Small town life . . . enough to make a shy, bald Buddhist reflect and plan a mass murder
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Fly the friendly skies
In Russia, drunken flight attendants beat up a passenger.
Inbred?
Or just clueless and arrogant. Princess Michael of Kent on her adventures in Africa.
"I travelled on African buses. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted experiences from Cape Town to right up in northern Mozambique. I had this adventure with these absolutely adorable, special people and to call me racist: it's a knife through the heart because I really love these people."
Here she is with (surprise, suprise) Siegfried and Roy.
Big honking brassica
My neighbor gave me a cauliflower from his garden last week. It weighed about 6 pounds. After diligently eating away at it, it is almost gone. Finally. Last winter (winter is when he grows the really big cauliflowers) he gave me an 8 pounder.
Odd customer of the day
Someone who tells me that the tip they leave is for "your college fund."
Books
I signed up for All Consuming and somehow managed to add it on the right. I feel like I'm fumbling around in the dark when I try to do something like that. I have no idea what I'm doing really and it's so exciting to click "preview" and have things show up pretty much as they should. It's been interesting to poke around there and see what people are reading and if they have left comments.
Big woody weeds
I picked about 5 quarts of Himalayan blackberries, not even making a dent in the overgrown mess in the back. The fruits are enormous this year because of our great weather. Picking the berries is fun, eating pie and jelly even better, but cutting back and digging out canes won't be so easy.
End-timers and Jihadis
Steve Weissman writes about religion, strange bedfellows, the election and international politics in Truthout. About Bush:
"Critics accuse him of lying: I fear worse. Either Mr. Bush still believes the intoxicating fables that Iraqi exiles fed to Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the neo-conservative crapologists, or else he feels no need to get facts straight as long as he does the Lord's Work. Having followed his "higher Father" into a faith-based war in Iraq, the poor Prophet Bush now casts his eye across the Euphrates, waiting for Revelation and listening to Iranian expatriates, some of whom work with the shadowy spies of Gen. Sharon."
From the mouth of a really big kid
About the "freedom cage" at the DNC. "In 50 years people will either think it was a big joke or they'll wonder why their grandparents didn't do something to stop it."
From the mouths of medium-sized kids
"John Kerry must be related to Jim Carey, since they have the same last name."
Forget the political anaylsis
What I want to know is this: did Hillary borrow those pearls from Barbara Bush?
Bumper sticker
I saw this one on a car today: "Re-reject Bush," along with "I found Jesus. He was in the trunk when I got back from Tijuana."
Annoying
I get annoyed when I'm reading a story on a smaller paper's website and I can't figure out what town or state it's about. Like this. Illinois, Missouri, Massachusetts, Virginia? But this one is in Oregon. They should all change their on-line mastheads and include a little "you are here" map.
Annoying customer of the day
Will you rinse out my (crusty, saliva-coated, sour) cup? Sure, no problem. Er, did you lick the handle too?
Pop sensibility
I am a deeply superficial person. --Andy Warhol
Time to relocate?
How about South Carolina?
ChristianExodus.org is coordinating the move of thousands of Christians to South Carolina for the express purpose of re-establishing Godly, constitutional government. It is evident that the U.S. Constitution has been abandoned under our current federal system, and the efforts of Christian activism to restore our Godly republic have proven futile over the past three decades. The time has come for Christians to withdraw our consent from the current federal government and re-establish the sovereign nation of South Carolina upon the Christian principles once so predominant in America.
Ultimate Idiot's Guide
Maybe GW could use this.
Seems like old times
We have a so-called conservative president who has spent every spare minute growing a more centralized welfare/warfare state. American citizens are more dependent on federal rules, regulations and largesse, in areas from education to agriculture to medicine to insurance to energy to trade to media, than ever before. One wonders if Bush is the American Caligula.
via Illruminations.
Greek rap
Well, it loses a bit in translation. I like big butts.
From the grave
An idea whose time has come? Ethical wills. Instead of just leaving instructions about the disposition of property, some folks are writing ethical wills, which record their values.
"We can see our financial wealth, and we do a good job in this society of managing and transmitting that wealth — but [ethical wills are about] your stories, your wisdom ... what you love and what you feel," she said to her small audience, which ranged in age from 40s to 80s. "How do we transmit this kind of personal wealth?"
I think that your family would know that stuff if it was reflected in the way you lived life.
Beach day
We went to the beach at King Salmon today. It has been so hot here that the water was actually warm. The first time I've experienced that.
The panda my younger daugher took with her was rechristened Sanda before we left the beach.
Kids overheard
"Have you ever noticed sometimes when you're really mad or sad your heart feels all heavy?"
Faith healing. Or not
Charmaine Babb had her leg amputated after a faith healing in 2002.
'With congregants singing and praying, the trio exhorted her to walk, but she kept falling, she said. Junior Mitchell then sliced both her feet with a razor blade, bled them, covered them with hot wax and put a flame to them. Then, "Mother Mitchell" came with a broom made out of a coconut tree, she said.'
The thing that gets to me is not so much that someone would try faith healing, especially with her husband urging her on. It is the singing and praying congregants. The singing and praying congregants who then just went on home. What the fuck is wrong with these people? I mean besides their "faith."
And the defense lawyer is a piece of work too.
'Defense lawyer Joyce Hendrick said the preacher was only guilty of trying to help the disabled woman walk again.
"The only thing that happened to Charmaine was love," Hendrick said.'
Extremely Silly People
From New Humanist.
"Do you believe in E.S.P.? That’s as in extra-sensory perception, not the title of this piece. Judging from the quote chosen to lead this piece, you may be able to guess the opinion I hold on the matter. If not, you can find out by reading my mind."
Small town life
My next-door-neighbor gave me an Abeka American history textbook that her granddaughter was finished with. She said that even though it has a Christian perspective that shouldn't matter to me because it is, after all, just history.
Nothing but death
Pablo Neruda, born 100 years ago this week.
There are cemeteries that are lonely,
graves full of bones that do not make a sound,
the heart moving through a tunnel,
in it darkness, darkness, darkness,
like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves,
as though we were drowning inside our hearts,
as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.
The novel
The artist deals with what cannot be said in words.
The artist whose medium is fiction does this *in words*. The novelist
says in words what cannot be said in words.
---Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
Berrying
We went blueberry picking. Picked pounds and pounds. Ate pounds and pounds.
For the map freaks
You know who you are. Ancient World Mapping Center. There's a beautiful picture of Hadrian's Wall there. And you can use the Maps for Students Map Room to download maps.
What the f . . .?
A student at the University of Utah sued the school because she had to say some recite lines that had cuss words in them. She withdrew from the university because she was afraid of retaliation by professors, according to this. Maybe she was afraid they'd corner her and swear at her? I liked this statement from her, even though I can't really figure out what she means.
"I wouldn't have a hard time at all making a career in acting holding to morals, no matter what those morals were," she told the news service.
There is such a thing as
being too smart for your own good. Case in point. My son taped down the handle of the sprayer on the kitchen sink so that when someone turned the faucet on, water would be diverted to the sprayer and spray all over the place. Unfortunately, he forgot that he had done that. So later in the day I heard shouting from the kitchen when he turned the water on and sprayed himself and the entire sink area. Tee hee.
They're made out of meat
An old Terry Bisson story on his website now.
"Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn't take long. Do you have any idea what's the life span of meat?"
Hey, man, I'm not dead yet
81-year old arrested for doing drunken doughnuts in school parking lot.
I guess "just grow up" isn't this guy's motto.
Very old stuff
Free resources for learning Greek and Latin. Downloadable texts, forums, books.
Lesson of the day
Becoming (or passing yourself off as) a Christian fundamentalist. This might be helpful for dealing with those pesky telemarketers too.
Small town life
I went to a rummage sale at the Catholic church in town. I noticed that there were several books by Jeane Dixon there. I thought (and still think) it was strange until I looked it up and saw she was RC.
I didn't buy those books.
Quote for the day
"Childhood has, I regret to say, like much else, got worse since I was a boy. We had school bullies, we had headmasters who were apparently direct descendants of Captain Bligh of the Bounty, we had cold baths, inedible food, and long hours in chapel on Sundays, but there was one compensation. No one had invented social workers." --John Mortimer, Rumpole on Trial
I've never read Rumpole on Trial. It's like a visit with a bunch of old, very funny cranks.
Small town life
I saw a sign on a local shop that said something like:
Mattress for sale
for $400. $1300 new
Never used.
Hilariously too large for my antique bed.
Aack! What's up with blogrolling? Must find out.
You too
could leave a video message on your tombstone. If this patent is granted.
Welfare reform
From the new Clamor mag, thoughts on welfare reform and one family's story.
"As welfare-reform guru Jason Turner, who remade the welfare bureaucracies of Wisconsin and New York City before going on to a job in the Bush administration, told an NPR interviewer: “Work will make you free.” Neither Turner nor the interviewer noted at the time that this phrase had previously been inscribed over the gates of Auschwitz."
Housecleaning
Bookslut has a link for folks to donate books to Chicago Books to Women in Prison. I also found this from the University at Buffalo. A huge list of donation programs for books, journals, and media, organized by country, with a few US contacts. And there's always your local library. If they can't use them, they can sell them.
P.S.
When I saw the title of the weird story below, "Blind man denied entry to immersion course because of guide dog," my first thought was that it was a scuba course.
Weird story
A Canadian blind man, Yvon Tessier, wants to take an English immersion course. But the University of New Brunswick won't let him because he has to have his guide dog with him, who was trained to respond to commands in French, with him. Tessier says:
"He says he could speak English to Pavot in everyday conversation, but the guiding commands are essential to his independence, and those need to be in French."
The university says:
"In the past the service has been provided that we do teach their guide dogs commands in English, so the dog learns English as well."
Does this mean that when someone is using commands with an animal, he/she is really conversing with the animal? What would the University do if an animal was trained with nonsense words?
Small town life
I am sad (sob) that the Fourth of July falls on a weekend because that means more tourists than usual in town. Today a couple people I talked to were really upset that the gas station was closed. Whatever would they do? I mean, they have to drive 10 minutes to the one down the road. Okay, taking their money is nice, but they all seem think that Starbucks is good. Or that telling me how they go to Starbucks shows how sophisticated they are. Starbucks=mediocrity. I mean, really, their coffee is swill.
Woman yesterday wants to know if our expresso is strong. She usually buys her coffee at Starbucks (oh, I'm so impressed, I'm just quivering in my hick sneakers). She tells me her husband usually drinks a quad mocha, would one of ours be strong enough for him? What do most people get, a single or double mocha? It's 50/50, I tell her. Now she doesn't know what to do, but tells me to make a mocha with an extra shot for him. How many shots does she want? Three. Finally got that settled. And we don't have 20 oz. cups? Horrors! So then she starts droning on and on about how so many places use pods and she just doesn't want to get some weakass coffee. All while she's looking right at the grinder. Idiot!
Don't act like you know about things you're clueless about, you look stupid. Don't tell people you go to Starbucks either, you look stupid. And like this. Er, the one with the green spot on its ass.
Make a list
Shopping lists sorted by region from the Online Museum of Shopping Lists.
Weirdness from the BBC
Iranian woman claims to have given birth to a frog. If that isn't weird enough, the story includes this:
"While it is unclear how this could have happened, the paper carries quotes from medical experts who say there are human characteristics to the animal."
"Medical experts?" I wonder. Did it say mama or have a cute little head of hair? Come on.
Homemade fireworks. I think I need the beginner's book, though.
1776
British take on the American Revolution.
"Prior to the Stamp Act crisis British authority, rarely asserted, rested on ties of loyalty, affection and tradition, not force. In the wake of the Stamp Act, Parliament repeatedly asserted its sovereignty and was compelled by American resistance to back down. Each time that this occurred the foundation for British rule in America eroded a little bit more."
Birthday celebration
July 6 is the Dalai Lama's 69th birthday.
Reagan again
Okay, so the flags are still at half-mast, so why not? From The Stranger
"Remembering Ronald Reagan isn't easy, especially for him, since he's dead now. Alzheimer's disease, which might be caused by deodorant or karma, depending on your views, has claimed the life of the really old ex-president, apparently in an attempt to impress Academy Award winner Jodi Foster. And the reddest tie-wearer in American presidential history communicates greatly no more."
Hardy har har
My younger daughter just said, "When I laugh my butt muscles wiggle."
