Fiddling While Rome Burns

The world is falling apart. Is it natural to retreat into art and beautiful things or just a way of keeping our heads in the sand? Or both?

I don’t know.

I had a thought this evening that there’s a pretty hilarious book for someone to write about a private investigator who takes only small, shitty cases. You lost your glasses? She’ll help. You think your daughter is taking an impractical route home from school? She’ll tail her and recommend she turn right and go down to a little-used road rather than going straight.

It’s just like, who, when the bad things are so big, and when you probably don’t have a job, wouldn’t like the satisfaction of completing small tasks?

Feministe is on Fire!

Man, lots of good stuff over at Feministe today. Great (if contentious) discussion about religion and feminism. Another about abuse. And a third about fat.

Lt. Governor Gun-Jumper Ramsey Wants Child-Starving Policy

Dear lord, what the fuck is up with these Republicans sitting around pondering all the ways they can cause Tennessee children to starve?! I mean, shoot, yes, I suppose that’s one way to curb childhood obesity–we’ll just let our children starve to death. But it seems like we might take less drastic actions of some sort.

But here’s the thing. Most people on welfare are women and children. If you drug-test women and deny them welfare, here’s what will happen: Mothers who are on drugs won’t be able to get welfare, which will mean they won’t be able to feed their children. That means we will have to pay for their children to go into the Foster Care system. The Foster Care system in Tennessee is, to put it mildly, fucked. Kids in foster care (assuming they would actually get in) are not necessarily better off than kids whose moms are functional drug addicts.

And yes, I find that last sentence absolutely terrifying as well. But that’s reality.

You know, one thing I find strange is that one of the most common criticisms of liberals by conservatives is that we want to engage in all this somehow unnatural social engineering. Enacting policies that cause kids to either starve or be taken from their mothers is also social engineering. And very intimate social engineering.

We’d need to have a much more functional Department of Children’s Services before I’d be comfortable dumping even more children into the system. And why isn’t the cost of increased children under the wing of the Department of Children’s Services also in the fiscal note?

Captain Morgan News that Somehow Doesn’t Involve Him Seducing Everyone With His Eyes

So, apparently Captain Morgan may have misplaced his boat some time ago. And some folks from Texas were trying to find it for him. But of course, since they were liberal elitist college professors who probably wanted Captain Morgan’s boat just to prove evolution or global warming or something, they mysteriously ran out of funds. Captain Morgan the spirits, not Captain Morgan who is a spirit, threw some money at the froo-froo Texans and the ship was found!

Well, someone’s ship.

The good thing about being a pirate is that even if it’s not your ship today, it could be tomorrow.

Hemlock or Queen Anne’s Lace

One thing that never fails to surprise me, even at this late stage, is just how much poisonous crap is growing around. And I say this as someone with foxglove in her garden.

Part of the problem is that you can walk by some lacy thing every day for years and say “Oh, that’s some weird, rounded-head smaller-blossoming strain of Queen Anne’s Lace” and then it dawns on you that it’s probably not Queen Anne’s Lace at all, but hemlock. Just growing along the road. Waiting for some philosopher to need a way to escape persecution.

This weekend was kind of a bust. I got a lot of stuff I needed to get done done, but I didn’t really schedule any social time other than what I tagged along with the Butcher on. And I probably should have. I tried to medicate the cat myself yesterday and am now sporting a couple of respectable cat scratches on my chest. But she really does do a good job of taking her medicine, I’ll grant her that. I guess her mom’s probably to thank–taught her well to just swallow whatever white crap squirts in her mouth. (Yes, we have already made those “that’s what she said” jokes to each other, no need to make them in the comments.)

I’m feeling kind of in a rut, but part of my “getting things done” thing this weekend was to check and see “Nope, not a rut. Actually it’s called ‘waiting’.”

I’ve also been meaning to say something substantive about Campfield’s “Let’s strip aid to poor people if their kids are shitty students” idea, but it seems so self-apparent that this is not only a bad idea, but also that we’re all watching a man play out his sadistic fantasies of being able to keep people weaker than him afraid of him that it’s really time to stop treating him like a harmless joke. He may be a joke. But he takes enormous pleasure in hurting people he has power over. That’s not harmless.

This is also why I’m tired of the whole “Oh, he’s gay” bullshit. Really? You think gay men have some trait in common (other than loving men) which is malignant hatred of people with little power? A lot of people up on the Hill crack gay jokes about Campfield because they’re trying to blow him off as some harmless guy with issues. Well, he’s not harmless. And being gay doesn’t equal hating women and children. I think we need to watch our insults of our enemies that they don’t carry some sting for our friends, you know?