Pax Nortona – A Blog by Joel Sax
From the Land of the Lost Blunderbuss
Insert a Trite Metaphor for A Corral
Posted on March 6, 2005 in Roundup
This roundup covers the period from 27 February to 5 March 2005.
We didn’t have a big event like the death of Hunter S. Thompson this week. And with the decline of liberal blogging, there wasn’t much in the way of righteous indignation about the Bush Administration’s attempts to ride the Republican Congress into dispensing with the filibuster and ending Social Security.
Maybe too many of us buy into the new media myth that blogging harmed the election results. I don’t think so, but the abundance of Bush stickers that have appeared since the election (where were those cowards before?) has been disheartening. Maybe it is time to set myself to the task of blogging about politics on Tuesdays and Fridays. Before it was a way of making sure that I didn’t run myself down: now it may be a necessary declaration that I have not been silenced by the W(R)ong.
Politics
- etherealfire reflected on the post-election-coup burnout among bloggers:
- Lauren snickered at Indiana Republicans whose attempts to deform the state government were derailed by a tactic they’d used on the Democrats last session: a walkout.
- Billy found himself apologizing for nastiness after he made the following remark:
- Kris is certain that the Draft is on the way.
- Stu surveyed the German unemployment rate.
I think it would be a big mistake to my psyche to stop posting the political; we can’t depend on the MSM to educate anyone, it is going to be up to the grassroots, We the People to find and report and link to reports about what is really going on in this country; it is going to be up to ourselves and each other to feed our heads and work towards an internal revolution of the heart, the mind and the spirit, to bring back real democracy in this country.
President Bush wants to cut funding for basic scientific research, yet he continues to pursue the missile defense shield, practical testing of which has failed miserably. Canada politely told him to go fuck himself and won’t be a part of it, which tends to prove that those running the sovereign nation up north have a modicum of intelligence.
Culture
- Teresa got a shock when the Cute-Redheaded-Girlfriend gave her a copy of Candy Land:
- Kathryn announced the release of Year’s Best Sf 10 edited by guess who….
- mileah made a list of search terms people used to reach her blog.
- Francis likes to program Scarlatti into his cell phone.
- Jeremy was disappointed in Peter Jennings’s look at UFOs.
- Andrea the Serial Deviant exposed the machinations of a Chinese chatter named The Princess.
I first became aware that the Candyland board had changed after a child asked me to play the game and I eagerly responded “yes.” Only then did I discover that the game board I fondly remembered, with its lollypops and gumdrops, had been licensed to include name brand candies like Reeses’ pieces and Mars bars.
Religion
- Joe G. demonstrated what happens when a real pacifist meets a warmonger.
- shelli reflected on the absurdity of mixing church and state
I do find it funny people want the 10 commandments in a court house. If none of the 10 were broken what ya doing in a court house? Is it a subliminal lecture or is it ironic..
Personal
- Randy got some sobering news:
- M. Luminous thought she might have received an angelic visitation:
- Pam wrestles with cabin fever:
- Tracy developed a new scale for pain:
- John mourned the loss of a goldfish.
- Natalie returned from hard disk failure to rejoin us on the net.
- Brian reflected on Daddy-Daughter Dates:
- Robert applied string theory to his life situation.
- chari talked about how her hysterectomy freed her soul and allowed her to wear white pants.
- Ellen listed things she’d learned from her coworkers.
- Nancy shared her notes on waiting for a dermatologist.
- Aurora denies that she ‘blogs’.
As if the memory of painful anniversaries was not bad enough, today I found out that my employer is eliminating my position which I have held for nineteen and a half years. The blog is going to take a few days off while I absorb the impact of all this and figure out what I’m going to do.
I was starting to think that all these weeks without menstruation meant that I had conceived and I was bearing the second coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That would have been kinda nifty, or, at the very least, it would have made for interesting small talk.
“So, Luminous, I hear that you didn’t finish college?”
“I had to take a leave of absence to give birth to the second coming of Jesus Christ. Isn’t she cute?”
I’ve been battling late winter blahs recently. I think everyone around here does once winter starts in on its 4th month with no signs of stopping, plenty of snow on the ground and temperatures consistently a good ten degrees below the average for this time of year. My crafting kind of dropped off after the holiday rush to get present projects completed, but I think that’s one of the things that helps me un-blah myself, so I’m heading back to it.
MILD PAIN: Damn, my elbow hurts.
MODERATE PAIN: Goddamn my elbow fucking hurts.
SEVERE PAIN: HOLY MARY MOTHER OF FUCKING GOD SON OF A BITCH COCKSUCKING FUCKING ELBOW!
When I was very little, it was always a huge deal when my Uncle Pete came to visit my grandmother because he would take me with him to some coffee shop he used to frequent and buy me an orange soda. I was only Charlotte’s age, and it probably only happened a handful of times in reality, but it still registers as one of my earliest memories. When I think about the fair likelihood that I might not be alive long enough to see all of Charlotte’s childhood, I am overcome with sadness, but then I recall how that one memory has lasted me throughout my life, and I can hope that when I am gone she will remember these moments we share, just the two of us.
Visual Art
- maria: Light at the End of the Day
- Coup de Vent: Snow Shopping
- Bill: Redbud
- Will: Snow
- Sally: Photoshopped
