Year: 2006
Winter Santa Ana
Posted on December 19, 2006 in Poems
The mountain air is of the mountain.
The mountain
storms through
bearing bits of its forests
and aerosols of ice.
A National Enquirer Moment
Posted on December 18, 2006 in Nipper Kettle Strange
This new kind of school shooting has yet to bring about its own copycat criminals.
The Best We Could?
Posted on December 18, 2006 in Responsibility
I’ve been hearing the phrase “I did the best I could” too much lately. I can accept it from someone in deep depression who just can’t pull his mind together to rise from the bed or read a book, but it is too often the province of those who have adopted a personality disorder and just don’t want to change. There’s another claim that I find more acceptable. That is to state “I didn’t know how to do better”. If this is delivered in honesty, then there is an opportunity for self education and self improvement.
Even in the deepest depression, we can reach just a little bit higher. We shouldn’t allow the dime store thinking of some Twelve Steppers (most of whom have not searchingly and fearlessly completed the Fourth and Fifth Steps) to lead us away from accountability. This is especially true for those who go to support groups for the purpose of remaining the same person that they are. The rest of us should deny them complicity in surrendering to their illness. If they persist, then we are in our rights to just turn our backs on them.
And for us, we should make every effort to look for that next higher crevice, and move our hands and our feet by it to a higher place.
Fucking the Gay Family
Posted on December 18, 2006 in Gender Morals & Ethics
I will not call Dobson an expert in anything aside from prevarication.
Stag Party
Posted on December 15, 2006 in Bipolar Disorder Violence
in a fit of road rage, a Florida man allegedly attacked another motorist with a .32 Beretta and a pair of antlers.
Friday Anteater Blogging – An Echidna
Posted on December 15, 2006 in Xenartha
I said at the outset that aardvarks, pangolins, and echidnas were fair game:
Note terrier in recognaissance mode. Cats be warned!
Who needs cat or squid blogging when anteaters combine the best qualities of both?
She Might Have Been an Only Child
Posted on December 14, 2006 in Bipolar Disorder
A piece from The Huffington Post describing one parent’s struggle with a daughter who has bipolar disorder:
Borat and the Drunken Frat Boys
Posted on December 14, 2006 in Film Hatred
They were drunk, they were stupid, and they were racist.
The Fundamentalist Penetration of National Security
Posted on December 13, 2006 in Liberty Morals & Ethics
A maverick former military lawyer goes toe to toe with a national security threat: Evangelical Christians:
The U.S. military, which I consider a noble and honorable institution, is technologically the most lethal organization ever created by Homo sapiens. When you have the leadership believing that to be a good soldier, good Marine, good airman or sailor you have to be not just a Christian but the right type of Christian, we’re no better than al-Qaida. And it’s hideous, beyond belief. My kids were called “fucking Jews” and accused of total complicity, they and their people, in the execution of Jesus Christ, by superiors up and down the chain of command at the Air Force Academy….
I’ve had nine death threats since about 10 o’clock last night. I usually get about two or three a week. They’re very grotesque, everything from wanting to gas all the Jews in America and send the corpses back to Israel to threatening to blow me up, threatening my house will be blown up, raping my wife, blowing up my house. We’ve had our tires slashed, we’ve had feces and beer bottles thrown at the house, we’ve had dead animals placed on the front door of the house.
I was in Topeka, on a book tour, and the local Episcopal priest came out to support me and five hours later his church was burned down. And the local synagogue in Topeka, where I was to speak that night, was desecrated with spray paint saying, “Fuck you, Jews” and “KKK,” all that stuff.
So if this is a nice, Christian response, my response is take a number, pack a picnic lunch and stand in line, because we’re not going to stop, we’re not going to ever stop, we’re going to lay down a withering field of fire and leave sucking chest wounds on these people that are trying to destroy our Constitution. This is not a Christian-Jewish issue, and it’s also not a political spectrum, left or right issue, it’s a Constitutional right and wrong issue. These officers, and what’s happening in that video, simply by appearing in a video that is blatantly and vociferously sectarian, by simply doing three things in that video, they should be court-martialed.
For the full details, click here.
Reflection
Posted on December 12, 2006 in Bipolar Disorder Violence
The disease does not compel the incident as much as culture shapes the disease.
Miscentered?
Posted on December 12, 2006 in Satire
WASHINGTON — There were unconfirmed reports yesterday that the United States is not the center of the world….
The claim evidently originated with a piece by a Lebanese journalist that appeared several days ago in a Beirut magazine. It was then picked up by a pair of left-leaning daily newspapers in London. From there, the story quickly made its way across the Atlantic via the Internet.
“It just goes to show how much we need seasoned, professional gatekeepers to separate the journalistic wheat from the chaff before it gains wide attention,” remarked the managing editor of one news program at a major U.S. television network. “This is the kind of stuff you see on ideologically driven websites, but that hardly means it belongs on the evening news.” A newsmagazine editor agreed, calling the reports “the worst kind of geographical correctness.”
None of the major cable networks devoted much air time to reporting the story. At one outlet, a news executive’s memo told staffers that any reference to the controversy should include mention of the fact that the United States continues to lead the globe in scientific discoveries. At a more conservative network, anchors and correspondents reminded viewers that English is widely acknowledged to be the international language — and more people speak English in the U.S. than in any other nation.
