Karma is a B### Sasha Bruce

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/24/AR2006072401352.html

So last year if you all may recall I was employed by Sasha Bruce Public Charter School in the position of Permanent Substitute. Everything that could be wrong with a school as wrong with this school. Well the charter board has shut them down. There s a God and a just deity he is at that.

http://www.voiceofthehill.com/SashaBruceRevoke.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/24/AR2006072401352_pf.html

~Eikon

Free Furniture

The deciore in the house of of Eikon and Flpper is best described as eclectic and we are always overjoyed to make a new aquisition. As such we were delighted to se a et of cairs being given away for free on the way to the dog park. Who in their right mind could pass up a paisley, butterfly, game cock emblazoned chair? Much less a set? And of course the flopped out Flopper is just so photogenic,

~Eikon

Yo g- it's time for Mass

This article has received a lot of attention. . .Here's the link.


The Lord is all that, I need for nothing. / He allows me to chill. /He keeps me from being heated /and allows me to breathe easy. /He guides my life so that I can /represent and give shout outs in His name. / And even though I walk through the hood of death, /I don't back down, for You have my back. / The fact that He has me /covered allows me to chill. / He provides me with back-up/In front of player-haters, / and I know that I am a baller and life will be phat. / I fall back in the Lord's crib for the rest of my life.

Amen!

It's My Birthday

the birthday picture

flopper

Elias and Delila - Photo 2

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Elias and Delila - 1st Photo

Today Elias met a new friend at the dog park. Though much bigger, our pooch feared not the wrath of the oversided bitch (Great Dane).

From the church lady within. . .

Our dog has diarrhea. He wakes us up in the middle of the night moaning, begging to go out. Of course we oblige because we don't want our carpet to be covered with his stinky peanut butter. As a result I'm up too early. I was sitting here doing my thing after I put the dog back to sleep with Eikon, and the I realized I need to get ready for church. I showered, dressed (quite nicely by the way) and then got ready to go, when I realized (remembered, rather) that my computer clock resets to EST every time I force restart it, which is all the time, because I'm too lazy to wait for everything to shut down. So I'm an hour early, and I don't want to go to church now because if I do I'll end up doing the music for the first Mass. So I sit here, and write.

Today's first reading starts out: (Jer 23:1-6)
"Woe to the shepherds
who mislead and scatter the flock of my pasture,
says the LORD.
Therefore, thus says the LORD, the God of Israel,
against the shepherds who shepherd my people:
You have scattered my sheep and driven them away.
You have not cared for them,
but I will take care to punish your evil deeds."

Do you mind if I wax homeletic? What a powerful message to the leaders of the church and to the leaders of the world who claim this scripture as their own. So many of us are driven away right now. I'm driven away by the shepherds of the church by their angry, insensible, and un-pastoral treatment of gays. I'm driven away by the shepherds of our country by their lack of support for our country in health care, education, and more - ignorance caused by a focus on problems an ocean away from myself.

I guess it's not safe or holy of me to long for the retribution that the Old testament God promises, but I still wonder what that will be. Everytime something awful happens, some moron like Jerry Fallwell comes out and blames it on liberal America. It's God's revenge. I take pride in the fact that most liberal Christians would never make a statement like "The September 11th Attacks was God's punishment for the evil deeds of America." I can't help but wonder though, if we gave those sort of people a little tit-for-tat, they might shut up. I suppose it's not worth it, because the answer is most certainly "absolutely not".

Today's Gospel (Mk 6:30-34) reminds us that there is no end to our mission and very little rest. Jesus takes his disciples on a boat ride for rest, and when they return there are teams of people seeking council and healing. The need for shepherds doesn't go away - and these shepherds were so dynamic, so consuming, that unlike the old testament reading, the sheep have not scattered - they wait.

Perhaps this is a way to know your success as a shepherd - your sheep wait for you if you disappear. The scary part is there are plenty of sheep that will wait for and follow people like Fallwell, Phelps, and Bush, and it's easy for them to convince themselves that they are good shepherds by ignoring the millions casted astray.

Thats all I got.
Flopper

Dog Park

Our local dog park is a lovely place full of trees and along the banks of the Mississippi.

Where Elias loves to run and chase other dogs.


This is Thor an enormous Giant Malamute. He must weigh at least 140 lbs.


We tend to take Elias almost every day for a bit and have gotten to know a few of the regulars.

He seems to appreciate it and eventuallly we may even get him to swim with us.
~Eikon

A Plethora of Apartment Kitsch Pictures

One of my greatest pleasures lies in the arranging of all of my kitsch in lots of little nooks and arrangements. So this post will consist of my various arrangements throughout the apartment taken on our terrible digital camera.

I have been collesting various implements of tea for about six years noww and have some lovely pievces though they tend to collect dust as I seldom use them.

Here on one of our old army chests are my old RFD's (courtesy of Dan) and a few shards that Flopper's mother liberated from several archeological sites in Israel and Egypt. My favourite is a shard from Masada.

This is one of our wall pieces ; it consists of Nickel Silver and Bronze Chainmail I made last year and a dish that Floppers parents brought home from greece during their travels.

I love my Drum and am greatly looking forward to the Lammas Gathering where I will use it. Also pictured aare my tambourine and my odd gourd presented to me courtesy of Weird Wayne. It is a terribly noisy gourd but handmade and quite pretty.

This is our little door altarsito with Flopper's great grandfather's casket set, our Poppea rose under one of my broken crystal goblets,an Olive wood staue from the Holy Land given to Flopper by his sister,and the stanard salt and bread bowl.

The requisite bowl of pysanky.


This is my corner table Which has my boxes and Go sets. The lamp ,which i think i pulled out a dumpster, is sitting on an old form box from Flopper's father's law firm. I shamelessly stole the idea of storing flatware in such thngs from Christian at the Hermitage and now keep the gold and Silver plate in it.


My incense /candle altar thingie is draped with some lace courtesy of Flopper's mother. I tend to burn charcoal in an alabaster bowl which sits atop a candleholder that Flopper got for me two weeks into our relationship for my 21st birthday (He was being Cheap) the candleholder in turn sits atop a brass plate given to me by Apeliotes.


A top our TV (an Iowan special bequeathed to us by the parents of Flopper) is a piece of desert glass I got when I was in high school, a painting Flopper did in High school, and fially mammoth candlesticks from Floppr's mom ( who as you can tell loves to give us stuff).

Hope you've enjoyed our kitsch,

Hugs and kitsches,

~Eikon

Settlers of Catan

Settlers of Catan is a delightful boardgame that won a few awards in the mid nineties. More importantly Flopper will play it with me if and when he is sufficiently bored. Nathan will be coming over in a bit to play with us. Yaaay!!!

The idea being to build up towns and cities by combinations of resources. the great thing about this game is that the board is in effect randomly generated each game, you shuffle and then assemble the hexes and then randomly place the numbers assigned to each hex ; this gives it immense replay value.

~Eikon

Brush your teeth!

I thought that teethbrushing was sort of a vet gimmick, but boy did Elias get into it.

SOCK

This took the better part of two weeks as Elias decided to attack my knitting one day. The gusseting is sloppy and I need someone to show me how to do the kitchener stitch. As it stands I bound off by alternatin between two needles. It desn't look good but it gets the job done. Now on to sock # 2. Flopper will have a pair of knit socks yet. Also as a bonus I seem to have learned how to blog from my phone.

~Eikon

I should be an underwear model

Yeah, I was just looking through Mandi's pictures of Rome. I thought this one was kind of funny and out of character. tee hee.

Pictures from Iowa!

When we were in Iowa, I took Eikon to a neighboring town, Audobon, IA which has a statue called Alber the Bull. See me? I'm there under his torso. It's funny, isn't it? At what point did the city council sit down and say, this town needs a statue of a bull? More likely, there was one man who got in his head that it was time to build a statue of a bull, and everyone said "Ok" as iowans are wont Iowans do. As you can see, Eikon is admiring the Bulls savory parts.

And here are a few pictures from the parade. Can you believe they did that to the horse? I can't imagine that owner would have lasted long in a target parking lot! I thinkthe picture on the right is the pork or beef queen or something. I'm not too sure.

Right on Target

Hi my name is Flopper and I'm an animal abuser. I just can't help it. I give my dog too many treats, I take him everywhere, I force him to play in the dog park, I make him run after balls. This all needs to stop today. I need to be more righteous and caring for the sake of my dog.
Maybe i'll paint a big ugly red stripe around his eye and then do makeup testing on him. . . That would be better.
Yeah so anyway, what the hell was that (previous post)? It was a little warm out yesterday, but we left our windows down and it was very breezey and most of the glass is very dark in teh van. When we got in the car, I think it was cooler than target. And seriously, if we were abusing the dog - would we have come to the front of the store? Would we have said, "Oh I had no idea it was hot out, thank you so much o wise and all knowing target worker. We'll take care of it right away."
The security gaurd in blocking the van was like, "Just making sure he's not too hot or panting." How could he possibly do that? You can barely even see through the windows. When we got back into the car, he was just chilling out in the back seat.

ayayay

Crazy Minnesottans

Today we left Elias in the van while we went to get some things in Target. Now Elias whies quite pitifully whenever we leave him alone. So as we strolled through Target across the loudspeaker our liscense plate number is called. Apparantly there had been several complaints that we had left our dog in the car. Flopper rather indignatly asked whether it was illegal and we left the store after making our purchases. Once outside we were astonishd to find a mall security vehicle parked blocking in our van because they had received several complaints.

This is exactly the sort of Kantian obnoxiousness that I detest about the prpriety obsessed Midwest.

~Eikon

Iowa

We got back from visiting Flopper's family in Iowa on the occasion of the Sesquicentennial and All School Reunion. The drama that almost always accompanies journies back to the fatherland was relatively missing from this trip. Flppers first neice is an adorable baby and Elias only tried to lick her a few times.

~Eikon