A laptop!

I have boughten a laptop from a friend. It was a great price, and I have put some additional money into it, too. I bought a new keyboard, as this one is toast. It only works in fits and starts. Right now, it's working perfectly, only because it's replacement is sitting right here. The main thing, and the greatest blessing, is that I am no longer trapped in the basement to do the internet thing. I can teach myself HTML and Java without being isolated from my ersatz family. I can interact(yell at the cats). The picture is of Spot, and since he's deaf as a post now, my yelling does no good, but it works a treat with the rest of the (8) ingrates. I can watch Antiques Roadshow whilst typing the latest and greatest into the ether. I can cook and post. I can work. I am doing all these things right now. It's a fun-glut that I can barely stand to be a part of!

I had a job interview this morning at a place that would be ideal for me...hours of 9 to 3, Mon. thru Fri., $10-12 an hour. A dance school in Barrington. Much closer...7 miles as opposed to 37 one way. I hope I get it. I don't even care about the reduction in wages...the reduction in stress and the addition of personal time are worth more than money to me. More time for myself, more time to do what I want to do. I could go back to school.

funny how as you get older...time is worth more than money.

An Upstanding Man of God

In the interest of full disclosure...I distrust and despise christians for all the same reasons you despise muslims(be not afraid, I despise all religions. Just christianity the most, because they're always up in my grill. ) . When my mind wanders, and it does, I wonder when we can start having sport with the fuckers again, i.e., throwing them to the lions. Let me be the first tosser. Will the lions choke on the hypocracy?

Here we have a fine, upstanding christian whack-job, with well over a few million acolytes, supporting the assasination of the democratically elected leader of a foreign nation. Ladies and Gentlemen......Mr. Pat Robertson. I'd like to say that he's an isolated incident, but, no, the christian right wing-nuts frequently call for the murder of people they don't agree with.

Pat Robertson called for his minions to pray for the deaths of Supreme Court Justices

Pat Robertson wished that a nuke would be dropped on the state department.

Pat seems to have forgotten some lessons from his bible.

From the editorial pages of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette: "One thing it clarifies is the hypocritical nature of some of those who belong to the religious right. ("By their fruits, ye shall know them"). In fairness, we won't say that Mr. Robertson, 75, represents everyone in that constituency but he does speak for millions and he is a founder of the Christian Coalition of America. He is no fringe figure -- indeed, he once ran for president, which makes his assassination suggestion all the more destructive to America's reputation overseas."

From the Chicago Sun-Times: "And remember that Robertson's moral indignation is selective. In 2003 -- a busy year for him -- he slammed the Bush administration's calls for Liberian President Charles Taylor to resign. A UN-backed tribunal had indicted Taylor for war crimes in Sierra Leone.
You see, some of Robertson's financial investments happened to be tied up in Liberia. Ah, morality is in the details."

So perhaps finally, the MSM is starting to see how they've been on bended knee to the christian right and this administration:?

From God's Mouth to Bush's Ear

Fortunately for this country, our leader has a direct pipeline to the thoughts and desires of God. God tells him what to do. Otherwise, things would not be going so well in Iraq, where the women can move forward from the rape rooms(still open for business, but under new management, BTW)of Saddam to the tender mercies of Sharia Law.

Mousie passed away today, purring for all she was worth the whole time, and 'til the end. Even though she was extremely neurotic(she thought the stove top was a litterbox, hence her move to the den), she was a very affectionate pest. Her motto: Reach out and touch someone. She was bright and cheery and happy little sprite, and I will miss her greatly. She had that certain Je Nais Se Quois. I wish I could make Dan feel better, but I cannot, only time and fond memories will. And they will.

Since we have gotten some rain lately, the front yard is green, not that I care. The across the street neighbors have their putting greens back. The cicadas are singing up a storm, and there are a lot of them. It is also big spider time...there are 2 spiders about the size of McDonald's Hamburgers living in the flowerbed beside the driveway. I don't garden much this time of year. Ha! I just kind of look at it and say oh, that looks nice, because the big spiders are there. Taunting me.

The garden is winding down in it's slow-mo slumping and desultory way. It is kind of comfy out today....no blasting heat. I will stick some of the plants that I grew from seed into the ground in a short while. The next week is supposed to be in the mid '70's. So MS wise, I should start to feel much better soon.

The guy across Rte. 12 from us has a personal helicopter, and he is using it like mad today. I can't say as I blame him, it's clear as a bell, winds calm, visibility 15 miles.

I think I will start to take horseback riding lessons again. Not sure where. I miss riding.

I miss Mouse already.

I guess missing things is a part of life.

Pax vobiscum, y'all.

At Loose Ends, A Bit...and Exploiting Tragedy

Exploiting tragedy is called Patriotism when one side does it, and they do it constantly...but when someone FINALLY, FINALLY, FINALLY holds the administration's feet to the fire about their lies(something the so-called Liberal Media never did)...then it's just Exploiting Tragedy.

I am a bit at loose ends because one of our cats is dying. Mouse. She's 15 years old, and very ill with some kind of bone cancer that took her from 8 lbs. to less than 4 in two weeks. Vicious. She's Dan's cat, but I loved her just the same. I am hoping that he makes the decision tomorrow to have her put down. She is eating, a very little, but she is not going to get better, and she is so weak she can barely stand up. It is time. It will just be a temporary parting.

We will all be reunited, someday.

OOOOOPS!!!!!!!!!!!!

Remember the guy the British Cops slaughtered in the Tube in London?

Turns out...he wasn't wearing a "padded jacket". He was wearing a light denim one.

Turns out...He wasn't acting suspiciously.

Turns out...He didn't jump the turnstile..he had a ticket, went through the turnstile normally, picked up a free paper and was running to catch the train because the train was pulling into the station. How many times have YOU done this?

Turns out...He didn't come out of a house that was being watched for terrorist activites.

Turns out...the British Cops slaughtered a completely and totally innocent man. OOOOOOOPS!

This man was murdered because one of the cops on stakeout was relieving himself.

Every cop who took part in this travesty should get life in prison without possibility of parole. And Tony Blair's government be forced to pay 10's of millions of pounds sterling to this man's family.

But maybe the cops could be transferred to Chicago, where they'd be excellent additions to the twitchy, nervous trigger- happy team.

As far as shoot-to-kill orders go...isn't that what Daley the First ordered during the Days of Rage demonstrations in Chicago? What it got him was national and international disdain and ridicule, and no solution except a very well known and filmed Police Riot, and one of the tipping points against the war in VietNam.

And here we have it again. Didn't work in the '60's...and it's not going to work now.

At Home with a Bad Cold....

What is it that possesses normally intelligent people to come to work when they're sick? So they can give their damned illnesses to the rest of us? I know they come to work sick to prove their loyalty, and also because they need the money...but...it really messes with people like me who don't go to work when we're sick, because we don't want to infect our co-workers, or in turn, their families. I also need the money, you shit-for-brains.

My nose is running like a Swamp Cooler on a hot New Mexican summer day. My whole body aches. I have a fever, which to people with MS is like spending 15 hours in a hot sun doing hard labour! I.E., not good. Not good at all. I don't want to do IV steroids again. Thank you, loyal Northwestern Employees!

At some point this afternoon, in order to sit up-right, I was forced to fashion some kind of "nose tampon" out of toilet paper in order to read. My nose was not running...no, it was in a full hand gallop .

It will be worse as we move into Fall, when all the shit-for-brain's sproggen(children, brats, flesh-loaves) start going back to school. Yep, your kids are viral resevoirs, and get over it. Parents should not be permitted to work with the rest of the human race during the fall/winter cold and flu season. They should be assigned to buildings far, far away from the rest of us for the duration. I don't want your damn kid's diseases. You all need to learn when to stay home. Telecommute, you yuppie morons. You all have better jobs than I do.

Re: the Cindy Sheehan thing. Kudoes to her. She has every right to be saying what she is saying, and who am I to say anything against her. Which I wouldn't anyway, because she is exactly right. Here is a fine article written by someone who opines what Fox News would have said in the days of Rosa Parks...had they existed then, and thank god they didn't. Otherwise, voting rights would have never happened.

A Tale of Two Cities, kind of.

Henway Twingo was NOT the source of the snipe-age below...but he/she did inspire this rant, and is a wonderful person. I love those who inspire me. I enjoy Henway's views on things, because they're sensible and non-frothing. I enjoy healthy and non-invective slinging discourse with people I know and love and still don't see ojo to ojo with. My hat is eternally tipped to Henway. My best girlfriend and her husband contribute enough money to the RNC to get invited to sup with the president, ok? Anytime they want to. All they gotta do is call. Talking politics and religion is still a no-no to me, unless you know the other people well. THEN, I'll opine. Woe to my dinner compatriots, and my wealthy, Dubya loving friend. My Dubya loving friend and her husband were invited to the inaugural, and didn't go...and I'm saying...why not? that would be something to remember!

I had to giggle when I read this other blog, from a New Yorker(and probably not a native one), saying that intelligent discourse was only to be found in New York City. Feh. Feh to that attitude. The following has nothing to do with intellectual discourse, and everything to do with pride of place: I was in NYC once, in the late '70's. I stayed with friends on Central Park West. VERY nice real estate. Very wealthy people. Imagine my dismay when I was told it was not safe to take an evening stroll through Central Park. I can walk through Grant Park or Millenium Park any time I want to. I could have walked through Grant Park at night in the late 70's and not been robbed or raped. I know because I DID it. A multitude of times!

So, you are the intellectual wunderkind who are locked in your expensive condos after dusk every night! But at least you can order out from Tomoe Sushi. If you're such a bunch of fucking geniuses...then how come your city is a crime ridden shithole...you're on lock-down? Shouldn't the combined sophisticated, intellectual mastery of all these New Yorkers have solved this problem? Or did Guiliani fix it all? How IS prison life these days, guys?

New York has Broadway, and I can't think of anything more descriptive of NYC than a Broadway Musical. I can't think of anything I hate more than a Broadway Musical. Like people just bust into song walking down the street. Or when talking to their lover. Or when trying to figure out how they're going to make ends meet. Or pass that audition. Right. Trite and cliche hustle-bustle. Talk about intellectual sollipsism. Native NYC people buy tickets to see this shite, critics rave, and ship it off to us in the fly-over zones, thereby decreasing our intellectual carrying ability to the level of theirs. GAAAK!

I'm sorry, but I can't tell you how glad I was that the Yankees lost the world series after 9/11. I damn near set off some fireworks. HA HA HA.

While I think that the science proves totally and irrefutably that global warming is happening(I read the NSF website all the time, it's part of my job), and this bout of it is entirely human driven, I also believe it has happened before, and that there is no way to really stop it. Which absolutely DOES NOT excuse us from what we're doing. We have sped up the problem by a magnitude of 100. I'm also of the opinion that we also should do whatever we can to stop dumping crap into the air and water, and into the ground, the financial effect of such effort on multi-national corporations be damned. Oh, they only made 6 Billion last quarter, instead of the planned 7 Billion. Poor Babies. Fuck them. Exxon-Mobil made 7 billion in profit last quarter. And gasoline is over $3.00/gallon in some places. Don't you think the gobernment should be looking out for YOUR interests a little bit better? But, then again, it gives me a chance to point and laugh at every upwardly mobile fuck in an SUV.

God gave us this great, green earth to protect and treasure. Perhaps he made a fatal mistake in his delegation of duties.

I don't think we should shit all over this earth, fuck it up, use it up, then find another planet to despoil..it's just not right. I want THIS planet. I don't want to go live on fucking Mars or Zardon because the air here is no longer fit to breathe. I want THIS planet, it's people, it's flora and fauna, and I want it live-able, not just for me, but my friend's kids and grand-kids. The people's needs and desires should ALWAYS superceed the needs and desires of the Multi-Nationals. Again, Fuck them.

Dan and I went out to dinner with my friends Chris and Ruth on Friday night. Gosh, it was fun. I miss the city a lot, sometimes. I needed some city on a warm summer night, and as always, Chicago came through for me. Dang.

We went to SmokeDaddy's, home of the really good barbecue, 1 door west of Phyllis' Musical Inn, and ate 'til we were stupid. Or at least, I did. Their Key Lime pie is the bomb, too. This is in my old neighborhood...Division and Ashland. I was sitting there, looking at the well dressed, thin(I mean, not one chubby person!), young, wealthy population passing in front of my table and thinking...dang...I couldn't afford to live here anymore. I had lived in the area for 27 years, and at Division and Cleaver until 3 years ago. My friends Susan and Ian bought my favourite saloon, the Gold Star, last April. The Gold Star has ghosts. In the old days, it was a rooming house/saloon, and of course, some people passed away there. They aren't the nice bar on the block anymore, LOL~ But I think they'll do fine, because every neighborhood, no matter how ritzy, needs it's neighborhood bar. As long as they don't take credit cards, I think they'll be okay. And don't allow cigar smoking. I used to go to the Rainbow(Damen, south of Division) all the time in the '70's...but I got sick of all the suburbanites slumming, hoping to see some authentic punks or hippie art fucks, so they could take us back to their water coolers for some astonishing(!) convo on Monday morning.

Heart, and why CAFTA blows donkey wang.

CAFTA blows. It blows big time. Remember how NAFTA was supposed to decrease illegal immigration, open up markets for American made goods and make more manufacturing jobs for American workers?

WRONG. NAFTA did none of those things, in fact, it failed miserably on all 3 fronts. It did, however, make big Amurrican corporations even richer, because they could move their factories down to $1 a day land. And CAFTA will make it even worse...kiss American manufacturing jobs goodbye forever. Illegal immigration is up 5 fold since NAFTA was passed, the markets for our goods have decreased since they can make them much more cheaply just outside our borders in the maquilladores(where there are no OSHA regulations, EPA regulations, etc...along with forced pregnancy tests for female workers), and we all know what is happening to manufacturing jobs in this country. Hundreds of thousands of jobs in the US and Canada have been lost due to NAFTA. In fact, the latest job numbers came out today. America lost another 4,000 manufacturing jobs in June.

This is just another case of the well to do feathering their already cushy nests at the expense of the rest of us. I've got to give Ross Perot credit here...he was right about "the giant sucking sound." He called it exactly.

I was watching Channel 11 last night, and they had a Heart concert on. Gosh. They were also an inspiration to me. In the days when I was playing guitar...playing "Keep Your Love Alive" was my highest goal and I attained it! And Stairway to Heaven...I got that one, too. But then I came to my senses and started playing bass. Anyway, I love Heart because they were a throwback to big rock bombast, and went against my punk rock sensibilites. But I still loved them anyway. Chicks in music in those days were rare. Nancy Wilson plays a mean guitar. I respected them as fellow female musicians. They and their co-writer(also a female) wrote their own music.

Heart had the coolest clothes..and they weren't coke-fueled gauzy twirly dress hags like Stevie Nicks. Later, Ann Wilson had the temerity to get fat. Oh, and did people comment on it.....Stevie Nicks, too. The very worst thing in America to be, is a fat woman. Stevie must have quit the Bolivian Marching powder at some point, though Stevie put her fatness down to "food allergies." Yeah, allergic to saying no to that second helping, and not having a Bolivian drill team choose your metabolism.

I don't know how Stevie got herself back into shape, but Ann Wilson had the surgery. Which I am contemplating. I am already way too stressed out and don't have the time to go on a huge diet and exercise program. I eat healthy foods. Just too much of them. I freely admit to not being able to say no to that second helping. I will not claim food allergies.

Jesus Saves AND Spends! Glurge!

I got this from an Evangelical Christian friend:

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about abattle that goes on inside people. He said, "My son, the battle is between 2 wolves inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith." The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: "Which wolf wins?"The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

It's actually liked this. Don't know if it's true, but the sentiment is spot on. Much better than the Jeebus Saves stuff I usually get from her. Or the cutesy "you're the best person in the world, now send this out to 10 other people and back to me!" e-mails with animated gifs of butterflies, angels and babies. Or the heartbreaking story of a little boy who's dying wish is to be a fireman. Or the hypodermic needle stuck in the gas pump handle stories. I always send her to snopes for these scary/heartbreaking ones, but apparently it's of no use.

Her intentions are honorable, and she and her husband and son are very nice and generous people. She's new with having a computer, and I kind of understand why she sends all this stuff on. Why does a dog lick its neuticals?

Another toasty one here today, tomorrow, too...I am SO done with summer. If I had balls to sweat off, I'd have been rendered a castrati about a month and a half ago.

Bring the Fall, Bring the noise.

Cafta and whatever else....

I'm not going to actually write about CAFTA. Other people do it so much better. This article about says it all for me. Stay tuned for part II. If you want the Social Dawinist viewpoint...go have a look at Michelle Malkin's blog. Learn the very meaning of heartless. She's very amusing, if you like attractive, dainty little fascistas- in- training.

But, dear peoples...like Ben Franklin said "hold your friends close, your enemies closer. " There is much to be learned in listening to Limbaugh and Hannity, and reading Drudge and NewsMax and TownHall every day. And reading Malkin.

Another hot weekend has passed. Another weekend mostly stuck in the house, thereby giving me time to think about things, as opposed to doing things. I'm beginning to have quite some angst about being stuck in the house all the time.

The one thing I did do was go out with Dan to buy a new fridge, as the old one finally passed away. I had to toss about $200 worth of food, which was a huge bummer, food should not be wasted. We also had to take out one of the cabinets, as new fridges are taller than old ones...no loss..that particular cabinet was hard to reach, and all it held were 2 boxes of Cheerios and Dan's ex-wife's rather extensive hard liquor collection. Vodka, Seagrams, Kahlua, Tira Misu Liquer and a bottle of Champagne, which we kept. I gave everything else to my hard partyin' Harley driving evangelical christian neighbors. It kinda broke my heart to pour that full bottle of Kahlua down the sink. I drink...just not hard liquor.

Damn...fridges are expensive! We got a fairly cheap one and it was still over $500. I was looking at some of the expensive ones, over $1700, some of them. Very high tech and digital. The really expensive ones had LCD TV's on the front of them.

I'm thinking.. what? You can never be out of the sight or sound of a TV? You even have to have one on your fridge? How about one on your toaster, too? Your stove?

It's like cell phones. I don't have one, but since I drive so far back and forth to work, I probably should have one. But damn! The idea of never being un-reachable creeps me out, and I guess that makes me a Luddite.

Again, check out Henway Twingo's blog..it's always funny, well thought out and insightful. The Henway can write!