joke in the last 30 years. The idea that what a worker contributes in terms of time and effort affects the bottom line and should be paid in direct relation to that is dead. A guy can work at a meat packing plant and do some pretty nasty job but get paid steadily and fairly because the work he does is necessary to the function of producing the end product.
Not anymore. Now they call it ‘unskilled’ labor and pay less. Then they say they HAVE to hire illegal immigrants because americans won’t do these jobs. And in some ways they are right, most americans would not do those jobs for minimum wage or in the unsafe substandard conditions found in most plants. You get rid of the unions and the worker solidarity and it’s pretty easy to start beating people down. Who’s gonna complain that the line is moving a bit faster every day? that the foreman is speeding things to a dangerous level? You’re not going to complain because you need this job even if it is low paying because shit is just so goddammed expensive nowadays and it seems like everything needs to be replaced and you just can’t afford anything. So you keep your mouth shut.
Let us not help these people who make bad decisions and do not believe in america! These malcontents who think that they deserve health care even if they can’t afford it! These libturd pinko commies who just want want want! Want more money and better benefits and maybe not get killed at the slaughterhouse. They’re the ones that made the bad choices…Certainly the same can’t be said about the soulless bitchpuppets sucking up relief money like it was a pile of blow on a hooker’s ass!
We have to help THEM! It should be obvious to anyone you have to help those who believe in the american dream! The dream of struggling hard to be born to the right families, get the right advantages! They are the ones that worked so hard to clamber up the weakened and bloodied backs of every person that just was not them!
We must grant bonuses to the pocketcocks and whoreblind jackasses that were instrumental in this bringing about this situation in the first place. We have to reward that vision of leadership, that golden mind that thought, “it is only right and good that i get even more”. They can lay there, fat and bloated, with their mouths hanging open and we can just continue shoveling our money down their throats. They deserve it. They lived the dream.

Right now Chester is sleeping in a pile of felted sweaters that I am planning on using in projects. Normally I’d kick him off the sweaters but he just looks so so comfortable! I’m pretty sure this is the best thing he’s ever had. He didn’t even get up when I went to the kitchen to get my coffee and he NEVER lets a kitchen trip happen without him.
He just buried his nose under a sweater, sighed and went back to sleep. Guess he’s keeping the sweaters for a while.
Speaking of Chester! Don’t forget to let your animals write in with their questions or comments or stories, Chester will be taking the helm and answering questions soon!
but let’s look at the things in the people world…
***
Dear Auntie BubboPants,
I have to admit that this is pretty weird for me to write to someone I don’t know about my personal problems, but I am hoping that I am not missing something in translation or communication…
Here is the issue, my husband, is in the military. We’ve been married for almost 9 years and have 4 children. Like a lot of marriages, we’ve had our ups and downs. Fast forward to a week or so ago, said husband asked me to get something out of his laptop bag/all purpose bag, and while I didn’t know which compartment said item was in, I came across some photos, there were 4. One of each of the kids (older photos of the girls), one of me, and one of some girl I didn’t know. Even now, I get somewhat teary eyed just writing about it. I’ve tried to talk about it, confront about it, whatever it takes to try to get an honest answer out of him about why he would carry it. All I get is some twisted answer or some blame on me for him to have it in his possession! Even to go as far as to tell me that he has ‘forgotten’ about it.
I’m sick to death with having to have this battle, and why he can’t be honest with me. It hurt my feelings so bad, and I just don’t know where to turn or who to talk to with it. I have no idea how long he had been carrying the photo, and there is even a little note on the back. I can’t recall what it said. It was just so unexpected and I was so surprised. I have all these other thoughts running through my head when he is deployed and I just can’t handle it…not that I think he would cheat outright, but I just don’t know anymore. We’ve been to marriage counselors over the years, because we have such a major miss communication.
I have a lot of trust issues to begin with, and I know he is aware of this. Lately we’ve been arguing about a lot of things, and the worst of the arguing comes from how much I dislike his family and his religion. I’ve been feeling so disconnected, hurt and majorly distrustful lately. Maybe you can shed some hope somehow, maybe I am missing something. It’s like everything I know has been flipped upside down. Would you carry a photo of someone in your knitting/crochet bag that you were not married to? My mom said that I shouldn’t make a big deal out of it, and another friend said I shouldn’t read into it so much.
Thanks for letting me vent, I’d like to remain anonymous (if you put this in the column)…I’m sure you get a lot of marriage issues? Please tell me I am not the only one out there that has issues…there are so many times that I feel like an island.
Anonymous Chicken Butt
Dear ACB,
Okay, I have written and rewritten this answer. I have gone to play mindless flash games, I’ve read other things, I’ve sat quietly, I’ve written it and erased it. I keep trying to find the right words to describe what I’m seeing.
The fact of the matter is that you and your husband stopped being husband and wife a long time ago. Being married isn’t an endurance sport, you don’t get to the playoffs for scoring well. The only way a marriage works is if you and your husband are on the same team working together towards the same goal. You should not be two disparate people forced to put up with each other and yet that is exactly what I am seeing.
I get so many letters that say “I am just so tired of fighting” and I just want to hold the letter writer and whisper, “then stop fighting”. It is so important that both of you stop seeing each other as the enemy and start seeing that if you can’t work together then 4 kids rapidly approaching their teen years are going to eat you alive.
I don’t know who that is in the picture and it does not matter who she is. What does matter is that he won’t tell you who she is. He’s being cagey and obtuse, any adult with 2 neurons in their skull will know that not answering the question is only going to make someone more suspicious. The more suspicious you get, the more hurt and upset you feel and the more you see him as the enemy and the more you lash out and the more he feels that he was justified in not telling you. It’s a vicious and ugly circle and quickly takes on a life of its own.
The first thing I want you to do is take some time alone and think about the situation. What are the possible answers to “who is the person in the photo?” Someone on the side? Someone with whom he flirts but has not done anything with? Someone who is interested in him but he is not so interested in her but she gave him a photo and he absentmindedly stuck it in his bag and never gave it a second thought but when push came to shove felt he could not answer your questions because you wouldn’t believe him anyway?
Think about all the outcomes and think about how they make you feel. Especially think about that first one, what if she is someone on the side? What would your reaction be? Would your reaction be, “I knew it! I knew he would do this one day!” What if it’s the second option, would you believe him? would you be angry that he is flirting with someone else? Or what if it was the third option? Would you say, “that’s absurd, nobody carries photos of people they aren’t married to!”
It’s obvious you have no faith in your relationship and perhaps he doesn’t either, I don’t know. You make yourself crazy worrying about his possible infidelities when he is deployed. Do you think he WOULD cheat on you when deployed? Why do you think that? More importantly, why did you marry a man that you assumed would cheat on you when you were not around?
These thoughts and feelings get funneled into our actions. I’m not saying he did or did not cheat, I have no way of knowing that. What I do know is that when you suspect such an action you will start to act suspicious and when you act suspicious the other person begins to feel like the enemy. They become defensive, they no longer see you as their reliable teammate, but as someone with whom they have to tread lightly for fear of saying the wrong thing and driving those suspicions.
So, if you think he is cheating then I want you to think about what the next step is. If you are merely afraid that he might cheat, then you need to spend some time thinking about where that fear comes from, and how it is affecting your relationship or how it has affected your relationship.
Ever since people clumped together in groups and started defending themselves, men have gone off to battle and the women have stayed behind to raise the kids and run the house. This isn’t easy. Not only are you constantly worried about his safety but you have the added pressure of doing all of the household things like raising the kids, making meals, buying groceries, paying bills all by yourself. This kind of thing makes you tough and steely. Being a soldier on the battlefield also makes you tough and steely. Then he gets sent home and you have these two tough and steely people who, lets face it, barely know each other, trying to blend their lives back together. You have a system for running the house, you have worked so hard to get this system in place and here he comes all wanting to take over the system but who the hell is he? Some guy that does not know that you do not buy groceries on Wednesday and you certainly don’t buy sugar cereal for the kids!
This happens over and over and over. Military families breaking up because the post deployment life is perplexing at best, harrowing and frustrating at worst. Of course you can add all kinds of PTSD and other injuries to the mix, those don’t help. Oh, and then one person suspecting the other of cheating during their time apart. That’s an onion in the ointment.
What you have here is not so much a miscommunication, but a complete breakdown of communications. You’ve both stopped working together, you’ve both stopped listening. You’re both so busy building your defenses and barriers and safety zones that you’ve walled yourself away from each other. How the hell are you going to work together if there is 3 feet of concrete between you?
If you want this marriage to work and I’m not telling you that it will or can, but if you want it to work you are both going to have to start dropping your defenses and start seeing each other. And you know what? Sometimes that means you will get hurt. That happens. But still we keep the defenses lowered because sometimes the hurt is not intentional, or sometimes the hurt is less of an attack and more just something that we just don’t want to hear or know or accept about ourselves.
You went into marriage counseling with an idea that the marriage was cracked and you needed some tape for it. That’s not going to work. The marriage is not an object, separate and distinct from you. The marriage IS you and both of your are creating the rift. You have to go back into counseling with your defenses down, with your softness exposed and weak. You both have to go into counseling with just this question and no other question, “what do i need to do to be a better teammate for my spouse?” Neither of you gets to play any sort of ‘tit for tat’ game, neither of you gets to say “well…you do THIS and it’s way worse than THAT!”. You don’t get to say it at all and you need a marriage counselor that knows this and will make you stick to it.
Both of you are 100% responsible and both of you need to start working on it.
Also, I know I wrote a lot and I’m sorry about that, but let me just add one more thing before I go. His family and his religion? They are never going away. You do not have to like them but you certainly have to accept them and you have to respect how important they are to him.
Good luck chickenbutt. Please keep me posted. This CAN work out but only if both of you are willing to work harder than you ever have before.
***
Dear Auntie BubboPants,
My first ‘I love you’ bf was in high school. We dated for about a year and a half, but then his parents were going through a divorce and he ‘needed a fresh start’ so we broke up, er, he dumped me in our junior year. Then a couple weeks later he started dating a freshman. The horrible things that stupid high school boys do. We dated again for a couple months, but both agreed that was a dumb idea and broke up.
Fast forward to today, where I am almost 30 and involved with an awesome guy and we’ve talked about the ‘m’ word, however far in the future that might be. Would I trade new awesome guy for old high school dude? Not a chance. New awesome guy loves all the little things about me that old guy ignored. He even TiVo’s all the show he knows I’m missing. So why can’t I get the doofus out of my head? He’s haunting my dreams, literally. He even popped up on Facebook a couple of weeks ago. Odd thing was, I went to a palm reader a couple of weeks ago (for laughs) and she said, “Who is this guy you’re trying to dig up? Stay away from him.” Okay, that’s open to interpretation. Do I try the old ‘write a letter telling him what a crapbag he was and how great I’m doing without him and then burn it’ route? Please help me forget this guy.
signed,
Made a New Friend and Wants to Dump the Old
Dear MaNFaWtDtO,
Um, do I need to drive to where you are and smack you in the back of the head? because I will! Acting all like a chickenbutt with crazy urges!
This ex of yours DOES NOT EXIST. done. over. gone. The person he was when you were together does not exist anymore because you are together. poof….there it goes. Writing to him is about as useful as writing to a stegosaurus and telling him that you’re glad he’s extinct.
More importantly, you do a disservice to your current guy. You think it’s okay because you are thinking about how much better this new guy is compared to the old guy, but really all you are doing is obsessing about the old guy and funneling energy into the trash can. Relationships should never be treated as a ‘trade up’. When you do that you leave open the possibility of trading up again.
That guy is gone. The relationships do not compare. Stop wasting your time wienering around and start focusing on what you have right now!
***
Dear Auntie BubboPants,
I did it. I cast on and knit a sweater for my now ex-girlfriend. I knew when I cast on that things were not good. I wonder if I really really knew about the sweater curse and that just helped me make the decision to end the relationship…
So now – the dilemma. It’s now 3 months after the final “goodbye”. I’ve asked the ex for no communication whatsoever (well – there is some joint property – so we have to communicate sometimes – but you get the picture). And…I’ve finished the sweater. It’s made just for her – she picked out the yarn – it’s a top-down raglan scaled exactly to her size.
I really don’t mind sending it to her, but since I am the one who said no communication, I feel that sending it is a really bad mixed message. I really don’t care if she wears it or burns it – but I promised that I’d finish it, and I keep my promises.
Friends are split – some say don’t ever send it. Some say – wait six months and see if you can both get over the breakup then send it. Some say – oh, wtf – send it anyway.
My main issue is that I made a promise – and I’m not clear on the next steps.
Any advice?
Done with the Sweater
Dear DwtS,
hmmm interesting….
Like you, I like to keep my promises and if I promise to make something for someone I want to keep that promise no matter what. This is something really important to me.
On the other hand, a handmade sweater given as a gift after the break up if completely filled with all kinds of crazy messages, intended or not.
So, I give you this…
If you were more than half way done with the sweater when the break up happened, then give her the sweater. If you were less than half way done then donate it to charity and be done with it.
***
Dear Auntie BubboPants,
It hit me the other day that I’m really quite close to graduating from college. Not in May (thank goodness) but I will graduate a semester early, in December. I know the job market is terrible, but I really can’t put myself through more school to get an MBA. I’m really excited to get out into the big bad world, but the truth is, I’m so scared that I could piss my pants.
A few years ago when I envisioned myself at this point, the envisioned me was in a great relationship with the now-ex (lying cheating bastard) and..well…alot braver. There are a few job offers on the table, but none of them were what I was hoping for and not nearly the salary I was hoping for. Even working for my dad isn’t going to be as lucrative as I once thought it would be. And I feel like a total butthead for even saying this when so many people are un- or under-employed.
So what I’m saying is that nothing has really gone to plan, and I’m absolutely terrified. Is it normal to be panicking nearly a year before graduation?
Scared Shitless and Running out of Optimism
Dear SSaRooO,
Is this normal? Hell, this is to textbook normal that I’m surprised they aren’t teaching a class about it:
“You Plans are Meaningless: Section 101 Fate is Laughing at You”
Seriously, though, it really is normal. We make plans and we create expectations based on a set of criteria and a somewhat misinformed set of data. As we move forward in life we work and work and work and suddenly remember those plans and dreams and they aren’t matching up and WHAT THE HELL!
But we only look at the goal and not what led us to decide that this was where the goal should be set. When you set this goal, how much did you understand about the vagaries of the economics of this country? When you were thinking about salary, where did your figures come from? How realistic were they? When you were thinking about the longevity of your relationship, where did…yeah you know.
It’s perfectly normal to be scared. In fact it is GOOD to be scared. Being scared means you’re thinking, it means you’re paying attention, it means that you are learning early that things do not always turn out as we wish they would. The younger you learn to not only accept that but how to adapt to it, the better. Those people who seem to always hit whatever goals they set right on time? They’re the ones that freak out in the grocery store one week because there’s been a tomato recall and they had plans to make BLTs for dinner and how the good goddamm are they supposed to make a bacon lettuce and tomato sandwich if there are no tomatoes available for them to reach this goal. Weird but true. Trust me, I’m Auntie BubboPants.
Things won’t turn out the way you expect them to, but if you are prepared and can adapt then quite often things end up way awesomer that you could have imagined.
This is not what I imagined my life would be like at 35. I never pictured any of this. But I love it, I really really do love it.