It's all going to hell in a bicycle basket

Wednesday's are my government appointed day to grocery shop.

After I show my state-issued shopping ID and my loyal party-of-red card to the greeter at Wal-mart, I go to pick out a cart.

Once inside, I am generally underwhelmed by the selection. Socialism isn't just on its way, folks. It's here.

When I am in the cereal aisle I am bored by the lack of choices. When are they going to give us some options?

After perusing the small shop's 25 aisles and mile-long perimeter, I get herded into line in lane 40-- only to be faced with numerous government run magazines: People, Cosmo, TV Guide, Daily Horoscope, and The National Inquirer.

Recently I was perusing Gardening Today about the imperialist "victory" garden the first lady planted on the White House grounds. I heard there's plans to paint the White House red. Soon no one in DC will be able to buy arugula; the Red House will be the only source at four hundred Yuan a bunch.

As I hand the government worker behind the register my grocery ration punch card, I wistfully remember the good old days of the Bush era, when all we had to think about was terrorist threats from every imaginable source. Remember the caches of weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq, and all of the reliable information we got from those "people" using torture?

I don't know about you, but I feel a whole lot safer now that the USA is the USSA-- the United Socialist States of America.

Tom and I talk about the days, years from now, when we will be able to tell the grandkids that we helped elect Chairman Barack Obama as we watch his daughter, Her Highness Queen Malia Obama, on government channel one.

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A really fun meme

Google the word "unfortunately" along with your first name.

Find 15 results

I made a mini-saga out of mine (I used my legal name and substituted my screen name):

Unfortunately, Skyewriter and Sydney are both very well-endowed.

Unfortunately, Skyewriter did not know what that was, but tried unsuccessfully to find it.

Unfortunately, Skyewriter is cursed with a tendency towards major faux pas.

Unfortunately, Skyewriter couldn't help herself.

Unfortunately, Skyewriter's nude cell phone photo was sent to hundreds of teenagers by, first, her so-called boyfriend.

Unfortunately, Skyewriter would regret that decision.

Unfortunately, Skyewriter soon returned to movies that bombed.

Unfortunately, Skyewriter's action figure was one of several from the Droids and Ewoks line that was never released to distributors.

Unfortunately…Skyewriter had plans of her own.

Unfortunately, Skyewriter goes to school and ends up teaching.

Unfortunately Skyewriter's career has a lot of these innocuous roles.

Unfortunately, Skyewriter is trying to succeed in an industry that is surviving on life-support.

Unfortunately Skyewriter's time is running out.

Unfortunately Skyewriter's plane crashed.

Unfortunately, Skyewriter doesn't seem to realize that she is dead.

THE END

Tom's going to be really pissed about the naked picture... and bummed about the action figure.

PS: To True Blue Texan: I promise I will get to the spectacular award... I have been thinking very earnestly about it and who to pass it along to... it is a distinct honor.

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Floridians may get a new license plate

Apparently, Florida's governor does not believe in the Separation of Church and State:



And here's what the plate looks like:



I wonder if this might get approved, too:



Or this:



Or:



Or:



Or:



I almost forgot this one, too:

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Senate may have a new Democrat

Seems Arlen Specter (R-PA) will be switching teams in the Senate.

The GOP must be freaking out right now, especially considering the MN election results.

However, the Grand Old Party of Obstruction will likely hang up that court decision for as long as it can.

After all, who cares about what's going on in the country and the people whom these folks represent?

It's all about who wins.

Sad.

But exciting about Specter. I had a feeling this might happen after his bout with cancer and the opening of his eyes to the promise of stem-cell research.

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Apparently Fox News is fine with Censorship

When I look for the origin of a word, I tend to trust the OED (Oxford English Dictionary). It is generally considered the authority on the English language.

If you are unfamiliar with how the OED works, here it is in a nutshell.

It traces the meanings, history, and pronunciation of over half a million words through 2.5 million quotations gathered from international English starting in the Early Middle English Period (1150 C.E.).

I looked up the word: reporter.

Here's what the oldest source of the recorded meaning of the English language defines it as:
"One who reports debates, speeches, meetings. etc.; a person specially employed for this purpose" (origin in written text in 1617).

Seems the "reporters" at Fox News aren't going to do their jobs, Rupert, at 8PM, April 29, 2009.

I think there's a case for a type of censorship here...

Censorship from the OED:
"The inspection of all journals, books, dramatic pieces, texts, etc. before publication to ensure they contain nothing immoral, heretical, or offensive to the government (origin in 1644). In this case, insert Rupert Murdoch as the "government."

Rupert has decided that the Fox audience doesn't need to actually hear and see the POTUS talk to *them* and the *press.* They'll get the Cliff's Notes from Hannity, O'Reilly, and Beck.

Way to encourage critical thinking skills, Fox.

No wonder those who are Fox devotees have the abstract thinking ability of 7 year-olds. That's how their news source treats them...

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Sunday sin talk, blasphemy, and zombies

Tom and I won some cash in the Powerball last night: 3 bucks.

Not bad for a $1 investment.

So many things happened this week that made me think: "Oooh, I need to blog about that."

Alas, my fried cerebral cortex cannot recall a single one. I think it wants out of this dissertation gig and keeps trying to squish into my frontal lobe. Abstraction only! No more thoughts or language!

So instead of worshiping in a house of the Lord this fine, sunny Sunday, ('cause we never do) some comments from yesterday (and this AM, thanks seeing eye) got me thinking about religion and its numerous mechanisms of control (read: sin) and brain zombification (read: academic writing).



Any of you zombie movie fans? I wasn't until I met my husband and honestly, they are among the creepiest in the horror genre in my opinion.

We were watching 28 Days Later shortly after we entered the sleep-over-of-sin phase of courtship (but prior to the living-in-sin phase) and Tom wanted to watch this movie in my room, in the dark, while it was storming outside.

I am not a squeamish gal, either. I like a good scare. But those fast-running, red-eyed, filthy, gorey, unholy not-dead scared the shit right out of me.

I asked Tom: "What would we do? I mean, if this really happened and the world was filled with a plague that turned people into flesh eating, blood-puking zombies?"

[An aside, I could insert a swipe at our current political climate, but maybe later.]

We occupy the entire second story of an old, post-Civil War home-- so we're not ground level.

"Well," Tom began thoughtfully, "we'd get as many supplies as we could, board up the windows and doors and wait for help to come or until the zombies ran out of food."

There are 15 windows in our apartment. Three exit doors and three staircases. Basically we live in second-story Swiss cheese (ladders provided) with some plaster between the holes in the walls.

I think I fell in love with him that very moment.

Also, because the attic in the ceiling above is poorly ventilated and (I don't think) insulated, in the summer we get heat radiating from below us and above us (opposite in the winter). So when the power grid goes down, we'll either turn into popsicles or nice crispy pork rolls both of which I am sure will please the discerning zombie culinary crowd. One good thing: our place is 80% hard wood floors. We could use that for kindling if the zombie pandemic occurred in the cooler months.

Another thing that is really on our side: we are married right proper. So when the end-of days comes (*cough* *achoo* *sniff*) we can at least rest somewhat safe knowing that we said some vows and signed a contract and bought rings for each other.

I could end this with some snarky remark about how religion rots people's brains (I wonder if that matters to a zombie?) or atrophies growth in the cerebral cortex (certainly a matter of portion size to a hard-working zombie).

Or that some theology is an interesting experiment in entertaining the notion of ghosts, an afterlife, and a dude arisen from the grave.

I guess I am too much of a humanist to put my faith in anyone other than living people.

When the Army of zombies finally takes to the streets, and not just to throw tea bags into bodies of fresh water, know that I will miss you all dearly and will remember the pre-apocalyptic days when we engaged in witty banter and exchanged snarks online in the spirit of true facetiousness (not fascismness-- to any zombie trolls) .

A programming note: my posts and commenting on my favorite blogs (there on the roll to the right) will be sporadic this week.

I am finishing final revisions on my dissertation and submitting it to the committee early next week (defense is scheduled for 5.19). So the craziness and hair rending shall ensue and I don't want to bleed all over my blog and you fine, decent people.

PS: Thanks True Blue Texan for the award; I am deeply honored and vow to post on it as soon as I can!

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We don't need no steenking science

Anyone recall from a few months ago, prior to the ARRA 2009 passage, all of the right-wing grumbling about over-the-top spending?

Lots and lots of GOP talking heads griping about flu research and preparedness and cyber-security as "pork."

Here's what happens, GOP f*cknuts, when you can't see beyond your own interests. Oh, and this, too.

Don't go complaining to the government when you or a loved one gets sick. Or when China or North Korea rolls out some new radar-evading F-35s: It's "pork" and the pig may come home to root.

No doubt the right-wing media will turn it around and somehow blame it on the Democrats.

I think 900 million dollars is worth protecting American's health in the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Initiative (altho' the GOP Senators did do their darndest to slash that funding).

Yeah, GOP f*cknuts. Only poor, lazy, yet elitist liberals get the flu.

Science, scientists, and research are so stupid [note sarcasm].

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A furry alarm clock

We have one.

It also has four legs, blue eyes, a tail and whiskers.

She is officially set to 6 AM ("Set alarm" function permanently broken) and has a snooze button.

The perp: Emma (a.k.a. Monkey, Schwootzy, Buns, Bunny, Little, Stevie, Lemon, Chick, Chicky; don't ask, okay? Cat people name their cats multiple names...).

It's not food she wants or the litter boxes scooped.

She wants her peeps to wake up: "It's morning! It's morning! It's morning!"

I feel especially sorry for Tom this AM; he didn't sleep last night.

So I brought her with me into our home office and she lays curled up like a folded piece of the softest silk you've ever petted in the chair next to me as I write this.

Picture will be posted later when Tom wakes up-- they're on my laptop in our bedroom where he is sawing enough logs to get fined by the Forest Service.

Until then, just imagine tiny paws slowly walking up your legs as you dream about painting on the beach with a circus nearby. (Or, see this post for the true dirt on Emma.)

All perfectly interrupted by the deepest and loudest "meowrrrr!" to come out of the furriest, blue-eyed, little dark mask. If I didn't know better, I'd think she had a three pack-a-day habit.

She is a morning cat. Which totally sucks for me, because I am a night owl.

"The fog comes in on little cat feet" (Sandburg 1919).

In our case it's the foghorn on little cat feet.

Happy Saturday all.

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Never take loved ones for granted

I was stopped at a red light today as I ran errands-- going to the post office, getting cat food and barbecue supplies for this weekend.

I had the windows rolled all the way down. It is gorgeous here today. 83 degrees outside.

I was daydreaming about the usual things (this is a particularly long light at a very busy intersection) when I noticed the bumper sticker on the car in front of me.

It read:

My son......... My soldier......... My hero
Please come home to us safely

I started to cry and cry as I write this.

That family won't have their son with them to share the gorgeous weather this weekend. He won't be there if they cook out or sit outside chatting in the cool evening-almost-summer breeze.

He won't be with them to star gaze on Sunday at The Moon, the Pleiades, and the planet Mercury when they align low in the west-northwest as night falls.


The Pleiades November 2007: I highly recommend clicking on this image to appreciate its beauty. Image courtesy of Antonio Fernandez-Sanchez.

Wherever you are this weekend, remember all of the families who will have empty seats at their tables and absent voices in their circles of conversation.

May they all come home to us safely... soon.

PS: Here's the Huff Post piece from today that followed yesterday's about Alyssa Peterson. It describes another female soldier (one who by chance met Peterson once) and her experience with the so-called advanced interrogation techniques instituted in Iraq.

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Torture cost us the life of one US soldier

A sad, sad story was just posted on Huff Post.

Torture makes us safer?

In this case, it cost us the life of one young woman whose death and manner of death were buried for years. Her life and her thoughts about what she was being asked to do eradicated with one stroke of a marker.

I. am. simply. appalled.

Anyone who gets in front of a camera and says stupid shit like this
deserves to get a first-hand experience with these so-called "interrogation techniques." Kit Bond uses the future-perfect-ridiculous-tense in his argument: "Do we want to see GOP members prosecuting people who [will have] carried out orders from the Obama Administration?"

If this dude can see that far into the future, he needs to call Dionne Warwick and start up that psychic friends network again.

I don't know about you, but I cannot live peacefully knowing that that black marker forever removed (and denied) the existence of a young soldier having a crisis of conscience.

And whose hand was it that so easily interred her life? Blotted out her name from records and reports? Are those the marks we want to represent this nation? Are people nothing more than names to be smudged out?

What is the value of a human being? Apparently not very much...

Sad. Just so so so sad.

Update: I just found another case
Why the eff isn't the media talking about these specific cases? Americans need to know about these people; we need to know their stories just as much as we need to see their flag draped caskets coming off of the transport plane.

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The proof is in the polling

According to the latest AP-GfK poll (4.16-4.20.09), as reported in Huff Post, President Obama is polling well with a majority of Americans.

Read the full pdf of the original poll here.

Total approval rating: 64%
Total disapproval rating: 30%.

Obama also scored very well in response to the query: "If you had to choose, do you lean more toward approving or disapproving of the way Barack Obama is handling: economy; Iraq; health care; terrorism; the environment; federal budget deficit; energy; taxes; immigration; Afghanistan; relationships with other countries; unemployment; gas prices."

The total percentage of those approving of President Obama's performance on specific issues:
Highest: 69%-- relationships with other countries
Lowest: 47% immigration (disapprove 30%).

Seems like he's doing rather well considering the plate o' shyte he was given upon entering the office just shy of 100 days ago.

Americans in general are pleased with the President.

I couldn't agree more...

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Stuffing the ballot box

Apparently, this tactic by the GOP doesn't just apply to elections:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29493093/

This address is making the email rounds among conservatives.

Seriously? An "F"?

It's a really sad indication of childish, bitter, irrational, collective psychosis.

The vote doesn't matter.

Obama is still president, GOP tools.

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Have Americans become desensitized to the suffering of others?

If you haven't read Elaine Scarry's The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World, you should.

Scarry's excellent book on the violent metaphors and rhetoric associated with the human body explores the political consequences of deliberately inflicting pain (physical, emotional, and psychological) on another human being. The text was published in 1985 and it is sad how appropriate it is today given recent revelations of American Government's policies and attitudes toward torture between 2001 and 2008.

Here's just a sample:

"As the body breaks down, it becomes increasingly the object of attention, usurping the place of all other objects, so that finally [...] the world may only exist in a circle two feet out from [the victim].
[...] The voice becomes a final source of self-extension; so long as one is speaking, the self extends out beyond the boundaries of the body, occupies a space larger than the body" (33).

In torture, there is an attempt to remove another from their body. Their voice the only salvation which allows them to return to that body, which becomes a much worse prison than any external structure. There is no escape from the pain; it is literally "incorporated" into the body and yet the victim of torture longs to return to the body, and is terrified to do so.

That is the nightmare that is torture. A disembodied psyche which fears and longs for the internal privacy of the body but both spaces (internal and external) are no longer safe.

Really. You should read the book. In addition to the first chapter, "The Structure of Torture," it has some great material on the "Structure of War" (Ch 2) and "The Structure of Belief" (Ch 4).

Definitely Foucauldian (and thereby quasi-Marxist) in its philosophical underpinnings (distribution of power) it is an excellent treatise on the body as both a surface and a vessel, a shell and an imaginary space.

Think about the last time you were in physical pain. You (hopefully) knew it would pass and you knew that it was not created by someone outside yourself. For those who are tortured pain becomes the normative state of the body and the mind--and there is no escape, no reprieve, no release from that pain.

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I have a theory

Y2K happened.

Seriously, hear me out... er.... read me out?

It explains so much.

Everything was reset by the government at midnight December 31, 1999.

Everything.

Why, you may find yourself asking?

To set up the New World Order [an aside, you should watch this; the tortured logic is something to witness]:



So that "they" could spy on us, track everything we do, set up the secret banks of databases that will track the chips the Obama health care plan is going to require every American to get.

Another piece of evidence for you.

The whole internet was reset, too. Only liberal, commie, batshit reporting gets on the interwebs (read "intertubes") and that has fueled the MSM and its lies about everything from UFOs to the flim flam about there not being a Loch Ness monster.

But I have seen pictures of it. Read a lot about it in books. It's real then, right?

That's why Obama wants everyone to go green. Setting up a new power grid will allow the central government to control power supply. Don't agree with that central government? No lights or clean water for you.

The secret Army of REAL America got it's chance that last fateful day in 1999. It's waiting patiently for the right time to show those liberal bastards the might of their Army. They've already got their canned goods, their bomb shelters, tin foil, and their stash of gummie bears.

Heck, we've been at nuclear level threat crimson since the Cuban missile crisis. Those neighbors down the block are going to beg to be let in when the rockets fire. Just look at how that awful mannerly man in the White House is actually being civil to Castro, Chavez and soon it will be Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong Il.

It's all going to hell in a handbasket, readers. It all started with Y2K.

Don't be surprised when the brown-shirts from ACORN save us all from the asteroid that's going to destroy the Earth in 2012.



Three more years; there are three more years to stop these liberal a-holes from trying to save our civilization.

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Colorless green dreams sleep furiously

The title of my post is one of my favorites. Altho' I am not a huge fan of Chomsky, it is a prime example of a verbal construct that is grammatically correct, but meaningless.

Colorless things cannot have a color. Dreams to not sleep.

Yes, if you wanted to argue this as a symbolic combination of ideas or even a metonymy, you could make that argument. However, it is nonsensical from a linguistic perspective and not an interpretive one.

I am amazed when I think about the ability of the human body. A well constructed machine that breathes and circulates and self-repairs without one nanosecond of input from us consciously.

Equally amazing to me is language.

We push breath across our vocal chords, muscles automatically move to position the tongue and lips and recognizable words come out.

We use our fingers to key in letters on a keyboard. Letters that aren't our mind, but what is *in* them.

How you reassemble these characters on the screen is how you understand what I am trying to communicate.

I tell my students: Look at a sign, for example, with words on it and try *not* to read it.

What is missing from some people's language is the ability to understand the intention of someone else's words. Even if they can read them. Comprehend the definitions of the words. But they are unable to process or think critically about someone else's words.

What is the speaker's purpose? What kinds of evidence to support that purpose can you draw from their text?

Who is the audience?

What kinds of arguments does the writer/speaker use? Deliberative? Definition? Contrast?

Aristotle should be required reading for students. He writes about how a speaker creates her/his authority *in words* and what tools of language and what constructs she/he uses to create that communication.

In other words: the critical utility of language and the construction of meaning for the self.

It's a disappearing art.

Words perch flying stationary.

Happy Sunday all.

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Torture is torture is torture

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it"

Philosopher George Santayana, volume one of The Life of Reason

One of the lessons I have had to learn as a teacher is that I don't teach my students anything.

They learn.

I am a firm believer in the pedagogical theories of both Dewey and Friere.

We learn by doing and we learn by doing whatever it is we are trying to learn by doing it with others.

Action and collaboration.

As a teacher, I correct students.

They are wrong sometimes. Plain and simple.

I tell them it's nothing personal.

I kind of feel this way about our President.

I knew a lot about him before I worked on his campaign having grown up watching his career from just over the border in northwest Indiana. I knew who I was voting for on November 4, 2008: a moderate Democrat with a good head on his shoulders-- a DC outsider that had the will and the energy to instigate the changes our country so desperately needed.

However, I cannot sit idly by while certain policies and practices by our government leave us standing in the same pile of manure we were standing in November 3, 2008.

Power reiterates institutions and institutions reiterate power (Foucault).

Institutionalizing torture was wrong when Bush and cronies did it and it is still wrong as President Obama fails to take a different course of action.

Being president has one characteristic that no other job does: you get hired to do a job (during a first term) that you have had no prior experience doing. The only ones with any experience are the ones who get rehired for a second term. Sometimes they have learned from their first terms, sometimes not.

I think President Obama's learning curve will be a strong one-- he seems to pick things up quickly and plays well with others.

But we *never learn to do something right* if no one corrects us when we are wrong.

We never learn to do something socially if we don't learn from other's mistakes.

And President Obama is wrong in guaranteeing no prosecutions for those who "legalized" the United States' "interrogation program," a sick euphemism for:

• Pushing detainees against a wall
• Facial slaps
• Cramped confinement
• Having prisoners stand or sit for long periods of time in "stress" positions
• Sleep deprivation
• Waterboarding or simulated drowning
• Playing loud music for hours
• The placing of a detainee into a confined space with an insect or an unfriendly dog

Abu Ghraib was only five years ago.

The types of torture used there were no better than those listed above:

• Urinating on detainees
• Jumping on detainee's leg (a limb already wounded by gunfire) with such force that it could not thereafter heal properly
• Continuing by pounding detainee's wounded leg with collapsible metal baton
• Pouring phosphoric acid on detainees
• Sodomy of detainees with a baton
• Tying ropes to the detainees' legs or penises and dragging them across the floor.
• Sexual abuse of a 16-year-old girl by two interrogators
• Having venomous snakes bite prisoners
• Hooded prisoners forced to masturbate
• Forced homosexual acts

Any acts committed against another human being that de-humanizes that person is torture. No exceptions. No passes.

We cannot righteously condemn other countries and governments for doing things we do ~and~ don't criminalize or punish. It places our service women and men and any American in foreign custody in great peril if we do not act to hold those who were in charge accountable.

A simple [rhetorical] question for those who do not see these things as torture:

If any of these were to happen to you or a loved one, is it considered torture?

You are wrong, President Obama. And yes, this is personal.




.

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Tea Party gets crashed... and they invited the crasher

This. was. hi-larious.

If you don't like Garofalo, she doesn't show up until after the best part.

Best of the best is between 1:20 and 2:35.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I was worried for the dude's safety.

Happy Friday, All!

Post Script: The online hype claimed that over 2,000 Tea Party protests were being held (723,000 google hits for that number). In reality, something closer to 600 occurred. Hmmm... perhaps all that tea got them to exaggeratin'. To get statistical data click here. Estimates used were provided by local newspapers in the places where the parties were held.

Tax protests on April 15 are normal. As are public gatherings to celebrate the Fourth of July... the next date slated for Teabagger's gatherings. Those people at Taste of Chicago July Fourth weekend might have to wade through pockets of people with anti-abortion signs, anti-Obama signs, and signs showing Obama caricatured as any dictator in history.

The Boston Tea party wasn't about taxes levied against the colonies; it was about the tea tariff monies going back to England and *not* staying in the colonies. History lesson anyone?

A great place to start is the December 16, 1873 meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society--commemorating the 100th anniversary of the party. You may find it on the Library of Congress' website.

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Pix from Tea Party Day

Huff Post has some "interesting"(for lack of a polite term) on-the-street photos by people who attended any one of the numerous lawful assemblies yesterday to protest [insert protestable content here].

Here is one of my favorites:



What you can't read on the back of the sign is "Literacy optional."

Hope all are having great Thursdays.

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The welcome mat has been taken in...

To the unpleasant people who have parked on my blog's doorstep.

One of my favorite exchanges in a movie addresses the issue of saying what people want to hear.

"Do you see purple people?" the guy asks.

"No," answered the woman.

"I had a friend," the man began, "who said he saw purple people. They locked him up, but he got out."

"Yeah?" asked the woman. "Did they cure him?"

"Nope. He just stopped telling anyone about the purple people."

Yeah, I see the "purple people" but I rarely write about them.

They are bruised and scared by the changing times.

They just want someone, anyone, to listen to them.

They threaten because they feel that they have no real power.

They truly believe that they can offer nothing positive to helping their neighbors aside from "It's not my fault"-- a child's response.

Like all of you, I have been through my own set of unique challenges. One of the greatest has been to persevere in writing this blog. I had to start moderating comments a few months ago when a rather unstable mob of people descended on this webspace.

Then, I get abused and harassed here to my "face" and all over other websites by people who have spent exactly thirty seconds "reading" this blog.

All because I refuse to be bullied and I will not post comments in which people have written:

"You are a fucking retard. You commie shitheads don't know anything and if my guns get taken away, I am coming for you first"

"You think you know so much. You are a total fake. A liar. And you are the coward for not posting comments" (This one is from someone who had left me over 20 abusive comments over the course of 24 hours.)

~ Of course, here's my all time favorite~

"You are a fucking cunt and I hope someone figures out who you are and finds you and wipes you off the face of the earth"

I've been writing this blog for almost six months now.

This post marks 164 published in that time.

I've definitely covered a lot of ground and material. Most of it written believing that people are basically decent and at least have a whiff of social skills.

As a young professor, I have to believe that.

I have 15-20 people who read this little blog. Loyal and supportive blog friends that have stuck by me.

They prove to me that most people aren't like these purple ones.

So if you are here to tell me how stupid or fucked up or snobby or elitist I am you can take it somewhere else.

You were not invited here-- and you have long worn out your welcome.

One thing to take away from this commie-liberal-progressive blog: if you have safe drinking water, safe food, safe medication, clean air to breathe, medicare for elderly relatives, social security for those same folks, if you learned to read and write in a public school, enjoy having a local police station, a fire department, a federally run postal service to deliver your Mother's Day cards-- thank a liberal.

Despite your best attempts to shit all over them, you have a lot to be thankful for because of them.

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Here's what I think...

I hope the gun-mob *finally* gets the meaning behind the words:

*I am not trying to reach you; you are NOT my target audience".

Please.

Try to use your word comprehension skills and read--carefully.

When you begin a comment with an *insult*-- you get deleted. Immediately. I don't even bother with the rest of your comment.

I am bored silly reading how closed minded I am; I am exhausted by reading how I don't want to listen.

You. know. nothing. about. me.

Why is it that because I am getting my Ph.D. some of you are so pissed off that you are beside yourselves?

[That's a rhetorical question, by the way.]

Bitter. Cowardly. Bullies. That's my impression of (most of) you and I don't think anything any of you could write will change my mind about my impressions of you.

You are hazards to your own cause.

And you fit the stereotype of your type to-a-capital-T. Just as I am sure you think of me from four posts out of over 160.

Take your webrage elsewhere.

*Yawn*

I'm done.

UPDATE: Also, starting your comment with "you probably won't post this" relegates your comments directly to the ether. A childish preface, with a dash of an infantile dare for me *to* publish it.

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Out again

Tom's elderly mother, who also lives alone, fell last Friday.

We left town and just got back late last night.

There are some tough decisions ahead for us...

Lots of work to catch up on.

I haven't had internet access for many days.

To the gun people who have once again decided to mob my blog-- I will not engage you.

AztecRed: I appreciate your calm and polite online demeanor.

It's become obvious to me that I am not allowed to have a dissenting opinion (even tho' I am not condoning, nor ever have condoned, the ban of *all* guns)--- on. my. own. blog.

I have also witnessed the irrational comments by those who seek to split hairs about assault weapons.

I. am. so. not. going. there.

Your minds will not be changed by reading my blog.

My mind will not be changed until Obama actually *does something in terms of legislation as POTUS* to prove the un-arming point.

Why waste my time and yours?

Capiche?

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Blocked?

Never one to tell a short story, I am like a dependable faucet: either on or off.

I try not to drip.

And if I feel as though I might drip, I force myself to shut up. Er, off. Erm, out?

So as I mix some metaphors and throw in a few non sequiturs for your reading pleasure, indulge me a few moments of waxing ridiculous.

I wonder if writers are allotted a fixed amount of words during their be-ing on Earth?

If so, I definitely have hit my quota.

Damn dissertation and all of those words it took... wrecked my lifetime measure of sustainable prose.

Not sustainable forestry or farming.

Wordsminthery gone south.

A.W.O.L.

Out to lunch, tea, dinner, second breakfast and midnight snack.

I've apparently stuffed the world with so many words that I cannot pack in another one.

Well, thanks to limitless blogger space, perhaps I have found my Liquid Plumber.

My septic snake...

Okay, so not going there.

I'll just follow the leak here on the screen and see where it leads us.

Rather than plumbing the depths of man's inhumanity to man, of which there is a lot these days, I think I'll step outside the fray for a while.

I find the world and all of its news is drowning my language.

I find it is taking away pieces of me that are going down the drain--irretrievable and not just stuck in the ess-bend.

I'll keep plunging in and hope that my silliness and punnery hasn't driven you to eye-rolling and gagging.

If so, dear reader, my deepest apologies.

The loo is overflowing on the rest of the web and tons and tons of shyte is pouring out of it on a daily basis.

I'd rather think of myself as that dripless faucet.

Or maybe a distant "thwip" you hear in a cave.

Water on rock, hewing out something recognizable over long spans of time.

Or creating a quiet underground waterway of meaning.



Betcha didn't see that one coming, huh?

Neither did I.

Neither did I...

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I can't escape it

It's everywhere.

All over the news.

I keep reading about pitchforks and torches.

A blogger from Media Matters wrote just over two hours ago:

"Fox News has been playing with radical, right-wing fire in recent weeks and months. And now it can't contain the bonfire. Of course, that doesn't stop Newsbusters from whining about the consequences and insisting that the GOP Noise Machine has no responsibility for the extraordinary hate it's been pushing since January".

The links are embedded in original post; I encourage some of you to read the original link in order to comment cogently--*you know who you are*. (I am not addressing this suggestion to you, faithful readers, who comment most often.) Also, I am quoting this author's use of the term "radical" right-wing just so some readers of the conservative persuasion don't think I am trying to point the finger at you. Nope. So not the point.

I say to Tom all the time: the media is as culpable as the loonies for some of these crimes.

Fear-mongering.

Conspiracy theorists.

Drama kings with a news camera, a mic, and a platform on which to spout the hatred that justifies the hate in the hearts and "minds" of the less-than-sane in their audience.

Madness.

It started with a governor from the great, white north that tried to convince those at her rallies that Obama was in league with terrorists.

It continued with Fox News' incessant use of Obama's middle name in a nauseatingly blatant attempt to strike fear into the hearts of its viewers.

It continues with Glenn Beck and his "circle" that "surrounds" .... hmmm.... THEM. The others, the enemy, the person who frowns at you in public while having stomach pains, but really they are looking at you slant-ways.

The "liberals".

How does a cornered animal behave?

All you need to do is find a fan of Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, or Sean Hannity and ask them how they feel about the president and those who support him.

Those "journalists" are the folks putting them in the corner... not me, or you, or any of us out here in the "real" world.

The media has created a Frankenstein monster from the ashes of the GOP.

And that monster is *nothing* like the sympathetic, thinking character that was the resurrected hodge-podge of human corpses Mary Shelley created almost two centuries ago.

In the novel, it's not the monster that is the abomination-- but Dr. Frankenstein himself.

So spin away, you doctors of Fox News.

Just remember: the monster wasn't controllable once it was released and it tracked the good doctor for the rest of his days...

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