I served in a church nursery this morning and some children and I worked on this exact jigsaw puzzle:
And the whole time we're putting together this fairly easy 100 piece puzzle I'm cracking up at the theological lesson not contained therein. Thank God I didn't have to teach them anything beyond let's do the edge pieces first.
Sorry for the extra late post I was needed at a bigger blog today. Not that that's any excuse.
And I was so busy thinking about my video blog for tomorrow I drove to the grocery store without my purse this afternoon. Must be the circadian rhythm thing.
BTW you have probably seen this but I love that teh internets allow an artist with this kind of talent and cleverness to get his artwork 1.5 million views in six days. Dang good.
Okay deep, cleansing breath. Because we bloggers are very good at venting our anger. We rage against injustice, rant about the crimes of the current world order, and add a heigh-ho and hearty fuck you (tm) to anyone who disagrees.
It didn't help my mood, not a bit, that Halloween morning I walked into the local public school of two of my three children, to find a grown woman wearing (supposedly for Halloween, but still) a miniskirted Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz costume. It turns out every third grade teacher was dressed in a Wizard of Oz costume (my son's teacher was Glinda) but I suspect Dorothy there was the only one who got her costume clicking on a sidebar ad at some spank-my-ass chat room. But I digress.
No, what really got my goat was the editorial earlier this week in the NYFT about "Honey, I shrunk the Congress." It's a good editorial as good editorials go, arguing for the restoration of checks and balances and that Congress is EQUAL to the Executive in terms of constitutional power and well, why don't they "act as if" for a while so that maybe someday they won't feel like complete frauds for overriding a veto?
What made me raging mad was this passage:
Right now, standing up for Congress may appeal more to Democrats than Republicans. The issue of reining in presidential power is beginning to gain traction among conservatives, however, as they contemplate the possibility of a Democrat — particularly Hillary Clinton — as president.
Okay I'm so over getting angry every time I see her name in print. What ticks me off is that our Constitution, like everything else inside the greasy DC Beltway (I'll be there next weekend for a blogger meet-up, be warned) is now just one more political football that is fine for a doormat at my house but not at yours.
And then there's Mukasey and the waterboarding thing. It's not about waterboarding, but kudos to the committee members who made it about that. The ploy, which allows you Democrats to seem reasonable and prudent with your colleagues across the aisle, seems to have worked. The problem, gentlemen and a few ladies, is that those across the aisle need to be removed from office for...oh nevermind.
Here's my sense of what is called for in terms of collegiality: if Mukasey or any other suited twit wore his candy cock ring into my senate Judiciary Committee meeting and started spouting trash about the Constitutional provisions that George Bush has thought such an inconvenience, providing my committee patient assurance that, in the legal opinion of many well-regarded blind fascists, the President can legally do whatever the fuck he wants, this is the reception he'd get:
I couldn't find Bill Murray in, which movie was it, Stripes? Saying, "something is WRONG here. Something is SERIOUSLY WRONG here."
Listen to this short news piece aired on NPR this morning. It's about the FBI's investigation of Blackwater in Iraq.
The correspondent is NPR's "resident FBI expert." And part of the problem, for sure, is that she talks to us about FBI investigations like we've never watched a Harrison Ford cop movie, or even an old Bond movie, not to mention a single episode of CSI-Kokomo, ever.
Gee whiz, these FBI agents investigate crimes after they happen. And they use more gee whiz technology that is garnished from surveyors equipment...
Yeah, the part about re-enacting Blackwater's crimes into a computer simulated "video game" in order to investigate gave me the creeps too, 'specially since the killer in this instance is a gang of hired thugs paid for by OUR Defense Department:
But maybe what's really bothering me is that this story makes it seem as though someone is actually doing something about Blackwater when we all know that's bullshit.
...to FOBG Commandante Agi's latest group blog venture, The Guys from Area 51. Basically, if Agi and Frederick do it? It's blogrolled here. That is all.
Sometimes!?! (Thanks to Paul the Spud of Shakes for the pic.) And remember ma hunnies, there is more than one way to cook a pumpkin. And this is one of my favorite Cake songs to dance around the house to.
Several people have told me I just need to embrace the whole Tina Fey thing. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to photoshop this image and show me how.
BLACKWATER:
It's okay, Blackwater isn't getting special treatment...Bushco wants the bad Arabs at Gitmo to have immunity from prosecution, too.
And then there's the Telecoms. Blek.
LAST NIGHT'S SALON:
Sorry guys, somebody already did Hatebook. I don't know why we didn't look it up last night. But it's still a great idea. And we did run with it. Thanks.
And yeah, then we discussed Pammy. (Thanks Morse) I woke up this morning happy and refreshed and I STILL can't figure out how she can't know what this looks like, except she's been hypnotized by John Bolton.
A little unusual vlog I'm having trouble sleeping this morning and have a day away from computer to look forward to, so no time like the present, etc. First vid is me looking tired and talking hoarse (yeah Dad you don't have to worry about too much makeup in this one, but dang girl you need to stop sleepin' in your earrings) but it's short, explains where I was yesterday afternoon, and the second video. which is not me, is more about the exhibit I attended. It's 5:15 long, and if you haven't seen it I hope you will watch.
It's 37 Days Until Zappadan. And Paul wants to know which musician is John The Baptist to Frank Zappa's, well, maybe we're taking the whole religiousity of this holiday a little too seriously. But if you have a thought leave it over at Paul's post so we can keep 'em together. I have always appreciated Frank more as a political philosopher than as a musician, but here he Done Good. In fact, lovely.
According to Wikipedia the controversy centres around the following issues: 1/ Whether Intelligent Design can be regarded as science. 2/ Whether the evidence supports Intelligent Design. 3/ Whether teaching Intelligent Design is appropriate.
My position on these is: 1/ No. 2/ No. 3/ No.
Yup.
More cool religious links. (Yes, religion can be cool!) Thorsmark has the best lengthy description of what blogs are and why they matter that I've ever read. Start halfway down the post under the heading, "Why should we care about blogs?"
The wonderful blog The Revealer tells us that once again, the claims that the religious right are dead are, well, overstated to say the least.
How the hell can the MSM have a hundred articles on Miss England being too thin to win Miss World and not one on why is the stupid Miss World "competition" being held in China?
Oh sweet Jeebus. They had big controversy in 2002 when they planned to hold the "pageant" in Nigeria. 200 people were killed in riots after "a young fashion writer in Nigeria wrote that Prophet Mohammed probably would have chosen one of the Miss World contestants as his wife."
This was after they moved the contest so it wouldn't happen during Ramadan. Not making that up.
It's time for the flesh parade (oh do they offer scholarships? Oh then it's fine and don't worry about the high lead content in the crown they've always had that) to move permanently to some nice non-controversial location like Guantanamo, where Miss Teen USA and Miss USA did a meet and greet in 2005 (but not with the bad Arabs).
A friend's definition of "favorite movie": You're having sex with the motel TV on (not part of my experience but I'll roll with it) and all of a sudden you realize the favorite movie is on. You tell your partner it's time to stop what you're doing and watch. Oy.
But if he has never seen Truly, Madly, Deeply...that would be the one. I'm gonna post a shorter clip because I want you to rent the whole thing if you haven't seen it. One thing I love about this clip is, it's two very intelligent creative people, obviously turned on by each other's brains, having fun together. (Nevermind one of them is dead and has come back as a ghost. Like that's a roadblock to a relationship. Please.)
Is this the best way to protest the war? I love me some Code Pink, specially their in your face activism for peace, believe me.
But I worry about creating sympathy for the lead spokesman of the bloody war criminal/PNAC'ers who run this country and who have picked a Black petite cultured manicured mouthpiece for just that reason.
Open thread on this and how can we subvert the paradigm effectively below.
...but if you must know what kind of images give me an orgasm? This one did it for me. h/t to the lovely blog Knit Me, as in, knit me spank me do me and knit me again god oh god oh Damn Good.
The hand-dyed merino in the background would have been enough. The woman wearing this sweater calls herself Harlot, and we totally believe her. And if you don't think there's knitting in the bag she has slung over her shoulder, you don't know anything about anything, good bye.
update: here's the pattern. It's NOT fairisle it's two balls of varigated. Gawd.
My name is Alex. I guess an introduction is in order but I don't really know who I am. Actually Alex isn't really my legal name so even in my first words this starts to get a bit complicated.
I am a student, and if you ask any of my classmates who I am, you will probably hear that I am a 19-20 year old boy, well-read for my age, openly gay and that I am someone almost everybody likes but nobody knows. If you ask my mother, the picture may be somewhat different. I believe that she will tell you that I am a 27-year-old married mother of three.
Read the rest. Like all good writing it will tell you about the writer and you and humans and sorrow and joy and life and make you feel that you know more about all of that because you spent five minutes in front of a computer screen, just reading.
On the fiction front I loved the Wired essay by Lore Sjöberg, Resting in Pieces. Not sci-fi, not mere alternative history, it's more a musing on roads not taken from the standpoint of someone we would not care about, had it not been written just this way. I loved the moments I spent reading it.
And then I read a comment on another blog. I won't link though the blog deserves it aw hell it's Drifty, I'll link after all since the subsequent comments are grand and respond without troll-feeding. The commenter quoted below imho does not need encouragement. The commenter called us bloggers
"wounded birds, and the psychotically and physically maimed who need to pound it out at the keys, for some relief.
Does ANYONE who blogs not have some great personal psycho/sexual/gender adversity to overcome that I don't have to hear about?
Is there NO one out there, that's just normal?
Why sure there is, commenter, and you can find them by doing a google blog search for "kittens," "my cute baby nephew," or "cookie recipe."
One can write well about those things, but really: hold up any novel or memoir or political tract worth reading and there on the title page is a word "by" followed by the name of a wounded bird. And there in the pages is, we hope and pray, a bit of great personal psycho/sexual/gender adversity.
See, you can be an artist, hell you can be the blogosphere's Pablo Picasso. Or you can be a commenter who is looking for "normal" where staring at you through your screen is something so much better. Your choice.
I've posted this song before but it just seems so, well, apropos:
No, not at all. I spent the day in deep meditation, working peacefully toward Blog Post Nirvana.
BTW Happy Birthday to Mr. BG and by happenstance it's also Comrade Kevin's Birthday. Free advice Kevin: look for someone born July 16. They'll put up with you for at least ten years, which is better than anyone born today has a right to expect. Go ahead, ask Kevin Kline and his wife Phoebe Cates. Today is that Kevin's bday, too, and Phoebe and I were born the exact same day.
![[Okay once again I have my limits as to images I will or will not post but I have to admit about the one that will appear when you click here? I did laugh. A lot.]](http://loljesus.com/wp-content/uploads/smellslikepanties.jpg){kind=link}
