Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

A Most Excellent Rant!

This comment was left on my post about Utz Cheese Balls. It’s way too well-written for it to remain hidden under a cheese ball post! For heaven’s sake, “roadsassy”! Show some pride in your work!! Post your rant where it’ll be seen!

Here. I’ll help. Now don’t ever say I never did anything for you.

New comment on your post #827 “A Barrel of Cheese-y Deliciousness”
Author : R Sassy (IP: 69.133.42.144 , cpe-69-133-42-144.cinci.res.rr.com)
E-mail : roadsassy@gmail.com
URI :
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=69.133.42.144
Comment:
You are such a slut – you not only admire the hag whore Linda Hirshman, you approve of “rights” for the enemy. Oh – that’s right – there is no enemy in ‘la la land’.

As a woman I can say unequivocally that bitches like you and Hirshman are a profound argument for the Chinese practice killing of female children. I certainly hope nothing issuing from your dead womb ever sees the light of day.

So why don’t you just go pick the fetal tissue out of your teeth or write a treatise in support of NAMBLA -an outfit that I’m sure you’d readily defend – and stay out of the public discourse – you freaking malignant whore .

Yeah, but how do you feel about Utz Cheese Balls? They’re great, right?

The Supreme Court Has Restored My Faith in American Justice

Supreme Court Rejects Guantanamo War Crimes Trials
The Supreme Court today delivered a stunning rebuke to the Bush administration over its plans to try Guantanamo detainees before military commissions, ruling that the commissions violate U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of war prisoners.

In a 5-3 decision, the court said the trials were not authorized by any act of Congress and that their structure and procedures violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and the four Geneva Conventions signed in 1949.

Yes!

For the first time in his 15-year tenure on the court, [Justice Clarence] Thomas took the unusual step of reading part of his dissenting opinion from the bench. The court’s willingness “to second-guess the determination of the political branches that these conspirators must be brought to justice is both unprecedented and dangerous,” he said.

Excuse me? What “conspirators”?? Most of the people being held at Guantanamo are only alleged conspirators — if they’ve been charged with anything at all. Seems to me, Justice Thomas is operating under the presumption of guilt. I didn’t think that was how we did things in the United States. There’s nothing wrong with the idea of bringing conspirators to justice. We’re all in favor of that. You’ve got to do it in a manner that’s just, though. You’ve got to obey the law. Bush broke the law. He should be impeached for that.

North American Bear Center in the News

Duluth News Tribune | 06/28/2006 | Neighbors find financing idea for Ely project unbearable
ELY – Lynn Rogers is selling his property to help humans better understand bears.

Rogers, a renowned bear researcher from Ely, hopes to raise $1 million to build the North American Bear Center by subdividing about 110 acres of property he has owned since 1993 near Arthur Lake, which is southwest of Ely.

Maybe the Arthur Lake residents who are opposing the land sale could get together and donate some money to the Bear Center’s construction fund. With enough donations, Rogers wouldn’t have to sell his land to finance the Center.

That Lynn Rogers is willing to so dip so deeply into his own personal assets to finance the Bear Center is just one indication of how strongly he’s committed to it. Dr. Rogers HAS written books, and given lectures and classes, and there’s still an AMAZING level of ignorance about black bears — even in northern Minnesota where you’d think people would know better.

A Black Bear Center — much like Ely’s Wolf Center — is exactly what’s needed for people to gain an understanding of and appreciation for these beautiful and intelligent animals.

Burn, Baby, Burn

Senate Rejects Flag Desecration Amendment
The amendment’s opponents agreed that flag burning is repugnant, but argued that U.S. troops died to preserve freedoms that include controversial political statements.

Exactly.

Actually, I think flag burning is more than just repugnant. It’s stupid. It provokes such strong emotional responses in many people that they become unable to rationally consider whatever issue it is the flag-burner is protesting to begin with. You don’t win people over to your side by pissing all over their beloved symbols.

True, there are flag-burners who are doing it only to make people angry. They don’t have any larger issues to which they’re trying to draw attention. These people are idiots. They’re not worth the energy required for getting angry.

What people need to remember is that the flag is just a thing. Flag-burning is only a powerful statement if you personally take it to be one. The best defense against people who want to insult you by wrecking your favorite symbols is to simply ignore them.

Better yet: Laugh at them. Mock them! Try saying this to them: “What? You’re too dumb to form a cogent argument for your point of view, so you resort to flag burning? What a pathetic lame-ass thing to do!”

That’ll get ‘em.

A River Runs Through It

These pictures don’t really do it justice. The new stream running through our backyard is actually about 3 feet wide and about a foot deep at its deepest. We’ve seen this sort of thing before when we’ve had very heavy rain — like a couple years ago when we got the tail-end of Hurrican Ivan. Still… it’s interesting. I love dramatic weather!

The F-Word

Achenblog: Daily Humor and Observations from Joel Achenbach
The F-word remains taboo. But just barely. We may be entering an era in which this fabled vulgarity is on its way to becoming just another word — its transgressive energy steadily sapped by overuse.

Okay. I’ll admit it.

I use the F-word too much.

Sometimes I do use it for its presumed shock value, as when I’m criticizing the FCC’s ridiculous “indecency” rulings. Those might be times when it’s actually a reasonable use. Too often, though, I just use it to give added “oompf” to adjectives describing how much I really REALLY dislike something the Bush administration has done.

If I really think about it, though, adding “fucking” to the word idiot or asshole (my two favorites!) doesn’t go very far towards describing the depth of my loathing. Everyone calls Bush a “fucking asshole”. It’s become passé.

I need new words. Better words.

Suggestions are welcome.

Pitchforks and Plowhandles

Record Rain Wreaks Havoc on Morning Commute
This morning, major commuter delays developed as a result of a mudslide that dumped six feet of slick debris near the intersection of the Capital Beltway and Telegraph Road, closing the road for hours, and because of underground flooding that shuttered two normally busy downtown Metrorail stations.

It truly did rain a lot yesterday. On and off all day — VERY hard. We had a little fast-running river going through our backyard.

Apparently the metro trains really are screwed up. I just got a call from Mark — at 9 am, mind you — saying he hasn’t been able to get to work. His train broke down (or something) at Clarenden station and he hasn’t been able to get on another train because they’re all completely packed. Understand, he normally gets on the train on Mondays right around 6:30 or 7 am — so he’s been trying to get to work for at least a couple hours. (It normally takes only about half an hour when the trains are running as usual.) What he probably doesn’t know — according to this Washington Post article, there’s flooding in some of the metro stations so service around Metro Center is all screwed up. Anyway, so he’s on a train headed back home and he’ll just telecommute today.

He should telecommute more often — he really doesn’t NEED to be in his office in downtown DC for most of what he does.

Anyway… so lots of rain. We needed it. It had been pretty dry.

If A Bear Attacks…

Achenblog: Daily Humor and Observations from Joel Achenbach
Bears will usually not eat something they believe is already dead. Thus you should collapse on the ground and stay absolutely still, like roadkill. Even if you feel the animal sniffing at your feet, and then slowly nosing its way up your body, and you can tell that it is getting angrier and angrier as it begins to growl and root around with its snout and teeth and giant wet tongue, and finally it’s at your neck, and you feel the saliva gushing from its gaping, slobbering, beastly maw, don’t move.

Joel Achenbach is just kidding around, of course, but this is a good opportunity to remind people of how they should REALLY act if they’re threatened by a bear

First of all, unless you’re hiking in Alaska or the Rockies, the kind of bear you’d be running into would be a black bear — not a grizzly. Black bears and grizzlies are different in how they behave, so this is worth knowing.

Actual black bear attacks are very VERY rare. It’s much more likely that, in the rare event you encounter a black bear, the bear will just be acting threatening in order to mask its own fear. The bear may slap the ground or nearby trees or shrubs very hard with its front paws and make a loud “huff” noise. Or, the bear may even make a couple of bluff charges in your direction. What you want to do in this kind of situation is NOT to make yourself small! You want to stand up tall, hold your arms up and out to make yourself appear larger. Yell at the bear! Act aggressive! Black bears are, by nature, very timid animals and will usually run away if you show them you’re in charge.

The bear in the picture up above, by the way, is one Mark and I met when we did the black bear study course through The Wildlife Research Institute with Lynn Rogers last summer. Dr. Rogers knows pretty much everything there is to know about black bears and, if they interest you at all (or even if you just enjoy getting out in the woods with nature), I very highly recommend that you take one of his summer courses. Another thing you might want to do, if you like bears and want to see them protected, is contribute to the North American Bear Center in Ely, Minnesota.

Life After Ileostomy — Part 3

There are more graphic desccriptions of bodily functions coming up, folks, so… if that sort of thing grosses you out, stop reading now.

I’m happy to report that the abscess I had near my stoma is almost completely healed and everything is, apparently, working as it should be. My surgical incisions are healing very well. This morning I was able to sleep on my right side for a while with no discomfort. Hurray! It was getting really REALLY old having to always lay flat on my back. (I became able to lay on my left side a week or two ago but I have bursitis in my left hip so that doesn’t usually work very well for very long.) Anyway — three cheers for the right side!

Yesterday I witnessed one of the freakier things I’ve ever seen: I figured I’d take a quick peak at my ileostomy pouch to see whether it needed emptying and when I glanced down, I could see that my stoma was moving. Yes, MOVING. All by itself. In a very creepy slow-motion snake-like sort of way. Like those underwater movies you’ve seen of moray eels with their heads poking out of some cave. It was like my stoma was debating whether to completely exit my body. It was like it had it’s own intelligence. It’s own will. Whoa!!! Too TOO weird! After I got over the shock of seeing this thing moving around by itself, I figured out that this must be what peristalsis looks like. Peristalsis, if you’re unfamiliar with the term, is the wave-like motion of your intestines that moves food through your digestive system. It’s not something most people will ever get to see! It really is wave-like, though. Truly, truly strange.

I was reminded of that scene in the movie Alien, where the little baby alien pops out of the guy’s gut. Hell…. stick some sharp pointy teeth on the stoma and it would even look a bit like the baby alien!

I went online with the good folks on the UOAA support board and they confirmed that, yes, this is completely normal and YES, it IS really weird to see!

Fight Club

On the Web, Punch and Click
All the major Web services employ teams of people to scour user postings and remove objectionable material. But since nudity and sexually oriented videos command the most attention, violence often slips past.

It’s like I keep saying: it’s a crazy fucked-up world where people are more offended by the sight of adults engaged in consensual sex than by the sight of adults beating the living crap out of one another. It’s got to come from some weird aversion to pleasure, right? Some leftover from the few up-tight religious freaks who were involved in founding our country. (Their up-tight freakish descendants are, alas, happily perpetuating their sick rejection of physical pleasure.)

I don’t really care about adults who voluntarily beat the crap out of one another. I used to enjoy watching professional boxing way back in the day. I enjoyed the movie Fight Club. These guys, though… they’re just fools. There’s nothing particularly interesting about watching idiots beat each other up.

I actually went to one of the sites mentioned in this Washington Post article and downloaded one of the less awful-looking fight videos. It was a couple of young women who pretty much just slapped at each other and threw drinks on each other. Big deal. I witnessed a MUCH more interesting fight between two women once about 25 years ago. I’m not going to name names but it went like this: It’s a wedding reception, right? And the bride, who is known for her temper, has some issues with the girlfriend of one of the groomsmen. Much alcohol had already been drunk by the time something set them off. No girlish slapping here! There was punching! And kicking! And, by the time it finally ended, the bride had the other woman down on the floor, hands around her neck, repeatedly smacking the woman’s head against the floor while chanting, “You bitch! You bitch!”

Ah… the good old days.

The groom and some of his friends finally separated them and the party pretty much went on as if nothing had happened.

I guess these things have to be expected when you have excellent blues musicians providing live music for your reception. Blues does that to people.

By the way… I didn’t see her, but I hear the other woman was a bruised-up mess the next day. The bride’s famous comment was: “She looked like 20 miles of bad road.”