Paranormal State

9:00–Yes, it seems like everyone is searching for the truth.

9:03–Ghosts are trying to kill a kid.  “Director” is annoying as hell already.

9:05–I believe Shelley has a unicorn on her bed.  No wonder the ghosts are pissed.

9:06–Kid is creepy as hell.

9:07–Newscoma, you’d better be watching this!  Timmy’s in the basement. 

9:08–This “Director’s Log” crap has got to stop.  It’s very annoying.

9:09–Timmy’s old neighbor has a bar in his basement.  I’m not saying that that’s any good reason to continue to hang around, but… it’s a bar with a John Wayne poster.

9:11–Timmy’s friend has a great mullet.

9:12–“Dead time?”  This is going to be… something.

9:13–Oh, okay.  Dead time is 3 a.m.  The anti-hour.  I’m just trying to imagine what it would be like if I were a ghost and a bunch of kids tried to contact me.  If I’d been to the John Wayne bar, I might be tempted to fuck with them, but otherwise… I don’t know.  It’s hard for me to understand what the motivation of these dead folks is.

It’s not as compelling as Ghost Hunters, I don’t think.  But Jason and Grant, though sometimes cheesy, at least try to remain skeptical and debunk stuff.  But it seems more less fake than Most Haunted.

9:19–They’re cleansing the house, by reading the Bible.  I wonder what happens if the ghosts and demons are non-Christian.  Do they abide by the Biblical cleansing just as a professional courtesy?

9:21–The Director has a heart-felt conversation with the creepy boy.  Dear readers, you will never believe this, but the Director was once a creepy boy, too.

Oh, Tiny Pasture

If I can’t even make the Sunday Morning Tennessee Liberal Blog round-up, I highly doubt I will make the New Media Hot Sheet, even if it does seem like “objectionable material,” “irreverant,” and “base” could only mean that the Governor is warning folks that they may have to read Tiny Cat Pants.

Random Questions I Should Know the Answers To

1.  Is there a term for the philosophy of leaving your opponent with an honorable way to lose in order to keep him/her from being more dangerous?

2.  I’m looking forward a great deal to the start of the Tennessee legislative session.  When do we get to start seeing the legislation folks will be proposing?

3.  Our favorite state legislator raises a good point, one that supports both his larger contention and mine:

The last time an income tax was brought forward many of the income tax legislative supporters were run out of Nashville on a rail. The only legislators who supported an income tax and survived were from districts full of people who would not pay an income tax any way because many of them did not have jobs.

[…]

Oddly, The legislature still passed the largest tax increase in state history but the people who supported other forms of tax increases got a pass.The moderates and the Democrats learned. Pass any other form of tax increase, no matter how big, and the people will not notice. Many smaller bites instead of going after the entire sandwich all at once would get the same meal at the end of the day.

His point is that there’s too much taxation; government is too big.  My point is that opposing a state income tax pretty much is just a symbolic stand and does nothing to ease the tax burden of people in Tennessee.

3a.  It’s stuff like his snide little remark which I italicized that drive me around the bend with Campfield.  Don’t you think he means we’re supposed to assume it’s those Memphis legislators who supported an income tax, who have all those constituents who don’t have and don’t want jobs?  As an antidote, go ahead and peruse the unemployment numbers from October.

I was surprised to see that almost 9% of Maury county is out of work (as opposed to 4% a year ago).  Eight percent of Lewisburg is out of work.  Anyway, I’m just curious if that’s who Campfield had in mind.

3b.  Holy shit, you know, if 9% of Maury county is out of work, it’s no wonder we see such hostility towards immigrants down there, is it?

Thirty One

Yesterday was the recalcitrant brother’s thirty first birthday.  He spent it fishing by himself.

I can’t write you anything about him.  All I can think about is watching him come out of jail, with no idea how long he’d been in there, no idea what time it was,  hungry, tired, and scared and holding onto my dad like he was a hallucination that might slip away at any moment.

I don’t pray to gods.  I pray to my loved ones, a vast net of folks living and dead.

Dear loved ones, please give the recalcitrant brother…

What?

I don’t know. 

Bait that tempts fish.  A line that doesn’t snap.  A foggy quiet day a man might spend on the water.

That, I guess, is worth praying for.

Human Rights Day

Over at Progressive Nashville, you can read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a proclamation first issued fifty years ago.

What I find interesting to consider when reading it is, of course, how relevant it remains, and how these rights wouldn’t need to be guaranteed if they weren’t constantly threatened.