O'Reilly and the Winnebago ManSeparated at Birth?

In case you have never seen the Winnebago Man, herezat.

The Power of The Bloggers

Sorghum Crow puts out a great blog, and I am a happy fan. But did you know that Sorghum's been up to so much more than merely posting the snark? Rather than complain about the problems of the day, Sorghum is doing something:

DEVELOPMENT: Can Sorghum Solve the Biofuels Dilemma?

Way to go, Sorghum. Way.

And the story goes....

Splotchy started another story virus. Thus far no eyeballs in applesauce jars, and least not per Splotchy, FranIam and DGuzman who has infected me. (Cover your mouth when you sneeze, Miss D!)

Here goes:

Splotchy's ominous beginning:
"I had been shuffling around the house for a few hours and already felt tired. The doorbell rang. I opened the front door and saw a figure striding away from the house, quickly and purposefully. I looked down and saw a bulky envelope. I picked it up. The handwriting was smudged and cramped, and I could only make out a few words."(Splotchy)

Despite the throbbing pain in my knees and the dull ache in my lower back, I bent down slowly and picked up the envelope...

Oh no. It did not say this, did it?

Oh yes, it did. It did.

The handwriting was familiar in a way that inspired a cold sweat and a bout of nausea. It was the penmanship of my former husband. You know - the one that was presumed dead.

He disappeared in a suspicious blogging related accident a number of years ago and was never heard from again. I was devastated. I had hated the blog, loathed the thing. What began as a hobby that took but a few minutes a day had morphed into an addiction, the proportions of which could not be measured. It was pure evil.

The blog turned into a cruel and demanding mistress and her siren song was more than I could compete with. One day he left for an evening event, never to return again.

All fingers pointed to one blogger, but I could never get the charges to stick. That one is slick- slick, slick, slick. He can talk a good game and write like nobody's business. But there is something about him, it just is not right.

So my husband was gone, that other one kept blogging and I had to rebuild my life, which I did.

So I finally had the bastard declared dead. And now this. (FranIam)

I took the envelope inside and got out a magnifying glass. I studied the scribblings on the front and made out the words “This is for you. You KNOW why” just above the undead bastard’s name. What the hell?

What could it be? What did he mean, I “KNOW” why? What did I do? I had never been anything but faithful to him and his "interests." I followed his stupid blog as it meandered through the vapid expanses of his small mind, trying my best to be polite when he talked about some comment he’d gotten on a particular post, or a funny link he’d dropped into a post.

Just thinking about it made my stomach hurt.

Despite a fleeting fear that there might be anthrax powder in the envelope, I opened it and pulled out the contents. (dguzman)

A noodle, a meatball and one of the six legs of a squid? (Squid have six legs, not eight, right? Unsure I rushed to my computer to ask The Lord Google. OMG, I was wrong! Squid do have eight legs. And two tentacles. Like cuttlefish. I digress. Damn you Google!)

What was he working on when he had that blogging accident? I thought back to the nights of feverish typing. The nights the keyboard fairly reeked of despair, flopsweat and ricola. He would babble "vision quest" "noodly appendage" "the alpha and the semolina" "green sticky spawn of the stars". This last I just attributed to far too much interest in the pussy photos of Britney Spears.

In shaky handwriting was the couplet:

That is not dead which can eternal lie.
And with strange æons even death may die

I felt that I was beginning to understand. He had been killed in an epic battle of Good versus Not-So-Good or even "meh!" (Jess Wundrun)

***********

Okay, got that done. Let's see. I am going to tag Randal Graves, though he's been tagged once already with the virus I practically wrote my addition for him to clean up. M. Yu at Social Seppuku, and Commander Other. If any of you are staunch anti-meme-ists, my regrets.

I wonder if he crosses his fingers behind his back

In remarks before the Knesset in Israel today, President Bush said "We believe in the matchless value of every man*, woman*, and child*. So we insist that the people of Israel have the right to a decent, normal, and peaceful life, just like the citizens of every other nation*. We believe that democracy is the only way to ensure human rights. So we consider it a source of shame that the United Nations routinely passes more human rights resolutions against the freest democracy* in the Middle East than any other nation in the world."







If this is his vision for a free democracy, or the type of democracy he dreamed of bringing to the oppressed people of the world, I think we can understand what went so terribly wrong.

By the way, in his speech he mentions the democratically elected Hamas only long enough to claim that they want to "wipe Israel from the map". He mentions Palestine or the palestinian people exactly never. I don't say that in support of Hamas, but in grasping the reality of the situation on the ground. Something Mr. Bush has no real interest in doing.

*Much like the game where you read your fortune cookie fortune with the suffix "-in my pants", the statements of George Bush need to be read with the silent suffix -"unless you're Palestinian".

Our "Secretary" of State brings new dignity to the job

Okay, I kid. But honest to pete, here's the real caption (shamelessly stolen from Princess Sparkle Pony)

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrives at the residence of Israeli President Shimon Peres, Wednesday, May 14, 2008, in Jerusalem. Looking on at rear is President Bush, left, and President Peres. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)

Did you detect a missing word? Vanna?

PS> as an aside, I went to a Yiddish translator site and asked to have "Beautiful Woman" translated into Yiddish for Shimon Peres to be saying. The translator said "Sorry, this word does not translate in Yiddish". Boom bappa chee! Be sure to tip your waiters!

I have had it.

In the past I've reproduced e-mails from my right wing friends that I find disturbing for us to chuckle about here. Could someone explain to me why left wing people don't have the same paranoic urge to send e-mails around? I mean, I have to say that the majority of people with whom I associate are left wing, none of them send these dumb ass screeds around the internet.

I know the answer: we are an elite band of brothers, secure in our knowledge who don't need to share the fear. But they do. What is wrong with Kansas? Or rural Wisconsin? Why do they want the rest of us to cower like they do, while all the time pronouncing how fearless, how brave they are? Fucktards.

That said, I think I hit the final straw with one of my rightie e-mail forwarders. It wasn't too hard. This woman is the wife of a highschool classmate of my husband's.

Here is what she sent to me:

Those of us who were alive at the time saw pictures like this in the newsreels at the movies and read about it in the papers. Those who fought in World War II in the area saw it first hand. Soon we will all be gone; I pray that we will not let others rewrite history to take true events out of the history books.

IT DID HAPPEN.


It is a matter of history that when Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight Eisenhower, found the victims of the death camps, he ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and even made to bury the dead.



He did this because he said in words to this effect: 'Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses - because somewhere down the track of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened'

'All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing'
Edmund Burke




This week, the UK removed The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offended' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred.

This is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving in to it.





These photos were taken in Germany by James Emison Chanslor, an Army Master Sergeant who served in World War II from 1942 until 1945.

Here is my response:

Holly, you should check Snopes before you forward these. Neither the University of Kentucky (UK) nor the United Kingdom passed these rules you claim they did.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/holocaust.asp


I thought this was a great e-mail at first. It's true that history will try to deny the worst atrocities. There ARE Holocaust deniers and that is a sin against humanity. Then your e-mail took a fabulous twist and became the same ugly bigoted missive that it portends to be against.

Amazing how you can use one holocaust to justify another one. I guess 6 million dead jews don't yet equal 650,000* dead muslims, (the figure for dead Iraqis ) but with luck we'll get there, eh? (I personally believe we are at about a 6:1 ratio, meaning that in only five years we've killed one million Iraqis. The Third Reich had twelve years to get to 6 million. But what's in a number?)

Unfortunately, you are promoting the exact same hatred toward a religious group as Hitler did. And you are doing it by promoting lies and bigotry against a group that you know nothing about. Or please, tell me about your muslim friends. I wait....

That would be called irony, wouldn't it?

It IS a shame for good men to do nothing when evil raises its head. In this case you would like to condemn a billion muslims worldwide for the actions of 19. Oddly, the vast majority of whom came from a country that is still an ally of the United States. (Saudi Arabia, have you heard?) So, because I agree that it is a shame to do nothing in the face of ugliness and hate, I am going to tell
you that your bigotry is not acceptable to me. I will not tolerate your racist filth in my in-box. And when our country builds concentration camps for muslims(Guantanamo, anyone? Extraordinary rendition anyone?) I will speak up.

Did you know that I used to work for a country at the United Nations whose citizens were all muslim? None of whom fit your hateful description? They would be in awe of the bigotry you so carelessly promote. (Bangladesh)

If this were Germany in 1933 I know exactly where I would be and where you would be. Trust me, you wouldn't be on the side of religious tolerance. Your arm would be held so high up in the air in a Heil Hitler that the rest of us would have to duck from the backswing. And Ben and I have stood at Dachau that self-same camp and on that soil you want to weep for and the most striking thing about standing on that ground is that there are only about 300 yards that
separate the concentration camp from the village of Dachau. And I know that those citizens that lived in Dachau Village did nothing and pretended that nothing was happening because they bought, hook line and sinker, the fear that Hitler sold.

They pretended to be on the side of God.

So do you.

You change the word Jew to Muslim in all your little missives and you'll see
that you are promoting the exact same hate that Hitler did.

Proud of yourself?

Jess

*that figure is two years old, where are we now? Most likely well past one
million. Will you speak up when we reach 6 million? Or are any dead children
okay with you? I myself find any child a tragedy.

Blogrollin'

m.yu from the Jade Gate has created a new blog. One that I didn't see because I have been far far too busy as of late. But, thanks to about twelve hours of sleep last night I think I can get back to spying on all y'alls blogs and commenting and putting up more posts here.

Anyway, m.yu's new blog, Social Seppuku is less sexysex exotic erotica and more about the bumfarking we've been getting since about the Nixon admin. Hopefully I'll get some time to read all the way back to the end of April when the blog began with this pithy post:

Welcome to my new place. In order to keep my other blog, The Jade Gate, more consistent and on message (more bond age, rope, naked people and sex, which seems to disturb some politico types,) I have started Social Seppuku in order to give myself freer rein to vent and, as they say now, rant, bitch, yell and otherwise express my discontent for the current state of things. This harder edge of sarcasm and contempt seems to be more acceptable to some than mixing it with erotic power themes. Who'd have thunk it?.....

In other words, I do not want to contaminate the nice wholesome subjects of sexual fetishism, Erotic power play, Dominance and submission, sadism, masochism, alternative sexual lifestyles and practices, sexual orientations of all types and many other nice things with other postings of inane and pernicious things we do and allow to be done to us (non-consensually of course) by the institutional corporate fascists powers that be. Because after all, the society we live in is really some kind of strange ritualized social suicide of the most graphic kind but accepted and acquiesced to by we little baa baa sheep. This suicide allows us to keep living as we do.

So be sure to tell your friends and enemies to stop by here at Social Seppuku,
"Where the World Comes to Slit its Belly

So there you are m.yu. I'm telling everyone, get on over! One man's entrails is another man's tripe. (Wait, I think that came out all wrong...)

The Made In America Update

We've been at this for four months now, trying to buy only American products. At first I would wander around a store, just looking, until I found something that I needed with a USA label. Now I aggressively ask clerks for help and they are happy to oblige. Then we get into long, protracted discussions about globalization. It's been very interesting. Friends and family all know about it now, and while no one else has said "Hey, I'm going to do that, too" many are taking second looks at their purchases. Even a relative who works at *Sam's*.

Ima turned five recently. I shopped for her birthday present at Kmart. Did you know that of 'baseball, hotdogs, apple pie and Chevrolet", at the very least in that list those baseballs are no longer made in America. A few baseball bats are still made here, but I could find no softball, tee ball or baseball manufactured anywhere but China. Maybe there's a factory that produces all those American flag pins, American flags and baseballs all at the same time.

I thought I was pretty good at reading packaging to determine where something is made. Some products that are made in America just put the company's address on the package. I bought Ima a soccer ball (red white and blue flag motif no less) that looked for all the world like it was manufactured in Oregon. When she took it out of the package I spied in 2pt type the itty bitty word CHINA along side the valve stem. Rats! Ben had bought her a piggy bank, pink plastic with electronics inside that make squealing noises when you drop in a coin. He bought it at Walgreen's before the start of the challenge so the rules didn't apply. We didn't even check: plastic, electronics, Walgreen's=China. But guess what? It was manufactured in Ohio. And I must confess to one glaring violation of the rules that I made. I bought a Disney Princess clock radio for Ima. In a lawyerly application of our agreement, I justified the purchase because I needed a radio to listen to while I worked on the house in Milwaukee last week. And the rules state the purchases needed for work don't count. I should have taken a picture of the pink Disney Castle radio sitting on top of my toolbox. Incongruous to say the least.

Greeting cards are a whole 'nother wonder, I've discussed them in the past, but I think I have gotten pretty good at standing at Hallmark and being able to pick out the Chinese cards from an endcap away. Cards with glitter may still be printed here, but cards with little goo gads attached or 3-D effects that take some intricate piecework to assemble are made in China.

Last month was my anniversary and of course yesterday was Mother's Day. For Mother's Day I received some beautiful hand-crafted objets produced quite close to home by little 5 and 7 year old hands. These child laborers were not even paid for their work, but rest assured were given a healthy snack time right after putting away the paint and the glue. The other thing that I got for Mother's Day was a saute pan made by All-Clad in Pennsylvania. Which followed the 12" pan I gave Ben last month for our anniversary. We know that there are still cookware companies in Wisconsin, but sometimes you just draw the line and say Wisconsin might be better than Pennsylvania in the buying hierarchy of needs, but Pennsylvania beats China any day. As an aside, I have perfected the omelet! But in the 12" pan it takes six eggs to make a good omelet.

Shoes are the next big hurdle. Ima is set for the summer, but I'm not quite sure what to do about Lotta. I have found that New Balance still makes some children's shoes here, but summer time sandals are going to take some searching. And I myself am just about crazy for some new shoes. If you see a woman openly weeping in the shoe department it's probably me. Kicky thongs? Cute slingbacks? Those little slipper sneakers? Sob.

Gotta go. Ima wants to play with all the Chinese crap she got for her birthday.

And You May Tell Yourself This Is Not My Beautiful House

The credit crisis, which is sapping America's economic strength, was the result of an almost religious belief in deregulation whose excesses are now coming home to roost.

It is instructive to compare the American financial mess with the economic situation in nations that resisted deregulation. Old Europe tends to get a scornful press in the U.S. But Europe is not suffering a financial meltdown today -- mainly because Europeans (with the exception of Britain and Switzerland) took only a few sips of the financial Kool-Aid so heavily promoted by U.S. banks.

read more at the American Prospect.

You Say Elitist...

I say "uppity nigger".

Don't know how else to explain a kid who grew up on food stamps with a single mother and who made it big through the promise of the American dream, who pulled himself up by his bootstraps, being given the "elitist tag".

Hillary might let that go, now that she's being asked to quit.

But you know McCain won't.

Yes, massah. Bes yah keeps thuh uppity niggahs down.

Tenants.

Went to Milwaukee to clean out the apartment vacated by a bad tenant. Super nice guy, terrible tenant. According to the woman living downstairs, he would often leave his dog alone in the apartment for long stretches of time. Brand new carpet had to be pulled because it was soaked with dog pee. When they moved in this couple told me they had a small terrier, who lost all its teeth as a baby and needed to be carried down the stairs to go to the bathroom. I guess they thought I'd never come around and see that it was a pit bull. With lots of teeth and very functioning legs. When it wasn't peeing on the carpets, it was taking shits on the balcony. There are turds inbetween the planks on the balcony and in the downspouts.

On the upside, his ex-girlfriend left her video tapes of their sex life. Oh, I kid. There was a little standard missionary sexin' on the tape, rather ho hum. Tenant says that his fiance left him for her drug dealer (oy vey) and that now she's pregnant and on bed rest and doesn't know who the father is. The ovulation kit and four pregnancy tests I found under the bathroom sink say otherwise. For the record, she told neighbors that he was the one on drugs. (I cross myself). Others say that both of them had a problem with alcohol. The SWAT team that showed up one night at 2 AM after the tenant rolled his vehicle on the freeway offramp and then ran away on foot would probably agree with that assessment.

So I'm going back for the next few days to finish the cleanup. I wonder if that sage burning thing they're always doing out in California to rid the place of bad juju has any merit? Sigh.

More About Me, meh.

* The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.


* Each player answers the questions about himself or herself.


* At the end of the post, the player then tags five people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog.


1. Ten years ago I was:

Married to someone else and building a house that I designed. (Yep, I was the general contractor after I fired the guy who was a friend of the ex's) He still lives there. I wish I could've kept the stove - it cost more than one of the cars we have today.


2. Five Things on Today's To Do List:

-Pack for me, kids, dogs to go to Milwaukee to clean up an apartment a tenant just left in a bad state.

-Take Ima to kindergarten orientation

-Go to Lotta's "Reader's Theater" presentation

-Try to find Ima's immunization record. Will give up and call for the clinic to fax me yet another one.

-Stop at favorite truck stop on way to Milwaukee for dinner.

3. Things I'd do if I were a billionare

* Build new homes in New Orleans on a totally new, independent, green power grid.

* Travel obsessively

* Kick Donald Trump in the nuts for being such a dickwad and then laugh at his puny helicopter.


4. Three Bad Habits

* Procrastination

* Poking at trolls with sticks

* I drink too much diet soda.


5. Five Places I've lived

* Oshkosh, Wisconsin - when they still made the overalls there

* New Brunswick, New Jersey - the train conductor said "ElizabethMatawaaaaanEastBrunswickNewBrunswick....."

* Richmond, Virginia - Ben calls it the city of Second Place Trophies for all the Civil War statues in town. I love you, Richmond. Take a joke, please.

* Milwaukee, Wisconsin - On days you didn't smell the foundry to the west, you could smell the mash cooking at Miller Brewery to the east. Contrary to what you might think that's not a great smell.

* A suburb of Madison, Wisconsin (where I am right now. Look at me on Google Earth! I'm right by the window. Wave! Hi there! Ben, put your damn pants on, people are looking!)


6. Five Jobs I've had in life:

* clerk at Ben Franklin store

* Sampler at grocery stores for 7 UP.

* Sales & Marketing Manager for a cat toy company

* Estimator for a construction company

* Lunch lady at a daycare center.

I am going to tag Yoga Korunta, Dr. Zaius, Dean Wormer, ed, and Germaine Gregarious.

The President Speaks

I watched the president's press conference yesterday. I must say the whole of it made me about as angry as I would have expected it to. His main thrust was that everything that's wrong today is the fault of Congress. He asserted in various ways that he's been unable to get several handy dandy bills through for about the last eighteen months or so. Now, by my math that means that he couldn't even get his own republican congress to help him out from November of 2006 to January of 2007, but I don't think he and I do math the same way.

Watching him, I was struck by how small his thinking is. Alternative energy is only nu-cu-lar and ethanol. Drilling in ANWR will solve our dependency on foreign oil and so on. Had John Kerry been elected we'd be nearly three and a half years into our "Apollo Program" for alternative fuel sources. One would hope these would be more than just those choices that benefit Monsanto, ADM and Cargill as well as GE and ConEd.

So in the midst of all his blather, I didn't pay much attention to the one sentence that became the news shows' soundbite. The President of the United States of America said to us "I firmly believe that, you know, if there was a magic wand to wave, I'd be waving it, of course.I've repeatedly submitted proposals to help address these problems, yet time after time Congress chose to block them."

Here's the funny thing. He has been president for over seven years. He could have done something. But let's recall that what was done in 2005 was to give massive tax breaks to the oil companies and other energy firms. We stopped charging royalties to oil companies who take crude from public land. Essentially, we are allowing oil companies to take from the commons for free. And each quarter these companies are setting record profits.

And, what did George W. Bush say in 2005 when he wanted to pass that wonderful energy bill that would bring down the price of gas, which then had soared to a shocking $2.28 a gallon? He said:

"I wish I could simply wave a magic wand and lower gas prices tomorrow," Bush told the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. "But we must act now to address the fundamental problem. Our supply of energy is not growing fast enough to meet the demands of our growing economy."

Three years ago he could have waved that magic wand to improve our mass transit infrastructure (my city is trying to add light rail-a forward looking idea that cons hate), could have extended tax credits to buyers of hybrids rather than Hummers, could have encouraged our auto companies to improve fleet efficiency. Rather, the news this morning in Wisconsin is that GM is laying off 750 people at the Janesville SUV plant. Yeah, who could have seen that coming?

And now, McCain and Clinton and others say that we should have a tax holiday for the summer to reduce the price of our gas by eighteen cents a gallon. Think about that: we give the raw product away, we've given billions in tax incentives to the oil companies and now as an answer, some would like us to forgo our own revenue - money that goes to US citizens for roads and infrastructure improvements, because oil companies are overcharging us? Insane.

Is now a good time to remind everyone that had we kept Jimmy Carter's CAFE standards in place we wouldn't need foreign oil?

Onion Radio News: Giant Asshole in the Blogosphere

They thought that it might be dense pocket of smaller dickwads but it was a giant singular sonuvabitch.

You may listen to the full story here. Though best very quietly if you are at work

Ticks!

We went for a hike in the country yesterday. I came home with three ticks. The problem is that I didn't find them until 1:45, 2:15 and 3:30. AM. Then I stayed awake for a very long time with the itchy creepy crawlies.

Fortunately, Lotta (7yo) had given me a pebble that she found interesting which was on the base of my lamp. I used it to crush those little bastards and line them up in a row like frontier rattlesnakes on my nightstand. Now they rest in peace in a baggie I can give my doctor when the lyme disease sets in.

Oh, and I'm tired as hell.

I Wonder What His First Clue Was

that this might be a somewhat racist affair.

John McCain Toured New Orleans

And declared it safe.

Gone Fishin

Okay, I haven't. But it sounds so much better than kids' yoga, treadmill, grocery store, garage sale, laundry. Doesn't it?

One week to opening day of the trout season, though. Ben "A River Runs Through Him" Wundrun will be missing most Saturday mornings for a while.

Who Is Today's Saint?

Did anyone ever see the Sting movie "Brimstone and Treacle"? One of the characters in the movie is an atheist who writes church hymns. (He also enjoys 'communion' with his secretary, if you know what I mean. wink. wink.)

At the risk of being that guy (sans secretary) today I post a WITS post right after a crazy catholic stuff post because today's saint is a famous one.

Cue sweeping music:

Today's saint is St. George, the dragon guy!

According to my Saint-A-Day Guide, George lived in the late third century. he is the Patron of Boy Scouts, cavalry, England, equestrians, farmers, horses, Portugal; he is invoked against herpes*, leprosy and syphilis*.

Saint-A-Day says:

George was a Palestinian soldier who suffered martyrdom in the persecutions of Diocletian. His cult flourished in England during the crusades-perhaps the Crusaders imported it from the Middle East. King Edward III declared George England's Patron, and Henry V invoked his aid before the Battle of Agincourt. The story of George and the dragon-a parable of Good versus Evil--has several variations. In the classic version he is a young knight who rescues a maiden princess from a flying reptile with bad breath. he pierces the creature with his lance, leads it through town using the princess's garter as a leash, and thereby converts thousands of pagans to Christianity. In the East, George is a demigod who endures a series of tortures, such as running in red-hot iron shoes. In the Wests he is a Cappadocian prince whose bravery wins even the Empress Alexandra to the Faith. There is even an ignoble George. In his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" Gibbon depicts George as a black marketeer dealing in bacon. "Riding Saint George"--that is sexual intercourse with the woman on top--was long considered a certain way of begetting a bishop.

If St. George were alive today he wouldn't be a saint, he'd be Justice from American Gladiator.

*I would love to know how that invocation works. I think maybe a condom would be a little safer choice.

Found Him

SAO PAULO, Brazil - A Roman Catholic priest who floated off under hundreds of helium party balloons was missing Monday off the southern coast of Brazil.