Settler words&music in S'ólh Téméxw, (leanpub.com/upsun) living where privilege meets precarity in MST country. she/her/they———– Novels: Midnite Moving Co., Upsun; Sweep Off Those Waves coming soon, Hair Sinister after that. —Restore All Indigenous Lands!
I watched the helicopter video of the assault on the Oakland OWS folks Gas. Un fracking believable. And oh look. http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2011/10/26/oakland-police-love-kittens-teargas/
So instead of showing the veteran who was injured by the assault by the police on peaceful protesters, they show an Oakland cop petting a kitten. If you see the video, you will be amazed and appalled.
Not impressed, Mister Mass Media. Not one whit.
Care package for the demo. 2 blankies, including a hand made quilt donated mOm; batteries, a drum and a penny whistle and an egg shaker; two pairs of socks, a complete rain outfit men’s medium, a yoga mat, reusable tie wraps, a metal portable desk with paper, a granola bar, a nice name tag, and some other little things.
Brilliant day of sunshine! Jeff’s coming too.
Alan Grayson: Now let me tell you what they’re talking about. They’re complaining about the fact that Wall Street wrecked the economy three years ago and nobody’s held responsible for that. Not a single person has been indicted or convicted for destroying twenty percent of our national net worth accumulated over the course of two centuries. They’re upset about the fact that Wall Street have iron control over the economic policies of this country, and that one party is a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street and the other party caters to them as well. That’s the real truth of the matter, as you said before. And…
PJ O’Rourke: Get the man a bongo drum, they’ve found their spokesman!
Alan Grayson: If I…
PJ O’Rourke: Get your shoes off, get a bongo drum, forget where to go to the bathroom, and it’s yours.
Alan Grayson: If I am the spokesman for all the people who think we should not have 24 million people in this country who can’t find a full time job, that we should not have 50 million people who can’t see a doctor when they’re sick, that we shouldn’t have 47 million people of this country who need government help in order to feed themselves, and we shouldn’t have 15 million families who owe more on their mortgage than the value of their home, okay, I’ll be that spokesman.
I always thought that PJ O’Rourke was a very amiable fascist.
Memo to the world if I’m ever killed in a terrorist attack.
I’d like to deliver a pre-event FUCK YOU to the media, sort of a “Panopticon friendly living will”.
I am an atheist, so please don’t drag God into it. God had nothing to do with mining the uranium out of the ground, or fabricating the explosives, or manufacturing the ricin, or in any way constructing whatever method blew me to bits or poisoned or drowned or suffocated me. Nope it was people, mostly men, who put me in the ludicrous position of trying to speak to you from my grave.
I don’t want the government to use my death as an excuse to harass people of colour; people who look different from my variously pink and white corpus; people who never had the complex edifices of hereditary and colonial privilege which are my daily and mostly unrecognized portion. The war on terror is a failure; my death is proof of that, but this proof will get drowned in a sea of wall to wall “How awful, how terrible, buy my hot chocolate pls” coverage. Besides, as I see it, I’m more likely to get killed by a domestic terrorist, lone wolves with grudges can walk into any church and start blasting away, and they don’t even need a coherent world view to act.
I don’t want the people I love to use it as an excuse to hate anybody. Fifty-two years on this ball o’ mud have taught me that only about 1 percent, maybe fewer, of human beings have the power to withstand social pressure when surrounded by the tribal emblems and ranting anthems and religious indoctrination that we grow up in, wherever we are; whether it’s the Inerrant Holy Text or the cult of Apple, we need our tribes and their shibboleths – and all the wit and good intentions and scientific advancement of 20 centuries means squat in the face of that drive. We try, we fail, we try again. A child is born; we vow to try again. A loved one dies, we rededicate ourselves. We are puny, but it’s hardly an excuse.
I have tried to join a tribe — or tribes — that at least look at human suffering and try to diminish it. I am angry, as angry as a human can be, at the starvation and false imprisonment and environmental destruction of people across the globe, but I don’t want to make it worse by running out and killing folks in revenge, even if I think they deserve it.
So my tribe of filkers (look it up, I’m tired of explaining it) sings and brings the making and sharing of beauty into its heart, and my family tries to integrate a lot of different world-views without breaking, and my tribe of Unitarians tries to stay cheerful, motivated and active for justice in the face of a lot of angst and doubt, and my tribe of coworkers tries very hard to make and support good products, although the way the global supply chain is looking that’s harder every year.
And now I’m dead, and my tribes will miss me. I’ll get a paragraph when they do a write up about the dead. Well let ‘em know. I loved the world, and I was sorry to leave it with so much undone. But I didn’t want revenge, and I want any grief to work its way into a useful memorial for the benefit of the world. And, FUCK YOU, mass media. Whatever you do, whatever you say, you’re going to get it wrong.
“Lie” isn’t an adequate word for what Republicans say. We need a new term; I propose anti-truth, as in, “There are lies, damned lies, and Republican anti-truths.”
Like matter and anti-matter, Republicans and the truth just can’t occupy the same space. What they say goes all the way through and past “untrue” into the realm of turning reality inside out, tying a knot in it, and yanking hard.
Considering that I think marriage is a crock I don’t know ‘zactly how to feel about this.
Disturbing pic of a kid done up Clockwork Orange style.
I’m only posting this in the hopes that pOp will forward a story about his childhood, maybe with an optional explosion.
Man, I didn’t know there was a floor show for the ferry line up. Ocean floor, that is. You can all tell me what a crappy pun that is later.
Very happy to have her back. Jeff and I were worried about her.
Moose go back to school, get edumacated.
I ignore the dog and play with the ball, for I AM MOOSE.
I make weird noises, ’cause I am a MOOSECALF.
SMG is back on TV. We’ll see. I’ve started watching Lost Girl so I don’t know if I’ve room on my TV plate.
I HAVE UPDATED the Red Deer link… check out the pics.
For Tom and Peggy. Just BECAUSE.
Also, I am performing my choon :Freedom: at church on Sunday. It was one of John’s faves and it ties in rather neatly with memorializing the second anniversary of his death and the subject of the sermon, how the way you vote reflects your values.
There are some UNFORGETTABLE quotes in here.
One of the most brilliant and humane artists of this or any century is Ai Wei Wei. I recently saw a documentary segment on Frontline about him and both Jeff and I were blown away at how amazing he is. He’s being set up for a long jail sentence.
The church spring potluck was last night. It went very well and in the end, as always, there was enuff fud. I contributed two entrées, set up, clean up, butter, a starch dish and the Tapioca Song and I was exhausted when I got home. Paul turned up for as much as he could stay for and contributed his best ever quinoa salad and home made bread.
This early rising business MUST stop. So I guess it’s time for a roundup.
Adult onset diabetes foreshadowing in rising level of 5 proteins. Link here.
Lots of lawsuits won’t necessarily help your case. Righthaven screwed up, but fair use rights have been protected.
A very commonly used contemporary chart about radiation exposure, which I only link to on the off chance one of my readers hasn’t seen it yet. Here.
The “serpent storm” on Saturn. via Nasa/Cassini.
The assault of the Repulsigans on women’s rights continues. Honestly, though, the “Harper Government” would do the same thing if they thought they could get away with it; fortunately the Bloc Québecois would have a collective seizure if they tried to pass something like this.
The assault of the Repulsigans against anybody who dislikes factory farming continues. In what universe is it illegal to take a picture of a farm? (link removed for security reasons).
From chipper, an ad for what she termed a ‘proofreader’s delight’.
Also from chipper, some lovely ‘supermoon’ pix from England.
I have no idea how church went yesterday, I was in the kitchen helping Peggy with coffee. Gave Carol a ride home and picked up some frozen fruit so I can make fruit toppings for pancakes a bit at a time.
As part of my ongoing commitment to the ‘counterculture’, which is an increasingly meaningless word, Continue reading Lounging around
Thanks to the magic of the internet.
Oh people of Egypt, tell the army that you’ll split the difference of all the money you recover from Mubarak. That man needs to sit in front of a judge.
the rules keep changing…..
OMFG. This is disturbing, and yet I found myself laughing anxiously. Somebody I had NO CLUE follows my blog has emailed me something by way of comment. I’m paraphrasing massively, but it went like this. “Next time you’re having problems why don’t you do something useful and strap a bomb to yourself? I can think of a few handy places to put it, and I’ll even help you with the technical side of things.” The rest of the email was a charmingly spelled rant about how even insanity is not an excuse for suicide (??!!), it’s for elderly and terminal people neither of which I am and I should be ashamed of myself for talking about suicide publicly. Oh, yes, I should definitely take your advice and not the advice of people I love, who love me. Let me just sit with that a moment.
Man, I know a lot of strange people. The idea of repurposing my private turmoil for a rather expansive (in the gaseous sense) comment on public policy has a certain amount of flair though. I couldn’t do it, even at the height of my belief that I’d be better off dead…. my rights end where my skin does, and I can’t imagine taking somebody else with me; it’s against everything I still believe.
Anyway, I’ve been lurking in MY OWN blog, which is weird. Over the years I have had it… have I really been doing this for years and years???? I have said less and less about more and more. I have been afraid of offending people; afraid of hurting people’s feelings; worrying about what people who already hate me think. I’ve been afraid of losing my job, making my parents stop loving me, or being the kind of person who gives Unitarianism a bad name. (I’ve had it pointed out that might not be a bad thing). I’ve been very very scared.
So I’ll decloak.
I am one opinionated mofette. ça veut dire mauxfaits. On va recommencer. I am going to stop beating myself up and start kicking the verbal snot out of those who more richly deserve it. I won’t talk about work except to say when things are going well or badly. I won’t recount personal conversations without the informed consent of the folks involved. I won’t repost emails without permission, this morning notwithstanding and besides it was a paraphrase and further besides he was obviously upset at somebody who isn’t me. I was just the… lightning rod? Dude can comment directly on my blog any time he likes… if he doesn’t like, he can take a sex holiday in Enumclaw with my compliments.
Leaving horsefuckery behind…. and yes, I’m against the use of animals for the sexual pleasure of human beings because of this whole ‘informed consent thing’, I’m just being sophomoric and rude…..
Foremost among those I would hear praised, Jeff, Katie, Paul, my parents, Peggy, Tom, Lady Miss B, Sue, Rev Katie, Keith, Chipper and two people who have asked not to be named publicly. Thank you thank you thank you. You are wonderful people and I know that you will keep doing what you do, so it’s good to know you are there.
Katie, thank you for telling me that you are and you intend to remain childless by choice. I was sure I’d never want children when I was fourteen; I wanted kids by the time I was your age. I think you’re old enough to know what you want. Keith, haw haw, the joke’s on you. My dreams of becoming a successful organizm now rest on your creamed-animé-on-tropes-stuffed cranium. And if I’m never a grandma I’ll be fine; there are enough neurotic white folks in the world already or so I scan it. One of my other relatives will breed when I’m longing for a baby to spoil. It’s no biggie.
Back to the real world:
Eddie is wandering up and down the house HOWLING for Jeff. He cries upstairs, downstairs, and outside (freaked me out, I couldn’t tell where he was; he sounded like he was locked in something).
Yay! Canadian tech for a better world!
Jeff, there’s rice pudding in the fridge. Maybe you’ve gone off rice pudding but this rice pudding is very superior, and even if you don’t want it I intend to eat every scrap of it before it goes bad; Rozo and Katie already extracted some for their own use at home.
Damn Paul but that was an awesome roast. I’d forgotten how much I love carrots and onyums done around a roast beast.
Al-Jazeera has been added to our roster of cable stations. I watched, with amazement, a documentary that didn’t even have a single Arab name attached to it; who knew I’d get a very damning picture of the Latvian forest industry, with lots of lines drawn between the first world’s desire to greenwash everything and the destruction of the last pristine forests in Europa? Honestly, I want to send an email to the Latvia PM telling him the satellite pictures of the Latvian forests are calling him an asshat and a full bore liar. Latvian politicians and functionaries are disturbingly smooth voiced and calm, they all seem to speak idiomatic bureaucratese English, and the bigger the lie the calmer they look. And they are destroying the traditional sustainable forestry operations which are family businesses. The guy who won the international farmer of the year award was foaming at the mouth showing how all the ‘scientific’ forestry immediately around him – clear cuts all – are causing blow downs on his property and destroying the margins of his sustainable forest. This is sustainable forestry in Canada. That’s pretty much what it looks like in Latvia. Anyway, at the current rate of clear cutting in Latvia- which is going to subsidize DIY homeowners in England, who get to buy wood that has a sustainably harvested sticker on it, sticker purchased by the Latvian forestry ministry from a fucking scam non profit in Britain – they won’t have a forest let alone a forest industry within ten years. The habitat destruction of rare species is blandly ignored by the politicians because it’s all about employment. Forestry sustains 40 percent of the Latvian GDP. They are going to kill their economy. One wonders, when forestry collapses, what the government will tell their unemployed young men to do. A social, political and ecological disaster in the making, I’d say. When the young men of Riga rioted after the economic downturn in 2008, this was the response of the government. Clear cut Latvia. Can’t even blame capitalism. It’s state socialism that is doing the job, ably assisted by the English demand for board feet.
I think of the Ukrainians who froze to death rather than cut down the trees in the parks in Kiev during WWII and I wonder what the hell happened to the Latvians. Shame.
