some days

I feel like the only thing keeping me going is Jared and Jensen. If not for them I don't know what I would do...whether I would be around much longer 

some deep thoughts

 My last relationship ended Dec 30, 2004....she had only been dating me to stay close to her ex, who was dating a friend of mine that I spent a lot of time with at the time. Had a girlfriend a few years prior who I had nothing in common with...except sex....it ended because it wasn't enough sex for her...she cheated on me. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened had things worked out with the 1st girl I dated from online. She was an absolutely gorgeous redhead who was sweet, intelligent, and easy to talk to...she also had muscular dystrophy and used a wheelchair. I didn't think that would be an issue but maybe the prospect of dating someone caused me to sabotage the date....talking about tennis and tailgating so much. Sometimes I wonder if I'm being punished for screwing that up. I knew after the date that I screwed up...hell, I think I knew during the date. Many years later, I emailed her...I had remembered her Yahoo handle and hoped she still checked that email address. I may have apologized after the date but I don't remember for sure. In my email, I thoroughly apologized to her...I wasn't being a jerk to her but thoughtless. The purpose of the email wasn't for a 2nd chance...this was over a decade later and even if it had been sooner, I don't think I would have deserved one. I just wanted to apologize and hoped she was well. She emailed me back to thank me...said she was in North Carolina and happily married with children. Sounds like things worked out for the best for her but there will probably always be a part of me that regrets my thoughtlessness,

My last encounter was in January 2007...we hooked up a couple of times but there was little connection between us. There was another girl a few years before her...don't recall exactly when...pretty much the same thing.

My last date...Labor Day 2011...with someone I thought was a good friend but may have wanted more until her mother found out about our age difference....or maybe she was playing me all along. I honestly don't know. It felt like a real friendship but given my history with women, the latter seems pretty likely.
Maybe  this all stems from never having a good relationship with my mother...I don't know...but I usually get the worst from women I ever feel close to...there have been 3 that wrecked me so badly that I thought about ending my life at the time. The last time, in 2012, after the girl I had the date with in 2011 destroyed something I valued very deeply...the only thing that saved me was my boys...I couldn't leave Oreo and Derek without a father.

These days, as I approach 51, there's a part of me that hates being single...but the feelings I've felt from other women working to destroy my confidence and life....left scars too deep to ignore. There are a few women who I've thought about but one lives so far away and has been burnt as badly as I have....the other, I haven't seen in over a decade except on social media. Regardless, the scars remain

Things I think

 Whoopi Goldberg was right and wrong. On one hand, when we think about race, it’s generally skin color and in that respect, Hitler’s hatred of the Jews wasn’t about racism because Judaism is a religion and not a skin color. On the other hand, other than the human race, race is essentially a social construct and many Jewish people consider themselves to be a race unto themselves so it would be a form of racism after all.  The biggest flaw in what Whoopi said was that she made it seem like she was trivializing Hitler’s hatred of the Jews as simple hatred. While I’m pretty sure that wasn’t her intention, her words mattered. Hated is something that can’t be trivialized…people who hate based on skin color, religion, sexuality, or any number of things that aren’t dependent on a person’s character are not good people..but they can change if they choose to. I know my father was bigoted to an extent but he let go of some of that before he passed away. Hatred should be reserved for people who are purely evil…people like Hitler, Putin, Manson, Dahmer, and Trump. A lot of people hate others because of their political views. Maybe it’s because I’m a right-leaning moderate but I think both sides of the aisle have something positive to contribute. 

There are extremists on both sides. On the right, it’s people who worship Trump and fascism. They deny reality and are afraid of education. They're outspoken against Critical Race Theory....which is a graduate level course on history without the whitewashing that most history teachers have taught. On the left, it’s the people who take things to the extreme. Here’s an example…statues of Confederate leaders are coming down from places of honor…statues that celebrate traitors who fought to protect the institution of slavery and were erected to promote the ideology of white supremacy. There is no reasonable reason to stop taking them down. Honoring traitors whose greatest claim to fame was to fight on the side of evil can’t be justified to decent human beings. But where extremists on the left are getting carried away is that they’re going after statues of people who did some great positive things to be remembered for but they had some serious flaws as well. Washington and Jefferson owned slaves…Lincoln freed the slaves but still didn’t see the black man as his equal. Do these flaws need to be acknowledged better? Absolutely…but those flaws weren’t their main attributes by any means nor should their positive accomplishments be overshadowed by the negatives in their character. People who do great things deserve to be honored for them…if you only honor perfect people, you’ll never honor anyone.

I grew up a Republican and loved how Reagan stood up to the Soviet Union, despite his economic policies…how far the Republican party has fallen since then. Their economic policies are still flawed but whereas they used to be strong on defense and against Russia, now they follow a coward who chose Putin and Russia over America…Reagan has to be rolling over in his grave. It’s nice to see some of them siding with Ukraine  now that Putin has attacked them but where was that support when Trump was illegally extorting them to try to rig the 2020 election? Why weren’t they standing against Russia when Putin attacked our democracy with disinformation in 2016 and beyond? Or when Putin put bounties on the heads of our military.  Better late than never, I guess? But if they still support Putin’s efforts in the US, standing against him in Ukraine is just window dressing…nothing more. 

Now, I hate Trump and won’t apologize for that…he’s a career con artist who divided the country I proudly served…his supporters and worshipers I don’t hate. I don’t have a high opinion of them because while some love Trump because he hates the same people they hate, I think a lot follow him out of ignorance and gullibility. They think that because he’s not a career politician, he couldn’t possibly be corrupt. Corruption exists outside of politics though and Trump set new levels of corruption that would make Nixon look saintly And then of course there’s the treason and all the other crimes. The funniest thing about their worship is the insane theory that QAnon has spread that he was sent by God to stop pedophiles. Really? The living embodiment of the 7 Deadly Sins was sent by God? The guy who was BFFs with Jeffrey Epstein and has 26 sexual assault allegations against him, including from a 13 year old girl…who bragged about getting away with sexual assault…who bragged about going into the dressing rooms of teenage girls who were dressing and undressing…is going to stop pedophiles? I don’t hate these people…I pity them…I pity their inability to think and their blind worship of the closest thing to the Antichrist we’ve seen since Hitler. I’m not religious…but more agnostic than atheist and the Bible is pretty clear on followers of the Antichrist. I don’t think anyone worships Biden…we elected him because the alternative was pure evil. The vast majority of Biden voters acknowledge his flaws…Trump worshipers deny his, though. They actually try to claim the worst thing he ever did was mean tweets....it takes a special kind of ignorant to believe that

If you’re a Trump worshipper and reading this…wake the fuck up.

missing the Bills opener

I got Bills season tickets in 1996 and for the 1st time in all those years, outside of what happened last year, I won't be going to the home opener...and why? Loneliness

When I first got seasons, I had a pair and my buddy and I always had people coming along. When he dropped his, he just came along with me and it was like that for 6 years minus a few games here and there. In 2006, it all changed...he quit coming to games altogether even though I had already bought the seats. I sat alone most of that year but I knew plenty of the people around me and I had my work with the Jills. When I dropped the extra seat in 2007, I saved some money and the aggravation of trying to find someone to go with...but I still had everything else. When I switched seats in 2011, I still had my Jills work and I already knew some people in my new section. It started going downhill the following season after the Jills director slandered me...the work was a little less enjoyable and then when she shut down the squad after allegations of mistreatment came to light in a lawsuit, it dried up completely. Interesting that the mistreatment started after I was gone but that's another story. I still knew people around me so I could still enjoy the games...to an extent. As bad as the team was, the games got less fun.

In 2018, I dropped my seasons for a variety of reasons...taking time off work was getting harder..I was buying a house...the rising costs weren't in line with the actual value of the tickets...and it was getting less enjoyable. I still made a point the next 2 years to go to a few games but while the team was better, the experience in the stands was worse. I rarely knew who I was sitting near so I felt more alone than I do when I'm actually alone. 

This year, with Covid and how isolated I've felt from my tailgating crew, I just didn't think much about checking into going. I wanted to go to the preseason game but checking on tickets, they were a little higher priced than I felt they were worth so I didn't bother.

Will I go to a game again? At some point, I will probably go but as to when, I have no idea. I have always been an introvert and a bit of a loner but I feel the loneliest in crowds.

Supernatural finale

15 seasons came to an end Thursday night and the reviews haven't been kind from most fans. Here's my take though.

The 1-hour retrospective show was nice but rushed. It should have been a 2-hour piece. Yeah, they gave love to several recurring fan favorite characters but where were Ellen, Jo, and Ash...Rufus, Charlie, Meg, and Ruby...Lisa, Ben, and Samuel...Gabriel, Billie, and Eileen...Claire, Alex, and Donna? I honestly hoped for the last 3 most of all. Twice, they looked at doing a spin off series. The first attempt, in season 9, focused on clans of monsters running the Chicago underworld...it didn't garner much interest. 4 seasons later, they tried again and instead of focusing on monsters, they focused on family....and instead of introducing a pack of all new characters, they used established fan favorites...Jody Mills, the Sherriff of Sioux Falls, South Dakota...Donna Hanscum, the Sherriff of Stillwater, Minnesota. Both had established themselves as allies and skilled hunters over the years and were to be mother figures to a quartet of young women...Claire Novak, whose father had agreed to be the vessel for the angel of Castiel, Alex Jones, kidnapped as a child and raised by vampires...Claire and Alex became proven hunters and the additions of Patience Turner and Kaia Nieves made it a promising group to focus a new show on. Krissy Chambers could have been a great add to the show as well, the child of a hunter who was killed by a vampire between her 1st and 2nd appearances on the show. But CW didn't pick it up. Anyway, out of those women, only Jody got her due in the retrospective...Donna got mentioned in the finale. Now, I know Kathryn Newton has been a busy lady in Hollywood the last few years but she still appreciates her Supernatural family and I'm sure would've been happy to film an interview for the retrospective. And I know Katherine Ramdeen would've jumped at the chance to portray Alex again.
As great as it was to give love to Mary, Bobby, Castiel, Crowley, Rowena, Chuck, and even Lucifer....I think they shortchanged the fans by not including more...in a longer show, obviously. An hour just wouldn't have given the characters and actors justice.

Regarding the finale itself, I thought it was fitting that it finished with a hunt on the most classic monster...vampires....even bringing back a victim turned monster from season 1. THAT was a great touch. The fact that Dean died fighting monsters....fitting....but impaled on a piece of rebar? Come on! Seriously? The one positive to it was that he was given the chance to talk to Sammy when he knew he wasn't going to make it. 
Sammy going on to live a normal life after a final hunt seemed fitting...he had been trying to live a normal life before the series started and gave it a go again when Dean was in purgatory. They didn't show his eventual wife except from a distance....I would imagine it was Eileen. I do wonder what happened with the Bunker, though. Also, when Jack took over for Chuck, he restored the people in the world....did he bring back the people from the apocalypse world as well? Alternate world versions of Bobby and Charlie became beloved characters and allies.
Lots of questions left unanswered

Hatred

Hatred....It's an ugly emotion. President Obama had a goal of eliciting hope among Americans. Trump, on the other hand, has worked to elicit hatred from Day one. His most ardent supporters hate minorities, liberals, and simple human decency. Now, keep in mind that I said his most ardent supporters...he does have supporters that aren't so filled with hatred...they just either don't pay attention or they buy into ridiculous conspiracy theories. Trump's supporters aren't the only ones who Trump elicits hatred in. The rest of us hate his corruption, his racism, his history of sexual assault, his attacks on the Constitution and those of us who swore oaths, fought, and died to defend it. 

Regarding Trump's worshippers however, many of us do hate them because of their allegiance to him. I don't hate them however. Trump is the closest thing to the Antichrist we've seen since Hitler and while I'm not religious myself, most of them are...and the Bible is very clear on what happens to followers of the Antichrist. I don't hate Trump worshippers...the ones I don't know don't even register as being worthy of eliciting my hatred. When it comes to the Trump worshippers that I do know, though...It's complicated. I don't hate them...I'm disappointed in them and if there's a heaven and a hell,  I feel sorry for them and hope they wake up before It's too late.

no family left

I've always been a bit of a loner but I have to admit, with my father having passed during this pandemic, this is probably the most alone I've ever felt. My brother is a racist and I don't care to ever see him again so the only family I have left are Jared and Jensen.