It’s Fall Here

Oh, it is beautiful here.  The trees have all turned on the hills and the pine needles make everything smell so good.

We tried to get a lot accomplished today.  We went through boxes and the Butcher got the car in the garage.  I did laundry, finished unpacking, and cut out a bunch of privet and briars.  I was going to start hanging art, but the Butcher broke our hammer setting up our compost pile, so neither of those things got done and the stuff for the attic isn’t yet in the attic.  But we did get to the grocery store.  And when we got home, some handsome stranger was cutting our lawn.

To Brighten the Mood Around Here

Look at this.

What Makes a Democrat?

I’ve come to believe that the biggest problem facing Tennessee Democrats is that…

Okay, I take that back.  The biggest problem facing Tennessee Democrats is that they became entrenched and corrupt and cut off from the vibrant liberal thought and advocacy being done in the state because they were so busy protecting their hind ends.

After that, though, the biggest problem facing the Tennessee Democrats is that who the hell knows what Tennessee Democrats stand for?  In the words of Kotz, is it “We’re Slightly Less Weird about Guns, God, and Abortion!” or do we have something else to offer Tennesseans?  And, if so, what?

If we just follow Kotz’s formula, I’d vote for ignoring guns completely, strengthening our (for lack of a better term) brand when it comes to religious tolerance, and moving ourselves out of the abortion corner back into a broader room of making a commitment to women and family health.

The thing about the abortion issue, the thing that makes it an impossible and stupid battle is that pro-life always means “anti-abortion but only until the butt on the line is mine.”  When it’s you or your daughter or your wife who’s been raped, when it’s you or your wife or your daughter who’s got a life-threatening condition while pregnant, shoot, often when it’s your wife or you or your daughter who just cannot have a baby right now, people expect that they deserve the exception–that abortion is bad and wrong and no one should have one, ever, except they really need it, so they’re different.

Everyone knows this; no one will admit it.  So we continue to have these arguments that are dishonest at their very inception, because we are never talking about the truth, we are always talking about some pretend world where, if abortions were illegal, no one would have them.

Instead, we need to recommit to

…

…

…

Oh holy shit.

Here I am all talking like there’s some Democratic party to reach out to and I see this pop up in my feed reader:

in a “cost-cutting measure” to leave the state party in “sound fiscal shape”, the Tennessee Democratic Party has apparently decided to fire their entire staff, except for Chairman Gray Sasser, Executive Director Kim Sasser Hayden, and office manager Vionne Williams.

What do you even say to that?

I’m sitting here laughing because I don’t know what other response to have.

Well, then, never mind.  Carry on.

Reinstating Hank

I completely agree with Mazor, except to say that I’m for leaving the possibility open for Zombie Hank Williams to rejoin the Opry.

More Good Democratic Discussion

Newscoma rounds it all up.

Isn’t Monitoring My Uterus an Expansion of the Roll of the State?

Over at Tiny Pasture’s, I read:

Lt. Gov. Ramsey agreed, noting, “I just think this next year is not going to be about what passes, it’s about what doesn’t pass. I don’t see any — period — any new initiatives being started” or expanded.

But social issues will get attention, he said.

“Obviously those are traditionally Republican-base issues,” he said, citing examples such as abortion restrictions and expanding gun owners’ rights.

Hmph.

Just to Make You Feel at Home, Instapundit Folks

I also spoke this week about stripping men of the right to bear arms and giving the 2nd Amendment wholly over to the women-folks.

Ha.

You protest, but right now, it’s about 40% of households that have a gun.  If women were issued a gun at 16, you’d have, what, about 40% of the people in the United States with a gun.

Ha, you know I say stuff like that just to rankle Say Uncle.

I Wonder What This Means

I just got an email from my dad that says “Wash the sheets at our end of the camper.”

Is he on his way down?

Very mysterious.

Prailines

The Butcher has eaten the shit out of the prailines.  For me, they’re too sweet to enjoy, but he’s eaten almost the whole pound.

Woo hoo!

I Hated this Book; You Should Read It

So, I finished that White City book, which would have been much better being two books both more fleshed out, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t spend the whole ride home telling the Butcher about the Ferris Wheel and how The White City influenced our culture in ways we don’t even realize now–Hello Disneyland!  Which reminds me, Coble, if you haven’t read it and would like to, I’m happy to share my copy.

But that left me part of my layover in Charlotte and then my flight back to Nashville with no reading materials and so I picked up The Monsters of Templeton which was the only book in the bookstore that didn’t look either terrible or like I needed to have read the whole series before i picked that one up.

I then stayed up all night to finish it.  I can’t remember the last time I stayed up all night to read a book.

Anyway, it’s loosely based on Cooperstown, NY, which is instead called Templeton and it’s the story of a woman who is a direct descendent of the town founder and his famous writer son who returns to her hometown to deal with her pregnancy and find out who her realy father is and learn about her family.  Also, there’s a lake monster.  And ghosts, and psychics and women who can start fires with their minds.  And the author has this weird hang-up of telling you all the time about whether her characters are fat or thin or getting fatter (and thus unattractive) or getting thinner (and thus more attractive).

It contains one of the biggest cop-outs in literary history, which goes far past the cliched “teenage girl gets pregnant, abortion seems like only reasonable course of action, but luckily she has a miscarriage” scenario straight into something that, for me, at least, was, if it is possible, even more offensive and what-the-fuck inducing.

And then, there’s this postcard scene which makes laughably little sense.

So, I guess the thing is that any time the book strays away from the magical and literary, it’s really problematic, to put it mildly, but I did devour the whole thing and am glad I did.