Yesterday I got wind of a documentary being queued up for the BBC. It’s about how the Catholic church in Spain has been taking the children of young, usually single mothers, and selling them to other couples while telling the birth mother that their child was dead.

You see, they were doing it in the name of God. A young, vulnerable girl would come in to the Church run hospital to deliver her baby. After the baby was born it would be whisked away and sold to other people who the church deemed “better” (read: can fork over more money to the Church) and more godly.

Then a nurse would go back to the woman who just gave birth and say “Ooops sorry, your child died.” The birth mothers were then refused seeing the remains of their children (because they were alive) or were shown a picture of a dead baby in a freezer. Nice. Stay classy Catholicism. But wait there’s more…

300,000 babies over 50 years. You read correctly.

300,000 babies who never knew their real parents. 300,000 mothers who not only had to survive the loss of a child, but never even got the chance to hold or see their little ones. 300,000 chances for the church to profit on the immeasurable suffering of the vulnerable.

It’s not often that words fail me, but what words can truly capture the scale of this crime? What words can connote the degree of outright evil perpetrated by the church? I can think of none.

So, Catholics, congratulations you are card carrying members of a criminal organization! Yay for you. But wait, you say that you had nothing to do with the selling of newborns and that the church you attend has nothing to do with the churches in Spain? Well you’re right and you’re wrong.

You support churches who sell babies, you support priests who rape children because you attend and tithe to the very organizations they use to conduct those deeds. Your faith puts them in a position of power which they are then free to abuse. And abuse it they do. Whether it be selling babies for 50 years, or priests all over the world sexually abusing children, or even the Church excommunicating one of it’s own because he has the audacity to believe that a woman’s call to god is just as valid, just as authentic as a mans, the only reason these people have power to abuse is because you give it to them. Every time you walk in the church door you give it to them. Every time you kneel in mass you give it to them. Every time you turn a blind eye to the countless abuses done in the church you give it to them.

The Catholic Church by any measure is a criminal organization. They have a history of abuse to the most vulnerable and a record of cover ups and non-cooperation with legitimate authorities who try to ferret out where abuses have taken place. I implore my Catholic friends and family…leave the church. Love God, fine. Worship Jesus, fine. Get together with friends and talk about your spiritual selves, fine. But please leave the church. Take power away from the criminals who run it. Walk with a clear conscience knowing that you’ve turned your back on the numerous atrocities committed by the church. The abusers can only abuse from a position of power, take that power away from them!

300,000 babies…and I thought I knew evil.

I was watching Bill Maher’s talk show and she was one of the guests. I had heard the name before, and kind of generally knew her as some talking head on the right, but the show was the first time that I had ever heard her speak on anything. How shall I describe hearing the woman talk?

It’s as if she were a life sized Pez dispenser. She has three flavors of Pez: lie flavor, rhetoric flavor, and blatant misrepresentation flavor. At any given time throughout the conversation, her head would slide back and one of these three Pez bricks of bullshit would pop out of her neck hole.

It was amazing to watch, I’ve never seen anyone speak so confidently while knowing so little. She also had this weird Stevie Nicks head bobble thing going on that was either her trying to shake loose an original thought, or the early onset of palsy.

All of that aside, crazy people are nothing new. I was completely ready to write her off like any number of crazy republican talking heads. However, she went on this one particularly obnoxious tirade that I just can’t let go. I’ve heard this nugget of republican thinking echoed more and more over the last couple of years and I just have to take a minute to address it.

She says during the course of the show that “government employees” are a drain on the country. She said that they were getting bigger raises (not true, our pay has been frozen by the President for the next five years), and getting bigger benefit packages (again not true, we’re getting the same Federal offerings we’ve always gotten) the implication being that we’re providing nothing in return.

Careful readers will note that I’ve already tipped my hat. I am one of said government employees, so I guess that this line of argument comes a little close to home. However it also gives me a prime position to tell you that I know what I’m talking about and Ann Coulter doesn’t.

How can so much contempt fit in such a tiny frame?

From the moment Ann Coulter wakes up to the moment she goes to bed she walks, like stones across a river, on the backs of government employees who have spent lifetimes making her world a little better, a little safer, and a little more free. And yet, asshole that she is, after she has finished using the backs of government employees to wipe her feet she spits on them and calls them the parasites on society.

Republicans, listen up. You benefit in a million little ways every single day of your lives from the government. I know, I know it doesn’t fit it the rhetoric machine to say thanks to the people who build the schools you learned in, the parks your kids play in, or the people who installed the pipes that bring clean water to your faucets. But it is unfair, disingenuous, and dare I say un-American for you to at the end of the day say that the government employee is siphoning off America when you’ve spent all day siphoning off the work of the government employee.

Ann, get your bobble head out of your ass and start thanking the people that you blithely take for granted every single day, because quite frankly lady at the end of the day when I consider who has done more in support of America, I’ll take one government employee over five hundred Ann Coulters.

Now first, let me say that we haven’t met yet. We haven’t talked, seen each other or had any flavor of meaningful exchange, but that simply doesn’t matter. My last post was about how Wonder Woman grew up on an island that doesn’t even have running water, yet they’ve somehow mastered aeronautics, and invisible plane making somewhere in between their fighting with sticks. She commented.

At first I wondered, who is this commenting on my post, then I followed the link to her blog. I’m in love. The first four posts I read were about the devaluation of zombies in our modern consumer based economy, her unnatural love of John Waters, the evils of Facebook, and how much she loves bearded men.

A girl conversant on any one of these subjects would make me all blushy and quivery, but all four, seriously! I must have her.

I know, I know, it’s not perfect. I’m married, she has a boyfriend whom I’m eventually going to have to shiv. I don’t know anything about her, she doesn’t know anything about me, but this is love don’t spoil it with your reasonable assertions.

Oooooohhhhh a lasso.

So I was watching some TV today and a wonder woman show came on. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to see it, but I totally noticed that one of these things is different from the others.

Wonder Woman (Diana) was born and raised on the island of the Amazons. All woman, all hot, no fatties (obviously not a comic written by women). They live a very simple life on the island. No electricity, no running water, they apparently just sit around all day eating nature’s bounty, and jousting with sticks.

Anyway, Wonder woman needs to go out into the world of “man” (neglecting the fact that the worlds population leans ever so slightly toward the feminine) and so she needs to get her some specialty tactical gear for personal protection.

It was either these or bulletproof nipple rings.

Item 1: Lasso that makes you tell the truth. Seriously. A lasso. When superman leaves his home he is invulnerable, can nuke you with heat vision, freeze you with cold breath, etc. Wonder woman on the other hand has a length of rope that will prevent you from cheating at cards. Yay for her.

Item 2: Bracelets that can deflect bullets. Okay, better, but still if you are going to carry around bulletproof gear why not oh I don’t know…a vest. Hey there’s an idea. Or maybe a suit. But alas, she can’t wear anything other than a battle bikini (must be an Amazon thing) and I guess if you are going to have a bulletproof princess prancing about while still showing as much skin as possible, then I guess bracelets it is.

What were you expecting...it's invisible.

Item 3: Invisible jet. How did I not see this before. W. T. F. Wonder Woman. You live on an island without running water, I can only assume that you wipe your ass with leaves. How the fuck did you get a jet?!? How the fuck did you get an invisible jet?!?! Who taught you to pilot and invisible fucking jet?!?!?

So for the record. Amazons live on an island lost in time, where they joust with sticks all day long because that’s the level of their technology. Yet, they also somehow seem to have access to invisible jet technology…somehow.

F U Wonder Woman. Thanks for making feel stupid.

For those of you that don’t know Gretchen and I are celebrating our six year wedding anniversary…almost. See, what happened was that we were planning on getting married in October (2nd) however in June we found out we were pregnant, and she had no insurance. So we pulled together our first wedding in five days, with just close family, however we still had the dress and the reservation for the October wedding, and we’re not one’s to pass up a party.

So this is the sixth anniversary of our second wedding, if you do the math it’s like twelve years together already, or maybe it just feels that way sometimes.

This was a nice hike out at West Pinnacles!  I took the day off to conquer the mountain, and Gretchen decided to come along with me.  It was a great date, it was a great hike, I was good all around.  I only wish it didn’t take an hour to get there or we’d do it more often.

Good news is that I’m sticking with the training in anticipation of next years event. Better news is that Gretchen and I went on the non-lost version of the death hike I took two weeks ago. That last hike really kind of broke me. I’ve never felt that bad in my life and I have never been so thoroughly defeated in my life either, however not one to let things get me down so I decided to go back and kick that mountains ass! My darling dulcet wife decided that she wanted to come along to support me and we had a really good time together taking our time getting up there so some beautiful views (to include the Mrs.).

So the bad news is that I didn’t get to go play in the mud and get hit with a stun gun, the good news is that I can wait until next year and I got both my revenge on the mountain and a date with my wife all at the same time. All things considered a win win.

For those of you who don’t know…never go hiking with Pete.  He’s one of the guys who’s on my Mudder team and he’s always in the mood to go on a hike that is well beyond the ability level of others in the pack.  Unfortunately he’s also the only one who knows where any of the good trails are so for some reason we keep following him into situations we have no business being in.

Last weekend we went to Pinnacles National Monument.  It was a really nice hike, for the first three hours.  Hours four through six sucked.  Hours seven through eight made me start reevaluating my life choices.   That’s right all, an eight hour hike…over 11 miles…over 2,000 feet of elevation change.  So basically, other than the mud and the women in revealing outfits, we just did the Mudder course.

It was supposed to be a much shorter hike, but Pete (who told us he was familiar with the trail) led us down a path that doubled the hike and brought us all the way down the mountain so we could climb back up it.  My GPS ran out of juice only half way through the hike.  The whole course is below.

Don’t hike this trail!

It was brutal, we weren’t prepared…ran out of water…blah blah blah.  Just consider yourself warned, no hiking with Pete.

Suck it gravity!  Today we did a hike at Garrapatta state park right off HWY 1.  It sucked, not going to paint a rosy picture here.  It took us three hours to go just over four miles.  The elevation change was 1900 feet.  It was straight up, and then straight down.

I was so happy when we got to the top of the mountain, thinking it was all smooth sailing from there, but no as it turns out going downhill that sharply is murder on the knees.

It hurt going up and it hurt coming down.

It was however, beautiful.  We started off at sea level and in the fog, but when we were about half way up the mountain we broke through the fog and we could see behind us a beautiful blanket covering the valley.  Above the fog the day was gorgeous.  The sky was a perfect clear blue and it was just warm enough and just cool enough for a descent hike.

Rob brought along his video camera so we have some great shots of the hike, the hard part is that you have to wade through several hours of nausea inducing back and forth camera work taking while hiking.

Whew, a lovely ride today along the coast. Rob and I went out to the coast after work and tried to put in twelve miles. We only made it ten. I was having a really hard time keeping up and my little legs were pumping like crazy, however, Rob was taking a Sunday stroll. The good news is that we may have spotted why I was having such a tough time keeping up (you know, other than my huge ass).

Rob was riding behind me for a while and he noticed that my back tire was a few degrees off to the left. So while I’m trying to go forward my keister is trying to go left. I need to get my bike tuned, yeah, then I’ll be able to ride like a champ!