Misere

Mrs. Clinton goes to Washington.

2007-01-20T09:24:00.000-08:00

And this time she wants the big desk. What a shame it would be for "feminists" if she were to be elected. The first female president should not be a calculating shrew who got there on her husband's jock and her willingness to sell out her ultra liberal base in order to appear centrist and moderate.
I live in a liberal enclave, and even here I am not hearing excitement about this bitch's candidacy. Maybe the excitement over Amy Klobuchar is overwhelming the potential enthusiasm over Hilary. Or maybe even all these folks who still have John Kerry stickers on their bumpers recognize an elitist, carpet-bagging poser when they see one.

How F***ing weird is this.

2007-01-15T11:46:00.000-08:00

I was going to start a new blog, with a link to & from this one so my mom could find me again. (Recently the Shtrib said most blogs have less than one reader, and I am pretty sure my mom reads mine & my sister's, hence our almost one reader each). Anyway, since the Scrib also said that there were something like 1 billion blogs already, and I do believe in the 3 Rs whenever possible, I decided to reuse my old blog.

The name I'd planned for the new one would have been either Madonna's African Baby, or Your African Baby- something like that. Another reason to recycle- the Madonna's African baby story is pretty O.N. and far be it from me to keep commenting on something everyone on the face of the earth is sick of hearing about, including Madonna's African not-quite-an-orphan. Besides, I'll get my chance when the kid is seven & some little friend of his shows him pictures of his hairy-ass butt naked white mama.

I'm also done with schooling (for now) (yea me) so I am slowly regaining my familiarity with reading for choice, not thesis material. And I've made another discovery.

I like to drink.

I am not talking, cirrhosis, kids in foster care, 8th DUI type drink. I mean that I am finally accepting that I like to have a cocktail every now and again like a grownup. Beer, mixed, fermented, whatever. It's almost all good.

So, here I am, 2pm on MLK's day, kids parked in front of the TV playing a rowdy version of Scene It involving dives on & off the furniture, apparently, Cosmo in hand & writing what is basically a note to my mom.

More efficient than email, if you ask me.

The "Plantation" remark...

2006-01-20T19:34:00.000-08:00

I usually ignore the political pandering to my race. I don't attend the rallies or speeches, I gloss over the quotes in the paper, I don't engage in conversations with supporters. It irritates me, but through avoidance I don't let it get to me.

I heard & was offended by Hilary Clinton's "...the house is run like a plantation, and you all know what I mean" remark.

No, Hilary. I don't know what you mean. Why don't you explain yourself, eloquently, like you did with the Tammy Wynette remark so many years ago, instead of letting the party's handlers send your lone Black colleague out to try to smooth things over?

Not that I care what you think. Because You. Don't. Represent. Me. Nor do you speak for me, nor can you speak to me, nor to my cultural experience and history. How dare you hijack an experience unique to my race to further your personal ambitions and objectives. The house is run like a plantation? What, are some representatives forced to do the bidding of others with the fear of the lash or the noose as their motivator?

Frankly, I'm not seeing that level of coercion on the telecasts.

I do appreciate that she's proving my point as she's trying to capitalize on her whoremonger husband's appeal to some segments of Black society as a means to curry favor. I don't see the tactic working as well for her. The woman lacks appeal.

Hilary Clinton should not be our first female president.

2006-01-15T17:57:00.000-08:00

If elected, she would not provide a 'clean win' for feminists. She rode the jock of a sex addict and serial philanderer to power, she neither earned it nor achieved it on her own.

There are examples of females who have reached levels of power without tying themselves to a man to get there. Margaret Thatcher and Condoleeza Rice come to mind.

"Support Our Troops-My sergeant Uncle"

2006-01-06T07:15:00.000-08:00

My 11 year old daughter wrote this essay for a language arts assignment:

"My uncle is a sergeant in the National Guard. I admire him for this. He's been deployed once; he went to Kosovo, in Serbia. Now he's training to go to Iraq. I missed him when he was in Kosovo. I miss him as he's training, and I'll miss him when he's in Iraq.

When my uncle is away with the National Guard, I'm sad and I miss him because I don't know how he is (and when he's training I probably don't know where he is). He emails, and sends pictures, but that's not the same. I want to see him in person, not on the computer.

About my uncle's deployment, he's been deployed in Kosovo, Serbia. In training for this, he was mostly at Fort Stewart, Georgia. He was training for an estimated six months. He was in Kosovo for about seven months.

As for Iraq, he'll be training for another three months. He has been training for about four months already. My uncle's training has mostly been at Fort Shelby, Mississippi. He'll be in Iraq for another 12 months.

My family all knows where he's going. We also know that he's going to be okay, and he wants to do what he's doing. I will pray for my uncle everyday; I'll pray for his safe return. I'll know that he is in safe hands. I will send lots of cards to him and others at his station. I'll also send useful and decorative things. I'll show lots of love in what I send. I will show that I support my uncle completely.

The rest of my family and I are very proud of my uncle. He is a great soldier; he is a great person.

To add to my pride in my uncle, I know that when he's away with the National Guard he's fighting as a representative of our country. He's representing the United States of America; he's representing my best friend; he's representing my neighbor; and he's representing me, as are all the soldiers out there fighting in the United States Army."

I just bought a huge truck/SUV.

2005-12-20T13:14:00.000-08:00

I've become one of those suburban people that I'm always complaining about. Broke, but riding in style.

(I'm not even getting into the environmental impact thing. Those people irritate me almost as much as the over-indulged self-absorbed clueless suburbanites.)

I'll probably get some stern looks taking up two parking spaces next to the bike rack at the co-op in St. Paul.

Simba & Nala...

2005-12-08T20:36:00.000-08:00

Decided to check in on some of my old favorites this evening and stumbled across this post from Chris at Dangerous Logic.

I have a golden. I gave him an extra hug after looking at Sully & Wrigley's then & now photos. Two good-looking dogs. Thank goodness Simba's only 6 or 7. I'm not ready to contemplate that goodbye.

We named him Simba because he showed up on our doorstep and my son, who has autism, said "What's that lion doing on our doorstep?" Later, after a successful campaign to convince spouse that we needed not just a dog but this dog, the kids & I were at Petco buying toys and dishes and whatnot & trying to come up with a name for him. My youngest, then a preschooler, said Simba! It just stuck.

He's loving, goofy, sweet and healing for a family adversely affected by a lousy so-called developmental disorder.

Nala joined us more recently, following the breakup of her original owners. She fits in perfectly.

Just because.

2005-11-07T19:57:00.000-08:00

Been busy at the new job trying to resist the temptation to blog or even read any blogs. I am computer shopping, and am quite a novice still, so if anybody real actually happens upon this post (I doubt anyone actually checks this blog anymore, sorry) and has any advice I'd really appreciate. Anyway, a decent upgrade will do wonders for my willingness to post at home or away with (hopefully) a cool new laptop.

I've lurked occasionally, though. Take a look at Stephen's blog. His recent post on turning 40 (a long way off for him) really struck me. What an amazingly healthy attitude, and one I wish I could adopt. I fear I am going to ride my good skin genes into being 29 forever. And I'll keep clairol in business, cause those genes don't apparently cover gray.

Apparently, you do try to go out there and look like a bunch of idiots.

2005-10-14T21:02:00.000-07:00

And how well the Yikes have managed to do that.

Now, I'm no prude. (Ok, I am, but that has nothing to do with this.) But when your team is sucking it up on the field & when your new boss promising you'll play in a nice new stadium someday, when you get a breather between beatings to regroup and hopefully come back with your head not in your ass this time, what do you do?

You book a chartered cruise on the most populous & popular lake in the area with a nice mom & pop organization. You invite a bunch of whores, hookers, and of course your teammates. You get drunk, drop trou, and get hummers in front of the wait staff and crew. When things slow down, you present that ass-tickler you've been wanting to try out. You're responsible, of course, so you pull your condom off and drop it on deck. That's what the crew is for, right? Swabbing decks, or something. And you're paying those whores a pretty penny so you make sure they stay naked. On deck.

I hate the yikes. Asshats.

Go Gophers.

No, I'm not dead.

2005-10-09T22:13:00.000-07:00

My house wasn't uprooted by an errant tornado & deposited somewhere in Kansas.

I didn't cut my hair, board a Greyhound, and walk around oblivious for the last month.

I'm just busy. I've vowed not to blog at work (cool new job, started early last month), and I've found it really tough to make time to blog at home and to make myself blog the topics that come up. I've missed several in the last few weeks.

We did see my b-i-l off late last month. His deployment ceremony was held on the 28th and he left the next day. He takes this responsibility very seriously and had a lot to do in preparation to leave his civ life behind for up to 18 months. He gave his most fragile nephew, my son, his old field jacket with the name they share stitched over the right chest. And he found time to buy his youngest niece, my little girl, a birthday present weeks in advance. And in her favorite color. Purple.

"...three of them deserved to die."

2005-09-16T19:00:00.000-07:00

Have you heard about this?

A Hmong man, deer hunting on private land was confronted by an owner of the property. He was told to leave, then the owner radioed the other members of his hunting party, one of whom was another co-owner and told them he'd kicked a "tree rat" out of one of their stands. The others hopped on their ATVs and intercepted Chai Vang. They reportedly, and admittedly, according to one of the survivors, surrounded him and proceeded to threaten and taunt him with racial epithets and foul language. He shot at them all. He killed six of them.

He was found guilty today of first degree murder. I do not know why this case came to trial. His defense was that he'd felt threatened, and had shot in self defense. I've no comment on what his defense attorney was thinking with that one, the man had already admitted what he'd done & was to be punished either way. However, in light of my visceral reaction to the Katrina imagery & fiasco, I am inclined to share a truth about this incident and my reaction to it.

First, some personal background: my f-i-l, who lives in a region of MN that is/was semi-rural and is home to a hunt/fish contigent that maintains a 6 degrees of separation to everybody else in the region that includes a wide swath of western WI, reported that one of the men shot, the co-owner of the property on which this occured, was a type who would confront, berate, cuss out & threaten an armed man that he did not know. The implication was that the guy was a loud, foul-mouthed hothead who was bound to have it bite him in the ass someday.

My thought is that while mowing down a small crowd of mostly unarmed people is not an appropriate reaction to being called a gook, or whatever & told to get the f*** out or something, as a minority, I understand. I under-effing-stand.

There is only so much one can take, and when you add being outnumbered and surrounded, humiliated & threatened, well, let's just say that somebody had better pray.

I can not imagine that a typical white person, when called a kraut, mic, limey, dago or whatever, feels the same pit-of-the-stomach reaction that a minority feels when being called nigger, chink, kike, beaner or gook. It sucks. It f***ing sucks.

I am beginning to understand, and accept, that the Katrina mess was as much or more a socioeconomic class issue as it was a race issue. Nonetheless, there are huge gulfs between us. Huge. Gulfs of understanding. Gulfs of experience. Gulfs of history.

Those hunters did not deserve to die. But no man deserves what Chai Vang went through, either.

What is wrong with [the] public education [that I, spouse and our kids received].

2005-09-13T19:34:00.000-07:00

Thomas Sowell explains it well. I also feel justified for dropping out of teacher college in disillusionment. I thought I was just too idealistic. Turns out my standards were too high.

Unfortunately, the idea of treating the brighter or more serious students as a problem to be dealt with by keeping them busy is not uncommon, and is absolutely pervasive in the public schools.

I had this experience. Gifted teacher's pet. I am grateful for the friends I had then.

One fashionable solution for such "problem" students is to assign them to help the less able or less conscientious students who are having trouble keeping up.

I was terribly embarrassed, and to this day regret, the time in fifth grade when a friend (my then best friend) asked me to read a story she'd written. I misunderstood & took out my red pen. I'd already made marks on her paper when she cried out that she didn't want me to grade it, just read it. Uggh. Stupid gifted teacher's pet. And WTF does "gifted" mean anyway?

High potential will remain only potential unless it is developed.

Hmm. So my failure to achieve the heights of whatever I was supposed to be good at, my failure to finish college until I grew up, got old & decided to go back was not necessarily due to my "lack of motivation," a common phrase on my childhood report cards. Work that even I recognized as busywork & a waste of my time apparently failed to develop my potential. And I've seen the exact same thing happen to our kids.

...teachers in our public schools ...cannot give students what they don't have themselves.

Hahahahahahaha.
Ok, ok. I have had, and I currently know, some excellent public school teachers. These people have been and are dedicated, creative, tireless and fearless advocates for their students and cultivators of their creativity and intellect. All of the students.
Despite that, another student in my major at college way back when failed her student teacher clinicals. How they'd let that girl get to that point in that major probably factored into my disillusionment. She was not just, how to put this delicately, not the brightest bulb, but she was actually kind of creepy. Her advisor gently suggested that perhaps she consider changing her major. Three years too late, imo.

I've been something of an education rebel at least in my family of origin & family through marriage. I haven't abandoned the public school systems, though. To do so would not accomplish what so many students desperately need. I stay involved and stay engaged and my kids stay enrolled. Besides, a lot of private schools suck as well.

It's not us. It's them.

2005-09-11T11:08:00.000-07:00

Minnesota began to prepare for up to 5,000 evacuees to travel to Fort Ripley where they would be housed, fed, offered medical care and access to federal relief resources. Discussion was held as to how the displaced residents would be housed. Family units together? Men, women and children housed in separate barracks? Couples together, children separate?

Nobody came. State officials reduced the number to 3,500 possible evacuees.

They haven't come either. The hastily formed medical team, proud of themselves for setting up a MASH unit at Ripley, was sent home. Some of them may be called back next week when the, maybe 500 now, evacuees show up. If they decide to do so.

An article in today's Minneapolis StarTribune mused that the displaced residents were really wary of the climate change. And also that they liked to stay close to home, more so than Americans in other locales, even. We are to surmise that it has little to do with assumptions. The assumption that those who essentially have nothing will take anything. That those who had little to begin with will appreciate something. That our generosity, on our terms of course, is and will be welcomed gratefully. Apparently the response of thousands of displaced persons was "Thank you, but no. Appreciate your offer, but it is really too much. And too late."

I, for one, am used to but no less weary of this we know what is best for you attitude. Many think they are being kind. Generous. Christlike.
To others, though, it is an insidious means of infantilization. Belittling. Insulting. Unwelcome.

Just something to think about.

What you've seen is accurate. There's just been a spotlight on it.

2005-09-10T15:06:00.000-07:00

I've had several conversations lately about the hurricane aftermath. Most stick with the safe angle, the party "how awful" line. Some have ventured into complaining, blaming, finger-pointing or exclaiming disdain at Barbara Bush's comments. For the most part, though, the people I'm around are pretty careful. Spouse & I are the biggest ranters I know & we pretty much keep it to ourselves & you.

Nonetheless, everybody is missing the point.

This is more than a republican/democrat thing.
More than a liberal/conservative thing.
More than a federal/state thing, or a state/local thing.
It's more than a mayor who lacks leadership. More than a governor who lacks administrative skill. More, even, than a president who lacks the desire to micromanage. More than an incompetent director of a federal agency.

It's not even about the hurricane, not really.

What the hurricane did, above and beyond the loss of life and the economic and natural destruction, was shine a spotlight, under magnification, on the experience of black Americans in every part of this country, every day.

I'm not talking about poverty, or access to social services.

I'm talking about being ignored. Not being heard. Marginalized. Filed. Having to rely on semi-hysterical "newsmen" to draw attention to needs; obvious, treatable, manageable needs, occuring right beneath the noses of those with the means to help, but who apparently lack the vision and the will. Blacks who "succeed" despite the circumstances of life as a racial minority with a sorrowful history of entry into this country, tend to be those who either assimilate, or whose talent or intellect or force of will pulls them into an arena of social, political, or economic status populated by few minorities. "Success" in this case is difficult to define as it means different things to different people. At this time, I tend to think of success as having enough money to have the means to get out of town after your home has been destroyed.

It is popular, among the people I know, the papers I read, the personalities I listen to, to declare that racism is if not dead, much improved. You don't hear "nigger" anymore outside of black comedy clubs and rap albums. You child has a black classmate. Your firm just hired a black associate. Even for most blacks, I suspect, that it is easy to mostly ignore the reality. You've got credit. You drive a nice car, own a laptop and a state of the art cell. Your kids go to good schools and wear nice clothes.

You don't have to think about the blood, the suffering, or the degradation that bought your freedom, your participation in the political process, your kid's access to decent schools. You didn't have to think about it, that is, until this week.

The will to right the wrongs we have all witnessed this past week will not come from the federal government. It will not come from the next president, or the next governor, or the next mayor. It will not come from Habitat for Humanity, or whatever contractor wins the right to rebuild the gulf coast. Not the Red Cross, not whatever-group-of-musicians-aid, not the certain congressional hearings into the matter.

It will come though. Truly, I say to you, it will come...

It's this kind of s*** that makes one wonder...

2005-09-01T20:24:00.000-07:00

Why does everything have to fall completely apart when known disaster strikes a city with a large population of black persons and poor areas? The mayor advises citizens to abandon the city. The governor is a hand-wringing candyass. Network news shows can get cameras on the ground but hospitals can't get water.

It's this kind of s*** that makes black folk suspicious. It's this kind of s*** that makes black folks distrustful. It's this kind of s*** that makes black folk liberals.

Somebody please prove me wrong.

Of course babies can feel pain.

2005-08-30T11:19:00.000-07:00

If they can't, then why the hell was Scott Peterson convicted of killing both his wife and his unborn child? If the child essentially didn't experience anything when his mother died, then he would not have been considered a crime victim. He would have been just another dead fetus. If a mom doesn't want her baby & kills it before it's born that is her protected right, but if a dad doesn't want it he can be jailed for failing to pay the mom to raise it? Just seems strange to me.
Would that all children born into this world were loved & wanted by both parents, but I just can not accept that killing them before their birth is a humane & reasonable response to an unplanned for pregnancy.

Dr. Steve Calvin weighs in with his valid & experienced opinion:

Steve Calvin
August 30, 2005
Last week's article on fetal pain in the Journal of the American Medical Association proves the desperation of the defenders of unrestricted abortion. The article reviews medical literature and concludes that fetuses are unlikely to feel pain prior to 30 weeks gestation.
The authors were clearly motivated to write what I view as a medical fantasy to counter proposed federal legislation that would limit abortion in the second trimester. The legislation would require informing women considering abortion that fetuses beyond 20 weeks feel pain and would require anesthesia for the fetus.
Twenty-five years of delivering babies and a specialization in high-risk obstetrics provide me some experience to refute the claim that fetuses feel no pain until 30 weeks. Many of the tiny babies that I deliver, some as small as 1 pound at 23 weeks, have required surgery during their difficult neonatal battle for life. All of them receive anesthesia.
Before the 1970s, many newborns, both term and preterm, were operated on without anesthesia in the mistaken belief that they could not feel pain. They certainly couldn't tell anyone about their discomfort. With more sophisticated monitoring it became clear that blood pressure and pulse rose dramatically during the trauma of surgery. Subsequently, a subspecialty of pediatric anesthesia developed.
Those who deny fetal pain claim that hormonal and withdrawal responses to invasive procedures are mere reflexes and are no evidence of pain. Recently, I performed an amniocentesis on a patient at 21 weeks gestation because of a possible infection. On ultrasound, the fetus pulled away from the needle when it grazed her arm. It is clear to me that this fetus felt discomfort, and that she would feel horrible pain if she were dismembered in the exercise of an unjust constitutional right.
The medical literature duel over abortion has been quite one-sided since most of the medical hierarchy is ardently pro-abortion. There are, however, courageous exceptions.
The most important medical study on abortion this year got absolutely no media coverage. A French study in the April 2005 British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology convincingly showed that a previous abortion increased the risk of subsequent delivery at 22 to 27 weeks by 70 percent. Premature birth has heavy personal and societal costs, yet the alarm over the increasing rate of prematurity ignores the abortion connection.
The fight over requirements for informed consent prior to abortion continues because abortion defenders refuse to accept any restriction on this manufactured constitutional right to exercise prenatal lethal violence. Their blind orthodoxy requires denial of fetal pain and willful ignorance of the significant long-term consequences of abortion.
Steve Calvin is a Minneapolis physician.

Political Lesbianism.

2005-08-27T07:58:00.000-07:00

Jane Evershed, Minneapolis artist, poet and writer wrote an interesting editorial article that appeared in the StarTribune on August 20, 2005.

I believe that in I've found a local political lesbian.

She, in her first sentence, used the phrase "global male rule." She goes on to actually blame Cindy Sheehan for the loss of her son because Sheehan failed to teach him "from a very young age" not to join the Army. "How," she asked, "was Sheehan to recognize the evil that lurked as sanity on her doorstep?"

That "evil" as she defined it, was the "...patriarchal systems [that] find it very easy to goad our children into their world of mayhem and killing as if it were quite normal."

I got news, lady. It is normal. It is unfortunate, but it is "normal." Interestingly, the families, mothers actually, that I have known whose young sons enlisted right out of high school did not "let" it happen. Their children made informed, articulate decisions on their own. Because they were adults. Young adults, yes, but no longer children looking to mom and dad- believe it or not lots of youth get & even seek advice and guidance from their dads.

"At one time Sheehan had complete control over her son's future when he was growing up. The patriarchal system stole him from her long before he died. "

Ah. I see. Become pregnant, get rid of the father because he is probably already a part of the "system [that] steal[s] children's minds and take[s] them away for purposes that serve only the elitist military agenda", & indoctrinate your male children against any inclination toward aggression, (you can relax on the girl children because according to this Minneapolis artist and poet it must be inherent in females to recognize and follow "the way of peace" & women apparently have a built in "sense of reverence for all life" that males must be taught). (Young).

"Women must teach peace to their children" (we can't count on their dads for this) "and educate them about the agenda of global patriarchy and the means by which they achieve it."

I did not find the article to include much information about those "means." Nonetheless, watch out all you dads out there. We're on to you.

I had wondered what happened to Logic Monkey.

2005-08-23T11:19:00.000-07:00

Now I know.

Interesting.

And a little sad. And, I suppose, there is a lesson in all of this.

Logic left his mark, his comments, in several places in the blog world with not all of them being quite as eloquent as some of his posts were. He apparently pissed some people off.

Finally, after him posting as a comment, "It's too bad you weren't aborted," I had enough.

The author of Logic's demise, as he appears to see himself, accused Logic and most other conservatives of moral relativism, among other things I am sure. I find it confounding that amidst the widely disparate political and social opinions voiced in the US these days, both 'sides' accuse the other of that same condition.

What is "moral relativism?"
According to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, Moral relativism is the position that moral propositions do not reflect absolute or universal truths. It not only holds that ethical judgments emerge from social customs and personal preferences, but also that there is no single standard by which to assess an ethical proposition's truth.

Logic's killer wrote, "I found it sick that his moral relativism told him that since certain Islamic extremists had taken to cutting off heads, that anything we did short of that was perfectly acceptable." We also find this statement amidst the gloating: Terri Schiavo died 15 years ago, and I wasn't the least bit responsible.

I am trying to wrap my head around the lessons to be learned from the sleuthing I did today. All I have thus far is the thought that my Christian faith (not Catholic, as Logic is and was), teaches me that all of us are "good" and that all of us are also "sinful." We are "good", as in God's good and perfect Creation (see Genesis), but also "bad," as original sin & the ingestion of the substance that allowed sin to enter our condition.

Is it "moral relativism" that causes me to think that most of us, on either side of a political or social divide, are essentially the same? That we see the same wrongs in each other because despite our apparent differences of opinion, we are seeing each other through essentially the same lens?

Take the Schiavo case: that woman did not "die" 15 years ago. She was still breathing. On her own. Was it "immoral" to withold tube feedings and hydration from her? Or was it "immoral" to keep a feeding tube inserted in her side? I suspect that the Schiavo woman herself may have held clues to which side was more "right" in her case, by examining whether & how frequently she pulled out her feeding tube. If that tube had to be reinserted frequently because despite her brain damage and diminished mental condition she still managed to dislodge it, she may have been expressing in her own way that the tube was not desired. Not that our press would seek out and share that type of information with us.

Take the Abu Ghraib POW photos: what disgusted me, more so than the actual condition of the incarcerated that we civilians were allowed to see, were the positions and expressions of the military personnel visible in the photos that were released to and pushed into the faces of the public. It almost seemed to me that our traditional media barely knew what angle to present to us as "the" angle in this story. Should we(the press) tell them(the public) that they(the public) sympathize with the prisoners? That they detest the soldiers? That they detest the soldier's superiors? And how close do we keep this story to the few kidnap by insurgents/torture/murder stories we present?

I think that what all this rambling is leading to is the thought that some of Logic Monkey's more vehement postings and responses to his critics were, simply, mean. Though they likely always reflected Logic's own perspective, moral framework and beliefs, he could be self-righteous and vicious. I actually admired that much of the time.

Nonetheless, the shameless gloating and self-aggrandizing of Logic Monkey's "killer" is no less mean spirited. The author of Logic's demise took the moral high road for threatening to "out" someone to his boss who left comments that author didn't like.

While I do feel that we should all be able to express ourselves, even if some disagree, without threat of persecution, I do understand that we do not have that luxury, nor apparently do we have that right. Someone somewhere will take it upon himself to threaten a loss of livelihood or privacy just because he (or she, relax) doesn't like what we said.

I'm black. And a woman. Not that either condition gives me some exclusive on discrimination, mistreatment, or name-calling, but I learned a long time ago (at age 5 or 6 when I'd first heard the term "nigger" and had no idea that it was mean or that it referred to me) to just fucking let it go. If I got bent out of shape over every opinion I disagreed with or over how those opinions were presented, well, I'd hardly have time for blogging.

That, folks, is the saddest lesson of all.

The media makes a darling...

2005-08-19T22:38:00.000-07:00

that we are expected to believe in, sympathize with and excuse for stating all matters of lunacy that the media refuses to inform the public of.

I am referring to Cindy Sheehan.

If she is such a sympathetic creature, and if her whole family is "on her side," then why is her husband filing for divorce?

My problem is not with her, perse. I do not know if grief is driving her recent actions and statements, or if she is using the death of her adult son to justify and draw attention to her political views and opinions. All I know is that a brief perusal of private news sources brought to my attention a whole host of statements accredited to her during her recent roadside stay near the president's ranch that appear to have little to do with grief, loss or her eldest son.

What I am coming to resent most is how our major media outlets, our daily newspapers, our local network affiliate news broadcasts & our network newcasts themselves continually edit and censor the very individuals they select as newsworthy. They do not treat her and her opinions as 'news,' they treat it all as if she is just a character in their story. *News* I would think, should include all sides. Perhaps the *reporter* edits for length, but not for content. The *reporter* attempts to include dialogue or describe actions that cover all angles & represent all statements, while making every effort, effort the *reporter* should be trained to make, to avoid the inclusion of bias.

To read the StarTribune's angle, Cindy Sheehan is a sorrowful grieving mother. To view CBS's angle, she is being caught up in a groundswell of emotion and opinion fueled by her humble request for an audience to her grief.

She is not a person who would infantilize her adult son and prostitute her grief, allowing opinion-mongers to use it to further their objectives.

We are only supposed to see the grieving mother. Do not look behind the curtain.

Update: Read Gerard Vanderleun's real take on this woman. When I read the first line, "IT ALL BEGAN AS IT TOO OFTEN DOES, WITH THE BARREN MAUREEN DOWD searching out still more ideological children who were not cats." I settled in. Another good read.

2973 dead.

2005-08-18T10:47:00.000-07:00

That's the number of people killed in the 9/11 attacks. (The number came from this link at CNN.com).

According to another CNN.com link, as of today a total of 1857 American troops have been killed in Iraq, and another link states that as of today 282 American troops have been killed in Afghanistan.

I got thinking about these numbers during a discussion last night, the first night of my first sociology class. My professor, an engaging, learned man, commented that most of the American military casualties in the Iraq war came from rural areas. When some of my classmates got smug looks & began to nod & mutter, I got to thinking about the number of people from urban areas who were murdered on 9/11.

At the risk of sounding trite, some of us bear the burden of the cost freedom, free will, and personal safety in much more profound ways than the rest of us. No one socio-economic class, gender, or race has borne more of this burden than others. All have been affected. Many have made the ultimate sacrifice. And I believe that our terrorist enemies, the enemies of our American way of life and of our freedoms, intend for all of us to pay their price. Someday.

Not guilty, just pleasure...

2005-08-14T12:11:00.000-07:00

And no, I'm not referring to that. This is a family blog. Well, it is if your family is a bunch of foul-mouthed blowhards.

Anyway.

I quit my job a little over a month ago & then had a several week break between classes so I've had the time & brain space to read! Books! And not ones from the reference section!!

I read The Happiness Code by Amy Herrick over a long weekend at the lake & it was a perfect read for that kind of time. Definately chick lit, but well written (which is all too often a rare treat in popular fiction these days) and enjoyable.

I just finished reading The Truth About Hillary by Edward Klein & that was a dirty little treat of its own. I even learned a new phrase... "political lesbianism." I'm fascinated by that phrase & I intend to try to use it as much as possible in the coming months.

Can't wait til those PTA meetings start up again.

"You try not to go out there & look like a bunch of idiots."

2005-08-14T11:57:00.000-07:00

Who said this? New Vikings offensive coordinator Loney. (Sorry, I forgot his first name).
Yeah, referring to football.
Sara's a happy girl.
For now.

The Alert Order came yesterday...

2005-07-16T20:38:00.000-07:00

putting b-i-l's entire battalion on alert for deployment. He says that means they're looking to send more people & that it's definite that his company will be going.

A sentiment that another parent can understand.

2005-07-14T08:29:00.000-07:00

"I swear to God if my son dies I will drink from al-Zarqawi's blood."
-'Umm Salam,' mother of a child wounded Wednesday when a mass murderer drove into a crowd of children playing with American soldiers in Baghdad.

My b-i-l has said that his unit is preparing to be deployed to Iraq as early as September. He served in Kosovo a year ago. I'm not going to gloss over this, I'm worried. But I'll post his updates & hope.

The MN microcosm.

2005-07-13T11:51:00.000-07:00

"Just what is it with the Minnesota left and this obsession for taking other people's money? Every budget cycle it's the same old song and dance. Hiding behind those golden parachutes of Great Society liberalism - education and health care - the DFL... renew their demand for more and more in taxes to placate an inscrutable appetite for redistributing wealth...
Minnesota liberals... think government exists to redistribute income from one individual to another."

Jason Lewis
Star Tribune Op Ed Counterpoint

Been one hell of a summer so far.

I'm not going down alone.

2005-06-10T11:21:00.000-07:00

I apparently share sentiments re: accusations of koran "abuse" with La Shawn Barber, a black woman that I 'd love to meet.

I held onto the previous post for a while...

2005-06-09T12:02:00.000-07:00

and I know why. It was because I was worried. Not about jihadists showing up at my house. It was about offending someone if you can believe that. I've been brainwashed.

Pathetic.

It made me feel better just to read this.

2005-06-09T12:00:00.000-07:00

American Digest again humbles me. No apologist there. This post is interesting & even validating to me because it gives (eloquent) voice to a somewhat vague, ill-defined unease I've felt for a while. A tinge of disgust I feel all too often, when I catch the evening tv news, or overhear other parents' conversation while waiting to pick up my kids at their school, or when reading anything in the first 20 pages of my local daily.

The thing is, I think I have known what that disgust is. I've just not wanted to acknowledge it because to do so seemed wrong somehow, or impolite. I apparently haven't been willing to allow myself the open disdain & disregard that I do apparently feel when I read or hear of crap like so-called Koran desicration. (Disdain that neither Logic Monkey nor American Digest have trouble expressing).

Know what I really think when I hear of stuff like that? It's a book. A f***ing book. I don't like to see books destroyed because I love books. I love the printed word. Nonetheless, I know firsthand that there is nothing in the koran that I really care to read, certainly nothing I enjoy reading or believe in or am moved by.

I know this because spouse has a copy of the koran. Given to him by a good friend of his, one he doesn't have frequent contact with, but who has played an important role in spouse's life.

Spouse and I spent several evenings, a couple of years ago, looking through the Bible & the koran, comparing stories. Jesus is mentioned in the koran, as is Abraham and his son Isaac. The histories are different, though. Not just different perspectives, like one might consider the four gospels to be different perspectives of the same events, but different. In the koran, Isaac was not the son almost sacrificed due to his father's devotion to God, Ishmael was. In that book Jesus was a prophet only, not the son of God. There are other differences as well- but these are a couple of examples from just the little bit that we looked at together & that I looked at on my own.

What disgusts spouse & I to no end is how much of what we hear about the Muslim world here in the US is not from the koran, not Islamic. It's ... what? Political? Misogynistic? Paranoid? I don't know. Why, in our country, where a man can barely open a door for some women (of a certain age or upbringing, I think) without getting vilified for belittling her and certainly not getting the 'thank you' that he should get, do we not hear any discussion of the weird-assed separation of the sexes custom? And how come Muslim men & women who speak out and say stuff like not allowing Saudi women to drive is un-Islamic are at best vilified, at worst murdered by their own?

I am grateful for the role spouse's Muslim friend has played in his life, in our lives. But the book is just a book. It sits on a shelf like all our other books, including several of our Bibles, except maybe for the current favorites that I keep at my bedside. It's not separate or segregated. It's not special. And if I should, say, leave that book on the floor for my black dog to chew up (carefully and systematically- almost daintily) while I'm at work & the red dog won't play, then I won't really care about anything but the sticky paper mess.

Mixed feelings. Kinda like kneading dough...

2005-06-07T10:57:00.000-07:00

Killer Biscuit Wanted for Attempted Murder: "Lisa Burnett, 23, a resident of San Diego, was visiting her in-laws, and while there went to a nearby supermarket to pick up some groceries. Several people noticed her sitting in her car with the windows rolled up and with her eyes closed, with both hands behind the back of her head. One customer who had been at the store for a while became concerned and walked over to the car. He noticed that Lisa's eyes were now open, and she looked very strange. He asked her if she was okay and Lisa replied that she'd been shot in the back of the head, and had been holding her brains in for over an hour. The man called the paramedics, who broke into the car because the doors were locked and Lisa refused to remove her hands from her head. When they finally got in, they found that Lisa had a wad of bread dough on the back of her head. A Pillsbury biscuit canister had exploded from the heat, making a loud noise that sounded like a gunshot, and the wad of dough hit her in the back of her head. When she reached back to find out what it was, she felt the dough and thought it was her brains. She initially passed out, but quickly recovered and tried to hold her brains in for over an hour until someone noticed and came to her aid".

Got this from Wicked Thoughts. I wasn't sure how to react when I read this one. Initially, I laughed derisively. Later, I felt kind of sorry for the poor woman. It must have frightened her terribly to reach back and feel something mushy. Now it just makes me think of Bill Cosby's routine where he described tossing the wad of mashed potatoes on the floor when getting whupped by his mother.

Poor thing. Poor, stupid thing.

Kerry- not a brainiac.

2005-06-07T09:38:00.000-07:00

Carrie's B-average gpa at Yale was virtually the same as GWB's. Except that carrie got 4 Ds overall, while W got one.

Moron.

My grades are & were better than both of theirs. Way better. Although I'm not at Yale & wasn't even alive yet when they were.

Roborant.

2005-06-02T12:27:00.000-07:00

You know what gets me about Roborant? On May 31 he posts that his posting will be light for the next few days, he's got to wrap up a bunch of stuff at work (*snort* - he should see my desk), but his next post will be about this interesting book he picked up at an estate sale, Generation of Vipers.
His next post is the very next day & it is a detailed, well written report on & critique of that over 300 page book.
And here I am, in the same boat (just gave notice at my job as well) & trying to figure out what to blog about the Pearls Before Swine cartoon I saw 3 months ago.
I'm pathetic.
Roborant rocks.

I've done number 54.

2005-05-26T11:37:00.000-07:00

Recently Chris at Dangerous Logic recommended that I read Right-Thinking Girl, as she reportedly tells a great story. I happened over there today & found her list of 100 things she wants to do before she dies.

As I've stated, I've done #54 and I'd pay to do #84. #87, for me, would be running.

Maybe I'll make a list like that someday. Mine would probably only be 7 things or so. I can't dream that far out. Too many variables.

More time for blogging.

2005-05-26T10:49:00.000-07:00

No go on the school board thing. I'm not brokenhearted about it. It's easier to bitch about people when you're not actually working with them.

Why not Hilary?

2005-05-20T10:07:00.000-07:00

A while back I posted about a bizarre encounter I had in one of my classes regarding the possibility of Hilary Clinton as this country's first female president. A couple of really funny recent posts I've read speak to that same subject.

Wicked Thoughts shares a joke about what she might do to get there (mean & funny!) here.

A Red Mind... shares a joke about why it won't happen either way (do not have liquid in your mouth funny) here.

Woman president in my lifetime? Not going to happen.
Hilary as that woman? So not going to happen.

It's like we were separated at [a] birth...

2005-05-19T10:44:00.000-07:00

...that's how it has felt for me a couple of times recently reading Italian American Princess. Today's, I mean yesterday's post took me straight back to my own wedding & dealing with my own insane cousins, who cornered me at another cousin's wedding about a month before mine to find out where the hell their invitations were.

First, some background. I am black. Most of my family is also black, extended as well. Those who are not are actually light-skinned blacks.

Spouse is white. Most of his family is also white, extended as well. Those who are not are adopted from Korea.

Some of spouse's family includes some who practice what I refer to as 'institutional racism.' They don't necessarily understand, nor are they able to effectively articulate why they hate blacks, they just do because that's the way everybody felt in rural shitville or wherever they grew up.

Some of my family engages in what I'll term 'occupational racism.' They hate Whitey because, they claim, Whitey keeps them down. It is not through their own effort, or lack thereof, that they are not wealthy and successful (by whatever standards they use to define success), it is because white men never have and never will give them or anyone else who is not an uncle tom a fair shake.

I think the only reason they wanted to come to my wedding was to see if spouse would be wearing blackface. I am ashamed to admit that I wimped out. I actually apologized (my mother raised me right, and I'm almost always polite in person), and wrote down their addresses so it looked like it was some incredible oversight, and just prayed silently that they wouldn't be able to find a ride.

Well, they found a ride. In fact, their ride was two or three people who stayed, thus overcrowding my intimate outdoor wedding, and who I didn't even know. Whatever. The important thing is that everybody ended up behaving well & was polite despite the opportunity for a possible race war to break out in a semi-rural county where I'm pretty sure the sheriff's deputies would have arrived with the shotguns locked & loaded once they were aware of part of the crowd they'd be dealing with. Not just city folk, but colored city folk.

Anyway. The insane mom angle also covered by Italian... Princess crystallized for me later on well after the wedding, when I was newly pregnant with our first daughter (a quite beautiful tea-with-milk tinted child, if I might say so). I was talking to her by phone early on & I was pretty happy. She was too, then she laid this on me: "Oh, this is so wonderful. It's too bad he's not black."

There was silence on the line for several seconds until I said (racist? yeah. realist? shit yeah.) "No, mom, because then I'd still be pregnant & he'd be gone." As is the case with those cousins I referred to earlier. All mothers of beautiful chocolate brown fatherless children.

I just voted for Italian American Princess in The Blogette Award contest. You should too, soon, because it really is a shame that right now she's ranked below crap like why-this-one-woman-hates-her-husband. (Maybe he smokes so much pot because you're a harping belittling bitch).

You can vote for my girl here.

She got a heart as big as the whole outdoors...

2005-05-18T11:44:00.000-07:00

but she ain't got a brain in her whole head.

At least that's what the withering but somehow loving look spouse gave me last evening seemed to say after this exchange:

We caught a few minutes of "The Horse Whisperer." (Only a few because spouse's respirations began to decrease just a few seconds after I turned to it). I asked him what state that was, Montana? He started to say something in response but I interrupted with "no, that can't be, there are mountains in the distance."

He said, slowly, with his eyes narrowed, "Yeeeaaahhh. There are mountains in Montana..."

Honestly? I had no idea.

Update:
Well, what do you know? Absolutely beautiful photo of a mountain vista in Montana right here.

Doesn't matter if I win or lose...

2005-05-17T13:35:00.000-07:00

...because I'm number 1 either way.

Corroborative evidence.

2005-05-17T12:59:00.000-07:00

We got this from a source who's usually very reliable.

So what? So you didn't bother to corroborate the story? To check the alleged facts?

Rob at Roborant had something to say on this, as did Tony at A Red Mind. (I only checked with those two, I am certain that many around the larger blog world were as disgusted with the whole sorry mess Newsweek started as I).

I hope this does not become a matter of "any publicity..." I'd like to see Newsweek (which I always thought pretty much sucked) lose some advertisers. They never really had to worry about losing me as a reader. When I've had to chose between Fly Fishing Monthly & Newsweek in the waiting room, I've checked out the ads for hip waders.

So, how is the school board race going?

2005-05-17T12:03:00.000-07:00

Don't know yet. Things are going okay, and we're in the voting period (it lasts several days), and several people have told me they either have or plan to vote for me, but then I suspect several people told carrie the same thing so who knows.

It's interesting, though. We had something called a 'candidate forum' where all the candidates presented their answers to previously presented questions and also responded to screened audience questions. This was handled kind of oddly- people were urged very strongly to attend, but only 3 of the current board members attended and one of them left before the presentation actually started. It's this kind of thing that has made this election such a big deal to so many in the school's community.

The ballots are going to be counted early next week. I'll keep you posted.

It's like after a loss...

2005-05-16T11:58:00.000-07:00

of someone you cared about. Maybe you hang on to their things for a while. Not necessarily because you believe or even hope they'll come back, but because maybe...

I don't mean to get all wimpy about taking some stuff off a blogroll, but it took me a while to do it because at least in one case I was just hoping, ya know?

There are a few still on there where it really would be like a death for me if they stopped blogging.

No pressure.

No Motive Found.

2005-05-13T11:33:00.000-07:00

True crime stories and poetry. Two other things that I love to read. (Check my bookshelves next time you're at my shop, er, house.)
Sometimes, in unexpected places, you find both.

"All of the victims were shot in their heads.
All but McGowan were shot in their beds."

This post.

...this post that I choose this week from American Digest; a satisfying, nourishing read for me because this week has been so crazy busy that I haven't had the opportunity to nourish myself that way.

I like to "nourish" myself sometimes with true crime, relived in the hands of a capable and vivid writer. What am I looking for? Madness? Maybe. I think that I am looking for that line. That thin red line that separates us from madness. Perhaps so I can recognize it when I approach it in myself.

And poetry. Vanderleun termed the lines above "found poetry." I have a few lines here and there, not my own, but belonging to someone with that gift, that I have taken to illustrate some of my life's things.

Often, when I recall my son before his condition overtook him, these lines are on my mind:

"Farewell thou child of my right hand and joy,
My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy."
Ben Johnson

I have figured a few things out.

2005-05-05T12:13:00.000-07:00

Actually, it's probably only one thing but it works for me.

I included a link in my last post that my initial sidetrack led me to fail to explain. I won't explain it much now either- that will come though, likely in my next post.

That link, however has led me to finally define what attracts me to a specific blog & now allows me to solve my own blogroll etiquette issues.

A good story. I like a good story. I love to read, always have & if I could live anywhere it would be in the small apartment above my own tidy little used-book store that specializes in extremely well written fiction, rich tales of adventure & woe, fact-based historic accounts and carefully chosen nonfiction.

That said, I now know how to clean up my blogroll. Chris tells an excellent story- I laugh out loud, I can see the setting, the characters are rich. He graciously provides us with links to explain unfamiliar terms. My vocabulary has increased- I'm able to make fun of people & situations & they don't understand what I said.

Rob, the author of the unexplained link, is a gifted storyteller. Take some time to read his discontinued blog (there's a link to his current site). I was only able to get through two stories/posts in my initial reading. They were not too long, they were just that full, moving & engaging.

Italian American Princess tells a nice story as well. Mostly auto-biographical, but concise, not cloying. She doesn't vie for sympathy or wrench feelings out of her readers. She just tells her tale. Her self-described snarkiness is a refreshing change of pace from the happy-crappy stuff I've found in so many other women's blogs. (One of the reasons I miss Veruka).

Logic Monkey is a good reporter & offers a lot of fuel for thought to his readers. He unabashedly shares his opinions on weighty subjects, but is also well able to explain them & provide the background to do so.

Make me think, send me someplace I've never been, let me peer over your shoulder. Let me feel what you felt, or if that is too close, let me appreciate what you did & know what you experienced.
I love a good story.

Blogger etiquitte.

2005-04-29T11:58:00.000-07:00

Etiquette stresses me out. I believe I am capable of initial politeness. It's the reciprocal stuff that confuses me. Blogging just makes it worse. What exactly is blogger etiquette? Is there a standard?
Some questions:
How long do you leave a seemingly inactive blog on your blogroll? Especially if you really liked it in its day?

Must one reciprocate each blogroll-listing one comes across? Or that is brought to one's attention?

How big a deal is de-rolling someone? I am sure that overall it is a meaningless gesture, like boycotting Chevrolet or something like that, but should some explanation be given? Especially if the de-roll-ee is an, um, lesser-read blog.

Some of this comes about because of something I read on another blog or two. Something about blogdom being 'clique-ish' and that particular blogger wanting to opt out of it. What went through my mind was, "Well, duh." Of course it's clique-ish. You start a blog, you read other blogs that you like, and most often because you share some opinions, you blogroll them & maybe correspond through comments, posts or email. Sometimes you try to come up with a blatant ploy to get invited to their block parties & maybe even a ride on their friend's boat. Whatever.

Anyway. I am still pretty much the most unsophisticated blogger I am aware of. I'm working on it, though. Well, okay, I'm not- cut me some slack. I'm busy.

Dangit.

This is part of my problem. I start out with some kind of intention, which was to incorporate this link into a post, and then I get wrapped up in some etiquitte crap & forget why I was even here. I'll have to explain the link later, when I can clear my head. All thanks go to Chris, though.

This school board thing is getting more & more political.

2005-04-27T10:10:00.000-07:00

Naive? Maybe I am in some ways. In many ways.
I knew this running for the board seat thing would be political. The only reason it's such a big issue is because the school is small & new & the parent community is extremely invested in it & equally committed to their own positions & opinions.
There are factions in the parent community, and discussion has been started about who the healthiest candidates are from the "faction" I am most aligned with.
I am more than willing to bow out just to give a healthier more viable candidate a better shot. We've gotta get somebody in there or the current people may self destruct & take the school with them. And I gotta tell ya, I love my girls but no way am I homeschooling them just because their school's board took the whole thing belly up.

So I'm over at Dangerous Logic...

2005-04-15T13:00:00.000-07:00

smiling, trying not to laugh out loud because even though Fridays are really quiet here at work, I'm not completely alone. Anyway, despite what happened, I'm not a complete idiot.

I'm reading today's post, I mean, yesterday's post and it's funny. And it includes a link to an archived post. So I go. And I've gotta read the tag line twice.

Ok, three times.

It was funny, once I got it, & I did allow myself a self-conscious little chuckle. I'm alone in my office & apparently I embarrassed myself by myself because I didn't get it immediately. Chris's humor can sometimes be a bit over my head... I got the Matrix reference on the first try, though.

Like I said. I'm not an idiot.

But he did have a reason...

2005-04-15T12:51:00.000-07:00

for stealing a dead guy's head.

Youth pleads innocent to head theft

April 14, 2005

HYDE PARK – A Morrisville teenager is being held on $100,000 bail after pleading not guilty to charges he raided a tomb in a cemetery and removed the head of the corpse.

Court documents said the suspect allegedly talked of using the man's head as a "bong," a pipe for smoking marijuana.

Well, what the heck? That makes sense.

Some changes...

2005-04-08T09:21:00.000-07:00

I really have no excuse. It's been mostly laziness that has kept me from blogging in recent weeks. I've even seen, read, or heard stuff but haven't taken the time to blog on it & of course have now forgotten whatever it was.
Nonetheless, some changes may be happening. I recall, I think it was Scott at Right Moment, addressing the issue of possibly needing to discontinue his blog at some point after completing his degree.
I'm not as close to completing this degree (next year) or entering a master's program (2007, if I decide to do it), but I am running for a seat on my daughters' school board. The language alone in this blog could make things unpleasant for my girls, and would certainly render me unelectable, even to a small school board. The expressed political opinions would probably shut the whole effort down.
It's tough. I don't want to pretend to be something I'm not, or deny a part of myself (namely my big mouth), but I also really think that I could do some good for the girls' school program at the board level. I wouldn't have considered running if I didn't think so. I don't want this outlet to shoot that effort in the foot.
Since Tony at Red Mind has reported extensively on the corruption in the Roslyn school district, I find my school board aspirations to be kind of funny. I am running in part because I think the current (appointed, not elected) board is a bit out of control & could use some perspective. My kids' district definately ain't got the kind of money that'll support a Roslyn level of corruption, though.
Wonder if there's any way to turn this blog into a "my kids' school board is crazy" blog, possibly from an insider's point of view? We'll have to see...

I don't particularly like yippy dogs, but this is just taking things too far...

2005-03-23T11:34:00.000-08:00

Woman sentenced for killing neighbor's dog
Associated Press
March 23, 2005
NAPLES, Fla. -— A woman has been sentenced to 30 days in jail for killing her neighbor's Chihuahua with a shotgun, telling the dog's owner she was horribly frightened by the pooch.
Wanda Ziglar, 49, of Golden Gate, pleaded no contest Tuesday to one felony count of animal cruelty. Senior Judge Jack Schoonover agreed to withhold a formal finding of guilt of the charge.
Ziglar was arrested July 31 after admitting she shot and killed the dog, which belonged to her then-neighbor, Marisol Olegnichar. Ziglar told deputies the Chihuahua repeatedly wandered into her yard.
She said in court that she grabbed a shotgun and fired two warning shots into the air to try to scare off the dog.
"I was scared by the dog. It came out from behind my garbage can,'' said Ziglar.
The dog's owner told Ziglar that she didn't believe her.
"There's no way a 2-pound dog was going to scare you,'' Olegnichar said.

No, but it might annoy the hell out of you.

The thing is, I can accept death.

2005-03-23T10:38:00.000-08:00

Absolutely, I can accept it. Otherwise I might not be able to function in a world where people beat babies to death with a stick. Or pay someone to suck them out of their mothers with a tube.

Anyway, I am not horrified by the Terri Schiavo case because I can't accept the fact of her eventual death. Of course I can.

I am horrified, but not terribly surprised, that so many people in the position to affect the case think that a feeding tube, Ensure, and TPN are 'extraordinary measures.' (I don't know that she actually receives Ensure or TPN. Both can be given to persons with feeding or nutrition problems.)

I am especially nauseated by the thought that some think that brain damage = terminal illness. That poor woman isn't dying of some organic disease. She's brain damaged.

Since when is swallowing a lower function than breathing? Or a heartbeat?

If you are going to get sick, you'd better hope it kills you.

2005-03-19T12:31:00.000-08:00

Or have a living will, no matter how young & healthy you think you are.

Depending on how your next of kin feels about it, they don't have to feed you.

Or give you water.

And the courts will back them up.

Heads up from Hell.

2005-03-15T10:19:00.000-08:00

I like the way this man thinks. And I am grateful as hell for what he is doing.

Don't make me have to pull a Fahrenheit 451 on your ass.

2005-03-15T09:55:00.000-08:00

You don't pull a gun on the fireman who resues you from your burning house. That's just rude. And if you do, you'd better pray you get the nice fireman, cause Chris at Dangerous Logic don't play that crap.

Where in the heck have I been.

2005-03-15T09:45:00.000-08:00

Nowhere interesting, I'm afraid. Just busy. A good busy, I suppose. Still, I feel out of it- less aware of what is going on around me that I can't see, for while I haven't been blogging, I haven't been reading blogs either.
Time to get caught up!

"Freedom has a flavor the protected will never know"

2005-03-01T12:08:00.000-08:00

This series of posts at What-tha was very moving to read all at once, and they got me thinking. I belong to a small church, not a nutty one, just a small suburban congregation that has sent 3 members off; two of them to Iraq, one in the same company that Shoshanna Johnson belonged to. He didn't get kidnapped though, thank God. In fact he's home & doing well.

The story of Shoshanna Johnson & her fellow POWs horrified and worried me when it broke. I was initially worried, of course, but became quickly more so when I saw the pictures of the missing. I had not expected one of them to have skin like mine.

In this post, Martyr at What-tha describes seeing a photo of one of the returning servicemen. One of the dailies recently ran a very similar photo, of one of the men from our small congregation who'd just returned. It spoke volumes, the same that Martyr tried to convey so eloquently in his posts.

It is almost surreal. I can speak of & recall the feelings I had surrounding the POWs, I can share the helplessness & stoicism of the families & friends I have who have sons, husbands, and brothers overseas. I can proudly send off & gratefully welcome home (which we did, last fall) my own b-i-l from his deployment. Yet I also bitch about traffic, sports, gas prices, my kid's homework, my own homework, my job, spouse's job, my dogs... I don't feel like I am sacrificing anything. So much burden rests on the shoulders of so few.

The line quoted in the title of this post came from here. It was spoken by "John Garcia, secretary of New Mexico Veterans Affairs, [who] thanked Johnson for her courage and bravery." She had spoken at UNM's student union in late January of this year.

I'm glad that my b-i-l and Martyr's b-i-l are home safe.

Admissions.

2005-02-28T12:01:00.000-08:00

1. I am anal about grammar & punctuation. I added a comma to the *What Makes a Brit Feel Like a Man* post where one had been omitted in the original posting.
I am fully aware that my analness about this does not make me particularly careful or always correct in my own usage. It just makes me likely to find my own mistakes after it's too late.

2. I did not watch the Oscars. I haven't looked at the papers yet today. It is about 3pm EST, and I have no idea who won anything.
God, I feel free.

Don't make me break my foot off in your ass.

2005-02-28T11:28:00.000-08:00

I had the clicker a few weeks ago which is often a rare moment at my house, and I stumbled across a movie that looked so crappy in its pre-opening credits scene that I stayed to see what was up. I settled in when the title came:

Sweet Sweetback's Badassss

I'd heard of this. Vaguely. In my childhood home this was not exactly used as an education tool for us children, but it was not completely censored out of existence either.

After watching just the first few minutes of the film I really thought it should have been. My mom had a homemade cassette tape that had the name of the film handwritten on it, so while she never described the film to me, she did let me hear Earth Wind & Fire's musical interpretation, apparently.

I had no idea that my mom or dad had anything to do with what I am quite sure was child porn. No, I'm not going to call them on it. (Can't as far as my dad's concerned.)

Anyway, I had to know, was the nude youth on top of the nude woman Mario Van Peebles? Here's what I found:

“Sweet Sweetback's BaadAsssss Song” opens with a scene of a young Sweet being initiated into sex with a 20-something woman. (And who plays this lucky little dickens? Why none other than Melvin's then 13 year old son, Mario van Peebles. Melvin has never given any indication that he considered the possible negative effects of having his own child perform what are essentially pornographic (and maybe illegal?) acts, stating in the aforementioned Tavis Smiley interview, “It obviously didn't hurt the boy.”)

Here's where I found it.

I have no idea what to make of this.

"And now for something..."

2005-02-26T10:24:00.000-08:00

...bah, you know what I mean. Just wanted to prove my previous point by lightening things up with this humor from Wicked Thoughts:

Thursday, February 24, 2005
TWO DOZEN THINGS THAT MAKE A BRIT FEEL LIKE A MAN(May need some translation)
1, OPENING JARS - nnng, she's struggling. You take it from her hands, open it effortlessly and pretend she loosened it for you. She didn't. Jars are men's work.
2, CALLING SOMEONE 'SON' - Especially policeman but even saying it to kids makes you the man.
3, DOING A PROPER SLIDE TACKLE - Beckham free kicks? Gay. A Stuart Pearce tackle is the pinnacle of the game, simultaneously winning the ball and crippling the man. Magic.
4, SHARPENING A PENCIL WITH A STANLEY KNIFE - Blunt, is it? Hand it here love. No, I don't need a sharpener, you think I can't whittle.
5, GOING TO THE TIP - A manly act which combines driving, lifting and - as you thrillingly drop your rubbish into another huge pile of other rubbish, noisy destruction.
6, DRINKING UP - Specifically, rising from the table, slinging your coat on and downing two thirds of a pint in one fluid movement. Then nodding towards the door, saying, "Let's go" and striding out while everyone else struggles to catch up with you. God, you're hard.
7, HAVING A THIN BIT OF WOOD - in the shed, solely to stir paint with.
8, HAVING A SCAR - Ideally it'll be a facial knife wound, but even an iron burn on the wrist is good. "Ooh, did it hurt". "Nah".
9, HAVING A HANGOVER AND THICK STUBBLE - When birds have been partying they just whinge. You, on the other hand have physical evidence of your hardness, sprouting from your face. "Big night?" Grr, what does it look like.
10, NODDING AT COPPERS - A moments eye contact is all it takes for you to share the unspoken bond. "We've not seen eye to eye in the past", it says, "but someone's got to keep the little scrotes in line".
11, USING POWER TOOLS - slightly more powerful than you need or can safely handle. Pneumatic drilling while smoking a fag? Superb.
12, KICKING A FOOTY AGAINST A GARAGE DOOR - Clang-g-g-g-g-g-! Stitch that becks, I kick so hard I set off car alarms.
13, ARRIVING IN A PUB LATE... and everyone cheers you. It doesn't mean you're popular, it just means your mates are ****ed. However, the rest of the pub doesn't know that.
14, NOT WATCHING YOUR WEIGHT - fat is a feminist issue, apparently. Brilliant. Pass the pork scratchings.
15, CARVING THE ROAST - and saying "are you a leg or breast man" to the blokes and "do you want stuffing" to the women. Congratulations, you are now your dad.
16, WINKING - turns women to putty. Doesn't it?
17, TEST SWINGING HAMMERS - ideally, B&Q would have little changing rooms with mirrors so you could see how rugged you look with any DIY item. Until then, we'll make do with the aisles.
18, TAKING OUT 200 pounds FROM A CASHPOINT - okay, so its for paying the plumber later but with that much cash you feel like a mafia don. The only thing better is peeling notes off the roll later.
19, PHONE CALLS THAT LAST LESS THAN A MINUTE - unlike birds, we get straight to the point. "alright? Yep. Drink? Red lion? George, it is then. Seven. See ya."
20, PARALLEL PARKING - bosh, straight in. first time. Can Schumacher do that? No, because his cars got no reverse gear which, technically, makes you the worlds best driver.
21, HAVING EARNED THAT PINT - Since the dawn of time, men have toiled in the fields in blistering heat. Why? So, when it's over we can stand there in silence, surveying our work with one hand resting on the beer gut while the other nurses a foaming jug of ale. Aaaah.
22, HAVING SOMETHING PROPERLY WRONG WITH YOU - especially if you didn't make a fuss. "Why was I off, nothing much, just a brain haemorrhage".
23, KNOWING WHICH SCREWDRIVER IS WHICH - "a Phillips? For that? Are you mad, bint?"
24. CALLING YOUR MATE A C**T - and punching him on the shoulder. Just a man's way of saying "you're a good mate; I missed you while you were in hospital".

Dead babies in Darfur...

2005-02-26T10:12:00.000-08:00

...still dead.

And, God help us, still dying. WTF is wrong with this picture?

Steve at HOI is at it again.

2005-02-20T15:34:00.000-08:00

He's prepared some sage relationship advice & observations. There's a detectable single-guy slant, but it makes sense.

Spouse is one of the most literal, un-mushy guys I know. He's not utterly without consideration, though. Just before VD, he changed the tires on the car so I'd get better traction driving our children to school every day & my own ass to work.

Screw the flowers. They just die anyway.

Another black man shoots himself in the foot.

2005-02-18T19:54:00.000-08:00

This kind of thing pisses me off. Cause we still live in an age when a black person trying to break a barrier has to be even more careful to check facts, dot i's and cross t's.

Prospective First-Black-NFL owner Reggie Fowler had bios handed out to the press at the news conference announcing his purchase agreement that contained, essentially, false information about his past accomplishments.

Don't embellish when it can't be verified & can be proven false. It hurts your image & credibility, and puts undue pressure & scrutiny on the next black person who tries to do what you're trying to do.

Fool.

The first black NFL owner...

2005-02-17T11:31:00.000-08:00

is both a good thing & a bad thing from where I sit.

I am always pleased when any minority or perceived minority breaks some achievement barrier. It opens the door.

I am, however, a native born & bred Vikes fan (or Queens fan, depending on how they're doing & how much I feel like emasculating them from my living room). A new, out of state owner who is likely spending all his unfettered capital buying an overvalued team with serious stadium issues might move the team. The NFL will not want to put up with Minnesotans who think that any money not spent on a new stadium will actually go to homeless puppies and kitties forever.

I already had to put up with no hockey team here. I will have to move if the state ends up with no pro football team. What the hell am I supposed to do Sunday afternoons in winter? Ice fish?

And do not even talk to me about Green Bay.

Lest there be any confusion, the hockey thing neither was, nor really is a big deal for me. I'm a black woman. Not too many hockey barriers I'm expecting to see broken any time soon. Still, I'll be happy for whoever does, & for the random minority hockey player (who this season is sitting home like all the rest.)

Is it just me, or has the hockey lockout not been as tragic as some thought? Could pro hockey disappear and people actually not miss it all that much?

It is an interesting time we live in.

2005-02-14T16:59:00.000-08:00

We have a black female Secretary of State.

We have a hispanic Attorney General.

I hope there are kids hitting the books, knowing they really can do whatever they put their minds to.

Maybe Alan Keyes should move to MN...

2005-02-11T16:16:00.000-08:00

'cause Mark Dayton does not believe that he is "the best candidate to lead the DFL Party to victory next year."

No kidding.

"Sen. Dayton has surprised us in so many ways...when he was [the only] one of 535 members of congress to shut his office down. I couldn't explain that, and I can't explain this." "As an incumbent, four years into a six-year term, if he's decided he is in no position to win this election, I think that says quite a lot about the state of his party, and I'm not sure what it says about Sen. Dayton." -Rep. John Kline, R-MN.

I have some ideas.

Oh, and Nick Grow? Relax. There is no need to panic, things are still wide open. No need to resurrect the body & his butt-kisser, er, jock-rider, er, former spokesman & "good friend" Smoochy Wodele. Be reasonable. Ol'Bod is a person who is incapable of working cooperatively with anyone. We don't want to suggest something rash & have MN even more of a laughing stock with one too many grumpy old newspaper columnists.

Moved...

2005-02-04T14:00:00.000-08:00

by this post from American Digest. Please note the inclusion about one third of the way into the post of a story about a developmentally handicapped young man murdered by *insurgents* in their quest to disrupt or halt the Iraqi elections.

He was 19. One year older than my son.

I have no words.

Shorts...

2005-02-04T13:39:00.000-08:00

...no shirt.

Radio guy said it was 49 degrees yesterday afternoon. I was on Snelling & Grand, near Macalester, when I saw the guy in shorts. Noticed the white legs first, scanned up and- yeah, sure enough.

Chest hair.

I will not be so smug as to say only in MN will you find a guy conspicuously jogging through a busy intersection in rush hour half nude, but please. There was still a lot of snow on the ground yesterday, and I am sure that some bars opened their patios anyway because even if you don't actually ice fish here, you apparently have other means of acting like a nut in the middle of f***ing winter.

Me? I wore a lighter coat instead of the parka. I'm not an idiot. I know we are one weather front away from Day After Tomorrow. (Don't even get me started on that laugh-fest.)

Chris = baboo?

2005-02-03T13:22:00.000-08:00

Maybe. Just maybe. Because of this. There are actually lots of reasons & WTW is one of them, and his tales of his (stupidest apparently in the US) neighbors, another.

(Disclaimer: I think the stupid city poll is bogus, too & why isn't Gary the stupidest city? I'm sure it's stupider than Fort Wayne.)

This, as indicated above, is the Cornell note taking system. Chris linked to American Digest where the whole thing is spelled out, along with some history & context.

I used them yesterday. In a civ class disguised as a lit class. My notes make so much sense I am not entirely convinced that it was I who wrote them.

They are breathtaking.

Thank you, Chris.

R. Budd. Dwyer.

2005-02-02T13:03:00.000-08:00

Remember him anybody? I do. And so, apparently, does Chris at Dangerous Logic, my favorite morbid kitty watcher.

(I'd never heard of a cat show & frankly can't picture a cat cooperating with that kind of thing anyway.)

I was surprised & fascinated when I saw the R. Budd clip on, most likely, WTTW out of Chicago on 1/22/87, a date that appeared to blow out of everybody's memory pretty quickly. (I actually may have seen the story on 1/23/87. I don't know what time the fatal press conference was, & if film was ready for the 10:00 news that same day.)

I was surprised, because with little info & no fanfare, the news anchor led right into this video that showed a rambling, somewhat distraught looking man & stopped right before the money shot. Damn.

I was fascinated because this distraught man, whom I'd never heard of & knew nothing about, chose to end his pain in front of the press. He chose to. I thought then that the story would be bigger & we'd be hearing, reading, and seeing endless analysis of suicide, the press, gun control, politicians, and the eastern US. I heard little. Maybe there was more out east, but from where I sat in the midwest, we apparently had more pressing death & destruction to attend to.

I had already begun to hate the press by then. I was pretty young (only about 10 years younger than I am right now. Keep up.) and the press had lost my respect by endlessly panting over sordid & lurid details of dead, raped young girls, brutalized young men & women, and molested kids. They sent me over the edge when, I think it was the same station I saw the R. Budd story on, they let their anchor apologize profusely because they'd just shown footage of some military family being informed of their child's death & you could hear screams coming through the front door. Around that same time, a young, quite young, girl was brutalized and murdered in the notorious elevators of a now-razed public housing highrise in Chicago & the cameras were rolling in her mother's living room as she screamed & cried. No apology there. Welfare mommas are fair game.

I always suspected R. Budd got buried quickly in Chicago because he was white, old, a guy, and far too respectable for leering. He murdered himself on TV. He wanted us to leer.

Go here if you'd like to (tastefully) do so. Turns out (I hadn't known this before today) he was likely a victim in an elaborate money-skimming scam & he was probably headed to prison for someone else's crime. Go figure.

I don't think this baboo thing can really work.

2005-02-01T13:41:00.000-08:00

And I feel kind of stupid for just realizing it. Don't get me wrong, I still like Steve H's recipes, general wit & meanness, and his dad's boat.

But Steve H at HOI likes birds. He has two of them. That live with him. That touch him sometimes.

Maynard is standing on my left wrist as I type.

Apparently they share a cup sometimes, too.

For a while he was helping me drink my coffee...

My dog ate a dead bird, after carrying it around in her mouth earlier in the day while it was still alive. My dogs don't drink from my cup, though I suppose they would consider knocking me down & taking it if said cup was filled with gravy.

I could have found a better link, but didn't feel like looking for a picture of a bird, great blog or no.

"...they shared chocolates."

2005-01-30T09:21:00.000-08:00

Early reports describe the elections going better than I had hoped. From what I have read, most eligible voters are not people who resented the opportunity to participate in free elections. Apparently, many welcomed the opportunity and did choose to participate. And some brought candy.
My kind of election.

Hmmm, an interesting post at What-tha?

2005-01-27T11:02:00.000-08:00

This post at What-tha? struck me as seeming to offer some input that may tie together a couple of my recent posts, about Hilary Clinton and political posturing/scheming. I didn't actually use the term *scheming* in my post about political posturing, but I do think it might apply in the situation Martyr reports.

Martyr (as always, thank you for digging) points out that 13 senators voted against Dr. Rice's confirmation, two senators didn't vote, and one that I know I thought would have voted against her did, in fact, vote to confirm Dr. Rice. Interesting. And yeah, I am suspicious. Hilary Clinton has never struck me as the type who would cut a sister any slack.

Political posturing & profile...

2005-01-27T10:09:00.000-08:00

Not long after fellow democrats in the senate failed to defend or join in Mark Dayton's decision to close his DC office prior to the presidential election, his fellow democrats in the senate appear to be giving him reign & profile in the prescription drug cost arena.

I know that prescription drug costs for seniors has been his *pet issue* at home in MN. I have been less aware of how much profile or influence that issue has brought him outside of his home state. I do know that his perceived panic prior to the presidential election got him some not so flattering national press.

I don't understand why a person who is widely considered in many circles to be a flake is being given leadership on any national issue at this point. Sympathy? Is there some kind of protocol for incumbents? No matter how vulnerable their seat really is, rather than finding a viable substitute & convincing the flake to fly home, they give him an issue. Go figure.

He can't afford to bankroll his campaign again this time, & I am not sure how much fundraising leverage he actually has, though I know there are many democrats out there with more money than sense, so who knows. What I do know is bug-eyed, sweaty kids from *special class* shouldn't be in the Senate.

A mouse sneezed into the petri dish...

2005-01-24T11:57:00.000-08:00

and that is GWB's fault, too.

All human embryonic stem cell lines approved for use in federally funded research are contaminated with a foreign molecule from mice...a setback to the Bush administration's controversial policy that provides federal funding only for research using embryonic stem cell lines that were created before August 2001.

I passed college-level biology only by the S of my A, so I am nobody to monday morning quarterback a geneticist, but what does GWB's policy have to do with this? That policy limits funding from the federal government. Surely there must be some wealthy funder with diabetes out there who would fund this type of research. Raise your heads from the microscope, write some grant proposals & wait- just like everybody else who wants to do something but doesn't have the money to do it.

The researchers said the safest course was to create fresh batches of stem cells that were free of contamination from animal molecules — a process that could also take years.

Safest for whom? Surely not the lab-created embryonic stage human beings whose lives have no more value than a rhesus monkey. Whose lives are more valuable, and who determines that value?

And if anyone stumbles across this post who thinks I live in some glass house somewhere, look around. I have a child with a neurobiological disorder. I can say with certainty that I would give years of my life just to see him well and whole again. My life. Not someone else's.

You may check the source of this soapbox here.

Why Hilary?

2005-01-21T08:56:00.000-08:00

I'm back in school. Night class, one at a time, after *mumble mumble ahem* years.

Last week the discussion came around to whether a woman would be able to run for president (or be elected, I can't remember) in our lifetimes. Three of the four black women in the class said yes, Hilary Clinton. Professor asked about Condoleezza Rice. They said no, she's too much of a yes-person. She's too passive, they said. Hilary was *the girl* the one who could do it.

Huh? Let's just say that I was the fourth. Even the white women in the class didn't register as vocally or as vehemently in support of Hilary Clinton. None of the guys, multiracial group, said much.

I don't think that a woman will be elected to the office of president in my lifetime. I don't think Hilary Clinton could do it, either way.
I don't think that blacks should just blindly support other blacks, high profile positions or not, but I really didn't get where that opinion came from.

We'd taken the kids to the gunshop...

2005-01-18T13:16:00.000-08:00

to check out the really cool civil war era rifles, all banged & gouged up with history.

Afterwards, we went to a nearby burger & beer place, not so the kids could have beer, but so we all could have burgers. While waiting on line in the cafeteria-style ordering area, spouse saw a mouse run across the area toward the kitchen.

Of course.

The kids were whiny & hungry, else we'd have left then, but rush hour with hungry kids... I'd have fed them the freakin' rat to avoid that nightmare. Anyway I asked to see the manager. The place was not that busy, not at all crowded, more empty tables than occupied ones, but the manager still looked stressed & harried.

I told him the place was infested & politely suggested he comp our meals. He refused, but then relented & comped us the kids' food. Later as we sat in the unacceptably crumb filled dining area trying to rush the kids & encourage them not to touch anything but their food- just the meat, really, he came over with a contrite attitude & an apology & an appointment with the exterminator. And a certificate for spouse & I to come back for a burger & beer on the house.

As if.

Can't follow that up...

2005-01-17T11:24:00.000-08:00

Yesterday's post was kind of draining, emotionally.

Recently that same kid & I were watching the movie Man in the Moon, it's a few years old with Sam Waterston & Reese Witherspoon. During the scene when the male teenage love interest meets the older teenage sister, I said to Robby, "Looks like he's in love. Are you in love with anyone?"

He looked right at me and said "I'm in love with you."

The heck with Freud. I love that kid.

Check out this timely post from Tony at Red Mind. I love the quote at the end. Now I'd better get back to work.

A strange personal story...

2005-01-16T08:46:00.000-08:00

Consider yourself warned.

A few months ago, an ex-bf from high school contacted me after something like 12 or 13 years. A few days into an awkward correspondence, he asked me to share something more personal about myself. I wrote him the following:

My eldest child, Robert, was stricken with a rare form of autism late in his 7th year.

He was 7 yrs 9 months, actually, when I noticed that he wasn't talking as much. He'd previously, as recently as the previous month, been a real talker- frequent chatter- and he had one of those really high pitched little boy voices, so there was no ignoring it.

Upon reflection, I realized that he'd become withdrawn also. He hadn't pestered me to visit his playmates. I got chills a day or so later, when one of his friends showed up at the door- I recall Robby seeming like a little ghostly figure- he kind of floated into the room & just drifted away.I started thinking that maybe it was environmental, he was too isolated. I was homeschooling him, and I began to work hard to connect with other homeschoolers more purposefully, though in my gut I didn't think that was the issue. I simply didn't know what the issue was.

A couple of months later, he began to develop debilitating fears. He could not be left alone. He could not fall asleep alone- not even with us in the next room. He would scream in terror at things we didn't recognize as frightening. He became even more silent, was not making eye contact, was not initiating interaction, would not respond when spoken to.

A psychologist we finally consulted (we didn't know what else to do) began to treat it as a family problem. We were to never speak for Robby, just wait for him to respond to others. I did not know how to make him understand that it was more than just some kind of wallflower syndrome. It was something else and whatever it was had stolen my happy, laughing, forgiving little boy and replaced him with a silent image of himself. I remember being terrified.

One day, about 9 months after I first realized something was different, Robby woke up talking more than he had in months. He was about 8 years 5 months old. He was more animated also. What he was saying did not make sense. It seemed as though he was trying very hard to tell us something, and he seemed to grow somewhat anxious, then agitated when we didn't understand. I remember one of the things he said: There are 2 Robbys, the high Robby and the low Robby. If the high Robby goes away, then the low Robby will go away. Then the trees will go away, and the grass will go away, and the cars will go away, and the houses will go away, and all the people will go away, and everything- will- be- gone!

His voice had grown more insistent as he spoke, and he cried and raged when he finished. He became more agitated as the day progressed and we made increasingly frantic calls around the region trying to find out what to do when you fear that your 8 year old is having a nervous breakdown. We finally were told, in the 5th call to our pediatrician, to take him to the children's hospital ER. We bundled him and our 1 year old daughter into the van and drove in silent fear. We only had to stop twice to settle Robby down and to keep him from striking his sister. He was admitted to the hospital that night.

It was awful.

He later reached a plateau of sorts. He began to exhibit baseline behaviors that remain today. He looks like an adolescent with moderate autism & several accompanying behavioral issues. Unless you knew about the onset of his condition, there would be no way to know that he absolutely had not been born that way.

I was 4 months pregnant with our second daughter when his breakdown occured. Had I known what was to come, I think I would have only one child.

Had it occured without my husband, neither Robby nor I would have made it.

I recently acknowledged that fact to myself & to my husband and I believe it to be absolute truth. We (my husband and I) are only recently coming to a point where we are beginning to fathom the depth and significance of the intimacy we share. We have been through so much together.

I believe that God Himself brought spouse to me because He knew Robby and I would need him. Spouse saved a woman and a child. Our family just doesn't work without spouse. I hope he always knows that.

I don't have room or need for a correspondence with an ex-bf from high school. I expect no further contact from him.

"End zone jackassery"

2005-01-14T09:58:00.000-08:00

Who, exactly, is the model for etiquette in the end zone?
Jack Gordon
January 13, 2005 Minneapolis StarTribune
On Jan. 9, 2005, a date that evidently will live in infamy, Randy Moss pretended to moon Green Bay Packers fans after scoring a touchdown at Lambeau Field. This piece of end-zone jackassery enraged the entire football-commentating industry, from the Fox announcers calling the game to local TV and newspaper sports pundits throughout the known universe.
Fox announcers: "Disgusting!"
Howie Long, back in the studio: "Classless!"
Terry Bradshaw: "Weak!"
Jimmy Johnson: "Makes my two eyes like stars start from their spheres, my knotted and combined locks to part, and each particular hair to stand an end like quills upon the fretful porpentine!"
To date, the football-commentating industry has failed to enlighten us on the only really interesting question, which is this: What makes Moss' gesture more offensive, lame, juvenile, classless, dorky or tedious than all the other displays of jackassery we've been looking at in NFL games for the past 20 years?
Moss' moon was insulting to the Green Bay fans? So is every other end-zone bugaloo, sack dance and interception strut that takes place in an opposing team's stadium. So is the "holding my finger to my lips" gesture that means: "I just made a tackle! Me! Finally! So you hometown fans have to shut up now."
Juvenile? The whole point of modern professional football is to rub the world's nose in the fact that you occasionally do the thing you get paid millions of dollars to do. Like catch the ball. Or block somebody. Or run out on the field without falling over your own feet. Right?
There are those among us who could live without ever seeing another Lambeau Leap or Mile High Salute or Icky Shuffle. Hey, it would be OK with me if Daunte Culpepper threw a touchdown pass and forgot to do the cute little fist-revolving thing that means he's "getting his roll on." He could lose the treehouse and the GI Joe dolls, too. I'd be fine with it.
If a particular kind of celebration gave commentators the vapors, you'd think it would be the one where a player lays the ball on the ground and then squats over it. A Vikings defensive back demonstrated the league-wide technique after intercepting a pass during the same game in which Moss fired the moon shot heard round the world. The announcers didn't say a word.
The precise significance of the squat-over-the-ball celebration has been lost in the mists of time, and we can only speculate about what it is meant to symbolize. But after the first merely nerdy possibility, that speculation quickly takes us places that Howie Long and Jimmy Johnson ought to find disturbing:
The ball is an egg, and the player is the proud chicken who has laid it.
The player has relieved himself, and the ball is the result.
The player intends to sit down hard on the ball and draw it into his body in the manner that Mr. Slave absorbed Paris Hilton to win the "Whore Off" showdown in an unforgettable episode of "South Park."
When running back Barry Sanders was still playing for the Detroit Lions, the occasional old-school announcer had someone to point to and plead: "See? That's how you score a touchdown. Act like you've been in the end zone before. Hand the ball to the ref and go sit on the bench."
Alas, since Sanders retired, it's hard to figure who Terry Bradshaw has in mind as a player whose debonair scoring behavior makes Moss look particularly like a horse's ass. These things are graded on a curve, you know.
I blame "Jerry McGuire" for dooming us to dorkdom once and for all. In that tragically popular movie, Cuba Gooding Jr. plays an excellent wide receiver who refuses to do minstrel-show routines after catching the ball. "I don't dance," he says.
Well, thank heaven for you, Cuba Gooding Jr., the viewer thinks. But the viewer is wrong. The movie's great lesson turns out to be that Gooding will benefit both financially and spiritually when he sheds his silly prejudice and stages an end-zone display that makes Stepin Fetchit look as laid back as Perry Como. He doesn't just get a new multimillion-dollar contract for this. He grows as a person.
Nuts to the idea that the NFL should fine Randy Moss for fake-mooning the Cheeseheads and then resume business as usual. In the Vikings' first regular-season game next fall, Moss should run onto the field dressed only in his helmet and a fur-lined jock strap with a tiger tail on the back.
In the unlikely event that he won't volunteer, we could take up a nationwide collection and slip him a million bucks, under the table, to do it.
Then we fans, in our titanic outrage, could demand sweeping changes in NFL rules for game behavior -- changes that would put us out of the groaning misery we experience every week, in every game, all season long.
The new rules would be simple. All NFL players gather for mandatory meetings in which they watch a short film of Barry Sanders scoring a touchdown. The head coach then reads an official statement, as follows: "That's it. Anything dorkier, for any reason, and we'll have you killed."

Jack Gordon is a freelance writer and editor in Eden Prairie.

A couple of links...

2005-01-12T09:37:00.000-08:00

No, not sausage.

What-tha is the source of my first "It f***ing figures" moment today. Hilary hates Chertoff, surprise surprise. Interesting reason why. Whitewater, of course. I hadn't heard that before, so thanks, Martyr. Hil really is a vindictive bitch.

The other link is from Steve H at HOI. At first read, it may appear that Steve hates women. I so often find myself agreeing with him that I've since come to realize that I must hate women, too. At least, certain women. That said, I appreciated this post at HOI. Now I can tell those who accuse me of being a man hater that it just seems that way because of the media.

I don't think, based on what I've read, that Steve hates women in the all-men-are-pigs sort of way that bitchy feminists keep whining about. I think that some bitchy women have encouraged a climate where men are denigrated for all of their uniquely masculine qualities. How these crazy bitches are raising their sons is beyond me.

Kinda reminds me of what I told spouse this morning. I love him, in part because his shoulders are broader than mine & he has a penis.

And the truth is, I hate everybody.

Just drop it already.

2005-01-11T10:15:00.000-08:00

In a recent interview, the ESPN one, I think- receiver Randy Moss responded to a question about his actions with something like, You guys [the media] blew it up. It wasn't that big a deal till the media made a big deal out of it.

Now they are proving him right by still blathering on & on about his post td reception pantomime. 2 seconds, like 2 seconds of pretending to do something & I am still hearing about it & a photo of it has been in the local paper for 2 days now.

C'mon. Does this really merit that kind of attention? I am positive that nobody really cares. Especially because that was one of the less offensive things one might see on Fox.

Updated the old blogroll...

2005-01-10T10:47:00.000-08:00

Belatedly.

Thanks, guys.

Oh, and if you hear anything about a certain black annoying nfl receiver with an attitude issue- just ignore it. He doesn't care anyway.

It's tough to be a Vikes fan. Just when you want to be pissed at them & sulk til spring training, they go and pull some crap like yesterday. Keep sucking me back in. Dammit.

Why do I keep hearing the term "indictment" in the same sentence with "Hilary Clinton?"

2005-01-07T18:09:00.000-08:00

She's like the Gordon Gecko (or however you spell it) character from the movie Wall Street. Okay, that analogy probably sucks, but you see what I'm getting at.
Apparently one can't work for that woman and be completely law-abiding at the same time.

Nobody really wants to hear what other people dream, anyway.

2005-01-07T08:42:00.000-08:00

It's boring. We've all been trapped in those endless chasms of listening to a friend drone on & on, when we know that if they were a real friend they wouldn't be babbling to you about how they dreamt they had sex with Dudley Moore & woke up really turned on...

*ahem*

Anyway. I certainly don't want to encourage that kind of thing.

Contemporary Christian music & my guilty pleasure...

2005-01-03T10:43:00.000-08:00

...South Park. Which I haven't watched much in the last, oh, two years or so because the charm kind of wore off. It was f***ing funny the first few times I watched it, but the whole Mr. Hanky thing (among others) started to drag.

So last week when I happened to see an episode of Cartman betting Stan he could get a platinum record sooner by making contemporary Christian music I ended up watching & laughing my ass off (quietly, the kids were in bed) cause it was true.

So much of that music just sucks that it is a joke, a bad joke. I always kind of thought that the artists probably meant well, but nobody had the heart to tell them they sucked. Watching that episode actually made me wonder!

Logic Monkey got some music as a gift by a group called Low. Says it's pretty good, especially compared to most of the crap that's out there. His post made me chuckle, thinking about that SP episode. Wonder if he watched it.

Veruka touches a nerve...

2004-12-30T09:36:00.000-08:00

in this post. I can see where she's coming from, and frankly, it happens so often that I have little or no reaction to it anymore. The 'it' I refer to is the msm bias toward whites. White tragedy, however small & insignificant in the larger scheme of things is more relevant to readers/viewers/audiences than some far away 'colored' people's tragedy. When you're poor and brown your life is hanging by a thread anyway & who wants to hear about that?

I really did appreciate when Ted Coppel apologized for his network's decision to put the story of the unfolding nightmare in Congo on the back burner for so long. I didn't think it was his fault entirely. The whole attitude is pervasive, so much so that most folks are probably like me- hardly even aware of it anymore.

Still, in this situation, I have to confess that it really is too huge for my comprehension. 114,000 dead? How am I supposed to comprehend that? I can intellectualize it, compare it to knowns in my daily life, but I can't really, can't deeply, can't honestly comprehend it.

And the numbers, the estimates keep going up. Exponentially.

I am in fatigue, tragedy fatigue. And I am so completely & utterly sick of those who are using this tragedy to complain about politicians', nations', and organizations' responses. This is a gigantic, staggeringly huge human tragedy & numbers, dollars can't possibly begin to define it.

And I have even heard of the small, whiny, petulant complaints about the president's public response. Perhaps he spent time in prayer on his ranch in Crawford, not publicly blathering about a horror of such magnitude. Perhaps more of us should do so.

Update: If you have the stomach for it, which I really don't, you might want to look at these photos posted by Jim at Right Thoughts. He wrestled with the decision whether or not to post these pictures of the reality of this tragedy. The photos show several dozen victims, maybe one hundred or so are visible. Multiply that.

Jim struggled with the decision whether to post these photographs, and ultimately decided to share with all some of the reality. Political posturing be damned.

Strong backs & shovels, backhoes & operators, clean water & some food. Then we can worry about houses & hotels. My God.

Newspapers suck ass, anyway.

2004-12-30T08:51:00.000-08:00

I'm no tech savant, not by any stretch, but for a long time I have kept my brain working in a couple of ways. I love to read, and when I was a full-time-at-home mommy to a grade-school-aged son with autism and two baby girls in diapers, I would read the daily newspaper almost in its entirety every day. I would watch the network news daily. I would listen to radio news updates often. When I had time, I would check online for up to date information.

What would bug me occasionally is when I'd hear of something on the evening news, for example, and then after the kids were in bed I'd get a chance to go online hoping to find some updates. The next morning I'd look forward to getting the newspaper & a chance to read it while the kids ate their lunch- maybe there'd be some more in depth reporting of whatever event I was following.

As often as not, the morning paper would have pretty much what I'd read online after 9pm the night before. The last time the daily that I read in my town had anything interesting, it was when they published a huge excerpt from the Starr report. Yeah, it was a long time ago in newspaper time.

Lately, the paper has had more stupid errors than I've ever noticed before. Stories that have parts missing, the whole ending chopped off & nowhere to be found in the print version. Spelling, grammar and usage errors (my personal pet peeve). Directions to the continuation of a story that are wrong- maybe it's on page 10, maybe it's not, either way good luck finding it!

It almost feels like they're not really trying all that hard anymore to put out a decent print paper everyday. Cut & paste a few stories from the wire services, poorly edit a few stories from local sources, continually mess around with the layout of inner sections, improvements they say, messing around with layout to cover up the lack of substance I say, allow a couple of whiny columnists to piss & complain about pretty much the majority of their own readership & anbody who dares to put out an alternative to their print whining.

I linked to Powerline. In a recent Minneapolis StarTribune edition, one of their columnists printed a whole column pissing & whining about Powerline blog. I found it laughable. It read as though the man was really feeling threatened by a few smart guys who dare to tread into his domain- blabbing about issues & world events. What he meant was that he's mad at them because they questioned Dan Rather's reporting & led the charge that showed it to be a fraud & a lie & uncovered sloppiness at best & a hateful, lying, political agenda at worst, and therefore may cast doubt on all reporters & their reporting. And he's mad at people who use other sources to find out information. Those other sources are wrong, the newspaper/tv news/msm is right, and damnit people are stupid if they believe otherwise.

I blog & read blogs because I enjoy it. I like to have this outlet to rant, I like to read other people's rants. I like to find out information from other perspectives than my own. I like that many of the blogs I read contain opinion, but also links, often several, to different sources of info about the issue the blogger is writing about. I like that others will, through their blogs, share information I would otherwise not have access to- mostly because I'm too lazy to dig around & find it for myself.

That Minneapolis StarTribune columnist is not the first to piss & complain about bloggers in general, Powerline blog in particular. I think that they should clean their own house first, make sure their mid-market daily rag is top notch, then they can worry about the "competition."

All in all, good times were had...

2004-12-28T13:48:00.000-08:00

Things could be better, and of course, they could be worse.

Spouse helped our autistic eldest, our son, to give me the cd-clock-radio I expressly told him I wanted for Christmas. Spouse chose a 'nature sounds' cd, too. Used it this am to wake for work.

Nicest wake up I've had in a while.

Beats the barking dog, the splitting headache, the yelling kid...

The entire editorial staff of the Minneapolis StarTribune appears to be heading toward suicide.

2004-12-22T10:16:00.000-08:00

Seasonal use of Prozac might be appropriate in this case.

Editorial: Solstice/Doesn't it seem darker this year?
December 21, 2004
...the darkness has seemed somehow darker as it swallows streaming taillights and enforces the boundaries of streetlamp pools... the dark has seemed to linger not just longer but more heavily in the low spots, and under the shrubs.

This editorial then launches into a couple of paragraphs lumping everyone into their malaise. It's political, they say, and we are all suffering.

Speak for yourselves, guys.

No matter which presidential candidate you favored, that campaign was like six months of rotten weather

Only for the losers. Some of us found it exhilarating. At least interesting.

No matter how you feel about the justifications for war in Iraq, almost every day demonstrates a steady, downward progress.

Get over yourself. Nobody loves war. Nobody wants to go to war. And nobody sits around relishing the blood. Except our enemies.

No matter your niche in this economy, it seems to be tottering like Humpty Dumpty.

And the wobbling started well before our president took office. The first time. The economy is cyclical.

And then they call us all stupid: ...no matter what side you take on any of these questions, really, you can't help but note the fading of informed expression...

Now they try to explain their funk:

Perhaps this general retreat from reason enhances susceptibility to the influences of seasons and solar cycles.

Try the Prozac. And go outside once in a while.

The Klebolds, the Harrises, and the movie '13'...

2004-12-21T09:31:00.000-08:00

Parents don't really know what their kids are doing. Period. A parent may think they have a great relationship with their child, and may very well have such a relationship, but still not know everything in their child's mind or all of their child's activities. Period.

In the case of the child portrayed in the movie 13, the parent may even have a 'good' kid yet still not be fully aware once things start going frighteningly wrong. Or the kid may be basically 'good'- minds at home, up on schoolwork, no major complaints, but using drugs, or fucking somebody or God knows what.

Or the kid could be a Klebold or a Harris, or any one of the lethal youth we have heard of in the US in recent years. Just speculation, of course, but in a case like that the parent may know their kid is weird, may be aware of strange ideas the kid has, freaky hobbies- but not know when or if any of that will turn into actions. Or what those actions will be.

Or the parent of a child who commits suicide. They may know their kid is depressed, they may even be aware of some of the child's unpleasant thoughts, but how can they know when that moment will come?

How can a parent do what a parent is supposed to do, rear the child toward independence, allow & encourage the child to develop a sense of self, yet still somehow control or manipulate all of the child's actions? Sometimes basically decent folks love their kids and do their best but something still goes terribly wrong.

This subject was on my mind today. It seems that society wants so badly for someone to blame. It must be the parents, it must be the upbringing. I hate it when parents of suspected criminals are trotted out in the media, almost all of them saying what a good kid their kid was/is & that they can't believe their child could do something like this. I always think to myself that they don't really know what they are talking about, or who.

And that is how it should be.

Abortion. Women. Children. Men.

2004-12-17T12:30:00.000-08:00

My opinions on these subjects have changed over the years.

I used to think that I favored choice, that women should be able to choose whether to have a baby even once they were pregnant.

I thought this even though I had, at 18, dropped my childhood best friend because I was so uncomfortable with her confession to having an abortion at 20 weeks gestation.

20 weeks.

She told me they induced labor for her to deliver the baby vaginally, and I hope, dead already. She complained about having to go through the pain of labor. She said she couldn't stand seeing herself get bigger and bigger. She said 'it' was a little boy.

When faced with my own unplanned pregnancy, I did not want to inform the father. It was none of his business, I felt. I was the one with the uterus, so I was the one carrying the responsibility. How screwed up I was.

I didn't want to have a baby then, but I didn't want to have an abortion even more than that. I didn't want to kill an innocent person, my child, just because I was to stupid to keep my panties on.

Perhaps in a place & time when a woman had a defined role and function in her society, unplanned babies were likely not killed at the rate they are killed now. Fathers provided for their children and their children's mothers. Mothers cared for their children and maintained a home for the family. They also contributed in other ways to the family's economic well-being. (I know that I am generalizing and that many families had two parents working or not or mom working for whatever reason.)

Recently I had an unpleasant thought occur to me. I should not have had children if I could not provide for them myself. Which is not to say that I should have chosen to kill my children prior to their births, but that I should not have gotten pregnant in the first place. I think that I live in a time & in a society where a woman can't count on having a provider for her children.

I fear that I live in a society where a woman is actually encouraged to not have a provider for her children, other than herself. Society lies and tells women & children that they do not need men. With an income and a babysitter, dad is unneccessary.

What bothers me, I think, is that of the likely many factors contributing to that atmosphere, a large part of it is women's fault. By denigrating motherhood, devaluing marriage, and bashing normal men, women are ultimately hurting women, and helpless children.

It sickens me to read stuff like what Logic Monkey scrounges from the dumb. It sickens me to read stuff like what J. Mitchard wrote in a recent column. I simply can't think of an excuse to justify killing a baby. Not one. It sickens me be surrounded by so many folks who apparently think it is okay.

(Okay, maybe if the baby is Damian & you actually saw the jackal giving birth...)

Thought this was funny.

2004-12-17T09:25:00.000-08:00

You might think so too.

"...there aren't a lot of completely satisfactory answers when you're fighting a war"

2004-12-16T13:39:00.000-08:00

David Reinhard, Newhouse News Service December 16, 2004:
"That is the way war and insurgencies and combat operate," Rumsfeld added. "You go in, you have an enemy with a brain that does things, and then you make adjustments. Does everything happen instantaneously as the brain in the enemy sees things and makes changes? No, it doesn't happen instantaneously."

I'm really exhausted today, and I guess I am also sick of hearing from 'armchair generals' who think they know how to run a war. The situation in Iraq sucks. No doubt. Each life lost is a tragedy. War is ugly, messy, painful, and bloody. But anyone who thinks the US could just perk along forever without ever entering into another war is living in a dreamworld.

Chattanooga Times Free Press reporter Edward Lee Pitts planted Spc. Thomas Wilson's question to Rumsfeld. Just when you think you've witnessed a frank and useful -- almost All-American -- exchange between soldier and secretary, the story's aftershocks hit. Not only was the Pitts/Wilson question a setup, but Rumsfeld's critics used the occasion for their ritualistic bashing of the secretary.

Rumsfeld explained that last month he ordered that armored Humvees guarding the Pentagon be sent to Iraq. The military was acquiring 450 armored Humvees a month -- up from 15 a month in the fall of 2003 when insurgents began using roadside bombs. It has 6,000 of the 8,000 up-armored Humvees needed.

In brief, the military was addressing this before the Pitts/Wilson question.

You can read this guy's whole opinion piece here, if you like.

Unless you have something better to do right now.

Like take a nap.

Acidman & Steve

2004-12-14T13:28:00.000-08:00

This post at Hog got me thinking. Steve links to Acidman in his post & those opinions got me thinking, too.

After thinking about it & sleeping on it, I think that the last 30 or so years in the US have ruined man/woman relationships. I think that guys with opinions like Acidman's & Steve's are not so rare because in order for women to become 'empowered' they had to break men.

It is sad, because I don't think it had to be this way.

Oh, and I have bigger boobs than Acid's whore.

Not that size matters.

Warm thoughts...

2004-12-14T09:51:00.000-08:00

Cause it's cold as h*** here.

Tony shares a loving memory.

We've had similar moments with our girls- 9 and 10 now. They sometimes take the fun out of it, though, cause they're smarter than me.

Tony sounds like a great dad. Every little girl should have one.

Now that's what I'm talkin' 'bout.

2004-12-13T13:40:00.000-08:00

Mob justice.

Better watch yourself.

"[T]hey're really the most rubbishy poems on Earth"

2004-12-13T10:49:00.000-08:00

"Even I could write poems in English better than he could in Arabic.'' Iraq's National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie told The Associated Press.

Gardening, exercising, reading, writing a novel & poetry. Tough life for Saddam H. Why is prison like a freaking spa? Hell, I should kill somebody.

At least my poetry is better than his.

Realists are red
Idiots are blue
Get over yourself
No one's listening to you

The name of this blog...

2004-12-10T08:14:00.000-08:00

In looking for a link to help clarify, I found that I've been spelling the word wrong all along. I'll try to fix that.

I've an album, an lp, a record, vinyl- that is a recording of The Choir of King's College at Cambridge performing Gregorio Allegri's Miserere Mei, Deus.

You may be able to listen to it here.

I was given the recording when I was about 7, from our family friend who was then an Orthodox priest. It is a hauntingly beautiful piece, that has spoken both to me and for me since I was a small child.

Have mercy.

Miserere.

This is an "aww" story if you're a dog lover...

2004-12-09T13:22:00.000-08:00

...or a "what a wuss" story if you're not.

This a.m. I heard on the local news that a vet clinic in Alexandria, MN had blown up due to some city gas leak. 6 animals inside, some there overnight for observation or whatever were killed. Owners had to be called.

I've had a rough few weeks & must have some defenses down, cause it made me tear up a teeny bit. (Not too much, spouse was up & he is merciless.)

My black dog came over & put her little head in my lap. Sigh.

"The dog has been taken off duty pending an investigation."

2004-12-09T10:06:00.000-08:00

Star Tribune December 9, 2004 A Minneapolis man wandered naked through residential streets on the city's south side and fought with police before being bitten in the genitals by a police dog and subdued with the use of a Taser gun, officials said Wednesday.

My question is, what on God's green earth will that investigation involve?

Unless they're waiting to see of the dog passes the penis...

They didn't even put it as nicely as Norm did...

2004-12-08T13:32:00.000-08:00

when several more senators called for Annan's resignation.

"To me the question should not be whether Kofi Annan should remain in charge," said Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J. "The question is whether he should be in jail."

Ouch.

Joe Lieberman, your own personal Willie Wonka.

2004-12-08T13:19:00.000-08:00

No particular reason for that association, that's just the image that came to mind when I read this.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Sen. Mark Dayton will travel to Iraq in a separate trip organized by Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn.

So glad that Mark Dayton found someone to wipe his nose, dry his tears, take his hand, and let him play.

On the trip, Dayton also will stop in Israel and Jordan.

Potty breaks.

No specific dates were announced.

I'm sure he & Lieberman will bring much good will and shiny happy thoughts to the Iraqi people when they visit there... whenever.