What’s that? There’s no one to one correlation between what a person listens to and what kinds of deeds they’ll do?
Dang.
Monthly Archives: November 2007
My Sure-Fire Way to Get Lee to Worship Satan–A Playlist
“Devil Went Down to Georgia”–Charlie Daniels (come on, we all know who really won that)
“Sympathy for the Devil”–The Rolling Stones
“Stairway to Heaven”–Led Zeppelin
The “Holy Diver” Album by Dio
And everything by Slayer
My Sure-Fire Way to Get Lee to Give Me All His Money–A Play List
“Money”–Pink Floyd
“Money”–The Beatles
My Sure-Fire Way to Get Lee in Bed–A Playlist
“I Just Want to Make Love to You”–Muddy Waters
“Fat Bottom Girls”–Queen
“These Arms of Mine”-Otis Redding
“Sunday Kind of Love”–Etta James
“Whole Lotta Love”–Led Zeppelin
Things that Come to Me While I’m Working on Mack’s Afghan
–My embarrassing lack of math skills causes me to be overcome with fear that, even though I have approximately eleventy billion squares, somehow Mack’s afghan will only be three feet tall. Here is the issue. Because we’ve decided that the afghan will be 11 squares across by 14 squares down AND I decided that they should all be on the point, I keep counting the rows by making a zig-zag between whole squares, which makes the whole thing very tiny. It’s a stupid mistake, and I keep talking myself out of it by reminding myself that we can’t, for the sake of this, count squares, but must actually count spans from one far corner to the other. Every row will have 11 spans, regardless of whether it has 11 squares.
–In other afghan news, I have misunderestimated (I don’t care who invented that word; it’s useful) the amount of brown I’ll need. I fear this means another trip to Walmart.
–I’m going in for a sleep study next week, but I don’t know what day. I need to call and get that shit straightened out.
–Walgreens didn’t charge me for my Advair. I don’t know if this means we’ve blown by the $3,000 spending limit. I thought for a second they might have charged my credit card, but I paid cash for it the last time (the only other time) I’ve gotten it.
–Also, I called my insurance company last night because, for some reason, the $1,500 anaesthetic bill wasn’t in-network even though everything else was and she was all “Oh, yeah, that’s weird. Okay. I’ll change it.”
–That’s in part what scares me about how healthcare works in this country. Amounts of money that could crush me get moved around with a few clicks on the computer like it’s nothing for my insurance company to just pick that up.
–I think I have a couple of reasonable answers for when people ask me what I want for Christmas now.
–I am so pissed at the “new” AT&T, I can’t even tell you. In October, our phone bill was $100 over what it was the month before, so I bitched the Butcher out, took his money and figured that would be the end of it. No, this month, also a hundred dollars more.
So, I look at the bill. I’m getting charge $60 a month now to have a home phone (which used to cost me $30) and $20 for the privilege of having long distance on that phone (which used to cost me $3) and, even though the Butcher and I are on the same family share plan for our cell phones, as of two months ago, he’s got no free texting and I’ve got 500 messages a month. Yeah, guess who sends text messages at our house?
I’m cancelling the home phone, just for starters. I’d love to cancel the cell phones and find someone new, but I’m stuck with them until July. Now, here’s what pisses me off. Clearly, we cannot go on paying what we’re paying. But we can’t get out of our contract until June. So, I’m going to have to go in and modify our plan so that the Butcher gets the text messaging minutes, which means, and you know they’re going to do this, I’m going to have to sign another fucking contract with them.
Hate.
–Also, I have seen no bills for any medical procedure. When should those start coming?
Why The Devil Will Need Mittens Long Before I Vote for Edwards
Note: I am so angry about this that I deliberately did not cuss in the whole post so that even conservatives could read the whole thing.
I was highly displeased with the way the Edwards campaign handled the Marcotte incident (though I was tickled to think that a woman could almost derail a whole presidential campaign merely for being uppity), and his stance on gay marriage irritates me, but I saw him here at the Ryman and I felt like he was a plausible candidate.
But, after reading this over at Little Pasture’s, I have to say that it will be a cold day in Hell before I vote for Edwards. I won’t vote for someone who so clearly hates me and my people (that being working poor people who’ve had to go without insurance at one point or another).
Here is the one good thing about Edwards’ plan: apparently there will be some insurer, somewhere, who cannot deny you coverage.
Here’s everything that stinks* about it:
1. It treats all of us as if we can’t be trusted. Seriously, I have to give the government a note from my insurance company saying I’ve been a good girl? I am not the property of my insurance company. I am their customer. My individual relationship with my insurance company is no business of the government and I don’t need the insurance industry to vouch for my character with the feds. I mean, seriously. Let’s talk some more about how screwed up the relationship between the government, private individuals, and corporations are. I, as an individual, petition the government to monitor corporations because corporations are large, governments are large, and I am, in comparison, tiny. The government does not ask corporations to monitor me in order to make sure I’m behaving. Do presidential candidates not understand basic personal liberties?
2. It treats people who don’t have insurance as if they are deliberately defrauding taxpayers, even though people who don’t have insurance are also taxpayers. Yes, there will always be some small group of people who are working the system. And yes, that very small sliver of people probably can afford insurance but don’t get it because they find it easier to just use the emergency room when they have a problem. But that number is vanishingly small. Most people who don’t have insurance don’t have insurance for two reasons: they can’t get it because no insurance company will take them or because they can’t afford it.
3. My money does not belong to the insurance company. I am not cheating the insurance company out of money if I don’t have insurance. When I pay taxes, those monies go to government programs. If you garnish my wages, it is because I am cheating someone out of money the courts have decided I owe them. The idea that the government could, without court intervention, take my money and give it to a for-profit corporation is enough to turn me into an anarchist. Again, does Edwards not understand that the healthcare crisis in this country is not that insurance companies aren’t getting enough money?
4. The problem with healthcare in this country is not that people refuse to get insurance but that they can’t get insurance. In other words, the problem is not with individual Americans, but with insurance companies. What about Edwards’ plan addresses the egregious behavior of insurance companies?
5. Many of the people who are bankrupted by medical care have health insurance. How does Edwards’ plan address that? It doesn’t seem to be a concern of his at all. In fact, his plan does nothing to encourage health insurance companies to change their ways; instead, it gives them more income and the weight of the government behind their collection efforts.
Here’s what I want. Either
1. Single-payer insurance run by the government. A portion of everyone’s taxes go towards paying for everyone’s healthcare.
or
2. We make for-profit health insurance illegal and make denying coverage to people also illegal, with government programs that help people who can’t afford insurance to afford it. Everyone pays in, everyone gets what they’re promised out, no caps on coverage.
But this? Yet another rich person proposing a program that seems designed specifically to demonize and punish the poor for being poor?
Absolutely not.
*And note, conservatives, it’s all I can do to not make this post as full of cusswords as a bar frequented by sailors on shore leave.
To the Manchild in the Tight White T-Shirt
If you shower every day, you probably have a smell that most potential partners would describe as “neutral” or “good.” If you wanted to smell irresistible, you might consider dousing yourself in water that’s been steeped in rosemary, but that’s neither here nor there.
If you insist on wearing whatever stinky crap you’re wearing, the kind that causes a girl’s eyes to water just standing next to you, here is how to apply it.
Spray it out in front of you and then step through. This will leave a nice light scent on you and encourage folks who might enjoy that scent to come closer to you.
As it is, you have effectively made a little impenetrable barrier around you.
Which, if you’re straight, means you don’t have to worry about women getting make-up on your t-shirt, so there’s that.
For what it’s worth,
b.
Archaeological Fun For the Whole Family!
I’ll be honest with you. I know a lot of folks who are just one more Chinese toy scare away from living off the grid and handmaking everything they need to survive, coming into town only to buy ammunition.
And I laugh at them (though not too hard, because I want a place to stay if stuff really does go to pot).
But then I saw this post all about how folks figured out that ancient Irish people were brewing beer and how they were doing it, and I’m about ready to start digging holes and throwing around hot rocks. I bet that will be useful nowledge after we run out of oil.
How cool is that?
I told y’all that one of the German strands of my family were distillers, didn’t I?
It’s like this: My great grandma, who I was named after (let’s call her Teckla, because that was her name) had two parents–as people tend to have–Hulda, who had come over from Sweden after her father (the beloved tax collector for the king–yes, I swear to god, in the family stories, he’s always the “beloved tax collector.” Make of that what you will, conservatives.) lost the family farm in a drunken poker game and my Great-great grandfather who came over from Germany, whose name escapes me, so let’s just call him “Pops.”
So, Pops is sent to Chicago to make business connections for the family business and instead is all “Woo hoo. I’m in America. Fuck this distillery crap, I’m going to be a meat delivery boy.” (And then I’m sure he and his friends were all ‘Meat delivery! Ha, ha, ha.’) Meanwhile, Hulda was working as a maid/cook for a family and… well, I think you see where this is going.
Anyway, the unanswered question out of all of this, aside from whehter I should gamble that the economy is getting worse, that we are becoming more like Soviet Russia, and that I should take up the family distilling trade is whether the family story about Pops being “German” is correct or if he was Belgian and, if so, is this my ancestral distillery? Or is that just a liquor store and I can’t tell because, like most Americans, I only know one language (though I’m pretty sure I could get a beer in any Slavic country)?
Can Exercise Piss You Off?
Okay, this may be a little too “woo-woo” for my scientifically inclined readers, but I’m going to ask it anyway.
So, I used to walk Mrs. Wigglebottom every week day and take her to the park for a big long walk on one day on the weekend. Basically, for the last four or five weeks, forget about it. I’ve been sleeping like shit and stressed out and then I had my surgery and so that was a week out of commission and blah blah blah.
So, this has been the first week we’ve been back to anything approaching a normal schedule–to the park on Sunday and then walks in the morning.
And here’s what I’m noticing. I’m finding it really, really unpleasant. Like, when I set out for the walk, I feel great and the wind is in my hair and the cool air feels nice on my face and the dog looks cute and off we go. But as I start to warm up, I start to feel like shit.
Not physically. But emotionally.
This is what it seems like. It seems like all this stuff that I’ve had to either push aside or only let out in small bits has just soaked into me and as I move around, it’s like as the muscles move around, that shit works its way back up and, I hope, out.
It really sucks. Now, this morning, at the end of our walk, I was feeling that familiar upbeat feeling I normally feel for the last part of our walk, but I came home feeling like I’d been through the emotional ringer.
So, tell me, exercise-y types, have you had similar experiences? To what do you attribute it? And will it eventually go away?
America, I am a Wimp
I hurt my back moving laundry around yesterday. It hurts to walk. It hurts to sit unless I sit with my knees as high off the ground as I can get them.
I have drawn a picture to illustrate:
Can you justifiably leave work early because your back hurts?
We’ll see. I wish we had some Bengay at home.
Is There a Word for a Person who Disproves His Own Work through His Work?
William Saletan, who has spent the larger part of two months “bravely” pondering what it might mean if white people were inherently smarter than black people admits he neglected to do the very basic work it would have taken to discover that one of the scientists he relies most heavily on is a racist.
Y’all Already Knew This, Didn’t You?
I just realized that the “Dee. Dee. Dit dit de de.” from Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon” is from the Everly Brothers’ “Walk Right Back.”
Ha, and those are two songs that will stick in your head all day. Sorry about that.
The Third and Most Deadly Plank
I know that merely suggesting that we restore, revitalize, or reinvigorate any part of the federal government is enough to cause my libertarian readers to have to take long naps with cold washcloths on their foreheads lest they have an aneurysm.
But I keep thinking about FEMA and how, of all of the federal agencies a person in the midwest has to deal with, FEMA was the least noxious. After the ’93 flood, there was enough anger to go around and I remember how people were almost homicidally enraged at the Corps. But FEMA? My impression was that FEMA worked. They came in; they did what they were supposed to do; they were a big bureaucracy; but people could navigate it.
And I am convinced that when folks who had dealt successfully with FEMA in the past saw what happened after Katrina it was, to them, indisputable evidence that something was very, very wrong in Washington.
I know that folks argue that we should not depend on the federal government to do what charities and ordinary people are capable of. But look at the Gulf Coast. After Katrina, there was an out-pouring of money and people the likes of which I’ve never seen before. There are still charities and church groups down there working just as hard as they can. And it’s not enough. It’s been two years and nonstop work by various NGOs (in the literal sense) and it’s not been enough. There just aren’t enough people, not enough organization, not enough coordination. We need something the size of the federal government to deal with that stuff and to be able to deal with that stuff.
Also, as anyone can tell you who works for organizations dependent on charitable giving, people send their money to the cause that grabs their hearts right now. Your ability to get help in times of disaster should not be dependent on your ability to grab headlines and keep them.
We also have to consider, now that it’s clear that we’ll be in Iraq indefinitely and the war drum beating on invading Iran (Our motto: “Securing peace in the Middle East by giving people who hate each other a common enemy they hate worse!”), that the VA must work. No sending out letters subtly encouraging vets to kill themselves. No leaving vets lying in fly infested rooms. None of that nonsense.
The way I see it, the only way for a government as large as ours to work for a country as big as ours is for there to be a constant source of tension. I think that, in that regard, the Founding Fathers were wise to develop three separate branches of the government that, by design, check each other. That’s great.
But it’s our duty as citizens to check the government, to monitor it and make sure that it does what it’s supposed to do, what we want it to do, and that it doesn’t get out of control. And that’s not an easy job, but it’s one of the most important ones we have.
It’s wise to not count on the government, but at the same time, we should be able to strive for an accountable government we can count on.
On the Way into Work, I Saw My Cousin
He was just standing on the street corner, waiting for the light so that he could cross West End. He looked fantastic. Bright and healthy and just like he felt great.
I mean, I know it couldn’t be him. In a month, he’ll have been dead a year.
I know it was just some guy who looked enough like him to catch my eye.
But damn. Just damn.
For a second there…
I felt like I was seeing him how he should have been, healthy and normal and happy.
Martin Brady, A Blogger Beyond Snark
There’s so much in this post that is wrong, bordering on ridiculous, that I almost don’t know what to say in response to it.
Does a girl start with the struggle to find a way to blame the victim? Or perhaps we should be considering how a grown man reaches the point where he comes to believe there’s some vast Mafia-like thuggery of African Americans in this culture, all sending each other messages full of omerta and death to snitches? Or maybe it’s the obvious outrage and jealousy the man feels that another man can get away with having a child young and not being forced to marry or even date the mother of his baby? Or perhaps we should start with the question of just where Martin Brady thinks the moral place for a little girl to be sleeping is?
No, instead, I think I’ll use this post to serve notice to my black readers and let them know that I, like Martin Brady, am on to y’all. Clearly, using Brady as a guide, it’s safe to extrapolate from what one sees on BET and other television channels how it is that African Americans differ from the rest of us normal folks. Well, I watch a lot of “That’s so Raven,” and I plan to get together with Brady and inform him that I have seen with my own eyes proof that black people are psychic.
Yes. Psychic. Which makes your lack of snitching even more reprehensible, because, of course, you know with certainty who it is who’s done what and when.
You just wait for Brady’s stern lecture about that!
Sharing the Polka with the Younger Generation
SuperMousey is describing the fright I gave her when “Aunt B. grabbed my arms and we ‘danced’. She jumped, I went flying.”
Yep, that tends to be how it goes. Just wait until it’s some cute old European man who smells vaguely of stale tobacco tossing you around the room. That’s when it gets really fun.
Random Randomness
–I love Jay-Z’s 99 Problems. I do not love that the version available on iTunes is just the vocal track. Thank goodness for Amazon.
–When I listen to Edith Piaf on my iPod, I do miss the sound of the needle in the groove. Ann Peebles doing “I Can’t Stand the Rain” is the only other time I really, really miss that noise, that warm schusch-schusch, pop, crackle. That magic.
–I need crochet help. I can’t decide how to join Mack’s granny squares and I’d like someone with more experience to help me think about it.
–I’m not sure, but I think that Andrew Sullivan is saying that, if only we give up on affirmative action, he’ll stop saying that black people are just naturally stupider than white people. And yet, I still read him, so what’s that prove?
—Little Pasture reports that Martin Kennedy believes we should do away with pre-K programs, because, apparently, educating children lets parents off the hook for their well-being. America, I truly believe that Martin Kennedy thinks that, if only parents were left alone with their children, they would rise to the occasion of taking care of them. When I read stuff like that, I wonder if I’m skewed by my time as a minister’s kid and the brief time I spent working at the family crisis center. When you hear the deep secret ways so very many families go so terribly wrong, I don’t know how you can’t believe that the more eyes on the kids the earlier the better. It makes me think that Martin must only meet nice people.
–I cannot stand when people ask me for money. Not people I know. Panhandlers. If I had a gun, I would wave it at them; I hate it that much. I feel threatened by it, like, if I don’t give them money, they’ll give me a reason to feel uncomfortable.
—S-Town Mike reports that the State is going to put up “Closed at Night” signs in Bicentennial Park. I’m sure that will deter those law-abiding rapists. And, really, if they don’t put cops in the park, how will they enforce the “closed at night” rule?
Plank Two–Restoring the Environment
There’s just one question I’d like you to ask yourself today. It’s “What the hell are they doing in Spurlockville, West Virginia and why is it turning everything downstream of it brown?”
I’m not really interested in talking about global warming in terms of the environment. It’s become a distraction–arguing about whether it exists and whether it’s manmade. Who cares? The truth is that we are too dependant on foreign oil (a.) and (b.) we’re too dependant on fossil fuels in general. People die pulling coal out of the ground. Look at what’s going on in Spurlock and tell me that whatever’s killing stuff downstream is not seeping into the people nearby.
We need to better manage and conserve our environment and the things in it because we are the things in it. If we build a culture so toxic to frogs and fish and birds and such that they die off, that’s the canary in the coal mine (so to speak).
A lot of the ugliest stuff that gets done to our environment gets done where few people with any power have to see it. This is one reason we need to enlist outdoorsy people of all sorts–from hikers to hunters–to be on the lookout for stuff. They go where most of us don’t. They talk to people who traditionally have no voice.
Being environmentally aware is just smart self-interest. And being able to back up that awareness with a government that can force changes in industrial practices (see how we circle back to plank one?) is paramount in that.
The Restoration of Individual Rights–My Platform Continued
When I talk about the restoration of individual rights, I’m not talking just about a return to habeas corpus, a rededication to the Constitutional principles upon which this country was founded, and an end to torture and show trials, but I also mean that we need to be rededicated to privileging the individual over the corporation.
Take, for instance, taxes.
I love a good fight over whose hard-earned tax dollars are being wasted on what and how it’s unfair that rich people should have to pay so much, blah blah blah.
But who is a legal person who’s all the time getting tax incentives?
Not me and you.
I mean, when was the last time Nashville offered you money to keep you from leaving the city?
We argue about Uncle Sam in our wallets, but why aren’t we insisting Uncle Sam get a firmer grasp on the money in corporate coffers? If corporations are legal persons, why aren’t they paying taxes like legal persons?
But it’s not just that. It’s that we are at the whim of corporations who blow off our mountain tops, pollute our air and water, and negotiate deals with local governments to look the other way. Erin Brockovich aside, most of us can’t sue our way into getting these corporations to do right by us. We need the government to step in and monitor this stuff and to impose consequences in ways that we, as individuals, cannot.
Clearly, this ties in with my other two platform… platforms? Ha, I suck as a politician. But I would like to see a party be a party of the people and not be in service to corporate interests.
The Charts
Here’s what I’ve been thinking about and I’m going to tell you up front that I’m not quite sure what to make of it. But it’s this chart.
If you look at the top crudely drawn line, you’ll see what’s been kind of my understanding of income distribution in this country. I assumed that there was a large bubble of abject poverty, then a smaller number of people who were poor but not that poor, who were working to make their way up the income ladder and that at each step of the income ladder, there was a slightly larger population, with the largest population being the middle class and the rich.
And, I guess if pressed, I would have been willing to revise my understanding of rich people down closer to the number of abject poor people.
But the point is that I believed that there were always a few more people who were doing a little better than the people below them. That was kind of my understanding of things.
That’s not what the data shows. You can make your own chart in Excel and see.
Instead, what we have is basically a pyramid, with each level containing fewer people than the one before it until you hit about $100,000.
I honestly don’t know what to make of that.
But it raises some questions for me. One is, on a graph like that, where do you locate the middle class? Yes, there are a lot of people who are making between $100,000 and $250,000, but they’re way over there on the right side. Can you have a middle on the far end? If “middle” is where most people fall, does that put the actual middle class in poverty? According to .gov, our mean income as a society is $67,000 a year, but the amount of households pulling that down is just over two million. Out of 110 million households, that seems like barely any.
If each level is smaller than the one below it, what does that really say for class or even income mobility?
I don’t know. I feel like I’m looking at something profound here but I don’t quite know how to wrap my brain around it.
Why I Hate My Phone
So, all yesterday I was laughing about how Mack’s friend was all “Mack’s not just lactose intolerant; he’s lactose bigoted,” because I swear, people, you have never met a man less happy with milk products than our friend Mack.
I’m almost certain his personal hell will be having to spend eternity in a hot tub full of queso with Republicans made of cheese, while really hot women offer to spread butter cream frosting on themselves so he can lick it off, and his only refreshment is ice cold milk and Oreo cookies.
And that idea of him being lactose bigoted, while probably not as funny to you, was so funny to me that I was giggling every time I saw a commercial for milk or cheese or even cows.
So, you know that, when he called, I was going to give him hell about being a lactose bigot but instead I answer the phone and I’m all “Hello! Hello!” and nothing. I’m all “Hello?” and finally, he’s “Hello” and then there’s a sound like a giant iron dog scraping his ass along some barbed wire carpet and that’s the end of that phone conversation.
Friday, I was sitting on the couch working on my afghan and my dad calls and says, “So, where’ve you been all day?” and I’m all “Right here.” And he says, “Well, I’ve tried to call you four times.” Those four times aren’t even on my phone, let alone did the damn thing not ring.
AND after spending a Thanksgiving being thunked and poked and prodded by bratty people, I put a huge make-up bruise on my arm and took a picture of it and sent it to said bratty people in order to illustrate the dangers of continually flicking someone as delicate as me, and the damn phone was all like “Okay, sent.”
And it didn’t.
But you know what really sucks sweaty balls?
When I was perusing through the archives here in order to find that post of me and my mom dancing, I found a post talking about when I bought this phone, just last year.
Well, paint my nails and call me a lady, but what the fuck? I have a two year contract on this phone and it’s practically useless after only a year.
That really just burns me.
Brief Aside
Listen to good ole Ned:
But one interesting angle on this thesis is that the much-touted “southern strategy” was less a factor in Democrats losing their political grip than was their Left-wing radicalism.
See, what tickles me is how it’s like he is faced with a connect-the-dot with three dots and he connects the first two, throws up his hands in victory, and declares himself done. So, he follows along–“Oh, yes, it wasn’t the ‘southern strategy’ that ruined it for Democrats in the South” and “Oh, yes, it was their Left-wing radicalism.”–but he never (and I’m sorry to pick on you, Ned, but it drives me crazy that you don’t ask critical questions of what you read because you are too smart for this nonsense) asks himself “What did Left-wing radicals want?”
Racial equality. Gender equality. An end to the hegemony of the military-industrial complex. To send a big ‘fuck you’ to the ugliness of the 50s. To not have to go to war. But most of all, radicals wanted equality for everyone.
So, in essense, what you’re saying is that one interesting angle on this thesis is that the much-touted “southern strategy” (of Republicans appealing to racist whites who used to be Democracts) was less a factor in Democrats losing their political grip than their insistance on racial and other forms of equality.
Those are not two different things. They’re two sides of the same coin.
And, duh! Of course you can now be a Southern member of the GOP and not be a racist asshat.
But let’s not rewrite history here. Y’all got where you are when you did by certain means that now that a younger group with the good sense to be embarrassed by it is coming into power and trying to understand where they are and how they got there wishes weren’t true.
It’s as simple as that.
My Platform
Last night, after the polka-ing, we had a long raucous discussion about politics, complete with drawings on a dry erase board. Ha, I guess that’s how you know that you’re among your own people, when someone can pull out the dry erase board and no one laughs.
Anyway, we had put before us as a thought experiment what three things we would boil the Democractic message down to in order to make our point succinctly to the American public.
I don’t know how much consensus we came to about any one thing. But it did get me thinking about why I’m a liberal. And, basically, I’m a liberal or a lefty or whatever because I believe that the deck is stacked against individual people and that the only way for us to achieve anything approaching a level playing field is for us to work together. And, often, when the weight of individuals working together isn’t enough to get done what we need to get done, we need to bring in the strong arm of the government.
And I had narrowed down my three things to three things I felt like covered a lot of ground, but in a succinct manner:
1. Restoration of Individual rights
2. Restoration of the Environment
3. Restoration of vital government programs
Just thinking broadly again, from where I sit, it seems like we need to bring some of the gun nuts into our fold. If I were in charge, I’d do this in two ways. I’d stop advocating for new gun control measures. We already have a shit-ton of laws on the books. Let’s set around to enforcing them (bringing some folks in under prong one). And I’d work with hunting organizations under prong two. Many of these folks get that what they do goes hand in hand with wildlife conservation. They want deer for their grandkids to hunt. They want to pull fish safe to eat out of our rivers and streams. And these guys are out there in nature. If we work with them, they’re our first sets of eyes and ears, our first witnesses to environmental problems.
…
…
Holy shit. I am in a complete fog. I am like a zombie in search of brains. Must have caffeine. Must have caffeine!
More later.
I go in search of my beloved drug.
But I Suck at Memes!
David has gone the “not technically tagging you” route to tag me for this. Here’s the rules.
1) Link to the person that tagged you, and post the rules on your blog.
2) Share 7 facts about yourself.
3) Tag 7 random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.
4) Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
Are there seven things about me you don’t know? I don’t know.
1. I cannot resist rubbing cat bellies, even though I know most of the time I’m going to get bit.
2. I cannot function without caffeine. I have no caffeine in the house right now. You’re lucky you can read this.
3. I really like having friends that know me well, but I have to say that nothing bothers me more than feeling like my motivations are utterly transparent.
4. I hate knitting and I resent the cool things knitters can make. As a 4.5, I truly believe that there are knitters and crochetters and that we come together in common purpose because we both need yarn, but otherwise, I don’t think we have much in common.
5. I want to learn to spin.
6. I believe that a willingness to polka redeems just about anyone.
7. The thing I hate most about pickles is that they have such a satisfying crunch coupled with such an awful taste. Why would something that is so much fun to eat taste so bad?
Ha, you can for sure tell this is the Diet Dr Pepper-less rant from me, seeing as it’s all about how much I hate everything! Well, at least that makes me laugh.
I’m not going to choose seven folks. Just Lee. Just because.
The Afghan Update
I’ve been perusing the granny square afghans at flickr and going through the afghans at Ravelry (which is this awesome site that Sarcastro’s mom tipped me off about*) and I see no other afghan like this.
I’m really excited.
I love the idea of the traditional–these simple granny squares–juxtaposed against the unexpected–these colors that seem to refuse to stay put in their traditional patterns.
I’m going to need a couple of more skeins of brown yarn to finish and I had intended to go to Walmart today to get them, but the Butcher has my car. I’d rather not brave the Black Friday crowds anyway, so there’s that.
I told my dad yesterday that I thought the Butcher was a little bummed that we weren’t going to be together for Thanksgiving, but the truth is that I was a little bummed about it. It’s funny how deep the foodways in my family run and how being able to cook the things you cook and give them to the people you love become important to you even without your conscious knowledge. Plus, last year I danced around with my mom.
I don’t know.
I’m bummed. I’d go back to bed but I just dragged myself out of it three hours ago and there seems something fucked up about staying in bed all day when you should at least, be doing laundry and dishes.
*See? This is what I loev about the internet. Where else can dirty hippie liberals and mothers of libertarians get together to share vital information about the yarn arts?
Tiny Cat Pants 