Originally posted by agent_mimi at Colbert

Originally posted by james_nicoll at Colbert

Originally posted by pbrim at Colbert

Originally posted by louisadkins at Colbert

Originally posted by griffen at Colbert

Originally posted by mattblakk at Colbert

Originally posted by kyburg at Colbert

Originally posted by mountain_hiker at Colbert

And in case anyone else was interested I added another picture to the last post, I added one of me smiling as rone requested and with long hair in case anyone wanted to see that. It didn't look that good very often :)

I mostly kept it long because not getting it cut and keeping it in ponytails was easier but the cut and color cheered me up so much this time maybe I'll keep doing it. The more I make my sister cut it the better she'll get :) We've got enough purple to last for a year, I wonder if I'll get interested in doing permanent colors now that it's short again. Permanent isn't so much fun on long hair, takes way too long to grow out. And really, semi-permanent doesn't ever come all the way out.

I do like very light blond (mine will not go all the way to white, well, yet) and dark roots. And then there's the good old Audacious Red from the Clariol Torrids line, they don't call them that anymore but they do have a color conversion chart to the new color names.

When I was wandering around Quincy on Wednesday (wearing this t-shirt I got for my birthday from my sis) I had one person say they thought it made me look younger, which may be true, I think long hair can age a person a bit, and one person who just sounded astounded that she thought purple hair looked good on me :) And two older women who, even though we were alone, told me very quietly they loved it and wished they had the guts, I told 'em where I got it and that it washes out :)I think I do look good in purple. And also Audacious red, Bombshell beige, bleached till it's breaking off, with a little laundry bluing to keep it from yellowing, and dead black, blue black, and as black as I can get it, and with stripes down the sides in various colors.

That was my first one, the stripes down the sides in a black ground. I think pink, then purple. Can't do blue on yellow hair because as soon as you wash it it's green and green was passe when I was doing it, must have been 1981. Got a lot of "looks like a Rams' helmet!" "and you got a skunk on your head!" well and superfreak and a few others :) Didn't realize I was supposed to be offended by those till quite a lot later.

I think I may have a fever, I'm sticking with that if this makes no sense. That and the not enough sleep one. Have that one going for the last week almost.

As soon as I figure out how to do the cut, pictures of the Occupy Quincy when it first started last fall. And pictures of me with my new purple hair.
( Pictures )

So it's from here and this in the comments:

Your overly simplistic analysis of the situation and mischaracterizations of several of these issues are harmful to the “re-imagining of Christianity”, not helpful.

1) You raise the issue of women and silence in churches as your first point of contention, yet in my 32 years of churchgoing, have never encountered or heard of such a thing. Can something that is such a rarity, such a fringe position, really constitute the opening thrust of your argument?

2) The screed on contraception shows a stunning lack of scientific knowledge as to the many negative side effects of such drugs. Take, for instance the fact that smoking and using a birth control pill increases your chance of getting cancer 35 times. Then there are the harmful consequences the EPA has reported on fish and frog populations, and which doctors have documented in regard to depression, infertility, and breast cancer. Such ignorance is ironic given the intellectual high-horse you claim to be riding.

3) You briefly allude to the correction (which you call a “smack down”) the Vatican has required of a small group of nuns. Study the document. It is one specific group being required to change, and the changes required are because they have taken a course that is contrary to the long-held moral teachings of the Church. They are a minority, not the majority of women–or even Catholic religious women–by any means.

Ms. Merritt, please take the time to research and properly present various positions rather than making deliberately inflammatory and divisive stereotyped statements. A pastor should seek unity under the truth of Christ, not division.

Well, I can see you've got the party line down! Good student that you are. Have you read the insert that come with the pills? 'Cause you forgot some of the best stuff! And smoking is always warned against and the pill is rarely prescribed to smokers, because it enhances the risk of blood clots. The reason you have EPA authored info in that pamphlet from your bishop is they monitor things like the effects of estrogen in the water and environment. But sad to say most of that estrogen is not coming from the urine of women taking the pill (and hormone replacement! Forgot that one didn't you! Same stuff! But since the women are no longer able to be forced to give birth, you don't care about them anymore) it's from things like pesticides and other forms of pollutants. Of course there are a lot of estrogens in natural sources like yams and soy beans. But the rest of the information they gave you is either flat out wrong or exaggerated, but nice to see you're not flat out saying abortion causes breast cancer! Well done! As for these other gentleman not caring about women? They have this strange idea we have enough intelligence to make our own decisions about what to put in our own bodies. For which they don't get a cookie because that's the baseline of decent human being in my world. I'd give 'em a cookie for being good writers were they close enough however.

So putting a man at the head of what was always a self-governed organization of women religious and telling them they had to stop helping the sick, the poor, the homeless, and get back to the true gospel as preached by Jesus of Nazareth of talking about abortion, homosexuals and women not being priests, i.e. not speaking in Church as mentioned in 1 Timothy. Man, those feminazis! Helping the poor, feeding the hungry, visiting the prisoner, giving away one coat when they had two, doing to the least of these. Can't get those nuns to do anything right without a man standing over them!

And boy, yeah, the Vatican can't get after those rapist priests! There are so many priests! But, boy, deviate from the new missal at mass, and you're out! Mention those forbidden subjects in a newspaper (this was in Ireland) and get rebuked *right* away. But baby rapers? Move 'em fifty miles down the highway to a new fresh set of kids. Monitor? It wasn't about monitoring, they were told, up and down the line, they were told what was going on and didn't do a thing to stop it, just to hide it. And they're still victim blaming.

And no, I'm not anti-Catholic, I'm anti-American Bishops, I'm anti-the present pope, I'm generally anti-Vatican but most Catholics I've met are people just like people. One of my mom's oldest and best friends is a Jesuit. And I adore him. But using power to aggrandize oneself and to harm others, to hide behind religion in order to do so? That's evil in my book. If you'd been an American evangelical I'd have had the same objections, except about the nuns, they don't have nuns.

Actually nuns are kinda the point, the only women you allow to work for the church you basically neuter in power, in money, you make them give up family and life and previously, their names before you'll allow them to be part of what you think is God's glory on earth. How scared are you of women?

Reverend Merritt, if I've gone too far, or made comments you dislike feel free to delete this.

So it seems there was a branch of US Bank on the UC Davis campus, (which seems a bit weird to me) and since banks are profiting from the rise in tuition fees some of them Occupy types decided to sit-in. They seem to have closed it down too. So now the administration of UC Davis, the ones who ordered pepper spray on some of these same Occupyers and the ones who are being sued by the ACLU on behalf of some of these Occupyers, have asked the DA to bring charges. There's 11 students and one professor, one charge of conspiracy and twenty of obstructing movement in a public place each (that sounds like one passed to move homeless along and not constitutional). If they're convicted that's 11 years in prison and up to one million dollars in damages each. This sounds nasty to me, and it sounds like prior restraint on speech but I may have just been watching too much Law and Order and it could just be harassment or something, but it's still nasty.

Here's a nice petition, an article on alternet. And pass it around to anyone who might be interested. No video for it to go viral with though.

And since he didn't seem to sleep much this is a wholly good thing :) Here's a slightly closer-up cell phone picture of Shadow (mini-rant: Little dogs need dignified names!):

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/23/why_do_they_hate_us?page=0,0

And people talking in the comments about Islam and Christianity used to oppress women in various ways in the comments and I get to this one:

you’re not facing the facts on the ground, nowhere in Christianity are women or anyone else being abused like they are under Islam. Yes there are bad people who claim to be Christian, but what we are talking about here is government sanctioned abuse torture and discrimination. There is no real comparison between Islam and Christianity. Why can’t we just say the truth?

Have you ever heard of the Quiverfull movement? How 'bout the fundementalist offshoots of the Church of Latter-Day Saints?

There are *lots* of Christians that do awful things to women and children in the name of religion. In the US this is not state sanctioned, usually, but in some places the local governments do sure turn a blind eye!

How 'bout that judge in Texas who beat his daughter with a belt? Not a rape or a killing or a genital mutilation, but it was done with the excuse of the Bible and he also abused his wife because the Bible told him to. You may not interpret the Bible the way they do, but don't hide your head in the sand, horrible things happen every minute of the day under the banner of Christianity.

Hey, I know, Catholic clergy abusing children and the heirarchy of the church covering it up and letting the perpetrators go to places with fresh children to abuse. And you're not saying the Catholic Church isn't Christian?

And we bring it back around to Islam and the Crusades! In order to keep the rich violent men of Europe from destroying the rest of the wealth and people in Europe in petty wars, the Pope invents a reason for them to go kill people who aren't European (and white) and Christians!

And you know what? A lot of the abuses mentioned in this article are not from the religion, they are cultural from the region, that's why you get genital mutilation in North Africa but not Saudi Arabia, and you get some kinds of sequestration of women in Saudi Arabia that you don't in other parts of the world where Islam is practiced, because it comes from the culture, not the religion. Kind of like how Christianity is practice differently in different parts of the world.

Christianity has and still does horrible things, especially to women and children, and as long as someone interprets the Bible as saying women are not equal to men, it will continue.

Tl;dr: Skip to the bottom for the picture of the found dog, and help us find his people!

I already did this on Facebook, hate facebook, but then this is the kind of thing it may be good for except I don't know all that many people who actually live here and I've texted those :) So here it is:

We found a small black dog, probably a chihuahua mix, bigger and a bit longer than a chihuahua, he's not fixed, seems very young, *very* skittish, which makes me wonder how long he's been out. Can't tell if he's been out alone for a while or he's naturally skittish(and naturally boney) and let to wander, this is wandering dog neighborhood. We're right on the edge of town, if you were to look at East Quincy on Google Maps you'd see how wild and for how far. We're near the intersection of Mansell and 3rd Street. We don't let ours out to wander at night, foxes, raccoons, coyotes, bears, mountain lions, not really good for small dogs. Also deer, our pug thought the deer was trying to play with him when it was trying to crush his skull with its front hooves, well it did look like a dog play position!

So, small black dog, he was very thirsty, which is why he ended up in our yard, that and he followed one of ours who wasn't supposed to get out. We don't leave water outside of the fence to get them back in when they run. Also mosquitoes. We have neighbors who threatened to kill our dogs if they found one shitting in their yard so we had to build a fence. BAH! So now we can't let ours wander at all anymore. Even though everyone else does.

Ok, so if anyone knows anyone who lives in Quincy, California, or Plumas County, or anyone knows anyone who knows anyone, who might know this dog? He's a sweetheart when not being a horny idiot or terrified :) I'm calling him Perdito as the masculine for of Perdita, I have no idea if there is a masculine form of Perdita but I like it.

I could explain why I'm particularly wiggy (and wiggy is too a word!) but since I think I sound like an idiot in most of my comments and posts, why ruin my reputation for idiocy or wiggyness? :) Oh, and pictures, I have some cell phone pictures, let me send one to myself. And then the battery dies, and then it doesn't want to send... I love cell phones except when I hate them. I, who was the original computer geek for most of my family, come very late to cell phones, and I much prefer texting to talking on them, and I really get pissed off about coverage and how no one seems to understand it. And I have the usual old fogey complaint about no background noise so you can't tell you're still connected. And fogey is also a real word and I'm pretty damn sure I'm spelling it right. And so much for the better picture, you're getting the bad one that I put on Facebook, should still be enough for whoever lost him though. That was from when we couldn't get within ten feet of him and he barked at us if we stood up. He's a seriously beautiful and sweet boy but we already have six small dogs we share amongst four of us and they are not going to let me keep him.

Actually, they're not just flowering cherries, they actually get cherries, but the birds always beat us to them.

It didn't really belong there, so I shall post it here, try not to faint!

Why oh why is pdf standard for anything??? It's Adobe! Adobe makes slow things! I know for certain applications Adobe's great, this photoshop I hear about seems the bee's knees for making women look like Barbie dolls and things of that sort, and I suppose the piece of software I used in the early 90s on a Mac SE 30 might have been good for making posters/flyers etc but it was soooo slow! It opened slowly, everything I did was slow... and then pdfs? You couldn't alter them, they opened slowly, couldn't search them (back in the day), you have to update the damn reader every few months (until I found an alternative at which point life was grand! Foxit Reader if anyone cares) but for most things people use them for, ie not setting up manuscripts to be printed that have graphics in them, it's terrible! Ok, maybe this is just me, but I hate hate hate pdfs. If it's text, give me a text file, academic paper? Hey! that's what the web was invented for! have an .html file! Figures? maybe a spreadsheet? But a pdf? *sob*

So I ran across a Chad Mitchell Trio song I didn't know, a combination of Johnny Comes Marching Home and Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye. And friend and I were showing other other versions, he gave me Captain Tractor and Dropkick Murphys and I showed him the first I heard, Clancy Brothers. And so we read the Wikipedia page and then I switched to Johnny Came Marching Home because it seemed weird someone would use the anti-war song tune for a seemingly pro-war song. Seems like the civil war troops were using it as a "we hope we get home at all" kind of song though. Anyway, in the long, long, Popular Culture (after 1950) section I find a Malvina Reynolds song I don't remember (Mom, you are really falling down on the job here!). Called The Judge Said. And so I youtube it and boy! Great song! According to the comments it's true, and it worked, the judge was beaten and never held office again. Oh, for the glory days of feminism in the 70s!

I thought that was oh, unconstitutional? Possibly they don't know that we consider the Declaration part of our law too?

http://ginmar.livejournal.com/2095883.html?nc=23&style=mine

I am incoherent with rage, so have ginmar, she writes better than me anyway.

I have yet to look closely at the available books but the ones I see are lovely and some big name authors there.

http://norilana.livejournal.com/177319.html

"Foreclosure and Cross-Country Moving - Book Sale
This is a difficult post for me to write, since I am once again asking for help.

But... I'll try to make it short and only bittersweet.

As many of you know, I am losing my home to foreclosure. (Some of the almost-unbelievable hellish details of these past 4 years can be seen here.)

Because I cannot afford the cost of living here, in June, I am moving from Los Angeles, California to a small town in Vermont...

... driving in a rickety ancient jeep with my cancer survivor mother and four old sick animals (2 cats, 2 dogs -- one dog is diabetic and needs insulin injections twice a day), all the way, cross-country...

... leaving most of the furniture behind, while bringing only the art and the Norilana Books computer office equipment and business files, and the most important beloved books....

... losing my health insurance -- and of course this is happening at a time when I need surgery.

Yes, I realize that people all across the world are in dire circumstances for various horrendous reasons. So all I can ask is very little -- just very basic and easy help from you:

1. Please re-post or LINK to this on your own blog or website. Basically, I am asking you to spread the word. That's possibly the single most important thing you can do to help me.

2. If you can afford it, buy a Norilana book -- ANY BOOK. That means in any edition (paper print or ebook), by any author. There are hundreds of titles for you to chose from, in a variety of editions."

I just thought I'd post this url, in case anyone wanted some ammo. I must say good for Steve Jobs and the other two down there with a dollar, since I'm a very anti-apple person, and especially Jobs.

Nice to see it in the MainStreamMedia too.

Originally posted this as a comment to a post of ginmar's. Got so linky I wanted to test them first. Well, and I love those songs :)

I went looking for Weavers/Pete Seeger songs and ran into some of my all time favorites: Solidarity Forever, Talking Union, Which Side Are You On?, Union Maid, and We Shall Over Come was originally a Union song. Then I happened on Malvina Reynolds, who I loved as a kid, she was living in the Bay Area then. Most people remember her for Little Boxes now used as the theme for Weeds but she had other songs, and she had a sarcastic tongue. My favorite is probably It Isn't Nice which I want to filk to a feminist song. It's not Union, it's general protest but I love it. Not quite sure where I was going with this but wanted to remind people of those songs, such powerful songs.

Ok, do you like this one better?

ETA: I didn't know what post they had revised and updated till after I posted that here, so hopefully your objections are answered here? I haven't looked in the comments yet.

http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/13/fukushima-simple-explanation/

In the interest of spreading calm and reason, here's an explanation of what happened at the Japanese nuclear power plants.

I'm playing with a widget from Grooveshark, I have a feeling it won't work on lj, but will put it behind the cut in case it works in a way that breaks someone's friends list.

ETA: It seems to work! Right now it just has a huge amount of Mumford & Sons (easier to just copy and try and edit someone else's list) but I plan to add more. I wonder what the catch is.

( Read more... )

I've been painting this fish off and on for three or four years, mostly off of course.

This is one of those annoying fish that sing Don't Worry, Be Happy and Take Me to the River. I'm not good at making or drawing shapes, I much prefer coloring in, so when my mom bought me some iridescent water colors (Ooo shiny!) I decided to paint the fish. It's much cooler to have it sing when it looks like this, at least I think so.

On the other hand this is a terrible picture of it, haven't figured out how to take a better one with my cell phone, which is better than any other digital camera I've ever used. For some reason, I can take 35 mm pictures but give me a digital camera and I'm crap.

My idea here is that it's a faery fish, escaped the Mad River or somewhere. Or caught there and attached to a board and sold in the World. Would think that'd be rather a dangerous thing to have on ones wall.

Oh, and going to put said fish picture behind the cut. If I can figure out how.
( Faery Fish behind the cut. )

Something for you even if you don't continue this silly meme of course. Just ask. But no guarantee on how fast it will happen.

I promise to send something handmade to the first five people who leave a comment here. If they're up for it, they can in turn post this and send something they make to to the first five people who comment on their livejournal post. (Editing tells me this meme is from facebook)

The rules are that it must be made by you and it must be sent to your 5 people sometime in 2011. If I don't already have your mailing address, you'll need to let me know that info.

That's the original, somewhat edited. Now, for glinda's edits of [personal profile] omimouse's edits: If you don't feel like/feel up to putting up an offer like this in your LJ/Facebook/whatever, you can still post here asking for something. Not everyone has time/energy for this kind of thing, and while I understand the spirit of this, I'm not interested in strangling folks with the letter. Please feel free to let me know color likes/dislikes and anything else that might be relevant.

And my changes, because my crafts are different: I am both a terrible procrastinator and have fibro so you may only get a book mark made of very pretty paper, but I also can make beaded memory-wire bracelets, and if you're really lucky a blank book, hand bound, with thread and needle and everything. Though if you want me to bind some particular book (in the public domain or something of your own) I shall take it under advisement. If I decide to do something as fancy as a blank book I shall probably ask you some preferences, size and color and things I can add. Caveat: I am not a neat person, the books tend to have random glue on the paper, usually only on the binding, the insides tend to be clean. The bracelets tend to have not-elegant ends. And the bookmarks could possibly be wonky. But people tell me I'm good at these things, so you can blame them for encouraging me.

Direct quote from [personal profile] omimouse here: I may or may not manage to get to more than the first 5 (assuming a lot, here) Feel free to ask for something even if there's 5 responses already.

Quote from glinda: Seconded, that. I've made almost nothing in the last month and a half, and this could kick-start me into getting creative again. I hope.

And I haven't made anything since at least September and I do think doing something creative might help with the various things bothering me lately, so ask if you'd like.

Originally posted by neo_prodigy at Spirit Day

 


It’s been decided. On October 20th, 2010, we will wear purple in honor of the 6 gay boys who committed suicide in recent weeks/months due to homophobic abuse in their homes at at their schools. Purple represents Spirit on the LGBTQ flag and that’s exactly what we’d like all of you to have with you: spirit. Please know that times will get better and that you will meet people who will love you and respect you for who you are, no matter your sexuality. Please wear purple on October 20th. Tell your friends, family, co-workers, neighbors and schools.

RIP Tyler Clementi, Seth Walsh (top)
RIP Justin Aaberg, Raymond Chase (middle)
RIP Asher Brown and Billy Lucas. (bottom)

REBLOG to spread a message of love, unity and peace.

Create your own visitor map!

First they came for the homosexuals, and I did not speak out—because I was not a homosexual;
Then they came for the transgendered, and I did not speak out—because I was not transgenered;
Then they came for the Women, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Woman;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Signed, the Swingers of Amarillo, TX. (With thanks {and apologies} to Pastor Niemöller.)

http://www.texasobserver.org/dateline/he-who-casts-the-first-stone

Reposted from ginmar.

And since one or two of you might be interested in possibly another angle on Tombstone:

"Monday, January 25th
9:00PM-10:00PM
AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: Wyatt Earp
Find all Broadcasts ι View Schedule
He has been portrayed in countless movies and television shows by some of Hollywood’s greatest actors, but these popular fictions belie the complexities and flaws of a man whose life is a lens on politics, justice, and economic opportunity on the American frontier. As a young man, Wyatt Earp was a caricature of the Western lawman, spending his days drinking in saloons, gambling, visiting brothels, and gaining notoriety as the legendary gunman in the shootout at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. Shortly after his death in 1929, distressed Americans down on their luck transformed Wyatt Earp into a folk hero."

Not that any of you have read any books about the Earps or anything.

In memory of family and friends who have lost the battle with cancer; and in support of the ones who continue to conquer it! Post this on your LJ if you know someone who has or had cancer. 93% won't copy and paste this. Will you?

Aunt last week, dad four years ago, another aunt in the seventies. Grandmother survived cancer, to die of other things a few years later.

My sister was supposed to tell at least one person what had happened, I might have gotten through to someone myself, but I haven't looked at what I managed to say to him yet.

Wasn't the flu, was accidental withdrawal from an SNRI, Effexor. I'll write up a longer description of what went on, so if it happens to someone else they have a little more info when google why the hell they can't wake up properly or talk intelligibly, or actually, what really clued me in was I couldn't read. I think that was a physical eye thing but boy was it disturbing. First I decided it was the kindle's fault :) Anyway, dinner at Mother's and so I gotta go but will describe it better soon. All better now! well, back to my regular state of ill health.

I got fifty bucks in gift certificate at the local bookstore. Here's what I bought:

Thelwell's Pony Cavalcade
Scalzi's Android's Dream
Stross's Glasshouse
Second two of Pullman's Golden Compass trilogy.

And $3.90 in change.

I went to the Berkeley Public Library on Wednesday and got some books. Anyone who lives in California can get a BPL card, which is so cool. When I went to get one, they said I couldn't have a new one since mine was still alive, and amazingly there were no fines on it.

So I'm planning to little reviews or comments on the books as I read them. Because I slept a lot yesterday I'm only a book and half in. Here's the whole list:



Scardown / Elizabeth Bear
Fledgling : a novel / Octavia E. Butler
Game-players of Titan / Philip K. Dick
I have fun everywhere I go : savage tales of pot, porn, punk rock, pro wrestling, talking apes, evil / Mike Edison
God's problem : how the Bible fails to answer our most important question--why we suffer / Bart D. Ehrman
Banker / Dick Francis
Bolt / Dick Francis
Blood sport / Dick Francis
Danger / by Dick Francis
Forfeit / Dick Francis
From eve to dawn : a history of women / Marilyn French ; foreword by Margaret Atwood
Sandman. Preludes, noctures / Neil Gaiman, writer ; Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, Malcom Jones II
Deryni rising / Katherine Kurtz
Early autumn : a Spenser novel / Robert B. Parker
Judas goat / Robert B. Parker
Rollback / Robert J. Sawyer
Iterations / Robert J. Sawyer ; introduction by James Alan Gardner
Fer-de-lance / Rex Stout ; introduction by Loren D. Estleman
Right to die; a Nero Wolfe novel
New shoe [by] Arthur Upfield
Suicide index : putting my father's death in order / Joan Wickersham
Krakatoa : the day the world exploded, 27 August 1883 / Simon Winchester
Meaning of everything : the story of the Oxford English dictionary / Simon Winchester

Audio:
Candyfreak [sound recording] : [a journey through the chocolate underbelly of America / by Steve Almond
Liberty falling [sound recording] / by Nevada Barr
Americans [sound recording] : the democratic experience / by Daniel J. Boorstin
Poems [sound recording] / Robert Browning
In a sunburned country [sound recording] / Bill Bryson
Big over easy [sound recording] / by Jasper Fforde
Stan Freberg presents The United States of America [sound recording] / [words and music by Stan Freberg]
Damsels in distress [sound recording] / by Joan Hess
Shrub [sound recording] / by Molly Ivins with Lou Dubose
Into thin air [sound recording] / by Jon Krakauer
True enough : learning to live in a post-fact society / Farhad Manjoo
Soul music [sound recording] / Terry Pratchett
Touching the void [sound recording] / by Joe Simpson
Adventures of Nero Wolfe [sound recording] / Rex Stout
Crack in the edge of the world [sound recording] / written and read by Simon Winchester
Republic of pirates [sound recording] / by Colin Woodard

Lots of audio too, so far I'm two tapes into Into Thin Air, which I've read a number of times but the reader is really good and you get different things out of listening compared to reading.

I discovered a bit ago that I'd forgotten enough of Dick Francis books to reread them, and that I still liked the early Spenser books and I could also reread Stout, so that's why them. I had little time in the library so the selection was a big slapdash.

Ok, I finished Fer-de-Lance last night, it's the first Nero Wolfe book and it shows a bit, though he does a good job of making you think there are probably a lot of stories from before, not unlike what Tolkien did with his legendarium, if a bit different in feeling and content. It's not bad for a Stout though I was a bit weirded out by Wolfe letting the guy kill the other guy, maybe that's a first novel thing or maybe I'll have it happen more and tell you about it.

I'm half way through Game-Players of Titan. I don't know if I'm better at getting into weird SF books than when I tried to read Dick before, I made it through three of them I think, or if this is an easy one to get into. So far it's very good, not as weird as I remember from previous readings of his. It has a bit of a feeling of Stars My Destination and the Demolished Man but not as flamboyant? Not sure if that's the word I want. In fact it feels less dated than a lot of stuff I've read that's later. I think I was reminded of Bester because so far it is a mystery with telepaths but very different from D. Man.

Ok, either mini-reviews or me saying why I got these books in particular, I hope, more posting in general. Like that's going to happen.

'If the Creator had said, "Let there be light" in Ankh-Morpork, he'd have gotten no further because of all the people saying "What colour?"'

See a Pratchett quote, post one to your LJ and the instructions.

Hopefully it won't be just me and glinda bouncing off each other.

"Pride is all very well but a sausage is a sausage."

See a Pratchett quote, put one in your LJ with instructions.

Since part of my f-list was doing a Joss one yesterday, and I couldn't for the life of me think of one, I thought I'd start a Pratchett one, as I know it crosses several of my groups of friends, at least I'll get two or three, I think.

"You had to admire the way perfectly innocent words were mugged, ravished, stripped of all true meaning and decency and then sent to walk the gutter for Reacher Gilt, although "synergistically" had probably been a whore from the start."

So when you see a quote, post another PTerry quote in your LJ, and see how long we can keep it going.

Since someone on my f-list hasn't got enough posts to read in order to procrastinate and I'm feeling mildly ok, I shall try and be interesting for her. I'm probably too late for her, but I should post once in a while, something that's not a meme.

I'm sitting on the concrete outside my converted garage house, which hardly looks like a garage anymore, using satellite broadband in what amounts to an oak glade. Hmm that may be wrong, a copse? We're right on the edge of town, so the back seven acres are pine forest, second or third growth, but the original and all following owners, cut down the pines around the house and only let oaks and the occasional cedar grown. It's a really lovely place though mostly when I'm out here I see things I want or should get done but can't 'cause of the ol' disabilities. It was over ninety yesterday, but seems less today. We had several days of lovely weather, down in the seventies! But oh do I miss rain. And I have a feeling it'll be a while till we get some. We still have two months of fire weather. Nothing really close here, but boy did we get smoked out.

So as some of you know, I taught myself to bind books, and I really should have noted the names of the sites that helped me, but of course I didn't, or if I did they're on inaccessible hard drives. Anyway, I had this brilliant idea last year to take all the stuff out of my living room and repaint, dye the concrete floor, put up the copper pipe on the perimeter of the ceiling for hanging all the gorgeous cloth I acquire, and fix up and move bookshelves etc, and not put anything back in until I'd sorted through it and trashed the trash, donated the donate-ables and not put something in the house without it having a place to go. Sounds great, huh? And you can guess how it went. Although I did do the floor, and it's magnificent, I should put some pictures up on flckr. The walls got painted and not by me, which is also great, I hate painting. And a bunch of storage stuff got put in. A big upper kitchen cabinet someone acquired somewhere, some drawer things we bought at Target, bunch of plastic boxes with lids, like that. But guess what! My crafts 'studio' is not back together yet, and there's still bunch of stuff sitting on the floor that needs sorting, and I still don't have enough storage. And of course I've been accumulated gorgeous papers and other things for when book binding resumes.

Another good thing, my sister bought me a used apartment stacked washer dryer set! And it's installed in the bathroom, so I take off clothes, bang into the washing machine! Unless they need bleach, and those can accumulate till there's enough for a load. This means I have to do something about my overgrown collection of clothes, the ones that are really too ratty to wear, the ones I'm never going to fit in again, etc. Then I'd have more room in the bedroom for guess what! Another bookshelf.

Stream of consciousness must be more fun to write than to read, so I'll stop soon.

Since I can't remember what I was going to say next, I'll stop here.

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Torture is wrong.

From Slacktivist via Ksej.

This is actually something I gtalked to my sister:

A post by D at Lawyers, Guns and Money set me off.

I was reading about racism in feminism, and then there was a thread for us white people to talk about our racism/privilege and welcomed any people of colors' input/corrections. There were two stories that stuck in my head.

One was there was a Klan rally somewhere somewhen, maybe Sixties, maybe Seventies, and six big white guys went and started beating up the Klan assholes. Of course the police started beating on the people of color but this was something they decided to do as a group, the white guys and the guys of color.

The other was about a group of five people walking along, going to a concert, couple young whites, couple people of color and a fifty two year old white women. They had dope on them and so they spot some cops and they pass their dope to the white woman, without discussion and she puts it in her purse.

How to use your white privilege for Good.

The other thing discussed was using your voice, since you may be listened to when others won't, but there's also the problem of speaking for people who want to speak themselves.

Edited for spelling, capitalization, and clarity. New content below.

My sister and I were raised to speak up. My dad's parents were Progressives back in the day, my dad was a feminist before my mother, a union guy, and although not perfect did raise us to hate injustice and at the least, speak up. My mom's family was all about speaking loudly, and she was six feet tall and never knew about sexism. Don't know if that was obliviousness or no one dared to talk down to her.

That hate injustice thing sounds stupid, or arrogant or both, but it is true in its way. We grew up in Berkeley, we heard I Have a Dream, or watched it, every year at school. Not on his birthday, because we didn't go to school that day. We also had Malcolm X's birthday and International Women's Day off. Other school districts used those days together as a skiing holiday, we were Berkeley. Which means we were arrogant about our liberalism and sheltered from the ugliness that is the rest of America. I didn't believe that, really really, until I moved to a small mountain town and we protested a war.

So the loudmouthed pointing out of stupid, unfair and illegal practices at our various jobs has gotten us in trouble sometimes, more my sister after we moved up to the mountains. In Berkeley she worked for the City's pools, and the City is not allowed to do anything bad. Up here shut up sit down and be polite are the watchwords. I haven't thought if this is more for women or not. R's a nurse, and most of them are women, and most of the doctors are male but the doctor-nurse relationship is fucked up anyway, so hard to tell if it's doctor arrogance or just plain male.

In Berkeley I did manage to get a place I worked investigated and fined by Cal-OSHA. I got everyone to call Cal-OSHA and yay! Big corporation based in Saint Louis is busted for painting the store with oil based paint at night when we were expected to work in there during the day. This was Copy-Mat, the big one, not the franchises. Sometimes I wonder if that was what caused the Headache and the Fibro but I don't think suing 'em at this late date is possible.

Oh, better link a few things. I didn't link the stories, because if I did it would have been pointless to retell them, and show everyone how badly I did retell them. They're in the thread though, toward the end.

I'm not sure what point I'm trying to make, but that thread and all the other people of color who brought up the privileged snottiness of some of the feminist bloggers helped me some with my problems with privilege. Since I started reading the feminist blogs and the threads and seeing the MRAs and the clueless idiots talk about how we're overreacting or how come we don't teach them the basics of feminism, I realized I had done this kind of stuff, not a lot, but enough, about race mostly. And to feel myself start to do that at some of the comments on the blogs where they were discussing this stuff made me not only sick but think. Now I do recognize the defensiveness and fear that are behind those comments, and hopefully can recognize it in myself before I actually do it again. Also that move of asking the one Other friend I have to teach me about things that must bore or annoy her, I still need to apologize to her.

Anyway, thank you, Chris and Theriomorph, Brownfemipower, Blackamazon, Firefly, Ilyka, and all those other commenters and bloggers that helped me with this, even though you have no idea who I am.

Hmmm hope this doesn't sound like I think I'm perfect now, or even that my speaking out is always good or that... well I hope my privilege isn't blinding me to something here that's ugly. Sorry if it does and if you feel I'm worth correcting, I promise not to get too defensive.

"Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them."

And don't be nice or polite when you feel the fear, you're not going to be beaten or raped because you weren't 'nice.'

Gavin De Becker on Oprah! Everyone must read his book Gift of Fear! It basically tells you what you should fear and what you shouldn't, and to trust your instincts, because that voice inside that says "he's creepy, get away from him fast!" is right. Very empowering book in all kinds of ways.

I wish he'd write an autobiography, he mentions some of the violence he saw as a kid, and I'd like to hear about how he survived and grew up to be so cool.

So I don't get enough sleep, or it's disturbed sleep, or I'd overdone the day before. Bad rest makes the other symptoms worse, so the fibrofog, the problem with words, the clumsiness, and the pain all get worse. So fibrofog means a lot of wandering around wondering what it was you were going to do, who you were going to call, where you put the remote control, or the phone, or your book. And problems with words, mostly for me nouns, are less of a problem if you're not trying to communicate so today that wasn't bad, but it can be really bad, especially with people who don't know you have fibro or with people who don't know how the word things work, so that's frustrating. The clumsiness is what really gets to me by the end of the day, I trip over things, sometimes fall because of it, I drop things then can't find them, or drop them and break them, I accidentally kick dogs and hurt them, all of that is frustrating. And all kinds of pain, lots of little aches that you don't really notice till they just become too much, or have one big one that drives you nuts, or your knees are hurting, making it hard to get up and down, or your back so you can't lift stuff, so that's also all frustrating. You sensing a theme here? So by the end of the day you trip and yell with annoyances, the dogs bark one too many times and you scream at them, you break one of your favorite dishes, or two of them.

So it just builds and builds and hopefully by the time you can get to bed you don't have too much pain to sleep. And since you have to sleep with the barky ones, you probably can't sleep well tonight either, or your sleep has just gotten worse and worse and you're trying to change your sleeping pills and they are worse than your normal ones.

So now I can't remember quite what point I wanted to make, maybe that it's not just about spoons, that there are other ways it gets crazy. I mean, I can live this way for a while, but I need some changes. Or at least we need to switch seats for another go round.

So sister can leave again tomorrow, but next time I go, then I can get tired and take care of my mom instead of the dogs. But on the bright side I get to do the tiring out and taking care of in the Bay Area so if nothing else the food will be excellent.

Oh, and that plan to post everyday? That worked well.

Not doing really well on this typing everyday thing, but today I'm forcing myself to rest, after about five days of doing way too much, typing is not considered all that unrestful here at Casa RepGillian.

Pain notes: Right Shoulder, right wrist, and most of stuff between, most other stuff ok when lying down. Headache pretty much usual level.

So I just finished Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, and I recently reread Into Thin Air again. I also have read Under the Banner of Heaven. I like his writing a lot, haven't gotten a hold of Eiger Dreams yet. But the effect of reading the books is that I have to go look up everything on wikipedia and see what's what. Or rather who thinks what's what. Much better stuff about Everest in 1996 than there was when I first read it a couple years ago, but I haven't even gotten to the Into the Wild stuff yet. I'm wikipedia addict, I keep opening more and more links in new tabs. Though aside from 'wasting time' it's hard to see what harm it does me. I've always had a trivia retentive mind and think knowing things for the sake of knowing things is one of the main reason humans are tolerable. Ok, I just made that up, not the trivial mind though.

Oh, also have to watch my netflickeses, I have Hot Fuzz, which is great so far. I watch Shaun of the Dead quite often, so am going to need a copy of this. And I got Running with Scissors because I found the book fascinating and I think the Baldwin in it plays the perverted shrink, which I tend to think is typecasting. Though Michael Douglas would probably be closer.

I need to get the netflixes watched 'cause I just found out Kristen Bell is going to be in Heroes this coming season, so I enqueued the whole first season of it, and must get 'em watched before the new one begins. Yes, I am just that weird. Though I tend to go the other way, refuse to watch any of the series before it comes out on dvd and I can watch it all. That's the best thing about dvds in my book.

Another random thought, I was a big Adam and the Ants fan back in the day, I'd forgotten how much piratey stuff he did and wore. No wonder I want to dress like a pirate, though highwayman and others could also be fun. Hoist up your Jolly Roger! Of course, lyric writing could be much improved. And yes I did notice what song was playing in the background at the beginning of Hot Fuzz.

So much happening so little energy to write.

Things I'd like to write about: The Living-room 'Renovation', don't know if you can call it a renovation when so little of the physical building was changed. The Story, which I'm telling the Friend Who Shall Not Be Named, but I can't really put it here without asking the principle. This story is in ways totally typical but also unique. You know, Tolstoy and unhappy families.

You know, I don't know what I want to write about, but I'm going to write, maybe everyday. Which is how I learned to write easily in the first place. I didn't go to school between grades six and ten, and had a tutor during the last year, and he made me write a page of something everyday, and I found those the other day, I have a bunch of stuff I wrote starting then and going through till senior year in college. Apparently I saw Blondie when I was 13 or so and didn't like 'em much. I have absolutely no memory of this. Fibro fog or Blondie didn't make an impression? Later I bought all their albums, after I became punky.

Ok, I have to unload the car and get something to eat. I left the house at three meaning to be gone less than an hour, five and a half hours later I return.

This is the best book ever, I want to do something, anything, that will help Emma Bull write more books, maybe I should found a religious order that serves that purpose, we can be like one of those self supporting abbey things, grow our own food and make our own stuff and keep Ms Bull in finest writing trim. Or maybe just write her a fan letter, though I haven't much else to say but I loooooove Territory! Write me another! Pretty Please!

I do find myself hampered by the fact that I can't for the life of me remember what led up to OK Corral. And I can't exactly wikipedia it because what I want isn't what really happened but the.. legend, I guess you could call it. The cultural memory of it. I recognize most of the names but have no idea what I should know, I mean I've figured out most of who is on what side, but not what the heck is supposed to have happened. Oh well, I'll ask my sister, she may remember better than I do, being a bit older and liking westerns more than I.

Nightmares

My father landed in the seventh day of the Normandy Invasion during World War II. My nephew fought in the first days of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. My father had nightmares and screamed in his sleep about the people he had killed till he died in 1976. Now my nephew is screaming in his sleep when he dreams of the people that he has killed.

The next time you vote for some war-mongering profiteering dirt bag to start another war for us poor people to fight for you, make sure that your kids are in line with mine at the recruiting office. You can listen to the screams at night.

G- T-
Portola

I wonder if I'll ever post anything other than memes again.



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Is anyone surprised that my first post back is a meme? I didn't think so.

Hopefully I'll post something a bit more substansive soon. First I have to add some more interests.

( My Interests Collage! )

Create your own! Originally Written By ga_woo, Hosted and ReWritten by darkman424

Anyone know anything about what kind of scanner I should get for the scanning of photographic slides? Doesn't have to be the absolute highest resolution, I'd give up some for ease and speed of use, and of course not a thousand bucks.

My sister brought down a bunch of my dad's stuff from Oregon, and I've fallen heir to the family slide collections. Not only all this family history, but there are pictures of Chaco Canyon from before it was a tourist destination. The road wasn't paved, and was probably not even graded. That was in the early seventies. Waking up there at dawn is one of my most vivid childhood memories.

So I'm not positive what it was in the news report that I heard about this new 'terrorist plot' that made me nervous but turns out I had reason. They were planning and maybe trying to get materials. They hadn't *done* anything, I thought thought and speech and assembly were legal in the US, silly me. NPR mentioned that someone, in congress? in the press? suggested that the timing was suspicious since the WP or the NYT was publishing something the government didn't want us to know it so there's the smoking gun in my opinion.

But I finally looked at an article from google news, Toronto Star as it happens, and they had pictures. They're all black. I thought it was weird they didn't mention race or country of origin on the radio, and since they said they were homegrown, why no one mentioned Timothy McVeigh. They're all black. Some flack from the government says something about somehow these people didn't belive the United States government had a right to authority over them. They're all black. Seems self explicable to me! This is the most activelly and actively encouraging racist government since I don't know when, since Jim Crowe maybe. And two were from Haiti, hell if I was from a country where the legally elected, democratically elected, president was removed by the current US administration, I'd be just a *wee* bit annoyed and tend to question the legitimacy of that government. Especially with the first election obviously stolen and the second one questionable, hey, I question their legitimacy.

I think I have to go erase some irc logs, over and over and over... And maybe anything I ever wrote about the first amendment.

Should I have known that Ann Coulter was one of Paula Jones's legal advisors? I'd always wondered where the hell she came from.