Welcome to Nathan Sheets' blog. Please scroll down for the most recent entries.

Today was my first day on the phones. By "first day" on the phones, I mean that we waited for literally six hours before the technical issues were dealt with. Needless to say after the 4 hour mark I was becoming enraged by the minute, which left a good 120 minutes of being incrementally enraged before we finally got on the phones. Just sitting in a call center for that long of a period of time doing NOTHING is hard for me. People kept saying things like, "Well as long as I'm getting paid, I'll get paid to do nothing." I don't buy that logic. I'd like to be paid to DO something. If I wanted to get paid to do nothing I'd go on welfare.

But enough of poor, angry Nate at the moment and let's get to the phone calls, of which I took three:

Phone call number one: Man's phone didn't port due to a Point of Sale error; I slowly fix problem while man is on hold; man hangs up. I don't know if he hung up because he got the text message saying that he could make calls or if he just got tired of being on hold. But not too bad considering it was my first call I shook it off.

Second call was the suck. A woman had 4 numbers to port, and when I looked up her port requests I saw that some dumbass had entered her account number from her old service provider as "12345678". I got ahead of myself, fixed the error, and told her that all of her phones would work within four hours. After I get off the phone, I realize with horror that I had forgotten to check to see if her numbers were even able to be brought into our network. My partner said, "Go ahead and see, and we'll pray that they're portable." Nope. Not a one of them. I felt terrible because this woman had probably spent hours at the store getting phones for her entire family, but then had to call us, only to wait all night with her phones still not working. She will call back tomorrow and will be told that she simply cannot have her old phone numbers with our network. I felt bad.

Third call was an easy transfer.

I started writing another pro-life post a few days ago to reveal some...I don't know, "revelations" about my point of view of abortion. Bah, I don't know the word. Just that since leaving Christianity, my pro-life beliefs have remained fully the same, but within that things have changed. That's what this next series is about. I'm creating a series because 1) they're just all the rage these days and 2) I've been lacking in pro-life material and I want something that will keep going for a while.

Nathan's Pro-Life 101: Put the Coat Hanger Down, and Let's Talk

Perhaps I'm just a little bit hostile with the pro-choice crowd. Whatever; I'll try not to be, but in reality I'll probably be taking a few immature jabs at them not only because they deserve it, but also because I find myself extremely funny.

The first thing I should do is introduce who I am and my involvement and transformation in the pro-life movement. I started blogging when I was 15 or 16 years-old. Because I was all young and smart-aleky, I chose a name that I deemed "clever": godisprolife. Immediately the wrathful denunciations about my horribly offensive name started rolling in (through email, no less!) and I was forced to hit the books (or websites, rather) and start defending my theretofore unthought out views.

But that's enough of that. Back in the day I was a Christian pro-lifer and now I'm a non-Christian pro-lifer. That's pretty much all you need to know about me personally for the time being.

The second quick thing you should know is that I view the pro-choice movement as different than pro-choicers. I'll explain more later, but the pro-choice movement is lead by a bunch of extremists, whereas pro-choicers in general do not believe in abortion to the same degree. It's true! Keep reading.

The very basis of how I think about the abortion issue (and any other life-issue, really) is what is happening in an abortion. It's a blatantly violent act, wherein a fetus is ripped apart and suctioned out of the woman through a vacuum. The pro-choice movement is able to ignore the violence of abortion by insisting that 1) the fetus is worthless and/or 2) that it doesn't matter because it's a woman's choice.

Pro-choicers--both the good kind and the bad--often state that the fetus' worth is directly linked to the mother's idea of it. If a woman is horrified to be pregnant and wants to have an abortion, the fetus is not worth protecting and it may be disposed of through the most violent means possible. If the mother is excited for her pregnancy, suddenly she should be left to have her child and if she miscarries it is a sad occasion, often involving a long grieving process, funerals, etc. In a sense, their formula for the value of the fetus is "ask mums."

This logic is quickly thrown out the window when we try to apply it to...anything else. Iraqi children? WORTH PROTECTING! Premature babies? WORTH PROTECTING! Serial killers on death row? WORTH PROTECTING! So the only people--ever--to have the moral authority to take another life are...mothers! Not politicians. Not voters. Not courts. But mothers. Maybe it's just me, but I think there are other people in the world who are able to make moral choices.

And mothers come in all shapes and sizes, don't they? In the pro-choice world, suddenly a 15 year-old mother has the same level of judgment as a 30 year-old mother: both can opt to kill their fetus.

You'll begin to see (and possibly start snickering at, if you're humor is like mine) how the pro-choicers' logic starts to break down simply by comparing it to a three year-old. Rape and incest, life of the mother, health of the mother, financial situation or the mother, the mother not being able to fit into a dress: none of these seem to be good reasons to dismember a three year-old, but more than enough reasons to slaughter a fetus.

Oops, and there I go saying "slaughter" again. The pro-aborts hate it. If you haven't seen photos of abortion, you should. It truly is grotesque, comparable to photographs of the victims of the holocaust when the Allies found them. Violence, especially violence against children, is always horrible. It is my hope in this series that I will be able to speak to some pro-choicers, or perhaps some shaky pro-lifers, and get them to see: abortion is not always the exception.

Ann Coulter allowed herself to be interviewed for a food website. One exchange was as follows:

Choose some foods that are typically conservative, and those that are typically liberal.
"Conservative: Things that taste good. Liberal: Things that are grown within fifty yards of where you're eating."

I don't know why, but I found that laugh-out-loud hilarious. Probably because it's true.

Read the rest here.

When not cleaning my gun or sewing up the rips in my KKK uniform, I sit and think about my current beliefs about life, death, religion, God, etc. Of course, as many of you know, one of the most important issues with me is the abortion issue, which really is a cumulative mixing of a bunch of terrible shit going on in the world.

I am actually quite surprised at how few of my political/social views have changed since I've given up trying to practice Christianity. The two biggest that I can think of are gay marriage (and trust me, I'm not pro-gay marriage in the traditional liberal way: by having courts give it to us) and the use of contraception.

When I say "contraception", however, it's only non-hormonal contraception that I approve of due to the precise reasons I was against hormonal birth control pre-secular days. I have to ask myself, "When does life begin?"

It's hard to keep track of what the pro-choicers believe these days in regards to personhood. One minute they seem to insist that a conceived child is not a person and therefore can be removed without any moral question whatsoever, then the other they're saying that yes, it's a life, but it doesn't matter, because that life isn't worth as much as, say, a homeless person. I find this perennially intriguing--but that's another issue.

If we're looking at things in terms of personhood, why is it that we, as a society, don't believe that pre-implantation lives are actually lives? What is the significant difference between traveling up the fallopian tube and actually being attached to the uterine wall? There isn't really that much of a difference, when looking at the development of that human life. But in order to make ourselves feel better about pumping fourteen year-olds up with hormones, we say, "Actually, life begins at implantation! Anything goes up to that point!" Unless of course you're Obama, in which case it's OK to slaughter an infant in the third trimester with a pretty damned good "health" reason!

I guess all of this to say that I still believe that life begins at conception. This hasn't changed, and I doubt that it will.

OK, I live with a total Star-Sign person, but it's not such a part of her life where she is constantly (aloud, anyway) making connections between people's actions and their signs.

"You're upset that I killed a bug? You ARE a Virgo!"

"You compose music? You ARE a Virgo!"

"You like salty snacks rather than sweets? You ARE a Virgo!"

"You eat parsley-garnish off of people's plates? You ARE a Virgo!"

"You're thirsty? You ARE a Virgo!"

Jesse Jackson has a very personal reason which fueled his widely circulated remark that he wants to “cut Obama’s nuts off” for “speaking down” to blacks. What Jackson calls talking down to blacks is Obama’s telling black churchgoers, as Bill Cosby has told black groups before, that they must stop blaming slavery alone for their communities’ troubles: “Too many fathers are AWOL, missing from too many lives and too many homes. They’ve abandoned their responsibilities. They’re acting like boys instead of men.”

The reason Jackson took this constructive criticism so personally is that he’s one of the “boys” that Obama is talking about. Let’s not forget that only a few years ago Jackson was discovered to have fathered an illegitimate child, and because of his other, “legitimate” life he couldn’t be around for that child as often as one might like.

In fact, if someone had cut Jackson’s nuts off in time, he wouldn’t be so angry at Obama today.

--Julia Gorin

Us being dorks. Josh, Kris, Dalton, Khirsten, I at mini-golf (aka "The Lamest Activity in the World")


Dalton in his blues and I in my jogging outfit


More normal outfits.



Me and Khirsten being awesome, as usual. Why yes, that is a tonic bottle in my hand as we strolled the Portland Rose Gardens. Any guesses as to what was IN the tonic water??? :)

Appeal: Sex Offender Law Makes Homelessness a Crime

You just know that this attorney is a liberal.

Today I am starting my first day at a job that I think will probably end up being really bad. But my hope is that I'll have such low expectations of it, and it will actually end up being a good job, and thus I will have surprised myself! IT'S FOOLPROOF!

I know many of you "outsiders" (not part of LiveJournal) read my journal, but you're missing out on what I write that is friends-only. You'll also be missing my work updates, because I've decided to lock those as well. So, if you want to sign up for LiveJournal just to read little old me, please do so and let me know, and I'll add you so you'll have all the great bits. (Janis and Bob, I am thinking of you two specifically.)

See, this is totally something I could see myself accidentally doing. I wonder what happened to "Mike".

I am a very laid back person, even while driving. Often times someone (from Washington, generally) will almost kill me on the road. Case in point: the other day, I was driving down Grand, which is four lanes of one way traffic. A car was crossing grand, and the driver was on his cellphone. I was the only care really, and so I though that he was going to inch out until I passed and then proceed on his way. No. He didn't see me, presumably because he was on his cell phone. It was scary. I was with someone, and they freaked out for a second.

But I don't get upset because I realize that this cell-phone using Washingtonian didn't mean to almost run into me, regardless of how stupid he was not to see the only care in sight. Perhaps he was chatting to his dying wife, as she lay on a mountain in Peru, just managing to drag out her satellite phone and call her husband to let him know that she had just fallen down and fatally hurt herself, and to please make sure Mittens gets fed. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt.

But it's another matter when people are being intentionally aggressive, or, as my internal dialogue refers to them as: douche bags.

Today I was driving down Burnside, which is always a trial because it takes forever once you get on the West side. There are many signals, and so it's kind of stop and go. Well, these signals change frequently, since we are downtown, and so I noted ahead of me that if I were to cross the intersection, I would be blocking the crosswalk. I then proceed to wait an entire ten seconds for a spot to clear up, grinning as I watch the lady behind me freak out--FREAK OUT--because I didn't cross. She then pulled to the side of me, with her window down, and we found ourselves at a red light. I SO wanted to shout, "I was stopping so I wouldn't get stuck in the middle of the intersection!" But I opted not to.

But my aggression did play out when, driving back in Milwaukie, DB#2 kept tailgating me. Now, frankly, I need a new care. Hell, even if she didn't have insurance, I'd be happy to have my car totaled to I'd have an excuse to stop paying for gas. This lady doesn't know that these are my thoughts, so, going down 32nd, I continually slam on my breaks. Again, my All-Seeing Rear-View Mirror shows me the hilarious scene occurring right behind me. This lady is flipping me the bird, banging on her steering wheel, and screaming at the top of her lungs. I continue to slam on my breaks whenever she gets too close (I was originally going 30 in a heavily-populated 25 zone, but of course after the first slam I decided to follow the law) and this provides me with 3/4 of a mile of comedy. I finally turn, and she got the last finger in (well, the only finger in since I didn't feel she was worth a finger of my own).

I understand how frustrating it is when people go slower than the speed limit, which I was not doing. But even if I were, why do people treat such an infraction as the equivalent to the Soviet threat? Do we show outrage over the children being killed every day in our country and outside? Do we care that our media treats women like pieces of meat? Or treat dads like expendable idiots? We can't think of those things now: the idiot in front of us is not going as fast as we'd like.

Happy Independence Day, everyone! To quote Julia Gorin: "There's really no need for other countries."

Boys, boys, boys.

I generally gravitate toward jock kind of men, who work out and are masculine and muscular. This becomes a problem in that I am not that kind of a person. I am a skinny guy who likes music. Generally, I've noted in my great ability to match people, gay guys stay in their groups and rarely go out. The exceptions to this are often when there is a big age difference between the two men, and the "groups" that they belong in are not generally that "far apart". Does that makes sense? Hell, no one will read this anyway.

Today I met a really nice jock from Nebraska. And he's huge. He could knock me out with one punch. I've noted that recently--and this is bizarre--I've been wanting to play sports more; not just to fit in, but because they are starting to actually look fun. Like basketball, for instance. So I met this guy and we'll see if he wants to get back together again. The very fact that we even met each other is kind of weird for me, because generally jocks don't like my type of guy.

I don't even know what I'm looking for right now. There's been one guy who has pursued a relationship with me, and while I like him a lot (we are still friends, actually) I just don't think that the two of us would really be a good relationship match. He's older (34) and has done a lot for himself. He owns his own house and is a doctor. And then there's me, haha, whose life has taken a complete and unexpected turns. There are times when I consider it though, just because I'm pretty sure he's still open to it, and it would bring some stability into my life. But I think he's a bit too non-laid back for me. Not that he's in the wrong and I'm in the right; it's a personality thing.

I've been meeting a lot of guys lately though. There's lots of cool ones. I met one guy yesterday who I really liked, but he has friends who do. not. like me. I didn't mention that I knew them, so we'll see how that works out. I just don't want to get to know him only to have them say crap about me. Bah.

I want to write a musical. I need a plot. Suggestions?

Do any of you (my internet friends) have any poems that you think would be cool set to music? I have been writing a lot of music recently, but I cannot write poetry worth a damn, so if you have something, could you email it to me? This is really just for practice, and I don't expect it to go anywhere, haha. But of course if it makes me millions you'll be written into the contract;)

I'm looking for something that rhymes, unless it could work otherwise. You would know more than me. Generally songs that work that don't have rhymes have longer lines of prose. Thanks ya'll!

Yesterday I went and saw Avenue Q. It was extremely raunchy, but it spoke of many truths to life. One of the things I think it effectively speaks to is how life is never how we think it will be. We watched Sesame Street as little kids, but it didn't show "real life" very often.

One of the characters was a closeted gay, and I felt like I could relate to him. Then I felt like an ass for relating to a puppet.

Last night was a spiritually hard night for me.

After I went to bed, I had a dream. Man, dreams can really affect you. You can meet someone in a dream, and then when the dream's over, you wish that you could go back to dreaming just to spend more time with them. I met a guy who I really liked (I don't think he resembles anyone I've actually met) and in the dream we hung out and I really liked him. At first, I thought he was weird, but then he grew on me.

And now I'm awake, feeling as if I lost a chance at something, which of course I haven't.

There are some days I long for male companionship, and other days when I long for male. What is wrong with me? My desire to have a wife has not left me, even though I have embraced homosexuality. It's quite upsetting. But how could I possibly have a wife when I am also attracted to men?

Damn.

So, I got a job yesterday, although training begins not until the 6th of July. The job will be crappy, miserable, and yet at the same time I'll be OK because I'll get unlimited overtime as well as performance-based pay, which will be good.

*siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh* Customer service. Khirsten actually started doing this job, and she only lasted a week into training...though she said it was because of the stupidity of the people with whom she was training...blast! However, I'm used to stupid people, so I'm sure I van get over it. We shall see.

Prepare to pee yourself laughing:

Oh Supreme Court, how you tear my heart so...

On the one hand, the fact that you overturned the Washington DC gun ban is wonderful and, indeed, Constitutional. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

But then, on the other hand, you want to outlaw the death penalty for the most evil people in our society, child rapists? How is injection cruel and unusual?

Oh that's right, because child rape isn't murder, and murder is apparently only thing that we can kill the guilty for, and even then only sometimes. Great.

I mean, just think about it: child rape. Why can't we, as Americans, have things that are so hated that everyone will know their punishment if they do it and are found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? Hell, now you can go around killing people and, depending on the state you live in, just chill for the rest of your life. This is insane.

If you rape a child, you don't need to be in our society anymore. It's as simple as that. Ironically, it's often the people who shout "rape and incest" from the mountain side regarding the dismemberment of fetuses who are against the death penalty from those who actually commit the crimes. Apparently liberals care more about the criminals than both the fetus and the rape victim.

Even better, Obama says he disagrees with the Court's decision on the death penalty for child rapists, thus making him look moderate before an election. Not that I believe him. I'm still waiting to see what McCain says, though I'm kind of scared to find out.

If you are pro-life, you have a responsibility. That's what pro-choicers (the dumb kind) say. If you ever--and I mean EVER--advise a girl against abortion, you are now required to adopt that child or, if she decides to keep her baby, support it for the rest of its life.

This information coming to me from various pro-choicers on LiveJournal who insist that pro-lifers simply don't care about non-fetuses. No really: they think we hate non-fetuses! No wonder I don't have any non-fetus friends! It's all coming together! That's why the conversations are so quiet at Shari's! Not to belabor the obvious, but if we didn't care about non-fetuses, how could out children survive into adolescents?

One individual told me that I must adopt every child that I personally have "saved" from abortion. But then another individual said that I (and pro-lifers everywhere) must take care of ALL of the born children in order to prove that yes we do care! So we need to shut down every pro-life organization and keep quiet on the issue until we can pool the resources to save all of the children of the world and make sure they get through University.

And what do the pro-choice organizations do when the woman decides to have a child? Sure, if she wants to abort, they'll drive her to a clinic, get taxpayers to pay for it, even, in certain cases, cover up the fact that she is a victim of statutory rape! What do they do for the woman who chooses to keep her baby? (Remember, kids, they're pro-choice: ALL OF THE CHOICES!) What about the girl who chooses to adopt? An adoption referral? What about these "scholarships" that pro-lifers are supposed to be dishing out to both babies born from our evil guilt mongering and also to their mothers? Do they offer a "You weren't aborted!" scholarship, or is that just supposed to be a pro-life thing too?

Thankfully I know that the pro-choicers who read my journal know that pro-lifers do, indeed, care about born children, just as I in all reality observe that they too also care for children and are not all blood thirsty fetus-haters. Except the sad reality is that my side's organizations help born children, while their side's organizations don't. Unless by "children" you mean "teenagers" and "help" mean "pass out birth control", "sneak behind their parents back for a surgery", etc.

It's like when you bring up the fact that we have homes for pregnant girls who are choosing to birth their babies. (Note: that means that these babies will be born at some point, and cease to be fetuses!) It might come as a shock to some pro-aborts that we don't kick the woman out the moment after she gives birth. "Whew! We tricked her into having her baby! Now let's kick her out and start the process again!" In fact, I have never visted a home for such women where there was any kind of time limit at all. Some of the more smart pro-choicers will denounce these homes as houses of Religion which will force women to adopt a terrifying religion, such as Christianity. OK, but what does the pro-choice movement have? Where are NARAL's secular homes for young women? Anyone? Is this thing on? Class dismissed.

Perhaps this argument reeking of retardation grates me especially because I know how helpess I sometimes feel when it comes to helping women who need it, and for especially helping their children, all the while balancing a respect for life and the principle that it's never OK to slaughter your child. I know someone who has just joined a pro-life organization which exists for the sole purpose of helping women through their pregnancies and thereafter. Hell, even though I don't ever think abortion is OK, and even though I sometimes take my rhetorical anger out on women who are getting pregnant while not being willing to have a child, I realize that helping women is the most improtant thing that the pro-life movement does. Believe it or not, when we try to talk a woman out of killing her baby, we offer her things other than "youshouldn'tkillyourbabyhaveaniceday."

• I had a job interview today, it lasted about three minutes. I don't know how to feel. I want the job because it is full time and it's a security job, and I would like to get some security experience before applying to become a police officer. During the interview, the guys asked me if I had any hobbies. For some reason I was taken aback, and stuttered like an idiot through a list of things, completely forgetting my interests in singing, playing the piano, Celtic music and chair repairing. *face palm*
  

• Yesterday I said goodbye to Dalton. He was here for two weeks, and much hanging out was had. Now he is back in Iraq for another 8 months. I have teh slight sadness, while Khirsten has turned on the gas.
  

• I am still looking thought and applying for many jobs on Craigslist. I had an interview which I skipped out on yesterday, because the website made it look shady, so I said, "Forget it," and instead opted to try a legitimate job.

• The more I think about being let go from SWCA, the more irritated I get. With the few details I had, I feel as if I should have been given a warning, but they threw together some BS. They mentioned my job performance, only to have my immediate supervisor applaud my job performance and say that if I ever did do something wrong, I fixed it after it was brought to my attention. OK, this bullet is getting full.

But I mean, really. I don't want my job back, but I do want to send a drama-filled letter to everyone there saying, "COMMUNICATE, PEOPLE!" And out of thirty people, perhaps, maybe, two didn't like some pissant part of work I did, like a crooked staple or something that could bring the whole corporation to its knees. I just hated it when people didn't come to me and instead went to my boss (over something really, really insignificant) and then I wouldn't hear about it until maybe two weeks later with no specifics. I don't like knowing that people don't like my work, because I want to do a good job, especially if I am assisting them.

I just got a call mid-entry from another company, which is good! Woo-hoo. I'm pretty sure I'll get this job.