Anger Management

I used to think I was the angriest person in all of god's creation. After reading this blog, I realised I was wrong, I realised I'm only the angriest person in MY world. The tiny world inside my own head. This here young woman is the angriest person in the world. AND her blog is quite very funny. Rants of the first water! Kudoes to you, mad-woman! I can summon the anger, no problem...but I can't summon the hate. She conjures the hate like a high priestess, LOL! Though nothing refreshes like hate(thanks Henway and Noelle).......I'm not even sure hate is the right word, maybe it's just extreme disgust....her blogging does have that certain je nais se quois, though. Literate, Intelligent, and I wouldn't want to meet her in a dark alley. God bless her.

Appropos of nothing..This image will wreck your children. Be warned.

If I had a penis, I don't think I'd be treating it in this harsh manner.

I'm bored, so of course I turn to B3ta.com and find some gems. Want some huge, angry un-pierced cock?

How about Tony Blair's 5 year old sons musings on dear old dad, skillfully rendered in crayon? It's a long download, even with broadband, but worth it.

Or a cow in a tree?

Or a swearing contest, between Bush & Blair?

B3ta(rhymes with Peter) is an excellent website that includes weekly challenges, excellent photo-shoppage, and the musings of the young, dis-affected British. A lot of this stuff is based on what goes on in England, so most Americans may be clueless to the politicians and celebrities mocked, but you can check out the BBC and get filled in right quick.

We're all sick, and we can all be fixed by some sort of pill. You'll have to watch an ad, but if you can't stand to do that, then that means you're sick, and need the Ritalin.

And something that may be working in Indonesia...

My Poor Car

Monday the 14th I was involved in a car accident. My nice(for me) car, which I purchased with the help of my friend Henway Twingo, is now a whoopdie. Godfuckingdammit. The accident was not my fault. I was broadsided by someone who ran a red light. I'm fairly sure, but I can't prove it, that he was talking on his cell phone at the time.

I lurve my whoopdie. Henway convinced me that it was now okay to Buy American. My last car had been a 1985 Ford Escort I had bought brand new that went through 2 camshafts, a crank shaft and a set of lifters in the first 18 mos. I had it. It took them that long to find out the problem was the oil pump. I had to replaced the trans at about 50K miles. The belt and water pump at 70K, and every 70 K. The last thing I wanted was another American car. In 1999, I sold a house that I co-owned with someone and got a very nice return on my $1.3K investment. I was going to buy a Toyota or something. Henway showed me the way to an excellent used car dealer in Zion. I ended up with a 1997 Ford Taurus. It already had 67K miles on it... but they were mostly highway, because it still had the original factory brake pads on it.

Me and the whoopdie have traveled many, many miles together, with only a small hiccup now and again. I had to have the original transmission re-built @ 189,000 miles. A gas tank gasket leak. A new spring and ball joint. An alternator and battery.

We have been from Chicago, to Ontario, Canada, to New Hampshire, to Massachusetts, to Delaware, and the yearly trip to Florida to visit the P's. And the approx. 80 miles a day I drive to and from work. Other than the basic maintenance, it has really been a trouble free car. Cars were made for driving, and I figured I'd drive this one 'til the wheels came off, and then have a frame off restoration done. Sure, it would cost $8-10K. You can't buy a new car for that.

I was sitting at a red light at the corner of Emerson and Greenbay roads in Evanston. Westbound on Emerson. I was the first person at the stoplight. Since I was at a red light, I took the opportunity to fiddle with the radio. When I looked up, the light was green. It took a few seconds for the green-ness of the green light to sink in, and the people behind me started honking.

I proceeded through the intersection, in fact, I was more than halfway through it when BAM! The driver's side window exploded all over me. I said EEK!, and pulled over.

The guy who hit me, one Mr. Sharma, pulled right behind me. It took a curiously long time for him to get out of his car, and when he did, he went directly to the trunk of his car, and put something in it. Hmmmmm. Of course there were none of Evanston's finest around, and I don't have a cel phone, and Mr. Sharma sure didn't call the cops. We exchanged info. I drove home in the rain in my now battle scarred whoopdie. She protected me at the cost of her own good looks! My back is still really stiff, though.

Since I have friends who work in the insurance industry...they tell me I might end up owing the insurance company of the guy who hit me. Something about a "comparative liability" statute that Illinois has.

State Farm, the guy's insurance company, hasn't exactly impressed me with their quick resolution to this claim.

Busy Week.....memorial wise.

First off, I'd like to thank my dad for his service in the South Pacific during WWll. He's full of good, but horrifying war stories....like..they'd take all their empty bottles, put them in the bomb bay of a B-25, fly up over Japanese villages. Then they'd open the bomb bay doors. The bottles would fall out, and make a whistling sound as they fell. The Japanese villagers would come out of their villages, Japanese soldiers would come out and look for where this strange noise was coming from....And P-51 Mustangs would come along behind and cut everybody down. The small, mean part of my coal black heart wants to laugh...but the bigger part of me wants to cry. I'm pretty sure Japanese villagers had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor, but some of them for sure were pro Tojo. The Japanese soldiers among them were legitimate targets. No way to tell the difference when you're flying low and fast and strafing at 425 MPH in your P-51. And I'm looking at it with lenses that are 50 years down the road. I have the jacket and the patch he's wearing in this photo, along with other decorations and medals.

They'd pay the pilots of B-25's (in cigarettes and cash)to take beer up to 30,000 feet to get it nice and cold. The landing strips were lined with grass thatched huts on stilts. The huts were occupied by prostitutes. Easy and convenient. The guys who painted the pretty ladies on the noses of bombers used housepaint, and they were paid for their artistry in beer and ciggies. My dad tells me that he'd commonly see a squadron of planes fly into thunderclouds......and not come out. He'd see pieces of planes fall out of the bottom of the cloud, though. The plane pictured above was my Dad's second plane, a B-25. Look at the girls on that girl! The first one he was in was shot down. While he was in it.

The thing I hate most about modern warfare is that now the warriors tend to hide themselves amongst civilians. It's a despicable, completely amoral practice. We're seeing it now in Iraq and Afghanistan. On our side and the other side. We saw it in Central America in the '80's. The Sandinistas are not my heroes, Liberal though I am. They did the same kind of shit. They'd launch mortars from poor neighborhoods, and the other side would go "right back at cha!" Result...lots of dead civilians, not so many dead warriors. Civilians used to be off limits....

The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald happened 30 years ago on November 10th. I know...I hate the song. It's turgid purple poesy.......but it is eerie, what the guitar plays. I'm all for eerie, and having the hair on the back of my neck raised.

Internet fun. Go ahead...type your message to the world in 4 lines on a post it! Then post it!

Stop motion fun from Plan B. I love stop motion stuff.

Since gardening season is over, I will free myself to talk about much less important things...like what's going on in the world. I have to have something to occupy my time, and my cheapest of the cheap cable package just doesn't do it. I've got Dan half convinced to do an upgrade. When that happens, I'll just sink into the abyss that is "What Not To Wear", or the History Channel. When I want to hear intelligent news that's not aimed at the lowest common denominator, I turn to the BBC. Not Fox. And right now, I don't have access to my BBC, which makes me a bit cranky. Because it makes me realise that the media in this country is shit. Not because it's too liberal or too conservative, but because it's shit. Lazy, patronising shit.

What really frightens me about America right now is people under 35 who are rock ribbed neo-conservatives. Malkin and her ilk, etc, etc. So young, and so completely bereft of a conscience. Their mantra is "I hate France." They dream of an American Empire. Their societal ethos is called Social Darwinism. They worship at the altar of Big Business and the "Free" Market. They hate Welfare, unless it's Corporate Welfare. They tend to love Ronald Regan. The man who turned the mentally ill out on the streets. There is nothing conservative about them, what they are is proto-facists.

I don't believe that my father and his co-horts fought and died for The United States of the Fortune 500.

Blogs I make sure to read every day:

Sense of Soot
Daily Kos

And global warming is not happening.

Frivolous? I think not!

This guy had a bad day, I'd say. But I can't quite believe he ended up with PTSD. But maybe he did. Humiliation and embarrassment would be part of it, for sure.

The picture above...it's about the love that I feel

The article...it's scaring me. Have some Creme de Yeast Bold Lager!

Actually...I went to a Fall Festival today at Glacial Park, which is a preserve I am now volunteering at. It's an awesome place, with kettles and moraines and kames, and a real old house which was built in 1854. They are re-building the summer kitchen. And a woman was there, in period dress, making beer. In Europe, rivers and streams were used as open sewers. So, when settlers came here, they were really chary about using the local streams and rivers for drinking water. So, they made beer. Everybody drank beer. It was low or no alcohol, and not fizzy. Kids drank beer from the time they were weaned, on. Beer was used like we use water. Water for cooking was drawn from wells.

I also learned where the word alimony comes from. In the olden days, the women would make the beer, keep it for the home and sell the extra. When a man left his wife, he would give her ale money so she could set up her brewing business again, and get on her feet. Ale money = alimony.