Trailer Park Paradise

February Photos, Day Fourteen: Heart

2012-02-15T00:18:00.000-06:00

I'm going figurative again here, because a heart? On Valentine's Day? Yeah, no. (The only actual heart I've seen today, other than some candies Bobbie gave me, was the one on the gift bag I gave Erik.)

This is a little girl's heart. Esther loves snakes. I've said before that she is my uncle reincarnated, & that is one big reason why. He loved them too.

We went to the rodeo today (just the grounds, not the show itself) and of course had to go see the snake show. They offered this Texas Indigo and another snake up for petting once it was over. I had to pull Esther off the other one so someone else could have a chance to pet it; the only way I could get her to move was to point her toward this one. She was elated when the snake did this, and even happier when the man holding it said the snake was giving her a valentine.

February Photos, Day Thirteen: Blue

2012-02-13T22:46:00.000-06:00

OK, I'll be the first to admit that today's a cop-out. But it's also a chance to brag, so I'm going with it.

This is a photo. It's the sky, as viewed from the parking lot of Erik's workplace. There were some puffy white clouds this morning, but it cleared up beautifully.

Yesterday was pretty chilly, especially with the wind. It only hit something like 43°, and with the stiff breeze (20mph or so) it felt much colder. Yes, yes, I know. It gets ridiculously cold in other parts of the country. That's why I don't live in other parts of the country, mmkay? There was, apparently, sleet in parts of the city during the morning hours, and even snow flurries (nothing stuck, of course).

Anyway, that was yesterday. This is today. Clear blue sky, temps in the mid-sixties. It's the darnedest thing. Even though I grew up here, I'm not really used to it. I don't think I ever will be.

Tomorrow, we celebrate Valentine's Day by going to the rodeo. It's forecast to hit 72°. I'm old-fashioned; I like my rodeo frigid. The warmth will be nice all the same. (We're actually just going to the stock show. The performer lineup this year sucks.)

February Photos, Day Twelve: Inside of the Closet

2012-02-12T23:49:00.000-06:00

Today's photo is supposed to be the inside of my closet. Only problem? I don't have one. There is a closet in this room, but we can't get the door open. I don't know why. It's not locked; the handle just spins. Anyway, I took a photo of the inside of a drawer instead. So you can see my mad organizational skills in action:

Yeah, it's about like that. Let's see: knitting needles, a baby-chewed CD case (I'd like to punch whomever decided to make them out of cardboard), my Kindle in its cover, two bottles of nail polish, nail art pens, my crappy digital camera, a lipstick tube, and my thermometer. Plus other random crap.

Color me shocked...

2012-02-12T18:42:00.000-06:00

The church service I used to go to--y'know, the one whose celebrant I dealt with here and here--is going bye-bye. I got the e-mail Friday.

Officially, the reasoning is:

Changes in St. Mark’s clergy leadership make it impossible to assign one priest to weekly serve that community alone. Leadership needs such as music and A/V technology team, planning and creativity team, readers and chalice bearers, and set up teams, have challenged the resources of the worshipping community. And, significantly, the schedule of the worship service on Sunday morning makes it “compete” with other services at St. Mark’s - a competition that helps no one.

That, as the formatting suggests, is an actual quote from the e-mail, which goes on to explain that, after the end of Epiphany, the 11:11 CAYA service will go away, and during Lent will become a midweek "creative worship offering" which will "explor(e) the Lenten themes of journey, risk, challenge, and creativity in new ways, in new places, with new offerings of music, art and movement." (It might be worth noting that, when I was much younger, Wednesday evening services were the more laid-back offerings. I will go so far as to say they were the progenitor of IT/CAYA services, and far predate Rev. Wickham.)

My immediate thought, I must admit, was Huh, finally alienated all your regulars, did you? Perhaps I am flattering myself, but I do not see this as being too far from the truth. Even before I was made unwelcome, I had noticed many of the service's founding parishioners had begun attending irregularly or not at all.

The truth about CAYA is that a handful of people ran the whole blessed thing, and though lip service was paid to involving everybody, it didn't. No ideas were entertained unless they came from one of the three couples who ran the show. Not exactly a recipe for success.

February Photos, Day Eleven: Makes Me Happy

2012-02-12T00:02:00.000-06:00

This is another one that is just impossible to do in one picture. I thought about it, but no. Too narrow.

In no particular order:

Miss Esther, my warrior princess, makes me happy when she shows off her quirky side.

Good beer and good barbecue--and my family to share the meal with--makes me happy.

My four little butt-monkeys make me incredibly happy.

Having a baby whose hair is long enough to put up makes me happy. Her sisters stayed bald until age two, or longer.

Fresh yarn makes me happy. Especially when it's obtained at a great discount. Those skeins of Fisherman's Wool? Paid $5 each, and they're normally $12 each.

Books make me happy. These are some (but far from all) of the books I've bought over the last year. It's a somewhat misleading photograph, as most of what's there isn't fiction, and most of what I read is. But they're mine, and I get to read them whenever I want. That makes me happy. I have always been a bookworm, even when it wasn't cool. Yeah, I'm the kid who got made fun of in school for reading constantly. Didn't care then. Still don't. Books are good.

Being with my guy makes me really happy. (This was Wurstfest, which is why we're holding random crap.)

February Photos, Day Ten: Self Portrait

2012-02-11T00:14:00.000-06:00

I'm going to have a bit of fun with this one. None of these are new pictures, but they're all photos I really like.

This was my first Blogger profile photo; I took it in Hawaii, with the camera propped up on my desk, sitting on the floor with my back to the couch. I don't know why that seemed like a good idea, but it did.

I was...hmm...Twenty-five? 'Round about that age, anyhow. I am pretty sure I was pregnant with Esther, or maybe I'd just had her. So, 24 or 25. I look really young to me here.

This was my profile picture for a while. Me and the older girls. I'm not real sure about the vintage of this one--'08, I think, but don't quote me. It looks like that because I set the camera on my bedside table that at the time held a high-velocity fan, so the wind's in our faces.

This is the large version of my current profile shot. It's a couple of years old; I am pretty sure I took it in 2009, slightly before my 30th birthday. This represents about the only time the whole "hold the camera at arm's length & hit the shutter button" thing ever worked out for me. My hair is still really long, by the way; it's just put up here. I usually look like this, more or less, because unless it's chilly out, my hair is pulled back. Long hair loose is like having a cat on your neck.

This is another, rare, arm's length shot. I wanted a picture of me holding Marie to put on Facebook. When she was tiny, my chest was actually her favorite place to sleep. None of the older girls would ever sleep up there, but Marie loved it. She still will sometimes, but she's well over 20lbs now and that makes it hard to breathe.

Similar to the other one. Me and all the girls. This was from September of last year, and looks like it was probably taken with the webcam on Erik's old computer, then run through Pixlr-o-Matic.

Last one, from earlier this year. New glasses that look a whole lot like the old glasses (glasses & hair see very little change from me). As I said in the Facebook caption: Red lipstick & a Spurs shirt. All I need now is 6" of bangs hairsprayed up in the air & I've got the quintessential SA look.

February Photos, Day Nine: Front Door

2012-02-09T21:00:00.000-06:00

Luckily for me, it doesn't say anything about being my front door. So I present to you, the front door of the restaurant where the girls and I ate dinner tonight:

I'm quite fond of this place, though I rarely remember it when we're thinking of somewhere to eat. It's on McCullough just north of downtown. Armadillo's. Really, really good burgers, though the grilled chicken sandwich I ate tonight wasn't anything to turn your nose up at.

As a side note, what is it about kids and chicken strips? Linda would eat nothing else, if I'd let her, and the other two are nearly as bad.

February Photos, Day Eight: The Sun

2012-02-08T22:14:00.000-06:00

Today was spent in the Hill Country, including at the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg. It's a tiny little place to house such a huge museum (and we only saw one portion out of three). It's just mind-blowing. We got there two hours before closing time, unwittingly; had I known how enormous it was I would have been certain we devoted the entire day to it.

February Photos Day Seven: Button

2012-02-07T23:24:00.001-06:00

Seems a strange subject for a photo, but okay. Here ya go:

I bought this dress, which is apparently hand-made, at Goodwill. It's a lovely bit of work. The smocking alone must have taken ages. There was nothing wrong with it, save it was missing one button and the other three were hanging on by threads. So I paid a dollar for a dress that would surely retail for about $40 new (and represents God alone knows how many woman-hours of skill) and broke out the spare buttons at home.

I really, really don't understand giving away a dress for want of buttons. It's not the only one I've bought under similar circumstances. Y'all, a button is not hard to sew. And yet, even the smallest bit of hand-sewing seems to be too much to ask these days. I'm admittedly not good at machine sewing (for some reason, it is a skill I do not retain; I've learned and forgotten how to do it easily half a dozen times over the years), but you don't need to thread a machine to put on a button, just a needle.

How is button-sewing a lost art?

Good to know they're covering the important stories of the day.

2012-02-07T23:03:00.000-06:00

WOAI, that is. This is from their Facebook page:

These are the two most recent stories, each from roughly an hour ago (it's currently 11PM).

Now, what else might be going on right now that a news radio station would be expected to cover? Hmm, lemme think...

Oh, that.

February Photos Day Six: Dinner

2012-02-06T19:59:00.000-06:00

"What do you want for dinner? I need something picturesque; I'm supposed to take a photo for the picture challenge."

"Brisket! Brisket tacos."

"What, to make Breda jealous?"

"Yes!"

And so, I ran with it:

The smudges all over the plate are avocado, by the way. There are corn tortillas, cheese, HEB brand salsa, HEB seasoned brisket (not the pre-cooked and -sliced stuff, 'cause holy fuckballs I am not paying $40 for a damned brisket), and sliced jalapeños from an HEB brand jar. (I'm not one of those people who complains about all the store-brand stuff HEB sells.)

It occurs to me, belatedly, that Borepatch is quite fond of brisket as well. Perhaps I'll have to pack some in dry ice and ship it to him once he's back in ATL.

And I know the picture was just supposed to be dinner, but here's dessert (I actually don't eat much dessert; plenty of sweets, but few desserts):

That is Bluebell. As their tagline says, the best ice cream in the country. I missed this stuff more than I did Big Red, which at least you can get in some places outside Texas.

One of the selling points of Bluebell is that they are "still 1/2 a gallon!" I'd rather pay $5.75 or $6 for a half-gallon of Bluebell than deal with the grocery shrink ray Edy's got hit with. (I think Edy's ice cream is about half air these days anyway. Tastes like it.)

This is "chocolate covered strawberries." It does indeed involve chocolate, and strawberries, but for some reason not actual chocolate covered strawberries. Dunno why I'd think to find that in the ice cream, right? It's a minor 'plaint, though, because the stuff is just as good as you'd think. My favorite from them, though, is their coffee flavor.

NYR Wrap-Up for January

2012-02-05T19:18:00.000-06:00

I honestly forgot that one of my resolutions was to give a monthly accounting of what I've read on the blog. I figure to do that and also report on how I'm dealing with the resolutions in general in this post.

First up, the books. Now, I have this horrible problem with attention span. I'm reading quite a few books, but between the fact that I'm reading something like six of the damned things at once, I'm not finishing much of anything. So I'll break this down into two categories: what I actually finished in January, and what I'm still reading because I'm reading so much other stuff (and, now, doing school work).

Finished
Demon Hunts, C. E. Murphy (Walker Papers, book 5). Pretty good book. Unfortunately, it suffers from what all the other Walker Papers books do--clichés, clichés everywhere. The main character is Irish/Cherokee, FFS, and named Siobhán Walkingstick. She's a shaman/warrior/mechanic/police officer. The series sometimes reads like Ms. Murphy is a newly-converted neoPagan who buys into the BS that neoPaganism is truly a resuming of the Old Ways. There is a recurring minor character who is a Mexican neoPagan. No Catholicism involved, naturally--she worships a goddess who is conveniently Wiccan. Yeah. In spite of all that, it's a good book. Enjoyable fluff.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs. Another pretty good book. I might be damning it with faint praise. The gimmick here is that the book is illustrated with vintage photographs. It's actually a great premise, but the pacing is uneven, the characters are a bit flat, and the ending set up the sequel in too-obvious fashion. I gather it's already been optioned for a movie, which I think will work very well.

And...yeah. I think I actually only finished two books this month. Now, for a much longer list of

What I'm Still Reading

A Clash of Kings, George RR Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire, book 2). I'm actually re-reading this. It's taking me longer this time around. I keep losing it.
The Five Love Languages. I don't remember the author, and I'm too lazy to look it up. Good concept, horrible execution. I'm about 1/2 way through it and "accidentally" lost it.
The Stand, Stephen King. Good, but dated.
7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess, Jen Hatmaker. This is my bathroom book, so it's gonna take a while. I am intrigued by the concept, but Mrs Hatmaker seems ditzy and self-absorbed, so I'm not sure I'll make it through.
Mommy in the Making, Victoria Pade. My emergency book. Dear God, why did I think it was a good idea to see if I could read a romance novel again? They haven't improved at all over the last decade or so since I used to read them. I can't get past the horrible decisions the heroine is making. If it was a real woman who was newly pregnant and broken up with the baby's father, I'd either slap her silly for getting involved with another man so fast or shut her out of my life for an idiot.
Strange Brew. This is a collection of short stories I have a sneaking suspicion I've already read. And we bought it instead of checking it out from the library, which makes it worse, but at least we bought it used.

Other stuff

I did indeed finish all my UFOs. Except for the ones I had to frog because I couldn't remember how I intended to do them. I still count it a win. I have sprouted several other UFOs, but I've finished a few new projects too, so I guess I'm batting .500 this year.

I'm doing pretty good at not drinking my calories. I've had one bottle of Shiner (Dortmunder Ale, so good), one McDonald's hot chocolate, and a few ounces of Jack Daniels honey whiskey. Oh, and a little bit of cream in my coffee. That does sound like quite a bit, but it's a huge cut-back from last year.

I have been an abject failure at limiting my sweets, but I'm trying. At least I'm not eating as much candy, so that's something, right?

Limiting restaurant meals has also been an abject failure. I hate lunch. I do fine with breakfast, because I can consider whatever I first eat breakfast. But when it comes time for lunch, my brain is all "What, I have to cook again? Fuck you."

I am making fairly good progress at outlining the novel I was writing for NaNoWriMo. I'm using an app called A Novel Idea. The free version, which seems to do nearly everything the paid version does.

I am getting better at eating low-GI foods. This is mainly because I'm not eating much bread.

Organization...Not so much. This one and the previous one I actually totally forgot about. I made too many resolutions, apparently. BUT, I've been keeping up with my schoolwork, and there's a lot of it. I'm even turning stuff in ahead of time.

The parenting thing is a work-in-progress. We went to the park twice in January, so that's something. Still need to work on routines.

Marie has a potty and goes in it about once a day at this point, since I take her with me when I wake up. She's not too sure what to do with it, though, and she's very young yet so it's easier just to change her. Which, come to think of it, I probably need to do. She's still in cloth 90% of the time. I do use disposables often when we're out, and overnight too, but I think I finally have a night-time diaper that will work better than a disposable, especially if I change her right before she goes to sleep, because she doesn't potty in her sleep.

February Photos Day Five: 10 o'clock

2012-02-05T17:15:00.000-06:00

I actually lucked out on this. Ten AM happens to be the time we get up on Sunday mornings. So there are quite a few pictures from today. (As usual, I had way too much fun with Pixlr, except for the first photo.)

The funny coloring on this comes from taking an iPod photo in a dim room. That's a sleeping Miss Marie for you. She was snuggled up this morning with her back to me. Poor thing kept coughing on and off during the night. Not bad, but like she has post-nasal drip. She finally crashed hard around 7 or so, so she did not wake up for the alarm at 10 this morning.

Here's another (this time, edited) photo of her. When I got up, she rolled over into my spot. Like all babies, she's happiest when she can take up as much of the bed as humanly possible.

Now, I really thought that turning on the light to get this picture would wake the older three up, but no. You will also notice all three are hibernating under the covers. This is because it got down into the low 40s last night, but for some reason they slept with the fan on high.

Bobbie, giving me her best "eat shit and die" look.

Linda doesn't fuck around. She's under the blanket even with her head. She is as bad at waking up in the mornings as I am. When I started talking to roust them all from bed, she was surprised by my presence.

There was a nice bit of Schadenfreude in this morning's wake-up call. Typically, it goes the other way around on weekends. The chill and the rain we've been having conspired to keep everyone abed.

February Photos Day Four: A Stranger

2012-02-04T22:20:00.000-06:00

Admittedly, I am playing fast and loose with the guide for today. That's because, well, the subject of this picture isn't technically a stranger. But she is:

So, what's a picture of Marie doing here?

Simple. I don't really know who she is yet. Well, I know who she is right now, but I don't have a clue who she's going to be when she grows up. How much of her personality will stick with her? How much is really just a toddler phase? Heck, at this point, I don't even know what hair color she's going to wind up with--my mother said my hair was that light brown until I was about three or four, and then it darkened to its current not-quite-black. Experience indicates she will lose those sweet little curls at the base of her head, but the other girls didn't have anywhere near that much hair at her age, so who knows?

Who knows? That's the question of parenting, and the reward. These little people spring from you fully formed, with a definite indication of personality even before they are born, but it takes decades to find out who they're going to become.

I'm quite privileged to get to watch this metamorphosis a fourth time.

Continuting with the easy jokes...

2012-02-04T11:21:00.000-06:00

February Photos Day Three: Hands

2012-02-03T23:57:00.000-06:00

Today's picture was not easy to get. Every time Marie sees the iPod, she wants to play with it, not let me take a picture. So there was no pretty hand-in-hand picture like I wanted. Given that things were already blurry, I decided to go ahead and load it up in Pixlr and play around.

The hands in the picture are two of my girls'--Bobbie and Marie. Oldest and youngest.

They are more similar than you might expect, for all that there is about a nine year age difference between them. Because Marie's Erik's child, she is a beginning in and of herself (well, every child is). Because it had been five years since I last had a child before she was born, and because things change so much, I very much felt like a new, inexperienced mom when I was getting ready for her.

Bobbie being such a good person naturally, she is an excellent big sister. It was Bobbie at whom Marie was pointing when she said her first word--"Zizzy!" It is Bobbie to whom Marie goes first, and most happily. (Well, other than me.) It's really something to see the two of them together.

Let's get the easy jokes out of the way first

2012-02-03T14:32:00.002-06:00

February Photos Day Two: Words

2012-02-02T22:01:00.000-06:00

There are a lot of ways to go with this one. I thought of piling up all the books I'm reading right now, but when it came time to do that, I came across this:

The last time she was in town, the World's Greatest Mother-in-Law gave me this book. Now, here's the thing. Peggy didn't know that not only do I like Steve Earle but he is actually one of my favorite producers-of-words evar. I did not squee like a little fangirl when I saw this.

I did, however, squee like a little fangirl when I saw this:

It's autographed! Squee! And she said that he told her my name was 'pretty'. Mega-SQUEE!

Yes, I know Steve Earle is a barking moonbat. I don't dig him for his political leanings, y'all, I dig him for his songwriting. I don't live my life in the echo-chamber, especially when it comes to music.

This should be fairly easy...

2012-02-01T17:32:00.000-06:00

February Photo Challenge (found on Facebook, natürlich):

But for Day 5, this should be pretty easy--I try my damnedest to be asleep at 10AM, thankyouverymuch.

Oh, I am such a whore for ready-made blogfodder.

Anyhoo, here's today's:

This is out US 281 North. Not my usual area by far. We went out to Spring Branch to check on a rental, but it's just too far out. Erik said he was just waiting for a character from a Stephen King novel to pop up.

Speaking of Stephen King, I'm reading the unabridged version of The Stand, the one published in 1990--when the book was set, interestingly. I'm guessing that Mr. King had never actually been to Texas in 1977 or so, when the book was presumably written (it was published in 1978, so I'm making an educated guess). The fictional Arnett, Texas, is described in the book as being 110 miles from Houston. In which direction I cannot be sure, but I do know that there is no desert for the Army to be running barbed wire through anywhere in that part of the State, nor would you be very likely to find maps of New Mexico and Arizona in a gas station in East Texas. I love Stephen King's work as always--particularly the older stuff--but between that and the fact that King's 1990 isn't substantially different from 1977, I'm having a hard time suspending the disbelief for this one. Had he been a bit more careful with his geography (if, for instance, the town was 110 miles west of San Antonio or Lubbock, or just not described as desert) and not set the book in a near future that somehow retained anachronisms such as leaded gasoline and prolific use of the word nigger in reference to music, the book would have aged much better.

Still a good novel, though.

Taxes

2012-01-30T22:25:00.002-06:00

I've kind of ignored the kerfluffle over Mitt Romney's tax returns, but after catching up on Larry Correia's blog yesterday and reading his post on the issue, I decided to do a little digging.

Of course, most of my blog readers are well aware that Democrats only claim to care more about the poor. (I'm going to do some more ranting on that in the near future, by the way.) When you crunch the numbers, a different picture is shown.

Here it is in black and white. For once, I'll provide links to my sources at the end; the info came from two different articles.

All this info is from 2010.

Barack Obama made $1,728,096
Mitt Romney made $21,700,000

Barack Obama paid $453,770 in federal taxes--26% of his income
Mitt Romney paid $3,000,000 in federal taxes--14% of his income

Another way to look at that is that Mitt Romney paid nearly twice as much in taxes last year as President Obama made.

Barack Obama contributed $245,075 to charity*--14% of his income
Mitt Romney contributed $2,980,000 to charity--14% of his income

Now, it's worth noting that the men were equally charitable as a percentage of their income. What I find interesting, however, is the ratio of taxes to charitable donations. President Obama constantly talks about how the rich don't pay their fair share.** Progressives repeat, as though it were mantra, the line that Republicans hate "the least of these" because we don't like the idea of giving the government more of our money. Mitt Romney essentially doubled the burden on himself specifically to aid those in need. That's not something many people can say.

*I actually think it's kind of cool that the biggest beneficiary was Fisher House.
**The Romneys paid $3,000,000 in taxes last year. We paid $0. Tell me again why he should be morally obligated to pay yet more?

(Obama's info)
(Romney's info)

No one ever likes my ideas...

2012-01-28T18:42:00.002-06:00

OK, totally not true. I came up with this (and doubt it's original, though I didn't purposely copy anyone) months and months ago. Didn't have the time to run with it then--and still don't--so I tried to pass it off to Erik. He agreed it was great, and then...nothing.

So, I'm throwing it out here in case anyone wants it. I present to you...Gun Nut Gator:

The quote, by the way, is from Marko, on one of Erik's Facebook posts. I'm sure there's plenty of other stuff we could put on it. I may throw something up from time to time.

Shockingly, not every website with the word news in the title is legitimate

2012-01-24T13:31:00.001-06:00

Shocking, no?

The Internet has gifted me with this brand new pet peeve: people using pseudo news sites to promote their beliefs. Liberals fucking love them some HuffPo; conservatives fucking love them some PajamasMedia. Both sides of the aisle fucking love them some Examiner.com. I get lazy sometimes here on my blog, but in general I don't argue a point without a legitimate source to back it up.

NaturalNews.com is not a legitimate source.

There is this article from that site floating around my Facebook quite a bit lately, 'cause I'm friends with lots of other moms and lots of other crunchy moms at that. So I see the anti-circumcision articles, and the pro-co-sleeping articles, and the vaccine stuff on both sides. I'm okay, generally speaking, with alternative treatments. I'm okay if you want to use homeopathics, though I prefer to take my alcohol undiluted. I'm okay with not vaccinating, or selectively vaccinating, or delaying vaccines for your kids, providing you've done your research some other manner than by listening to Jenny McCarthy.

What I am not okay with is stirring up outrage through lies. I am not okay with "news" articles that engage in misrepresentation of scientific studies to the extent that they're just making shit up. (I realize that even theoretically legit media stretches the hell out of the truth when they report on scientific studies.) I am not okay with this:

CDC researchers say mothers should stop breastfeeding to boost 'efficacy' of vaccines

I'm not okay with it 'cause it's a fucking lie, people. Nine-tenths of what is in that article is an outright fabrication and another tenth is truth-stretching, and but that final tenth contains enough truth to, apparently, make people overlook all the rest of the bullshit.

I'm not even sure which batshit insane portion of that article to quote here. It's really all contained in the headline. Ethan A Huff, the article's writer, makes the claim again and again and again that the CDC is recommending that women stop breastfeeding in order to boost the efficacy of vaccines.

Fuckballs, here's the last paragraph of the article, just so you can bask in the stupid:

This is how vaccine dogma works, though. The religion of vaccines does not have to offer any solid proof that a vaccine works, or that it is even safe. A vaccine can even cause the very thing it is touted as preventing, and vaccine apologists will say that it works and that it is necessary. And now in this case, these same psychopaths are suggesting that young babies be starved of real nutrition in order to improve the effectiveness of a vaccine.

I shit you not, that's in there. Because, as we all know, proper nutrition means you'll never ever get sick with a virus. Amirite?

About the only helpful thing Mr. Huff did was include a link to the abstract of the study itself, which I strongly suspect he did only in an attempt to give himself an aura of trustworthiness, 'cause I'd like to believe that if he thought people would actually click through and read it he'd have reined in the crazy a bit. (Then again, maybe he simply thinks NaturalNews.com's readers are too stupid to comprehend sciencetalk, which is entirely possible for regular readers I am sure.)

This is the study:

Inhibitory effect of breast milk on infectivity of live oral rotavirus vaccines.

I won't quote the entire abstract here, as I do trust my readers to be able to comprehend it on their own, but I will point out this part here:

The lower immunogenicity and efficacy of rotavirus vaccines in poor developing countries could be explained, in part, by higher titers of IgA and neutralizing activity in breast milk consumed by their infants at the time of immunization that could effectively reduce the potency of the vaccine. Strategies to overcome this negative effect, such as delaying breast-feeding at the time of immunization, should be evaluated.

You will note, please, that FUCKING NOWHERE DOES IT SAY TO NOT NURSE YOUR KID. What it says is that possibly not nursing your kid right around the time the immunization is given is something that should be evaluated

Or, to put it another way, Ethan A Huff is a lying fucktard who wouldn't be able to grasp scientific literature if I shoved it into his mouth after beating him senseless with a fellow hippie.

When you're dreaming about updating your blog

2012-01-23T12:58:00.000-06:00

you know it's time to actually post something. I have zero inspiration, so here are the photos I took earlier this month as part of a "12 on 12" project--take a dozen photos on the 12th day of every month. I reckon I'll share the project here as well. These were all taken with my iPod, so they suck. Future months will be better. Most of these, naturally, are pictures of Marie.

Marie, at lunch.

At the fabric store, Marie grabbed the iPod. She loves it, particularly the front-facing camera. I snapped this picture of her staring lovingly at herself.

Moments later, she managed to take a picture on her own. She's getting better at doing this, by the way.

Took the girls to McDonald's for dinner, and took this photo there. Linda's reading a book one of her sisters brought home from school. At the time she was quite whiny because she'd finished all the books I bought for Christmas and had nothing else to read.

I am slowly working my way through the Baby Surprise Jacket, a horror of double decreases and trying to knit an entire sweater in one piece (so it's big, and I don't have the attention span). Here I was working on restarting it for the umpteenth time, and finally figured out how to do the crochet cast-on. Since I crochet much better than I knit, this is really fast, and since I don't have to guess ahead of time how much yarn I need (as with long tail cast-on), I am in love. Should have known--to make knitting appeal to me, just add crochet!

Oh, the hungry baby is hungry! And likes to hold her foot while she eats. (That bag behind her, by the way, is a sheet that I intended to turn into a wrap sling; as that didn't work it will become diapers. I'll update on that once I've got them cut out--I'm sure I can get over a dozen from it, and I paid $3.99 at Goodwill.)

Somehow this turned out to be the only picture I got of Esther all day. About a centimeter from the camera lens. She likes to get really close. Six years old, and still my cuddle bug.

Bobbie, reading one of the Harry Potter books. I don't know which one. It's not like I'm going to read along, okay? But they like them, and now I face the daunting task of convincing them that nothing they read there was original. Sigh.

Bobbie and Linda, mid candy hand-off. They thought they were being sneaky. They suck at being sneaky, but teaching them how to do it better would be really counter-productive, so they get no help from me.

I bought a plastic tub to put diapers in. Naturally, Marie thinks this is the best source of toys EVAR. (Note she's already tossed one on the floor. Note, too, that there is an actual toy behind her.)

Naturally, I took the previous photo as a sign I needed to change her booty-butt. Naturally, she wanted to play with the diaper instead of let me put it on her.

The downside to being a one-car family is I have to drop Erik at work and take the car to get the girls and then go pick him up in the middle of the night. The upside to that is built-in alone time. And, frequently, a stop at Taco Cabana.

Real content soon, I promise.

There's a difference between marketing and journalism

2012-01-16T15:06:00.001-06:00

MikeW brought this to my attention; as always the fun is in the comments section. Paul Helinski of GunsAmerica threw the following hissy fit therein:

Now the question is when you are going to start qualifying internet media? We have to crawl over nobodies who can install wordpress and have nobody reading anything they write, It isn't so hard to qualify internet media using Alexa.com and Compete.com. Why do you waste the manufacturers' time and make the real internet media have to deal with wish I were internet journalists who are just using your stamp of approve to solicit review guns and accessories? You've created this giant gorilla in the room and we all have to deal with it, and you may think the industry takes your numbers seriously, but everyone sees things for what they are. If you are serious about bringing value to your exhibitors, you need to vet the press list.

He is, of course, fisked quite soundly in the comments section. Quite plainly, he fancies himself a big fish in a small pond, and moreover wants to drop in some dynamite to get rid of the minnows.

There's a problem with this, of course. This is the problem:

(Click for pretty much full size.)

There is a blog. You can see it up top, just to the left of Dealer Services, and on the left navigation bar, all the way down at the bottom. But it is obviously not the point of the website. And therein lies the problem. If the SHOT Show folks vetted their media badges the way Mr Helinski claims to desire, GunsAmerica would not make the cut.

See, Mr Helinski is correct that merely claiming to be a journalist does not make you one. By the same token, adding a blog to your company website doesn't make you a blogger, it makes you a marketer who somehow was given the idea that a blog was a nifty marketing tool. And it is...but in order for it to be an effective one, you have to interact not only with your readers and with the people whose products you want to market, you have to be able to positively interact with potential customers. And, duh, that means not alienating them by claiming you are oh-so-much-better than they.

I am not a gunblogger, nor do I play one on the Internet. I do not claim to be either a journalist or a marketer. I did take Journalism in high school, so I know the basics, and I pay enough attention to know marketing when I see it. Mr Helinski is a marketer--not a very good one, mind you, but a marketer. He is not a journalist. His blog serves to further the commercial aims of GunsAmerica as a whole. There is nothing wrong with that, but to proclaim that he's the Real Journalist® is patently false, no matter what college degree he might have. Bloggers like JayG have far better claim to journalism insofar as guns go, because that's what they do, on the Internet at least. Now, I think (though I'm not positive) that JayG is in sales in real life, so maybe if Mr Helinski asks nicely while they're both in Vegas, Jay can give him a few pointers on not showing your ass in public and alienating potential customers.

Dude, I'm finally doing something girly

2012-01-11T12:44:00.004-06:00

It's a long-standing joke between my best friend and I that I am more masculine than he is. Mainly because he's queer as a three dollar bill and I hate shaving, talking, and clothes.

I was reading over at Borepatch's blog yesterday, and found he linked to a blog post about manly drinks. In short: Old Fashioned, gin & tonic, and whiskey on the rocks.

The recipe for an Old Fashioned sounds a bit disgusting to me, especially with Borepatch's add-ons. I have a hearty dislike of mixed drinks that involve sugar and/or fruit. I couldn't resist some gentle teasing about putting oranges and cherries in the glass. As I said, the only produce I really like in my drink is olives (lime twists go on the edge of the glass; it's a fine line but I'll walk it).

The blogger he linked to has an odd hatred of martinis, long considered a classic and masculine cocktail. Oh, I realize that myriad flavored versions exist, but the second you add, say, chocolate liqueur it ceases to be a martini. Don't go hatin'!

I'm amused, mind you, that vodka is nowhere on the list. Too reminiscent of the Cold War? Nevertheless, its lack has convinced me that it must perforce be a feminine libation. And as that's the only alcohol I drink these days, it follows that I'm finally doing something typically female. And not a single giant fruity drink needed!

(There was also some discussion in the manly drinks post that Bud Light and other cheap beers are never, ever acceptable. My poor husband's misspent youth leapt immediately to mind. Is Natty Light girly?)

Progress!

2012-01-11T00:38:00.000-06:00

Well, I've accomplished one of my resolutions for the year. I cleared up all my unfinished projects from last year. This actually isn't as impressive as I'd like for it to sound: I wound up frogging (unraveling) three projects because I didn't keep good enough notes to know what I was trying to do with them, and that left me with about four projects to finish. So I was done rather quickly.

This picture isn't one of those projects. It's my first project for the new year. I'm trying to take things one project at a time, and since I just started my second try (first was lost in the move) of the Baby Surprise Jacket, it will be a while before I'm done with it. These, though, are leg warmers for Esther. One of the UFOs from last year were legwarmers for Bobbie, and Esther fell upon them immediately.

Of course, now that she has her own pair, she has lost interest. Unsurprising, that.

I suppose this should not surprise me…

2012-01-04T14:30:00.001-06:00

Just now, while listening to KTSA's news update, it was mentioned that a federal appeals court is hearing oral arguments today in regards to Texas' new law mandating sonograms and description of fetal heartbeat before an abortion.

Seems that some abortionists have a problem with this requirement, and claim it violates their free speech rights.

Informed consent violates doctors' free speech rights.

Forget, for a moment, that this is about abortion. My feelings on that subject are well known. Let's look at the other aspect of this: the law mandates that women be given all pertinent knowledge before agreeing to a surgical procedure. And a group of doctors is claiming that requiring them to fully inform their patients, rather than telling them just enough to gain their permission, is something they shouldn't have to do.

That's scary. Granted, it isn't at all uncommon for doctors to provide skewed information: certain facts are emphasized while others are glossed over. Sometimes outright lies are told. I have personally been on the receiving end of this more times than I can count, and if you are a parent, chances are almost 100% that you and/or your wife have been too, whether or not you realize it. (Did your wife have internal exams at the end of her pregnancy to check for dilation? Did the doctor inform her that these checks provided no useful information and put her at increased risk of infection?)

If this case is decided on these grounds, it WILL endanger patients. It will not stay within the confines of abortion. Doctors already feel free to lie to their patients. This is going to give them a legal precedent to back them up, and remove recourse for patients who will be pushed into poor decisions because of ill-informed consent.

Resolutions

2012-01-01T16:03:00.001-06:00

I actually don't make a habit of making January resolutions, but I've been thinking about doing so this year. There are a few things I want to accomplish, & public failure is always more entertaining (see my NaNoWriMo attempt, which almost worked). So, what the hell; I'll make 'em and share them here, in order to once again prove I'm not one of the cool kids who shuns such things.

And so:

2012 Resolutions

Keep track of all the books I read, including fiction, non-fiction, & Kindle ebooks. Post a monthly list on the blog.

Finish everything in my UFOs basket. Don't start anything new until I'm done. (This last part will be the hardest.)

Quit drinking my calories, with perhaps monthly exceptions for good beer or hot chocolate from McDonald's, & try to limit even that. I used to be very good about this, but last year I really screwed up. Damn McCafe and their yumminess.

Limit sweets/candy to twice a week, with the goal of getting it down to once every two weeks. This is something else I used to be very good about, but I lost the habit while pregnant with Esther. Yes, that long ago.

Work on limiting restaurant meals, with the goal of getting it down to only twice a week. I hate cooking breakfast and lunch, so this one will be hard. And yes, I realize twice a week sounds like a lot, but I do not want to abandon Wednesday night dinners out with the girls, or Sunday brunch dates with Erik.

Outline at least two of the three novels I have in my head, prioritize them, and get started on writing. November showed me that I can write every day if I make a point of it.

Go back to eating whole grains only as much as is practical, and limit myself to low-GI foods in general. Yet another dietary practice I used to have down pat.

Practice organization. This doesn't come easily to me, so I'm going to look on it as a work in progress.

Work on becoming a better parent: establish clear routines in regard to chores and bedtimes, learn to let shit go, more park outings (at least weekly), that sort of thing.
Potty train Marie. Shouldn't be too hard: she is kid number four, after all, & I've moved down the age of potty-training with each successive child so far. As long as I'm done with it by the time she's two, I'm considering it a success.

should

Not a lot of depth

2011-12-27T23:37:00.000-06:00

Reading Tam's post on the most-played songs on her iPod made me uncomfortably certain 'eclectic' was not a word that could in any way be applied to my own list. And, well, I was right:

Jesus is Cryin'
Finger on the Trigger
Don't Fade Away
American Saint
Back to You

(All of those are Bleu Edmondson. I would happily listen to that man sing the phone book.)

Another Like You, Hayes Carll and Carey Ann Hearst
The Echo
Another Morning After
You Call it Trouble

(More Bleu Edmondson.)

Long Gone to Saskatchewan, Corb Lund
Resurrection (Oh, hell, GUESS.)
Steer Rider's Blues
Horse Doctor Come Quick
Rye Whiskey/Time to Switch to Whiskey

(Those last three are also Corb Lund.)

What can I say? I like both kinds of music: country and western.

Really, I like to think of myself as a specialist. Erik? He's the generalist. I totally do not share his concerns with being thought to have broad tastes.

(Also, I'm kind of really not a technophile. I have four whole albums on my iPod right now. Once I get the computer thing addressed, I'll add the rest of the music on it, and more besides. But my most-played isn't going to get any more varied.)

Considering what happened the last time I did this...

2011-12-26T14:18:00.000-06:00

...I figured I'd better be more selective in my choice of politicians.

(For context, see here.)

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T12:14:00.001-06:00

I don't normally do this

2011-12-23T20:41:00.000-06:00

Yesterday and today have been a great orgy of candy making and baking. My output isn't as impressive as some folks', certainly, but for me it's hefty and unusual:

That's the haul. Clockwise from top: fudge, chocolate chip peanut butter cookie, cracker toffee, bread, & a butter cookie.

Recipes: (& apologies if these display funky; I'm blogging from my iPod)
Hershey's cocoa powder fudge Saltine cracker toffee
Brown Sugar Peanut Butter Cookies (I used the listed ingredients, stirred in a cup of chocolate chips, & baked in a 400-degree oven, in bar form.)
Butter Cookies (I used 1/3 c. less flour than called for.)

You'll notice there's no link to a bread recipe. That's because I didn't use one. I haven't bothered with a recipe for bread in years. It's one of those things I can just make now, like meatloaf or chicken soup.

But yeah, I don't normally do this. All this Christmas baking. I sure didn't last year! I don't remember the last time I baked this much. Hell, I don't recall the last time I baked cookies from scratch, period. This can only mean one thing:

LIFE IS GOOD!

Never a dull moment…

2011-12-20T15:06:00.000-06:00

I mentioned before that we're back in the trailer park for a while. Well, this place is just as weird as ever. Case in point:

Yesterday morning, we were awoken by the owner of the park banging on our door. Seems someone had cut open the gate of the shop up front and stolen the trailer his DeLorean was on.

Note that I did not say "stole his DeLorean".

See, what they did was drop the car back behind the back row of trailers, about as far back as they could get. There are only two trailers in this row, and they dropped it at the other end. We didn't hear anything, or if we did, we didn't mark it as unusual, because weird shit happens all the time. I looked out the window a couple of weeks ago when I heard a funny noise and there was a flippin' 18-wheeler slowly driving by. So I pretty much ignore funny noises.

The gal in the other trailer, though, did see them--but of course at the time didn't realize what was going on.

Well, they came back this morning, apparently around 0300, & spent about three hours here working to steal a big gooseneck trailer that was in the field back behind this row of trailers. (There's a lot of random stuff back there, & the dirt roads are blocked off by huge piles of dirt and/or what appears to be the housing for sewage pipes. Due to the rain, the ground is muddy and soft, so much so that one of the cars involved in the brawl here yesterday afternoon got stuck. I only wish I was making that up.)

Now, I did hear an engine this morning and remember thinking muzzily that I really ought to look outside and see what was going on, but surely it could not be more chicanery a second day in a row, & so I went back to sleep. Clearly, I am not the person you want protecting your property. Not when I'm running on only a few hours' sleep, anyway.

So they almost got away with it. Unluckily for them, the woman next door is an early riser, and THIS time she knew what was going on, & so called 911. Apparently property theft interests the BCSO more than a brawl, because they came right out and caught the bad guys red-handed.

It might relieve you to know that the beer truck was never in danger.

Enjoy while you can...

2011-12-16T13:24:00.001-06:00

Christmas break started at 11:30 today. I'm sure by this time on Monday I will be threatening to leash them outside the school to await 2nd January, but right now I'm enjoying having them with me.

That did not end well

2011-12-09T18:44:00.001-06:00

NaNoWriMo, that is. Y'know that cardinal rule of computing? The one that reads "Always back your shizz up"? Yeah. I didn't exactly do that, so when Erik's computer bit it, so did my novel-in-a-month hopes.

And I was ahead, too.

In other news, I survived Fall semester, albeit barely, & with the hounds of burnout nipping at my heels.

I have not had the chance to hit Altex to look for computer bits yet, but I do appreciate all the advice. I'll either get a replacement clip (even if it means buying a new ribbon) and get it on myself or pay someone to do it for me...and then be lost in wonder of a full-size screen once again.

At least I'm getting plenty of reading done!

One Upmanship

2011-12-03T10:42:00.001-06:00

I'm gonna outdo the War on Christmas.

You know how every year around this time the Religious Right starts up on those eeevilll liberals and how it's just wrong that they say Happy Holidays? Because, of course, retail salespeople should know exactly what holiday each of their customers celebrates and greet them appropriately. Or maybe it's because no holidays other than Christmas occur during December (well, other than Hannukah & Bodhi day, but those were made up to steal attention from Christmas amirite).

At any rate, I'm told that the only proper greeting right now is "Merry Christmas", because it's Christmastime, dammit! Only...it isn't. See, the Christmas season doesn't start until December 25th. The season leading up to the second-holiest Christian holiday of the year is Advent, dammit.

Ergo, anyone who makes a point of telling you Merry Christmas is not only an insufferable asshole, they're wrong. I hereby encourage all right-thinking Christians to stand up to the scourge of religious revisionism and combat the War on Advent.

'Tis the season to be a dumbass

2011-12-01T19:58:00.000-06:00

So I was driving home from dropping the kids off at school this morning, & listening to WOAI's Charlie Parker and they started talking about the Arizona gun club that was offering its members the opportunity to pose for pictures with a Barrett machine gun, Santa, & their choice of other weapons. It was all well and good until Charlie Parker introduced his guest...a licensed clinical social worker with a psych degree.

Now, I suppose it's possible that they proceeded to discuss how it's perfectly normal for enthusiasts of any given hobby to want to exhibit that in their Christmas cards, so don't read this as a rip on WOAI's First News (although I'm forced to note that Mr Parker wasn't inclined toward logic on the topic of Campus Carry). But seriously--you had to call in a bottom-of-the-line psychologist to discuss tacky Santa photos? Really?

I told my mother that, the next thing you know, the Corvette Club was gonna offer photos with Santa Claus and a 'Vette, & sure enough, they do.(That photo is from their '09 event.).

See, this is the thing that a lot of people seem to be missing with this "news" story. Shooting is a hobby for most people who own guns. Yeah, there are survivalist hardasses out there, and crazies, but the guys you have to worry about are NOT the ones engaging in such outrageously silly behavior as posing for pictures with Santa with borrowed assault rifles.

I am well aware, mind you, of the fact that at least half the reason these pictures are being done at all is that it's guaranteed to get a rise out of idiots. I propose, in fact, that these pictures be used as an idiot test. It's one question long, and pretty much foolproof--

You see a picture of a family and Santa Claus. All the adults are armed, and a machine gun is in the foreground. Are these people:
A) playing an elaborate practical joke
B) probably rednecks
C) shooting hobbyists
D) in need of psychological evaluation

Answer D? Congratulations, you're a fucking idiot.

Just leave

2011-11-27T15:06:00.001-06:00

One of my Facebook friends shared a link to a story from Single Dad Laughing today. I tried reading it, but I cannot stand the fellow's writing style, so I didn't get very far. From the part I did bull through, however, I gathered that Danoah has this friend and this friend is gay and Danoah is the ONLY person to stay his friend after finding out the dude is gay. Now, I'll confess that a part of me questions whether this is really true, but for argument's sake let's say it is. This is my message to Danoah's gay friend:

Leave. Now. Beg, borrow, or steal the money for a bus ticket. Go to NYC or San Francisco or Vermont or Austin of San Antonio. Or any one of the numerous other cities with a thriving gay community. Better to live on the street somewhere you are accepted (or at least not hated) than to live in the nicest house in a town full of intolerant hillbillies.

See, it's not so much that it gets better. It's that it is better. But it's an uneven sort of better, and like all good things, it doesn't actually come to those who wait. You have to figure out what is better for you and then move toward it. It's just how life works.

Is there something to be said for working towards change where you are? Oh, sure. But again, there's that word: work. I tried that "sit tight and have faith" thing in my first marriage, and you know what? It accomplished nothing.

These are your choices:
1) Stay where you are, and speak out. Live your life unapologetically, make waves when people try to treat you like shit, and as the saying goes, be the change you want to see in the world. I highly doubt you are the only homosexual in your area, so find the others and work together with them to build a community and lend one another strength and use the strength that lies in numbers to effect change.
2) Leave. This doesn't sound as noble as choice number one, but believe me when I say it is a valid choice. Maybe you have no taste for activism. Maybe you would become a target for a hate crime if you came out and spoke up. I get both of those, really I do. But just as there are pockets of absolute intolerance in this country, there are areas where you will be accepted, and many, many more where no one will give a damn who you are and what you do. Get yourself to one of them. Otherwise, you are left with option
3) Stay where you are, and do nothing. Live in fear of losing friends if they find out who you are. Never have a boyfriend or a husband/partner because that would lead to ostracism. Stay in the closet to avoid conflict lest you fall victim to a crime at the hands of a homophobe. Never be you, never live your life, and sink into an incurable depression because your life really IS that bad. Bemoan the mean people who won't change around you magically. Die earlier than you should, either at your own hand, or someone else's, or just from the sorrow of a worthless life.

Is the choice really that hard to make?

Kids these days

2011-11-27T10:32:00.001-06:00

Continuing with the mobile-ish blogging, it occurs to me that I can add photos fairly easily (though I have no clue where it's going to wind up in the finished post). So prepare for a bunch of sappy kid blogging.

The picture in this post is a Marie creation. She is fascinated by my iPod touch. The tag line on her Twitter account says she is "possibly the world's most technologically advanced baby", and while that's an exaggeration it's no longer much of one. I try to keep my kids on a pretty strict no-tech diet while they're young, but this child makes her own rules.

Some day I will be frustrated by her headstrong nature, but right now it's adorable.

Where's my Cadillac?

2011-11-22T19:31:00.003-06:00

The downside of being an also-ran in the blog field (I get 80 to 90 visits a day, most days) is that I only attract second rate trolls.

Good trolls, of course, are the ones who actually read your posts and base their rantings off what you've written. Their arguments are full of logical fallacies, but at least they *are* arguments. Bad trolls are the ones who resort immediately to ad hominem attacks without bothering to ground them at all in reality.

The second kind is the one I merit. Le sigh. My general policy toward trolling comments is to publish them and mock them, but I've about reached the end of my rope with the current troll, 'cause damn, it's like s/he's not even trying. I think from now on I'm going to require a certain level of reading comprehension & a better level of insults than the accusation that I'm popping out baby after baby while collecting a wide variety of welfare...'cause, yeah. Not even close.

But dude, if I'm a welfare queen, I want my Cadillac. I've heard tell we all have them.

Well, that bites

2011-11-22T17:29:00.001-06:00

Some time ago, my computer got water spilled on the keyboard, & then got Diet Coke spilled on the keyboard. I finally ordered a replacement from Amazon & got it switched out. Great, right? Only, the only thing I didn't know was that the ribbon that attaches the power button to the comp itself was likely to be pulled loose when I pulled off the faceplate to switch out keyboards. So that happened. And I couldn't get it back together, so Erik suggested taking it to a repair shop. I figured what the hey, they couldn't mess it up too bad, right? All they had to do was put it back together, a task I could almost accomplish myself.

So Erik took my laptop up the road to Rico's World (God, sometimes a business name SHOULD be a fucking clue.) and after being very patient and allowing them to have my computer for THREE FUCKING DAYS with no contact, Erik went to ask them what the fuck was up, & they said they hadn't been able to do it because I hadn't included the little clip that holds down the ribbon in question. Only, I had, because I am not a fucking idiot and it was obviously necessary. So I can only guess that they lost this vital part and my darling husband agreed with them that I would have done something so colossally stupid, & instead of calling them out on it just brought my non-working computer home. So I now have a $430 paperweight.

None of which I would bother blogging about but for this: at the same time my keyboard got fried, we started to have problems with his. The power adaptor wouldn't charge, & it fit kind of loosely & the battery was badly in need of replacing. He'd wanted to get a new one, but I asked him to wait until we got everything else we needed to get because he wants to replace one Mac with another and dammit you could buy a Kimber for that much. So he decided to buy a new adaptor and battery and swapped them out and for a while it was all good. Then it started being finicky about charging again.

So yesterday I went to turn on his computer and it wouldn't work. I noticed it was unplugged so I figured the battery had run down and plugged it in. The light wouldn't come on at all, so I checked the surge bar and did all the usual things & about that time realized it smelled kinda funky. You know the smell. I figured at that point we were probably fucked but turned it over to him.

Long story slightly shorter, we now have about $1630 worth of high tech paperweights. So blogging is gonna be touch and go for a while.

Writing Stuff: Character Cards

2011-11-17T22:48:00.000-06:00

Surprisingly, I am actually still on track with NaNoWriMo. As of this moment, I have written 27,750 words (I'm going back to writing once I'm done with this blog post), out of 50,000 due for the month. Some of it will be cut in revision, but I think most of it's usable. We'll see.

I decided to participate on a whim, when a former Creative Writing classmate sent me an invite to NaNo on Facebook on Halloween.

I have had this novel idea kicking around in my head for a while now--I am using the opening image I wrote about here, in fact, though not in this exact form--so I am not starting from absolute scratch.

I like to outline, and had good luck using Holly Lisle's notecarding idea, slightly modified for use with a first person set-up. I started out doing that--and wound up abandoning it, by the way, because I couldn't get the story to coalesce--and decided to take a brief detour to get my characters straight.

Now, character sheets are one of those things I think are tremendously helpful. Unfortunately, they are also one of those things that lend themselves to being procrastination helpers. This template, for example, has 18 sections, with 31 questions in the first two sections alone. (I was going to count them all, but I got bored quickly.) This one, from actual published author Charlotte Dillon, is nearly as bad--there are only six sections, but the first section has 25 things to fill out all on its own, and there's also a freaking list of interview questions for you to ask your main characters.

And while some of this stuff is certainly important, and I agree that you need to know at least your protagonist inside and out, much of it is unimportant crap. Exactly what's crap varies by author, admittedly, but one thing that is in both of those character sheets which I really question the value of is astrological sign. Unless your character is very superstitious, and your world is exactly the one we live in now--or you're plagiarizing "Symbols Are a Percussion Instrument"--stopping to figure out whether your protagonist is a Sagittarius or a Libra is not going to add anything to your understanding of your character. (I strongly suspect the reason behind this is to help you craft strongly clichèd characters. No need for an actual personality when you can crib traits from an astrological chart!)

Still, I wanted something. And I had these index cards. So I decided to make character cards. Like so ('scuse the shitty iPod pic; it's all I've got right now):

You can see what I did here. Top has the character's name as she's usually referred to in the novel, then you get the full name, age, job title, etc. For the most part, I've left off labels, and not worried myself about little flubs (yeah--regional magical examiner isn't RMI).

Here's the one for her sidekick:

You can see that the information is a bit different here, because different things are important about this character.

Two new things for me: Every character has a well-defined failing and an equally well-defined goal. Basic stuff, but I haven't been writing it down; instead I've been winging it, and I don't think that works as well.

Duh, right?

I like this format. It forces me to keep things short, it's flexible (I have things in different order on one or two of the others), and it's handy. I may not have a clue what Deontay's star sign is, but it's okay because he doesn't either.

If you're more than mildly curious, I'm going to drop the first page of writing in behind a break. That way if you want to read it, you can; if you don't, you won't have to do a lot of scrolling to get to the next post.

Still here? Cool. I like this opening. I'm breaking a couple of rules here, but I think it flows well. Here ya go:

Everyone seems to think graveyards are a great place to find ghosts. They couldn’t be more wrong. Think about it for a minute. If you were a ghost, where would you want to spend eternity—near the people and places you loved while alive, or in a park filled with nothing but graves and other dead things?

Ghosts aren’t as common as everyone seems to think, either. For one, a person has to really want to stay around to turn into a ghost, and most souls want to move on to the next thing. For another, embalming a corpse seems to stop the ghost from sticking around. I think it makes it impossible for a soul to recognize its earthly remains.

It was a very specific set of circumstances, then, that led Deontay and me to stand in an East Side cemetery shortly before sunset, hoping to find a ghost. After three days, a soul will move on from its body—usually to the Afterlife, but sometimes to an Earthly residence. Guessing where that ghost will wind up is tricky, so trying to catch it before then is a good idea. If it turns out to be a ghost at all.

Murder victims? They are pretty likely to ghost up. Hilda Mueller had been ripped to shreds on the access road of I-10, just outside of Columbus, Texas. An Orthodox Jew, she had not been embalmed, and had been buried the day after her death. I figured my chances of finding a ghost were pretty good.

Beth-El cemetery is one of many in a very small area on San Antonio’s East Side. They are the oldest in the city, oddly located in a rundown area of town. Most of the cemeteries are pretty run-down themselves, with knocked over stones and smashed statuary, but Beth-El and the other Jewish cemetery are in excellent repair, fully fenced, festooned with security cameras, and the recipients of regular landscaping. They are crowded little cemeteries, though, with graves nearly touching and high hedges hemming it all in claustrophobically.

Hilda Mueller’s grave was improbably located near the center of the cemetery. There was not yet a headstone, only a temporary marker from the funeral home. Small and black, the only notation on it was ‘H. Mueller.’ She had been only 42, barely old enough to begin considering her own mortality; nowhere near old enough to think about pre-ordering a tombstone. Raw dirt covered the grave, tamped down but already cracking from ever-present summer drought. I sat cross-legged in the grass just beyond the dirt’s edge. Deontay Williams, my self-appointed partner, stood behind me doing his best G-man right down to black suit, thin tie, and right hand clasped around his left wrist.

“Vangie? Think we can get this show on the road soon?”

Funny thing? I’m the federal employee. I’m with the Office of Magical Investigations; the Regional Magical Examiner for South and West Texas. My name is Evangeline Aldrich, or “Please don’t shoot me,” if you’re nasty.

Oh, but they MEAN well.

2011-11-14T20:04:00.001-06:00

Years ago, my ex-husband and I were visiting a friend of his, Larry Barksdale. Larry was a hell of a character, and drunk most of the time when he wasn't on the boat, which made for a great deal of entertainment. Anyway, we were sitting there in Larry's living room in Groton, and for some reason he was going on about the cook on board the Miami, where he was then stationed, and said of the fellow: "He means well. Of course Hitler meant well. Stalin meant well."

I was thinking about that the other day while reading Marko's post on lawmakers and policy, and was reminded of it again this morning when reading the comments on a friend's Facebook link. Said friend linked the following story and said that she found it distressing:

Police arrest Chapel Hill protesters who occupied vacant business.

A police tactical team of more than 25 police officers arrested eight demonstrators Sunday afternoon and charged them with breaking and entering for occupying a vacant car dealership on Franklin Street.

Officers brandishing guns and semi-automatic rifles rushed the building at about 4:30 p.m. They pointed weapons at those standing outside, and ordered them to put their faces on the ground. They surrounded the building and cleared out those who were inside.
About 13 people, including a New & Observer staff writer covering the demonstration, were forced to the ground and hand-cuffed.

snip

The group, who identified themselves as "anti-capitalist occupiers" moved into the former University Chrysler and Yates Motor Co. building at 419 W. Franklin St. on Saturday night, the police statement said.

The brick and cinderblock building with large windows fronting the sidewalk is owned by out-of-town businessman Joe Riddle and has stood empty for many years. One demonstrator said they were acting in the tradition of working-class squatters' movements around the world that some say inspired the Occupy Wall Street movement and its offshoots across the United States.
The group printed a flier that proposed a possible new use for the space that would include a free clinic, kitchen, child care, library and dormitories, among other uses. The flier acknowledged they were breaking the law by entering the building.

"Make no mistake: this occupation is illegal," it said, "as are most of the other occupations taking place around the U.S., as were many of the other acts of defiance that won the little freedom and equality we appreciate today."

The reaction, unsurprisingly, was not exactly sympathetic to the lawbreakers. I've always been of the opinion that if you're going to break the law, you better have a damned good reason to do so, and "we wanted the building" just isn't a good enough reason.

There was one person, however, who took umbrage. The protesters, she pointed out, were planning to set up a clinic, daycare, and library at the building. They meant well, in other words. Their intent, to borrow Marko's phrase, trumps their results.

Only, it doesn't. Not for those of us who live in the real world. The folks who broke into the building may well have intended good things by breaking the law, but when you break the law, oddly enough the police tend to take a real dim view of your actions. And so do most law-abiding citizens. Breaking into a vacant building and trashing it are things that reasonable people frown upon. No one should be shocked at this.

(On a side note: Most people probably greet their spouse first thing in the morning with a kiss and or by saying "Good Morning". Me? I greet my husband by saying, "You know, if the Occupy folks had more intelligence, they'd use Kelo v. New London as proof of their argument.")

She's on the move!

2011-11-13T15:06:00.001-06:00

This is a re-enactment.

Miss Marie has been playing a game with us for a few months now. She started standing up at 8 months, and since about 10 months has pretty much refused to sit down unless strapped down.

So of course at this point the question becomes "When is she going to walk?" Her sisters were all over the map. Bobbie and Esther both walked at 13 months, but Linda started walking at 10 months (adjusted age 9 months--she was born early). I really, really thought she was going to beat or tie Linda, but it became obvious that wasn't going to happen. So I resigned myself to waiting.

Well, the month or so she's been taking about a half a step here and there. Putting one foot forward and leaning, but never completing the step. At the same time she's been cruising like crazy--holding on to the walls and chairs and the beds and the girls' dollhouses and taking little sideways steps.

So I've been chivvying her to come on and walk to me. Doing the typical mom thing of standing about two steps away and dangling something she wants. And she'd reach out her arms and lean forward and fuss a little, maybe scootch one foot forward, but then she'd always drop down to her hands and knees and crawl. (She's fast too, which is why I think she's not started walking sooner).

And then, earlier today...We were in the bedroom. Erik was sitting in the beanbag chair he bought with this computer in his lap, and I was lying on the bed with my iPod, and the baby was playing on the floor between us. She stood up with this holster in her hand (it's been empty for a while), looked at her Daddy, and nonchalantly walked over to him to hand it to him. And I'm not talking "took a step or two" and then fell over, I'm talking "took three or four steps in a row and then reached her destination." (And can I just say how hilarious I found it that her first walk was to give Daddy something for his gun? That's how you know you're a gun nut's daughter, folks.)

I had a feeling she was going to do something like this. She's a careful little thing. She'll consider something for a while before doing it, and so to see her suddenly stand up and start walking like it ain't no thing? Totally not surprising.

Nor was it surprising when she decided to repeat her walking performance standing on the bed and going after something she wasn't supposed to have. Guess she thought she'd be so cute I'd let her have whatever she wanted. (Sorry, girlie, that's not one of the perks of being the fourth kid!)

So now I have a sort-of toddler. She has walked twice so far, which is definitely enough to count, but she of course won't do it when I want her to, so I haven't been able to get any video yet. But it will come. I do think she'll be a lot like Linda, in that now she's got her feet underneath her, she's going to be running very soon.

The Triumphant Return of Sunday Song!

2011-11-13T09:08:00.000-06:00

(AKA: Sunday Song #10, since I somehow skipped straight to #11 earlier...)

In so many ways, this is easier than an actual, well-thought-out post, and it gets something new up.

Now, I've never made any secret of the fact that when it comes to country music, I prefer my songs sad. There's a simple reason for this: no other genre does it better these days.

This week's song is from an artist I've been really hard on in the past--Charla Corn. Her '09 album More Than I Should had one questionable song after another on it, especially "She Ain't Always Been an Angel" and "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?" It was vapid pop country, undeserving of the Red Dirt label, and I frankly dismissed her as another candidate for Nashville's Interchangeable Blondes stable.

What made it bad for me was that she did release a couple of pretty good songs from that first album--"Lie A Little" and "Break My Heart Tonight" were both enjoyable, and a sign to me that she could do so much better than songs about drunken coeds and male grooming habits.

Fast forward to late 2011, and it's like I've stepped through the looking glass musically. Miranda Lambert is singing dreck like "Baggage Claim" and (with her girl group) "Hell on Heels", slipping down Nashville's primrose path of vacuousness even quicker than I ever thought she could. Charla Corn, on the other hand, is proving to be the anti-Sunny Sweeney.

She's got a new album or EP or something, I am sure, although the only mention of it I can find online is from Farce the Music, a parody cover which hopefully has zero to do with whatever the actual cover is. Anyway, there have been a couple of new songs from Ms Corn on the radio lately (by radio, I of course mean KFWR's live stream), and strangely enough, not only have I not wanted to punch her in the throat when listening to them, I actually kind of like them.

Especially this one. It's a life on the road song, and although she looks too perfect in the video for it to be wholly believable, it's still a great, sad, bluesy country song:

Meanwhile, back at at the farm...

2011-11-12T15:34:00.001-06:00

I'm writing over 1500 words a day for NaNoWriMo, and this blog has sadly fallen behind on account of that. I'll try to get better at it. For now, though, in lieu of actual content, enjoy this conversation between my best friend & I on iMessage:

I said it seemed that X had named her daughter the WASPyest name she could find.

Ah, and that would be spot on.

L___ and S____...Golden Retrievers, or Irish Setters?

I know, right?

Well-bred doggies, anyway.

My aunt, Mamie, who is 94 (and who I thought was dead) is ill.

It probably is a bad thing when you tell everyone your baby's name and they start talking about the family pooch they had with that name.

Oh? I've had a few relatives like that.

I am endlessly amazed how long people in my family hang on. Given the decades of smoking, drinking and high heels...to say nothing of a diet composed almost entirely of bacon, it's a miracle she's even moving.

Yes, exactly--it's like naming your child Max, Scout, or Get out of my azaleas.

Which, incidentally, would be the name of Demi's next child, if she were not currently 67 years old.

Oh, have you noticed what S____ E____ named her chilluns?

Uh-oh. No. What?

Hold on. Gotta look it up again to ensure I get the spelling/punctuation correct.

E'M___-A___, E'L___-J___, & E____.

Uh, huh?

I have a sudden headache, and I am never sending them birthday cards--well, maybe to J___.

I can't help but wonder if E___ will feel cheated out of an apostrophe when she grows up.

E'L___-J___, you mean.

I think she'll just be glad people don't mistake her for an app.

LOL. I need to figure out if snails will go well with sautèed portabello on a salad. It'll be like they're playing in a garden. As they did before the dirty Frenchman took them away.

Her name should totes be like E'M___-Shanique or something.

OMG, that needs to be your Facebook status.

The Shanique would need a hyphen, apostrophe, or umlaut.

No, not as the second name.

True, true.

We have two watermelons.

I have a vague desire to do my Pandora Peaks impersonation.

You need fried chicken. Some racist stereotypes are yummy.

I wholeheartedly agree, but we only get fried chicken on Tuesdays, when a two-piece is 99 cents at Chatman's.

They have some damn good yardbird.

They do indeed.

This watermelon is like sex on the beach.

Fermented and headache-inducing?

Really sweet and totally regrettable.

(We'll be here all week. Try the veal. Or the chicken, if it's Tuesday.)

What's not to love?

2011-11-08T22:06:00.001-06:00

I'm participating in NaNoWriMo, that zany 30 days wherein a bunch of people try to write a 50,000 word novel. I'm actually trying to use it as a jumping-off point. Unbelievably to me, I am actually on course; granted, it is only day 8, but the last time I tried this (2006) I had already fallen well behind.

The picture above is a screenshot of the Reference Desk forum on the NaNoWriMo site's fora. Take a look at some of those thread titles--Stomach kicked by a stiletto shoe? Help, stomach stabbing assistance needed... A query for anyone with testicles The fora are half the fun!

Oh, also, there is this, from just a second ago:

If you excuse rape, you are not a feminist.

2011-11-04T16:50:00.000-05:00

I'd like to think that goes without saying, y'know? But apparently I have to say it, because just yesterday I had a woman tell me that I should not discount the Occupy America protesters because of a few rapes.

Of course, the outright hypocrisy of Progressive "feminists" has been well documented over the years. Look at their enduring love of Bill Clinton, who is definitely a harasser if not an outright rapist.

Still--and maybe this is some vestige of youthful naivete showing--I had figured that four sexual assaults in three cities (that I have been able to track down online sources for), tied together by the fact that they happened at these Occupy protests, would be enough to give any woman pause.

Obviously, I was wrong.

I will reproduce my links here, in case anyone who comes across this blog wants proof. Now, I realize that yes, some women falsely report rapes, but the truth is that the number of rapes and other sexual assaults that go unreported far outstrips the false claims. In the NYC cases, there are two women accusing the same man, and they made the accusations at different times, independent of one another, which makes it that much less likely they're lying. Anyway, here are my links. You will notice that only one of these comes from a right wing source; I included it only because there is a video report from a local newscast embedded:

The Rape of a Protestor: Occupy Wall Street New York City
Tonye Iketubosin Arrested At Occupy Wall Street For Alleged Rape and Sexual Assault
Rape Alleged at Occupy Cleveland
Emotional Interview: Alleged Occupy Baltimore Rape Victim Says Activists Refused to Help

Oh, hey, I followed a link from that last one up there and found another rape, this one of a 14-year-old:

Police Investigating Possible Sexual Assault Of Teen At Occupy Dallas

Look, y'all know I said to begin with that we should concentrate on our similarities with the Occupy America folks. I'm far from the only person to note that there is some crossover between OWS and the Tea Party. Only...well, the Tea Partiers have managed to protest for quite some time now without raping anybody. I think that's pretty significant.

I cannot support any group which harbors rapists, especially when it has been widely documented that they are discouraging proper reporting of these crimes. That is so anti-woman it is flat disgusting. The only thing worse is any woman excusing this behavior because it's only a few people.

I don't care if it is only a few people. The proper response to repeated sexual assaults isn't to claim ignorance, as so many OWS supporters are doing, or to flat-out repudiate it, as I have also had happen. It isn't to blame it on infiltrators--there's no such thing as infiltrators when you allow anyone to come play. It sure as hell isn't to pressure women to let the crimes be handled internally. It is to repudiate those who excuse it and prosecute those who do it to the fullest extent of the law. It is to walk the victim to speak with the police and to stay by her side to ensure a rape kit is done, thereby increasing the chances she will see justice done.

Anything else is simply unacceptable, and the fact that I have to spell this out is fucking ridiculous.

Those of y'all who read my husband's blog

2011-11-03T17:34:00.000-05:00

He hasn't posted much lately 'cause he's been sound asleep or away from home gettin' shit done every minute he's not at work. Third shift, by the way, is a bitch. He's in the home stretch of training for the new job, which means an extra 15 minutes at work each day AND is fixin' to translate out to working 8 days without a day off.

We wound up buying a Durango on Tuesday. Not a planned-for purchase, but the truck smells funny & was starting to steam out the vents AND the plug on his blog is a result of yet another freeway blowout, so it was either keep pouring money into the truck or get something with no problems that everyone actually fits in, so we went with that since we were able to put a substantial down payment on it.

Can't tell you exactly when he'll be back at it, but he got hisself a portable magic elf box free on upgrade and maybe I can browbeat him into downloading a Wordpress app (there is such a thing, right?) and blogging on his lunch break or something.

The Myth of Equality

2011-10-31T14:25:00.000-05:00

I have been doing a lot of thinking on this lately, prompted of course by the OWS folks. Like I said, I've got a soft spot for hippies, so I want to be on their side, and I started out very sympathetic. Now, though, I am frustrated and annoyed. It doesn't seem to me like very many of these protesters are really living in the real world.

This is actually a pretty common theme of mine, as y'all who are regular readers will know. I'm on the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder, and though I see some room for improvement (improvements I can make, thankyouverymuch), the truth is there's no amount of money that is enough to be worth it to me to miss out on the armful of baby I have at this very time.

There are people in this country who define success as making $X, and set out to reach that level of their career. These are the kids who go to the right schools and study the right subjects and make smart decisions the whole way, eventually entering a field that is in high demand. If they have an interest in creative pursuits, these things are pursued in their spare time--what they want to do and what they need to do are carefully balanced.

Then there are people in this country who define success as living X kind of life. I am among those people. The things that are truly important to me--being a mom, having a good family, being creative--do not have a monetary value. You see a variant of this from a lot of artists and musicians. They decide to live their passions and build their lives around chasing their art. Sure, success is hoped for, but it's more about getting their stuff out there than anything else. The need to earn money is recognized begrudgingly, and is pursued only to the extent necessary to fuel creative pursuits. These are need/need folks--art or family is as necessary as breathing, and the need for money takes a distant second place. There's little balance, if any.

It seems to me that most of the OWS crowd is made up of a subset of the Type II people, the creatives. They've pursued their dreams, and that's okay, but for some damn reason they failed to notice that doing so was going to prevent them from achieving the same level of monetary success as the Type I people.

Part of this is, I think, a societal problem. American culture is very, very consumerist. Look at how many of our beloved kids' shows/cartoons are thinly veiled toy commercials--and this has been true as long as there has been television. It is even worse now than before, of course, with Disney Corp. sending reps to hospital rooms to visit new moms with Disney-branded gifts, and the pressure continues throughout life. The way people act, you'd think everybody and his brother has a smart phone, and here I sit without a cell phone at all (and I like it that way--can't be expected to talk to people without a phone!). Day after day we're presented with a list of must-haves. We must own our own house, or it's throwing money away; we must have a new car, and if we're parents it has to be a Toyota Sienna or we hate our kids; we must have a hi-def TV and DVR and Wii; our kids must have a certain preschool and after school activities and classes and...and...and...

And Type II people? They can't afford this shit. Not unless they're living way outside their means. Of course, y'all were rolling your eyes through the last paragraph, because of course we don't need all that shit. None of us does. We need food, clothing, shelter, and some way to relax, yes, but who is to say that the food has to be from Whole Foods, the clothing from the mall, etc?

It's as though none of these people ever grew up. I can have some sympathy for the twentysomethings, 'cause maybe they just haven't matured enough yet. But there are older people there too, people who profess concern for their grandkids.

Too bad they never thought to break the cycle of consumerism with their children. To, as Dave Ramsey says, change their family tree.

There's no guarantee of equal outcomes. There shouldn't be. I've seen a saying, supposedly an Einstein quote, floating around a lot lately: "Everyone's a genius. But if you measured a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it would go its whole life believing itself a failure." By the same token, a creative type measuring his or her success by bank balance is using the wrong measuring stick.

(Tomorrow, or in a couple of days, I'll talk about Equality of Beginning, because it's much more important for achieving the balance Leftists claim to want.)

Somehow, I didn't think equality would look like this...

2011-10-26T16:56:00.002-05:00

Erik and I stopped off at BJ's Brewpub for lunch (one of those places that can be really overpriced or reasonable, depending on which part of the menu you order from). They had quite a few TVs, and I happened to glance up at the one on the wall in front of our booth at just the wrong right time and saw an ad for what I can only call Spanx for men. I didn't catch the brand name, but the commercial was obvious in its purpose--plenty of shots of beer bellies flattened out, complete with fawning women lovingly running their hands over the spandexed expanse of their man's torso.

Given that the sound was off, I can only assume they were saying "Welcome to my hell, sucker."

Folks, when I said I wanted more equitable grooming expectations, I didn't mean that men should become just as burdened with idiotic societal strictures. This trend has been developing for years, though, so I can't say I'm really surprised. Annoyed? Yes. Disappointed? Yep. Saddened, even? Sigh. Yeah.

On government and religion

2011-10-25T23:33:00.000-05:00

The fiction that America is a Christian nation and was founded as such has always left me nonplussed. I suppose it comes from a shoddy understanding of history--thinking that the Pilgrims were the first settlers or some such, rather than the folks in Jamestown (at the behest of a corporation--don't tell the OWS crowd!) (And yes, I am talking solely about British settlement here; after all, we didn't gain our independence from Spain.)

This entry is prompted by my husband's post a couple of days ago about the role of the First Amendment, and a comment claiming that it was aimed only at preventing any one sect of Christianity from becoming the state religion, rather than ensuring a truly free exercise of any religion or none at all.

I have known for years now that people believed this sort of thing, but I don't think I'd ever seen it so close up before.

Listen, it's not true. There's no reason to believe that this nation is a purposely Christian one. Given that Thomas Jefferson, perhaps the most influential man when it comes to our earliest government documents, vociferously rejected Christ's divinity--and therefore, by definition, was not Christian--it is beyond me how anyone could believe that. Then again, there are people out there who seem to think that Jefferson, Franklin, et al were devout Christians, in spite of stuff like:

"Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."

(source)

and

As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think his system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes, and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, some doubts as to his divinity; though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble.

(source)

Yet, even with all this evidence to the contrary--and these are primary sources, folks, some people persist in believing that a respect for Christ's teachings equates with worship of Him, and that Christianity should be what America does.

It should not.

Look, if you get a group of Christians in a room together, if they are not of the same denomination, you will run into disagreements. Sometimes vehement ones. Catholics don't think priests should marry, Baptists don't think women should be ordained, Quakers ascribe to complete pacifism, and we Episcopalians quarrel amongst ourselves even on the parish level.

If America is a Christian nation, pray tell which sect of Christianity is it?

I think if the people who think we should be/are officially Christian took a good look at the predominant denominations in Revolutionary America and their modern incarnations, they'd be much slower to say we should go ahead and establish Christianity.

Let me walk you through a thought exercise:

Say that we had adopted, as a state religion, the American version of our parent country's state religion. (And really, that's what would have happened.) We would have the Church of America, and it would be the ECUSA.

Can we take a look at the ECUSA? Right now, we have:

A female presiding bishop (head of the church in America)--who is, by the way, a scientist
A gay bishop
A lesbian bishop
Female bishops and priests aplenty
Full communion for homosexuals

Does anyone really think the far right would be happy with the state religion right now?

Moreover, as I have said time and again, the thought of religion in government should scare the shit out of the devout just as much as it does the atheist. Because you cannot have religion in government without having the government in religion.

Think about that. Right now, churches and other places of worship are exempted from anti-discrimination laws. This is because they discriminate left and right. Were we to accept religious intrusion into government, it would intrude right back, and all of a sudden those exemptions would disappear. Know the whining the far Right always does about marriage equality? Yeah, intertwine religion and government and the false belief that churches would be forced to marry queers would gain footing in reality.

A sectarian split across the country--with each state able to declare its own sect the dominate one--would be no more palatable. Think Robert Jeffress would be too happy with an officially LDS Utah? God knows I wouldn't be too happy if Texas suddenly became officially Catholic, and the Assemblies of God folks would most likely be shit outta luck everywhere.

I really, really think "America is a Christian nation and we should recognize that" is a statement of supreme ignorance and no little purposeful self-delusion. The pipe dream is always that a given person's particular sect would be the dominant one...which is a little silly, given that it's almost always Republicans saying this, and our sect already isn't the dominant one. Hey, we could tie the official sect to the President! Just imagine Jeremiah Wright calling for America's damnation on PBS every Sunday morning. Wouldn't that be fun?

Or we could just, you know, STFU about it and focus on loving God and each other like Jesus told us to do.

These things don't usually get to me too much.

2011-10-25T10:56:00.002-05:00

The Lisa Irwin case is getting to me, though.

I don't have a TV, so I haven't been getting the cable news play-by-play on things, which is probably good for my peace of mind. I heard of the case on Facebook, one of the innumerable links from a friend things, and clicked through for some reason I am still not clear on, and was immediately skeptical of the story as presented...

...and then I saw the baby's birth date. 11/11/10. Same as Marie. Damn.

It's not so much a "that could be my baby" frisson. Because, well, it couldn't--anyone wanting Marie would have to go through me. (Never thought I'd add "makes kidnapping next to impossible" to my list of reasons to co-sleep, but there ya go.)

But this baby is the exact same age as my baby. My baby, who is lying here beside me right now, with her hands shoved under my side. Who wakes up when I sneak out of bed, quite often. Who, mistress of the cross-crawl, follows me wherever I go in the house. Who wakes up, rolls out of bed, and goes looking for her sisters (she doesn't understand this school thing yet). Who sometimes panics when I get up to go to the bathroom, thinking that I'm leaving her.

The best case scenario for baby Lisa right now is that she is absolutely terrified. Whether she was kidnapped or sold, she is away from her mom and dad and siblings. Wherever she is, she is crawling around looking for her loved ones, and can't find them. That would be terrifying for Marie.

Worst case scenario is that her mother invented the kidnapping story out of whole cloth, having either murdered or accidentally killed her. And that means she won't learn to walk or to talk, she won't cut the rest of her teeth, she won't grow hair, be potty trained...And may well mean that the woman who is supposed to protect her and love her and shepherd her through all those milestones instead chose to hurt her beyond recovery.

Either one of those makes me indescribably sad.

What's fair?

2011-10-24T22:54:00.000-05:00

"The rich should pay their fair share" is an ubiquitous meme these days from those who want to take more money from successful folks. I know it has been, but I don't recall those who advocate poorly-done income redistribution being quite so proud of it before. And of course none of them can answer the question "What's fair?" with anything more concrete than More!

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by that, given how people love to throw around diagnoses like Mardi Gras beads ("Most CEOs are psychopaths! Dude wrote a book that said so!").

Nevertheless, it is a question worth considering. What it is not, however, is a question which can be properly considered in isolation. Of course, those on the Left want us to, because that is the essence of class warfare. Let's soak those guys, just to be fair.

But what is fair? Isn't it something that should involve consideration of everyone? My kids certainly seem to think so, as does anyone who has ever come up on the short side of an arrangement.

Let's take the only concrete answer I have ever seen (and I really respect the people who do answer this, even if I don't necessarily agree): return the top tax bracket to its Clinton-era level of 39.6%. Okay, fine. Let's do that.

But how about returning the tax rate of the lowest bracket to 15%? Allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire would have done that, granted, but in the past several months I have only ever heard people advocate the return for the top tax bracket. Because the rich aren't paying their fair share.

Can I ask: What's a fair share for the poorest Americans?

I'm serious. I understand the logic of a graduated income tax. But if it is fair to ask so much more of the super-rich because they are super rich, why isn't it fair to ask at least some of the poor?

The poor use more social services than do the rich. It's the way the system is made, of course, and I am not disputing that. Hell, I've benefited from it. And perhaps it is because I have that I feel compelled to ask this question. Why should any group of people be encouraged to take without giving? As I've covered in this blog before, parents know that expecting kids to contribute to the household (and I do not mean monetarily, in this case; it's an imperfect comparison) helps build self esteem.

So, again, why can't we expect the poor to contribute something? Food stamps & welfare both carry work requirements in many (if not all) cases, so clearly this isn't an alien concept. And yet, any proposed tax code change is pilloried as regressive--I've been hearing it for years about the Fair Tax, and now I'm hearing it about Herman Cain's 999 program.

But if higher taxes are good for some people, they must be good for all people. At least if you are laying any claim to fairness. Treating people differently without good reason is fundamentally unfair.

I am feeling burnt out.

2011-10-19T21:53:00.001-05:00

Not on this blog, on school. I've already been at this two-year school far too long. First, I changed my major, and I need an idiotic number of hours in order to get even my AA. Then, I decided to take an extra year because of having Marie, then I decided to take an extra semester to try to bring my GPA back up (because, you know, 3.6 sucks). And now...

Now, I just do not want to do it. I feel like I am just barely treading water. I love the subject and, were circumstances different, I would happily devote my whole adult life to academia. English is one of the cliche useless degrees. Unless you're planning to become a teacher, there isn't a whole hell of a lot you can do with it.

I never really swallowed the line that going to college guaranteed one a good future, but I am surrounded by degree holders who, by and large, are struggling like crazy. With one exception, no one is working in the field they're degreed in, and although I adore the exception, I would be utterly miserable trying to pursue a Math degree. (But everyone else should! Or computer science!) I'm tempted to shift my schooling focus to something computer-related, but everything at SAC requires a higher math than I have, or else another five semesters worth of stuff because I have NOTHING. So that's not bloody likely.

All in all, I'm feeling as though this line of academic pursuit is keeping me from what I actually give a damn about. I have had to send Erik off walking with a crying Marie more than once so I could write a paper or take an exam, and although I got an A and great compliments from my Technical Writing professor, it's scant salve. I am stressing about tests and snapping at my kids when I try to do homework--unable to help them with theirs--and I hate it. I'm not getting any writing done, and now that I'm starting back in on American Lit II, I'm not going to get much reading done. It's unpleasant.

I did not get to round two of the midwifery school scholarship; while disappointing, it's unsurprising. I had to postpone doula training because of the unexpected move and the truck repairs. The story I grew brave enough to submit was rejected & I haven't found another good possibility. I cannot in good conscience leave school without an alternate plan, and right now I just don't have one.

The strange thing about it all? In spite of the burnout, I'm actually pretty happy. We got our tax issues straightened out. Erik got a better (although still not fantastic) job. I've been able to buy several of the things we've been desperately needing for awhile now. The kids are in a charter school again, & while it's not as good academically as I'd like, it is a sight better than their previous school.

Most areas of my life are really really good, in fact, & I strongly suspect that's part of the problem: it is throwing this final area of discontent into stark relief, & I have no clear path out of the swamp I've gotten myself into.

Success!

2011-10-18T23:32:00.001-05:00

Found 'em today. Flat heels, black, OVER the knee...and on sale.

I hate shopping...

2011-10-17T23:01:00.001-05:00

Last post aside, I'm not much of a shoe person. I put shoes on only when I absolutely have to. I find use for only four pairs of shoes: chanclas (sandals) for everyday wear in the summer, which is most of the year; tennis shoes for the gym, a pair of heels for dressing up, and a pair of boots for the winter.

I last bought boots back in the winter of 1999, the first year I was married. Paid $20 at Wal-Mart for heel-less black, knee high boots. They outlasted my marriage: I wore them up until last year, when the soles finally started detaching. As I paid so little for them, & last year was such a mild winter, I didn't see any point in having them re-soled. I've had the better part of a year to dread replacing them. We finally have the money now to do so, and so I have been a woman on a mission.

I HATE shopping. I hate everything about it. I am short-waisted. I have stumpy little legs that guarantee even petite cut pants will drag on the floor. I gained some weight from stress eating & so now am a size 19...Only, a size 19 doesn't actually exist, so I get to either wear a too-small 18 or a too-large 20. My waist measurement is twelve inches smaller than my hip measurement. I also wear--I only wish I was making this up--a size 42H bra. Not only is that size next to impossible to find, it means I really can't wear button-down shirts.

In the past 24 hours, I've actually conquered almost all my bogeymen. I have two pairs of jeans sans gaping waistbands or dragging hems. I have a nice button-down white shirt that, in spite of being two sizes too large, does not swim on me. I even have not one, not two, but THREE bras that a) are my size, b) don't look like they belong on Robin Williams and c) were bought in the store. Trust me, it's monumental.

The one thing remaining? Boots. See, I have boot issues. Since the boots are for daily wear and I find pain fun only in certain circumstances, I need flat-heeled boots. Since they will be my ONLY boots, they need to be neutral. Since I sub boots for dress shoes on a regular basis, they have to be at least goth-nice. And, although it's not absolute necessity, the whole vanity thing makes me really want knee-high boots...And therein lies the rub. My calves are big--16" circumference, to be exact. It's not fat, either, it's genetics & muscle. And my penchant for four- to six-mile-long walks.

I don't know what a "normal" female calf measures. I honestly do not care. I like the way I look. I just hate finding this great pair of boots that is perfect in every way, and is my size, but won't go on up my calf. Worse yet are the ones that zip up the sides and almost fit...but for that last eighth of an inch or so. Bitter, bitter disappointment, I tell you.

To make matters worse, I am glasses-shopping. With pipe dreams of glasses in an hour (have I mentioned I'm very close to legally blind, if I'm not there already?), I went to two different stores today. I don't want much, just cat's eye frames without the little nose-pieces, & not too small. Easy, right? Not so much, apparently. The one place had only two choices and they were both too small; the other one, the frames cost $159+.

I guess it's time for me to give up & go to Wal-Mart for glasses and to Cavender's for a pair of ropers.

Sigh.

I might just buy myself another pair of stupidly high heels just to make myself feel better.

There are some simple pleasures left...

2011-10-15T20:54:00.016-05:00

Like these shoes:

Four inch heels, about .5 inch platforms.

Yes, I can walk in them. Not that I intend to. Shoes like these, I really only wear to bed.

Oh, & also, today had this:

Shiner Bock. On tap.

Yeah, he's pretty happy today.

Hey, I can do that too!

2011-10-12T15:44:00.000-05:00

Of course, you've seen this. It's one of the sillier manifestations of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Pictures of people with signs they made talking all about their woes.

I got to thinking, hell I can do that too!

So I did:

I realize most of that is probably hard to read, so I'll transcribe it for you:

I chose to not go to college right away.
I chose to have kids starting at age 22.
I chose to stay at home with them.
I chose to major in English.
I chose to have a fourth child while still in school.
I am strongly considering dropping out of school to become a doula, a job which will net probably $500/mo.
SEE THE COMMON THREAD HERE?
MY LIFE! MY CHOICES!
The 1% owe me NOTHING!
More gov't is not the answer!

Not my most eloquent, sure, but it fit the medium.

Things which make me fear for the future

2011-10-12T11:15:00.000-05:00

FB's math wizards are at it again:

Now, I do not expect perfection. There's at least one minus sign in there which is kinda hard to see. But the one million plus who voted for zero need to be slapped. Didn't they learn anything the last time?

Impossible to love, hard to hate

2011-10-10T21:11:00.000-05:00

That's what RobertaX said about the Occupy folks, and as usual I think she's nailed it:

Impossible to love, hard to hate, especially as long as they keep on waving those "End the Fed" signs. Oh, if only they wanted hard currency to replace it, instead of Ithaca Hours. Still, think of all the real work that's getting done in the places where they aren't, all the parent's couches unslept-upon, all the fridges unraided. It's an ill wind that blows no one any good, though downwind of an NYPD squad car might not be the place to be.

Here's the thing. As I told Erik earlier today, there is at least some level of cross-over between the Tea Party and the Occupy protesters. This is from the flyer they gave us (er, I must admit I'm not reproducing the bizarre capitalization, & am inserting commas where necessary):

End the alliance of government and large corporations/banks, so that our elected leaders are actually representing the interests of the people (the 99%) and not just their rich donors (the 1%). Include limited terms on all government officials.
Investigate corporations and banks, holding senior executives accountable for the destruction in wealth that has devastated our country and the world and eliminate "personhood" legal status for corporations.
Dismantling the Federal Reserve, which is a private institution, and returning the power of coining money to Congress; and the US Treasury returning to sound (real) money.
Limit the size, scope, and power of banks so that none are ever again "too big to fail"and in need of taxpayer bailouts.
Repeal the Patriot Act and protect civil liberties.
End all imperial wars of aggression and bring our troops home.
Sweeping, all-encompassing health care and education reform.
End law enforcement brutality and corruption.
Fair workers' rights and protections including wages, hours, safety, and injury compensation.

Now, I'm not claiming we are perfectly aligned. Not at all. But look at that, y'all: term limits, end the Fed, return to real money (gold?), repeal the Patriot Act, protect civil liberties, end law enforcement brutality (I can think of a certain Canton cop plenty of gunbloggers would like to see go). Aren't we for that as well? When last I checked, we were.

Here's the thing: this is a nascent movement. Still feeling its way. Here in San Antonio, at least, a significant portion of the protesters are libertarians. That means there is common cause.

Borepatch is always telling us that the Democrats are not the problem, and the Republicans are not the answer. And he's right. The problem is that we have an entrenched political class in this country, the very de facto aristocracy Patrick Henry warned us about back in the late 18th century.

We are being played for fools.

We are being given false, misleading impressions of the Occupy protesters the same way they were previously given false, misleading impressions of the Tea Party. They are no more unemployed slackers (quite a few of the posts on the local FB page were from people wanting to know whether the protest would still be going on when they got off work) than we are racist rich people. Allowing the same mainstream media we distrust for very good reason to dictate our opinion of this is dangerous.

We should make common cause, to the best of our ability. Again, this is a nascent movement, at least outside of the NYC group. Find out where the protests are happening in your city. Go down. Listen much, talk some. Do your damnedest to keep an open mind. Don't dismiss them as a bunch of rudderless hippies unless you find out that they are. (And, hey, they might be. That the guys here aren't may just be another symptom of San Antonio being pretty much the best place, anywhere.) There's a pretty good chance you'll find you agree with them on something.

There is a window of opportunity to help mold this movement into something that can work with the Tea Party rather than against it. It's a small window, though, and it's already closing. When Erik and I went down to visit them Friday afternoon, a couple of Northerner union reps showed up to chat up the gathered protesters. And Van Jones is already after the NYC folks. (No, I don't buy that he's running the protest. But he sure wants to.)

Wanna let that happen so you can feel superior? I sure as shit don't.

Presented without further comment #4

2011-10-08T15:23:00.000-05:00

(I'll have a full post up in a day or two.)

QOTD, Barking Moonbat Edition

2011-10-06T16:07:00.000-05:00

From comments to this story:

omelettes
Brian - Considering the US was able to divert an economic crisis that would have led us to a Great Depression I feel somewhat fortunate that Obama was at the helm as opposed to other options. Our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are now winding down thus our troops can finally come home. Arab spring has led to change in the Middle East and hopefully some stability. We finally got Bin Laden (I guess Obama did deserve that Nobel Peace Prize). The United States has finally universal health insurance so all citizens can have some access to basic health care. So far so good. Now only if the Republicans could just get out of the way this nation would be back to position of world leader.

Sigh.

Y'know, I tried to stay neutral on the whole Occupy Whateverthefuck, 'cause I thought maybe they were idealists, sure, but my friend Mary is supporting them and she's pretty smart, so maybe they really are working for the little people. I mean, they might not have known what they wanted, but the Tea Party was a bit rudderless there for a while so maybe it'd all work out in the end.

Of course, that was before they proved themselves to be total fucking idiots advocating a $20 minimum wage and global debt forgiveness.

Now I'm wishing my camera was working 'cause I'd love to go downtown and cover this and poke around and see if anyone's got a brain, or if they're communists in that regard too. I'd like to think, like one of the other commenters said, that 99% of Americans just aren't that dumb. Maybe I could find someone who can articulate an ideology not buried completely in wishful thinking and naivete, but if they could, they'd probably be at a Tea Party rally instead.

Cheat Sheet

2011-10-04T11:42:00.000-05:00

If you haven't yet, read Thursday's post. Back now? Good. I could link you to Wikipedia pages for the folks I feel are worth knowing, that wouldn't help you understand why I like them. Instead, I think a better approach is to share some of their work with you.

First up:

This is Octavia E Butler, one of my favorite Sci-Fi authors. I was an adolescent when I first encountered her work. It is not hard Sci-Fi, but not insufferably whiny like much of the so-called psychological science fiction writers out there.

Not much of her work is online, of course, but I did find two archived stories. "Amnesty" is the more science fiction-y one:

The stranger-Community, globular, easily twelve feet high and wide glided down into the vast, dimly lit food production hall of Translator Noah Cannon's employer. The stranger was incongruously quick and graceful, keeping to the paths, never once brushing against the raised beds of fragile, edible fungi. It looked, Noah thought, a little like a great, black, moss-enshrouded bush with such a canopy of irregularly-shaped leaves, shaggy mosses, and twisted vines that no light showed through it. It had a few thick, naked branches growing out, away from the main body, breaking the symmetry and making the Community look in serious need of pruning.

The moment Noah saw it and saw her employer, a somewhat smaller, better-maintained-looking dense, black bush, back away from her, she knew she would be offered the new job assignment she had been asking for.

The stranger-Community settled, flattening itself at bottom, allowing its organisms of mobility to migrate upward and take their rest. The stranger-Community focused its attention on Noah, electricity flaring and zigzagging, making a visible display within the dark vastness of its body. She knew that the electrical display was speech, although she could not read what was said. The Communities spoke in this way between themselves and within themselves, but the light they produced moved far too quickly for her to even begin to learn the language. The fact that she saw the display, though, meant that the communications entities of the stranger-Community were addressing her. Communities used their momentarily inactive organisms to shield communication from anyone outside themselves who was not being addressed.

This is Ray Wylie Hubbard. He is one of the godfathers of Texas country music, up there with Joe Ely, Jerry Jeff Walker, Gary P Nunn, etc. He's done oh-so-many great songs, including my kids' favorites "Screw You, We're From Texas" and "Snake Farm."

And those are good songs, but I go a bit against the grain when it comes to my favorite Hubbard song. This is it:
The Beauty Way

Ah, that's what MySpace gives me when I copy & paste their "embed" code. No idea yet if it's going to work but if it doesn't, go here. The song is "The Beauty Way," off his 2010 album Delirium Tremolos. It's a rather contemplative song for a guy who once sang cheerfully about murdering a cheating woman & the guy she was dancing with, and it is fantastic. Oh, and apparently MySpace thinks it's folk music, which is just laughable.

Last of the three:

This is Elizabeth Zimmerman, author of Knitting Without Tears, The Knitter's Workshop, The Knitter's Almanac, & so much more. As you might guess by the first title, her thing was to demystify knitting and give crafters guidelines by which they could create their own garments, sans patterns.

Such a thing no longer exists. So alien is her mission to the bulk of today's knitters that her books are considered, at best, the purview of experienced needle-wielders. Beginners are warned away.

And that's a goddamned shame, because this woman's work demystifies everything. Complex-appearing color work is as simple as switching between two yarns every other stitch, purling is avoided at all costs, and cables are made without the assistance of a special needle. I have every faith that, had I stumbled across Mrs Zimmermann earlier in my attempts at knitting, I would not be the slowpoke I now am.

I've done a lot of talking here because, unlike the other two, there's not really anything of hers to show online. She died in something like 1999, so she never blogged. However, she is still such an influential person that thousands of projects made from her guidelines have made their way onto the internet. Flickr has 6500+ photos of what's perhaps her best-known pattern, the Baby Surprise Jacket. Here's a pic:

This pattern, mind, is more than 40 years old. Somehow I doubt that anyone's going to be knitting something from Stitch & Bitch in 2044.

Too soon?

2011-10-01T12:58:00.000-05:00

(Yes, I know my graphic design skills are lacking.)

Ooh, this looks like fun!

2011-09-29T13:25:00.000-05:00

Breda points out that spurious accusations of being "what's wrong with the world" can be made out of virtually any pair of pictures. Never one to let stealing an idea pass me by, I figured I'd do a few of my own:

If you don't know who this is:

But you do know who this is:

You're what's wrong with the world.

If you don't know who this is:

But you do know who this is:

You're what's wrong with the world.

One more, and I'm going really esoteric here...

If you don't know who this is:

But you do know who this is:

You're what's wrong with the world.

Fun fact: I actually only believe it with one pair. Feel free to guess which one (in your head is fine).

(Source 1, Source 2, Source 3, Source 4, Source 5, Source 6)

I'm number 1

2011-09-26T21:43:00.000-05:00

For certain things, anyway:

Hmmm...

From East Brunswick, New Jersey. Probably explains it.

FTFY*

2011-09-25T14:51:00.000-05:00

Seen this recently? I think I've seen it a good six times over the last 24 hours.

I'm actually getting used to this nonsense. It's typical Leftist stuff; they've decided that Jesus was a Socialist, apparently deciding to blend their lack of knowledge about Socialism with never actually reading the Bible.

Anyway, I finally got sick of this, so I decided to edit the pic as follows & re-post it (which you know if you're on my FB):

With very few exceptions, I assume of my more liberal friends that we have the same goals, & our disagreement is over how to get there. I would not ever dream of calling them bad Christians because they believe the problem of poverty is too entrenched to be solvable without government help, much as I disagree. That they are not extending me the same courtesy is galling, although at this point completely unsurprising.

Self-righteous leftists are no better than self-righteous right wingers.

Let's be real here: most of the major charities out there, if they are not faith-based now, they at least started out that way. This is why the Red Cross is the Red Crescent in Muslim countries. This is why the names of charity hospitals often start with the word Saint.

Thomas Jefferson published (or at least prepared; I'm uncertain if it was published during his lifetime) a version of the Gospels from which he had removed all mention of Christ's divinity. He was, at most, Deist rather than Christian. Even so, he acknowledged the usefulness of the church as an agent of social order. I am fairly certain Unitarian Universalism persists to this day because of similar beliefs--some sort of congregation is the easiest way to gather like-minded folks together to give hands-on help within a community. Charity of course isn't a Christian virtue per se, but faith groups have been around the longest and are usually the ones to have well-established means of helping the least among us. Even lacking faith, most people can acknowledge their utility.

I welcome this, but it has brought some rather untoward developments. There are people with only a partial understanding of Jesus who presume to speak for Him. Did He command us to help the poor? Unquestionably. But he also commanded us to spread God's word, and our belief that salvation is to be found only by following Christ. More and more I am seeing people insisting that we're missing Jesus's point if we proselytize in conjunction with our charity.

Now, personally I am of the "spread the word by living the word" school of thought, but some sects feel the need to explicitly spread the Gospel as well as living it (I know there are some who do the former and not the latter; they're not the point of this). Here locally, Alamo City Christian Fellowship provides food and clothing and other aid to the poor, but they insist that petitioners sit through a short service first. And, well, I don't have a problem with this, even though my church separates the two things rather thoroughly. An honest reading of Scripture will make it evident that this "Jewish carpenter" was in actuality an itinerant preacher who spread a radical interpretation of God's word, told us to take care of each other (not to force people to join in, mind--this was about personal salvation, & you cannot force that on anyone else), and, yes, sometimes tried hiding from people whom He knew would demand personal favors.

If it fits your purposes better to consider Jesus an historical figure who spread a message of fellowship, more power to you. But we have knowledge of Him only through Scripture, so you're going to have to acknowledge that some of us will be unwilling to divorce the two.

*FTFY= fixed that for you

Oh, in other news, I no longer allow anonymous comments. I'm fully sick of people not willing to own their words. I have, however, removed the captcha. I figure since I manually approve comments anyway, it's an unnecessary extra step. If it really does result in more SpamBots, I'll stick it back up, but right now I doubt that'll happen.

That says more about you than you realize...

2011-09-23T14:28:00.001-05:00

So, this morning on FB I saw that several of my friends shared the following:

Here's a link to the story: Gay soldier booed at GOP debate; candidates stay mum.

These friends were outraged, and rightly so. Who the fuck boos a soldier? Especially one currently in Iraq?

I can hear you now: "Democrats, that's who!" And, well, you're right. Of course, it should go without saying that not all Democrats do this, which is why I'm saying it: not all Democrats boo active-duty soldiers.

And, well, Republicans don't make a practice of it either.

In fact, I will go so far as to say the debate audience wasn't booing the soldier who asked this question. They were booing the question. Which, yes, is childish. But not anti-military, which is what The Hill (and other left-leaning websites) wants you to think.

Freud had a term for this--projection. If someone boos after a question is asked, and you assume it's aimed at the questioner rather than the question...well, that says a whole lot about you, but very little about the people actually doing it.

ZOMG the sky is falling!

2011-09-23T02:11:00.001-05:00

If you are not on Facebook, skip this post and rest comfortably in your superiority to the rest of us.

If you are on the site, by now you have been subjected not only to a radical overhaul of your news feed but several cut-and-paste statuses about how to fix a sudden hole in your privacy settings. Suddenly,we are being bombarded with status updates from total strangers just because a friend of ours has hit the Like button. Personally, I've seen one unborn baby gender announcement and one elderly parent's imminent death announcement. Stuff no one is likely to want a stranger to see.

The fix du jour is to entreat your friends to unsubscribe to your comments and likes so that your every activity is not broadcast to all of Facebook. One little problem: it doesn't work. Subscriptions affect what you see in your news feed, not your friends'privacy settings.

The true culprit is a lack of awareness. In every single case of broadcasting your bidness, it is due to a lack of proper privacy settings. Apparently a large number of people have been posting links and status updates as either public or friends of friends, which means just what it reads like. Facebook has always allowed users access to strangers' post on the strength of a common friend acting on it somehow--it's just more obvious than it used to be.

Quite a few people are reacting angrily, though, as if this is a new crack in the otherwise sturdy levee of Facebook privacy. Of course, I understand privacy concerns. What I do not understand is being careless/not paying attention to your privacy and then becoming irate only when it's made obvious.

Of course, the issue is not unique to Facebook. The price of personal security is personal vigilance, but far too many folks are more than willing to turn both over to someone else. Sad, really.

F'r reals?

2011-09-21T22:22:00.000-05:00

Being that Elizabeth Warren is, apparently, a Democrat out of Massachusetts, I don't doubt she believes this quote wholeheartedly.

As for me, well, I have my reservations. The beginning statement--that no one gets rich on his own--is more or less true. But you know what? Corporations don't succeed by just taking, either.

"You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate." So...the shareholders of a given corporation pay no taxes on their own? They don't pay into schools? They get to bow out of that? Huh. I had no idea.

I could fisk this point-by-point, but really, why should I? It all boils down to the same thing--there is no "the rest of us paid". This nonsense that corporations, as a whole, contribute NOTHING to society is just that--idiocy so transparent and plain that anyone with a speck of sense should immediately be able to grasp the fatal flaw with this quote.

Elizabeth Warren may be the daughter of fishermen. She is certainly fond of red herrings.

Tell ya what, Ms Warren. If you think "the rest of us" paid for all of this stuff that benefits corporations and they have nothing to do with it...Let's go ahead and take corporations out of the equation.

Oh, wait. She's from Massachusetts. They're already doing that, apparently. (I could link a whole bunch more stories, but since I decided to use one word per post of JayG's, I totes ran out of words before I did stories. But that's okay, 'cause I'm now going to link a few more in this sentence.)

Y'all let me know how that works out for you, okay?

I do not understand this mindset

2011-09-20T15:35:00.000-05:00

Sunday evening, I was reading over at Fark and came across this story (I'm using Fark's headline here, & linking to the newspaper column): Texas wonders if homeless people should work in exchange for shelter.

From that column (this is in an Austin paper, by the way, which should probably explain much):

No, said Front Steps spokesman Mitchell Gibbs. The nonprofit's first priority is to make sure people come in for services. Staffers feel that requiring clients to perform chores might make them stay away from the shelter, where they are connected to services that can get them off the streets permanently, such as job training, drug treatment or housing.

and:

The Salvation Army in Austin takes the same approach and does not force clients to work at its downtown shelter, which houses about 250 people every night. There are liability issues involved in requiring people to work, and staffers encourage people to spend their free time looking for work or housing, said Kathleen Ridings, the nonprofit's director of social services.

for a counterpoint:

Haven for Hope, a homeless shelter in San Antonio, does things differently. The 37-acre campus has multiple programs in which long-term residents are taught jobs skills such as construction or janitorial work, then employ those skills on campus, said development director Megan Legacy. Residents, for example, recently did some remodeling work at the shelter.

The facility has an outdoor sleeping area for homeless people who are not involved in rehabilitation programs and are not medically fragile. If they want to sleep inside, they have to volunteer at the shelter for at least seven days, performing tasks such as cleaning bathrooms or wiping down sleeping mats. The idea is to encourage good behavior and hopefully inspire them to take advantage of other services on campus that help them rebuild their lives, Legacy said.

Honestly, I had no idea that shelters didn't insist on "residents" pitching in. We're not talking about forced labor, for crying out loud, we're talking about picking up a fucking broom and sweeping. When I went to summer camp, we had to do chores in our cabin, and we paid for the privilege of being there. My kids have to do chores, and they certainly have much less to do with their situation in life than your average homeless person. My kids do chores so that they learn how to be competent individuals when they're adults, and because in a family we all pitch in and do stuff.

This sort of outlook is bad for the homeless how?

But wait, there's more! There's the comments section on Fark itself, where we are informed that expecting a bum to wipe down his nap mat is tantamount to slavery (misspellings left intact, of course):

gopher321: Where the hell does such diregard/antipathy towards your fellow man come from anyway? I do understand the American mindset of honouring the independant/bootstrappy individual, but how does that turn into not only ignoring those down on their luck, but actively working against them?

Got that? "Pick up after yourself" is actively working against a person.

R.A.Danny: So educated, experienced people can't find jobs, but we're gonna make the mentally ill work like slaves for food and shelter? Awesome.

Really? None of those educated, experienced people who are falling on hard times wind up homeless? It's something that happens only to the mentally ill (oh, and veterans, though I guess in the eyes of some those two go hand-in-hand).

The more you eat the more you fart: This is just wrong. By any definition...its wrong.

If you are christian: shame on you for being a hypocrite. Im sure this isnt what Jesus said about the homeless, hungry, and poor.

If you arent: having respect for other people STILL makes this wrong. They have value simply because they are. We should not, as a society, treat human beings as though they are disposable or worthless.

/self-professed libertarian who has common sense...and apparently an intact sense of compassion.

*facepalm* As the title of this post states, I do not understand this mindset. I just don't. How is it unChristian to help people to help themselves? How is insisting on a very small measure of self-reliance and responsibility a sin?

Again, I'm forced to go back to the example of being a parent. It's generally understood that good parents give their children some level of responsibility starting from a very young age (toddlers can be expected to pick up their toys, for example). This serves, among other things, to enhance their self esteem--we know intuitively that we get increased responsibilities only as we exhibit increased capabilities.

But we can't do this with grown-ups? It works the other way, or something? That just really doesn't make sense. Not from any standpoint. Learned helplessness is a bad thing. Insisting that homeless people have no responsibility for themselves--which is the unspoken message of not wanting them to contribute through doing chores--will inculcate that sense of helplessness. Know what locking homeless people into a sense of helplessness does? It locks them into being homeless. And, yeah, that gives liberals someone to feel good about themselves by "helping"--but as I've said time and again, creating a permanent underclass does nothing for the people in said underclass.

We conservatives are the uncaring ones, though. Got that?

What he said

2011-09-19T22:47:00.000-05:00

BobS knocks one out of the park here: "What Teachers really need to hear." I found myself nodding along pretty much the whole time I read it. I had read the article itself before his blog post, and it bothered me, but I had difficulty putting into words exactly what it was that bothered me.

In large part, it goes back to what I talked about not too long ago. There is far too much passing the buck coming from teachers these days. It seems like there's no real way to win. We're either helicopter parents challenging every decision or we're inexcusably uninvolved*. Of course, it is blisteringly obvious that many teachers want only a certain sort of involvement--anything that serves to make a child question the teacher's edict is frowned upon.

One of my friends posted a photo to her Facebook yesterday of a classroom "citizenship" project her son had been been part of recently. She said that, when he first came home complaining of the assignment she didn't understand. What's so wrong with learning to be a good citizen? Well, she saw the cards the class made, and she understood.

See, she'd made the same mistake you and I probably would--citizenship is about being a good citizen, right? About becoming informed about local issues and politics and acting upon your convictions in regard to such. Easy-peasy. But no:

Choice "good citizen" declarations:

A good citizen follows directions.
A good citizen sits appropriately in chairs.
A good citizen uses eyes to focus on the speaker.
A good citizen obeys classroom rules.

And my personal favorite: A good citizen follows the "majority rules" decisions.

BS like this is why parents are giving teachers such a hard time. It is fundamentally dishonest (does anyone really think classroom rules are decided upon democratically?), and moreover divorced from what these things mean in the real world. School is supposed to give kids the tools they need to be productive members of the community. It is not supposed to inculcate them in a certain way of thinking, and anyone who went to government schools (which is most of us, let's face it) knows how much of that goes on.

Overall, in spite of the continuing refrain of "we're not nannies" in the article, there is unspoken emphasis on abrogating your position as primary teacher of your children. Again, you can't have it both ways. By the time any given daughter starts kindergarten, I've had more than 10 times the experience with her that any one of her elementary school teachers will. Reasonable people are going to be unwilling to turn the care of their children over to a succession of strangers with only a general idea of kids and no special knowledge of their kid.

*Oh, yeah, about that non-involvement. The deck is stacked against parents. Especially working parents. Especially lower-income working parents, the ones who are paid hourly and can't afford to lose half a day's work for something stupid like coffee with the principal or a noon parent/teacher conference. But they really just don't care about their kid's education.

I just realized something

2011-09-18T17:47:00.001-05:00

Quite some time ago, I enabled post-via-email on this blog. My Kindle
(as I've said a gift from Erik's mom) has internet capabilities. This
means I can post bloggage from my Kindle! Will this revolutionize my
blog? Probably not, but this is the 3G version of the Kindle, so there
might just be some posts from our Sunday lunches.

It's that time of year again...

2011-09-16T14:07:00.000-05:00

Happy Birthday, Peter! 

(You're old.)

What year is it again?

2011-09-14T19:11:00.000-05:00

I won't argue that there are innate behavioral differences between males and females. Cultural gender roles play a much, much larger part in things than a lot of folks are willing to admit, however. (Anyone who's ever potty trained a little girl who insisted on standing up to pee knows what I'm talking about.)

Even babies are subjected to this, even by the most well-meaning people. I am not immune, in spite of being sensitized to the issue; I still catch myself telling Marie she's such a pretty baby, even though I don't want my kids to think their worth is wrapped up in their looks. For whatever reason, people frequently mistake Marie for a boy, just as they did her sisters before her, and it's always amusing to see the way they interact with her change once they realize the whole lack of a penis thing. There was one fellow in HEB who just refused to get the message; no matter how many times Esther told the dude Marie was her sister, he kept on talking about how she would obviously grow up to be a big, strong man and take good care of her sisters.

So, I'm used to this and you'd think that given that she's my fourth daughter nothing would surprise me anymore. Generally speaking, it doesn't, but every now and then something will poke me in just the wrong way and be irritating as hell. The insistence on fairy ballerina kitties as an ongoing motif on girls' clothes is one of those things. This is another:

This is the pop-up product page from the Fisher Price website. See that tag-line under the picture? For a busy baby boy!

WTF, Fisher Price? Here we sit, most of the way through 2011, and the hammer toy is labeled specifically for boys. And it's not as though there's a pink-and-purple version on the next hanger for girls, as there often is. Nope, you've gotta have a baby dick to use a baby hammer. Or something.

To be fair, Fisher Price does have a rattle marketed specifically to girls:

**headdesk**

See that? Baby boys do things. They're busy. Baby girls? Eh, they're just for looks. Aww, how precious.

For the record? Yes, yes I did buy this. The second time I saw it. The first time, I thought "Well, fuck, if that's only for boys I guess I'll spend my money elsewhere." Which would have been a great decision on my part...had I not turned around and bought something else by Fisher Price. Today, though, the thought was "Sexist bastards. My girl can have a hammer if she wants to."

So this may be the most brilliantly dastard piece of marketing out there.

Perspective?

2011-09-11T16:36:00.000-05:00

To begin with, I wasn't planning a 9/11 post, but as usual Facebook got me wound up. I came home from lunch and a trip to the grocery store to see this on a couple of friends' walls, titled Perspective:

Obviously, the idea here is to remind us that yeah, a lot of people died on 9/11, but a whole lot more people died other times, so let's...Hell, I dunno that part. Stop feeling sorry for ourselves? Stop considering it a day of change in how our world was put together? Look at it from an historical standpoint? God alone knows (I somehow doubt most of the folks who posted it put much thought into doing so).

Being who I am, I looked at that and thought "Well, shit. Nothing else there is a terrorist attack. Not really a proper comparison, is it?" So I picked an arbitrary time period and fired up teh Google machine and a paint program and came up with the following:

You can tell I don't exactly have mad graphic design skillz, but that's not the point. Point is, when you look at actual terrorist attacks, you see the true size and impact of what happened 10 years ago today. Going beyond the last 20 years doesn't change the list that much. It certainly does not alter the position of the 9/11 attacks.

If you leave out all the terrorist attacks in Iraq and call them mere acts of war in a civil conflict, the list would get much shorter, but 9/11's position would not change.

More than THREE TIMES as many deaths occurred on 9/11 as in the next-deadliest terrorist attack. You have to go into acts of war and acts of God to find worse numbers.

Now, you can ask yourself some pretty big/important questions because of this list, depending on your political leanings. Did America indirectly cause all those deaths in Iraq? Why hasn't American media covered most of these other attacks? Is there a common thread in the 15 or so deadliest, and if so, what is it?

All of that is valid.

But if you're going to give 9/11 a ranking, then rank it properly dammit. Compare it to other such events, not other events that will give you the results you want.

Because that's not really a true perspective, is it?

Let's all show our support

2011-09-08T19:08:00.000-05:00

Y'all need to like my new Facebook Community page. You can see it here, and there's a doohickey to help you like it over on the left side there. Right now, I am the only person who likes it, and that makes me sad.

Why did I start this page? Well, mostly it's 'cause I'm bored as hell right now. But also, one of my Facebook friends just liked several pages with ridiculous numbers in their titles. As of right now, One Million Moms in Support of Chaz Bono on DWTS has a whopping 1738 likes,
1,000,000 Strong to Help Improve Tea Party Patriots' Spelling and Grammar has 1876 fans,
One Million Strong Against Michele Bachmann in 2012 has 33,140 fans, & One Million Strong Against Rick Perry in 2012 has 10,105.

So I created this page in an attempt to model realistic goal setting. Can I get "27+" fans? Being that I started the page, probably not. But I reckon I'll get a lot closer to my goal than even the folks over at One Million Strong for Barack Obama.

Join up! And figure out your own damned issue to support. I ain't your mama.

Presented without further comment #3

2011-09-07T18:46:00.001-05:00

http://www.manybooks.net/titles/neilm13281328613286-8.html#

Looking at the bright side

2011-09-07T17:07:00.000-05:00

In all honesty, at this point the "bright side" seems to be illuminated with a 50-watt novelty bulb, but I know things aren't as bad as they seem.

Brief run down of things: the duplex we were living in, on the east side, had electrical issues. As in, we were awoken one morning by a loud pop to find that suddenly none of the outlets in the living room or the girls' room worked anymore, plus one outlet in our bedroom. This past Wednesday was the last straw; we had just turned off the lights & were laying there talking when the power went out in our room. Now, this isn't exactly new. The breaker flips all the damned time. This time, no noise from that happening. Erik went & flipped the breaker anyway, and flipped it back, and I could see the a/c trying to power itself up, but it just couldn't draw enough current to do so. At that point, we deemed the fire hazard too high to try to tough it out further, so we racked out the girls and went to a motel for the night.

Now, we'd been planning to move anyway. I set back $1000 from my Pell Grant check to cover deposit + first month's rent. This should give y'all an idea of our budget. We really don't have wiggle room in it. My mother had already said we could bunk with her a little while, having just moved into a larger trailer. So we've been here a week now, and I hadn't intended to be here past the weekend really.

This is where the bright side comes in: one, that she was in a position and of a disposition to allow us to do this. My mother & I don't exactly get along like gangbusters, but she'll come through in a pinch. It's a bit of a tense situation already, though, because of her negative disposition that I've mentioned several times. She's not upset that we're here, she just gets on the kids for every little thing they do.

Well, Friday we went & looked at a little shotgun shack over on the west side, just a few blocks from the baseball stadium. Hemmed and hawed, finally made the decision to go for it...Just in time to learn it was taken. (Oh, this was after driving to Seguin to look at a duplex that was for rent...$400 a month or no, I expect my next residence to have a toilet that's actually attached to the sewage pipe, not sitting across from it accusingly.)

So, shit.

Yesterday, Erik went to take the girls from school. Had some trouble getting back. Battery ran down. Had to have it jumped. Was going to go to Wal-Mart & replace it; didn't make it. Finally wound up hoofing it to Wal-Mart, buying a new battery, walking back to where his truck was, and installing it himself.

This morning: repeat. Sort of. Wound up having to leave the truck on the shoulder of an on-ramp & take a taxi back here. Started looking into a tow to FM 78 Auto Care Center. I took my Taurus to these guys years ago. They did good work, and I knew they were well above-board, because I had a taillight out because of a loose cable, and they didn't charge me to fix it, just did it with all the other work. So we're talking about doing this and Erik was looking at his account balance, which said $6.54. Well, shit. Not exactly gonna cover a tow and a new alternator, huh?

But...we didn't get that little house. So we still had $1000 sitting in the account I share with my mother.

To cut a long story before it gets ridiculously longer...A few hours later, we are out half of our moving fund. We're stuck here with my mother at least another week. Erik's entire next paycheck is going to re-stock the moving fund, and we'll probably still be a bit short, but oh well. My child support the next two weeks will be going into the gas tank, putting a temporary halt on taking the kids out for dinner.

But...Erik works retail. Generally gets off at 11pm. The last bus that comes out here leaves the Park & Ride at 10pm. We have the money. It hurts to lose half our moving fund, but we have the money to fix the truck, and Erik's not even missing one day of work, and the kids won't miss even one day of school.

A rash of bad luck, yes. But, not one without mitigating factors.

And for unadulterated good...My darling mother-in-law bought me a Kindle for my birthday. Being smart, she got the Kindle with Special Offers (that, in the 3G version, costs the same as the non-3G Kindle without the special offers). This week's special offer from Amazon? 100 Biographies/Memoirs for $1. And I had $3.24 gift card balance. Free book! (Yes, I am that easy to please.)

1000 Journalists

2011-09-06T20:00:00.001-05:00

Or so the folks at the Express-News tell me they have covering my fair city, and yet not one them could be arsed to put a story on their website about the several fires here today:

Huh. Imagine that. It's almost as if corporatization of newspapers has eroded that format's sole strength--local focus.

Look, I realize the Bastrop fire is the big deal right now. But there were four fires in the San Antonio metro area today--a brush fire at Broadway and Mulberry, a structure fire at Perrin Beitel and Industry Blvd, and wildfires on camps Bullis and Stanley.

Yet the only local fire MySA talks about is the one in posh Stone Oak. (Which was yesterday.) Fancy that.

You can't have it both ways.

2011-09-06T06:24:00.004-05:00

There seems to be this new meme going around amongst teachers, if some of the gals I'm friends with on Facebook are any indication. The idea? "It's not my fault." Seriously. If a given kid doesn't learn, it's not the fault of the person whose job it is to teach him. It's his parents' fault.

Look, I know that parents are important to a child's education. I know that children whose parents are active in their education do better in school than kids whose parents aren't. It's a no-brainer. That said, there's no reason for this to be anything other than the difference between an honors student and a C-student, with obvious exceptions for the kids who just don't give a damn.

If your job is to teach, then you need to ensure that kids learn, to the best of your ability. If you're not going to do that, get the hell out of the profession, or at least quit acting like you're a fucking martyr. Yeah, there are some unmotivated kids out there, but guess what? Teaching them is your job. Much as we all like to think the generations which come after ours are sliding straight to hell...every generation thinks that. Looking at the matter from an historical perspective, graduation rates are higher than ever. Kids are staying in school now much more than they did even back in the 1980s (from 14% in 1980 to 8% in 2009), so to say now that kids just don't care is a bit questionable.

And here's the corollary to that: if it's not your fault the kids don't learn, you're not as valuable as you are claiming to be. You cannot have it both ways. Either you are an essential part of a child's learning and on the hook for their success, or they're failing through no fault of your own, and you don't matter. It's really that simple. If you want the much-higher pay teachers are clamoring for (and really, with the median salary for teachers being in the $40,000 range, they're not hurting for money), then you have to be worth it. If you're going to throw your hands up and say "Ain't me!", then there's no reason to increase your salary, because you're not essential. If you're not teaching the kids, then let's pay you the $23,000 or so the average daycare worker gets, because that's all you are.

The rub, of course, is that in reality it is both ways, a fact to which we can all attest. Some teachers are fantastic, some are horrible, and the vast majority of teachers are just sort of muddling along waiting for retirement. There needs to be some system in place to reward the good teachers, and to push the shitty ones out. Merit pay is the usual answer to this, but it's not a perfect solution. How do you gauge merit? Test scores?

Here's the problem with that: I've finally found out what teaching to the test means. The tests are, of course, the standardized ones. Basic skills tests. As a parent, I see the utility of this sort of thing--they exist to measure learning, to ensure that kids are being taught at least at a certain base level. It's not a very high level; most of what was on the TAAS test I took back in 10th grade was stuff I learned in junior high. Obviously, kids who can't pass these tests aren't being taught enough to get by in the real world.

But standardized tests aren't taken annually. Here, at least, they are first encountered in third grade. Now, those who are against these tests claim that "teaching to the test" squeezes out all the time for arts education, and Social Studies...basically, the claim goes, if it's not on the test, it's not taught. Unsurprisingly, this is bullshit. My kids go to art or music class several times a week, not much changed from when I was in elementary school. No, the reality of "teaching to the test" is much more pernicious. It goes like this: kindergarten lays a nice foundation, and by the end of first grade kids know how to read. Other than that, not a whole hell of a lot of new stuff is introduced. Early in third grade, the teacher realizes she's been handed a classroom of kids who haven't been taught much of anything, and frantic cramming for the test begins. Get the kids past the test and move them up a grade...and the same thing happens. Little, if anything, is being taught in the grades which aren't defined by standardized tests. And that's why you can't tie merit pay to test performance.

For once, I actually do have a proposed alternative: have students and parents evaluate teachers in grade school the same way professors are evaluated in college, and base merit pay increases at least partially off that. Yes, there will be some personality conflicts and some axes being ground, but by & large those will be obvious. Student evaluations would be weighted more heavily than parents', as parents don't always pay attention. And, to be fairly accurate, I think you'd need to start the system two or three years before the first merit raises were handed out. Is my idea perfect? No. It is inherently subjective, and kids being pressured into leaving good reviews is a very real issue. I do, however, think it's better than the system of nothing we have now.

The essential teachers need to be paid as such, as do the daycare workers.

25 or so of my favorite fantasy novels/series

2011-09-05T08:28:00.000-05:00

I know I am going to type this out and realize tomorrow (I'm writing this Sunday night for publication Monday morning) I've left out someone I absolutely adore. I will also, undoubtedly, leave out some fantastic author with whom I am simply not familiar. I'm not even going to pretend I think these are the best, because this sort of thing is inherently subjective. However, if you're a fan of the genre, there might be someone here with whom you're not immediately familiar, so if you're looking for new authors this might be helpful. Please do leave further suggestions in the comments section; I'm always looking for new reading material.

There's no real order here, just as I think of them. The list will skew pretty heavily toward fairly recent urban fantasy. And the LOtR series isn't here, because it doesn't need my validation.

1) A Song of Ice and Fire, George RR Martin. I'll admit the fuss surrounding these books right now amuses the hell out of me. I read them nearly a decade ago, back when I was picking out my novels by thickness. (It's actually a winning strategy, believe it or not.) He is not afraid to kill off major characters. Apparently, there was a great deal of shock surrounding one of the deaths in Season One of the series (I don't know which death). People who are only now reading the books, or plan to read one per season, are going to be shocked when they get around to Book Four. I am re-reading these right now, by the way, as it has been so long I've forgotten much of what's in them. Mr. Martin is a very prolific editor, and I had just about given up on the fifth book being released; maybe I can stretch the first four out enough for the fifth to be available in paperback by the time I'm done with the others.

2) Tailchaser's Song, Tad Williams. You'll see him again on this list. I adore Tad Williams. This is an epic fantasy centered on a cat. Most of the characters are cats, in fact. The novel has all the elements of epic fantasy--the come-from-behind protagonist, the unlikely gathering of travelers, the epic journey. I've bought this book a few times; every time I loan it out, it mysteriously disappears.

3) the Diana Tregarde novels, Mercedes Lackey. Not the last time you will see her, either. Ms. Lackey is the grande dame of urban fantasy; her Di Tregarde novels really introduced that genre. They were published slightly out of order in the universe itself, I believe; Children of the Night should be read first. There are some superficial resemblances between Di Tregarde & Laurell K Hamilton's Anita Blake (short, dark-haired women who fall in love with...well, on the off chance you haven't read it I won't spoil it for you). Interestingly, LKH took on the same Aztec myth Lackey dealt with in Burning Water in her own novel Obsidian Butterfly. The former is much better, though LKH's take on it isn't a slouch.

4) Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter, Laurell K Hamilton. Well, the last one provided a nice lead-in for this one. It's another series I started reading long before it became popular. I read the series very nearly in order, too--I read Circus of the Damned first and then went back and picked up Guilty Pleasures. I remember going stir-crazy when Blue Moon's release kept getting pushed back; when it finally came out I stayed up all night long reading it. I'm about 90% in the disgruntled-fan camp on this series. I hate that it reads like slashfic these days, that Anita is screwing damn near everything with a penis. That said, Hit List actually had a PLOT, people! There was some sex, but not much, and it didn't completely derail the action as has been the case since Narcissus in Chains. Hamilton's AB novels were the first ones I'd read where all the mystical stuff was out in the open; subsequent series with this conceit seem to always feature wussy vampires who drink blood substitutes. WTF?

5) the Sookie Stackhouse series, Charlaine Harris. Yet another series I read before it became huge. I've avoided the TV series, because I hear they've really screwed it up. Ms. Harris was involved only in the first season. Lafayette dies in the second novel, people. And Pam is a lesbian who dresses like a yuppie. I'm a little put off by how Sookie is now rather promiscuous, and didn't like it when a certain important female character was summarily killed off, but the older novels are absolutely charming.

6) the Mercy Thompson series, Patricia Briggs. A skinwalker living among werewolves. Interesting take on things, though I'm not fond of the immortal werewolf thing. I am a huge fan of how the Fae are dealt with, though. Fair warning: bad things happen to the heroine. I'm actually impressed by that; there was no deus ex machina to save her. There is also an Alpha and Omega series (only two or three books so far, I think) set in the same world, but it is written in third person, and this grates on me for some reason. (Probably because the convention in urban fantasy is first person narration).

7) Urban Shaman, C E Murphy. There are more books in this series, but truth be told it's an uneven series. Ah, apparently the series name is The Walker Papers. Look, I like it, but the Celtic gods thing is really really done. There are a lot of cliches in the series. Most of the time it overcomes them, but not all of the time. Still, this is the most enjoyable of the author's series, to me.

8) Working for the Devil, Lilith Saintcrow. This is the first novel in the Dante Valentine series. I haven't yet read the others, so I'm not recommending the entire series. I've got a love-hate relationship with this book. It's heavily influenced by cyberpunk, which is a subgenre of which I've never been overly-fond, and it's a bit too over-the-top anti-Christian, but it's a compelling book nonetheless. I'll work on reading the rest of the series soon enough.

9) Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, Tad Williams. Epic high fantasy trilogy (four books in paperback; the last one was so massive it had to be split into two volumes). Nothing Earth-shattering, just good high fantasy. Elves, a stable-boy who makes good, an an ass-ton of onions eaten as though they were apples. Seriously. I love onions, but I'm not going to grab one and take a huge bite, y'know? It's really immaterial, but it's always stuck with me. This trilogy compares very favorably to Martin's series.

10) the Mithgar Series, Denis L McKiernan. This is the first of two large bodies of work I'll put on this list. (You probably already know the other one, if you've read high fantasy any time in the last 30 years.) There are sixteen total books here. The Iron Tower trilogy is very, very derivative. It's a much lighter take on LOtR. The Hel's Crucible duology is much better; it's probably my favorite.

11) Valdemar, Mercedes Lackey. Yes, this is the other large body of work. She covers some interesting, important topics in this series. And some are just purely enjoyable sword-and-sorcery novels. I think the first of these I ever read was By the Sword, which my uncle owned. I didn't read the Vows & Honor trilogy until I was an adult; one of those books has a line I still quote "Strong like ox. Dumb like ox. Hitch to plow when ox dies." Still, not the last of this author you'll see on this list.

12) Keeper's Chronicles, Tanya Huff. Of course, not the only time you'll see her. This isn't the series for which she is best-known, but it's my favorite. I am a sucker for good comic fantasy. This is pretty fantastic stuff. I think it is The Long, Hot Summoning which has the mall elves; it's my favorite.

13) Tiger & Del novels, Jennifer Roberson. One of the authors whose work I have plans to read much more of. This is the only series of hers I've read so far. High fantasy, again. Feminist. A little weird in places. One of two places in fantasy literature I've encountered my given name; Sabra is a villain in one of them. (Sabra is also a city in the southern continent in Denis L McKiernan's series mentioned above.)

14) Dresden Files, Jim Butcher. Urban fantasy for men, I guess. Very good. The TV series is available on Hulu, or at least was fairly recently. They screwed up enough minor details to annoy me away from watching it. I have yet to read Ghost Story, but I'm up to date other than that. Again, nothing Earth-shattering here. Or, well, maybe there is; in the (heretofore) penultimate novel I think there was a gigantic earthquake at the end. I think this is probably one series everyone has read.

15) Monster Hunter International, Larry Correia. I reviewed this a while ago. I've read Monster Hunter: Alpha, but not Monster Hunter: Vendetta. I liked the second book but given that I loved the first, it was kind of a let-down. I kept getting distracted by other books, to be honest. Don't get me wrong; I think Correia is a fantastic author. It's just that MHI made me leave book stores depressed because there was nothing else anywhere near as good on the shelves. I want to be Larry Correia when I grow up, only without having to depend upon math for my livelihood.

16) Happy Hour at Casa Dracula/Midnight Brunch, Marta Acosta. There are two more books in this series, but I haven't read them. This isn't comic fantasy per se, but it is very biting and amusing. Kind of a comedy-of-manners featuring vampires. It's almost paranormal romance, but that phrase implies a certain amount of overwrought melodrama that these books simply don't have.

17) Green Rider series, Kristen Britain. This is another series which compares favorably to Martin's. There's even a wall to keep back the Big Bad. Apparently, I need to get back to buying them, 'cause I'm short two books. (I think I started the third one but had to return it to the library. Also, it came out in 2007, which wasn't exactly a calm year for me...)

18) the Blood Books, Tanya Huff. This is one of the two series Ms Huff is best known for; I have not read the other. Nice urban fantasy: a PI, a detective, and a vampire. I think this was made into a cable TV series as well, but I'm not 100% sure. These novels are all very good. I read them at the same time I was reading LKH's novels, and was impressed by the seriousness of these novels in comparison. There is a spin-off trilogy, starting with Smoke and Shadows, but I haven't read any of them. (Well, actually I think I have read that one, but I'm not positive.)

19) the Discworld novels, Terry Pratchett. The king of comic fantasy, bar none. I have yet to read all of these. I got Erik started on them because of how much I was laughing as I read them. Good send-up of high fantasy; better send-up of bureaucracy. Making Money is a must-read, even if you never get around to the others.

20) The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman. I'm not quite done with this. It's about the only YA novel I'll admit to reading. I am embarrassed to say it's the only solo Gaiman novel I've actually read. American Gods is next on my to-read list. By the by, I have read Good Omens, the novel he co-wrote with Terry Pratchett, and don't really understand the fuss. He is a fantastic essayist.

21) The Glasswrights Series, Mindy Klasky. More high fantasy. I must say I liked the earlier novels better, but they were all worth reading. Here's another author not afraid to kill people off. I did find the end a bit trite, though. The naming system in the series is pretty original--you get one syllable per caste, basically.

22) Born to Run, Mercedes Lackey. Total guilty pleasure here. Elves with mullets, yo. Need I say more?

23) World Gates series, Holly Lisle. This trilogy has the best characters I've yet come across. It is one of those parallel universe novels. The main character is a widow with a young son; the way Ms Lisle deals with her guilt at moving on with her life is moving. Also, though the son is a fairly major character, he is not annoyingly precocious.

24) On the Edge, Ilona Andrews. This is the first of a new series (there's one more, but I haven't read it yet). It's another parallel universe novel. It goes like this: you have the mundane world, which we all live in and know. Then you have a high fantasy world where magic is real and there are swords and sorcerers and such. In between the two, you have The Edge, a place where magic works to a much lesser extent but the rest of the world is modern.

25) the Allie Beckstrom books, Devon Monk. This is projected to be a nine-book series. I'm currently reading book six, Magic on the Hunt. I keep losing it. Which doesn't mean it isn't as good as the others, just that I'm easily distracted. Interesting concept--anyone can use magic, but they must pay a price (some sort of physical malady) to do so. Of course, there is a shadowy cabal of magic users with their own goals, and Ms Beckstrom gets sucked into it.

26) the Otherworld series, Kelley Armstrong. I haven't read all of these. I think I'm short two. It's a mainly female-focused series. All novels are in the same world, and they generally center around a few core characters. These include the world's only female werewolf, a medium who plays a fake one on TV, an a half-witch/half-demon. Oh, and one novel even has a dead protagonist. Very interesting stuff, though nothing really innovative. I haven't figured out what it is with vampires in this series yet.

27) Kitty the Werewolf books, Carrie Vaughn. Yes, a werewolf named Kitty. Someone comments on it in every book. The protagonist is likable. She "comes out" on the air of her radio program, the eponymous Kitty and the Midnight Hour. You'll see the vampire/werewolf politics that have become a common theme in urban fantasy, but it's not belabored. The author also tackles some pretty heavy stuff in these books, including the weaponization of werewolves. I'm about halfway through Kitty's Big Trouble right now; she finally got over her fear of guns. (Seriously, why would a werewolf be jumpy around guns?)

28) the Hollows novels, Kim Harrison. I started reading Harrison & Armstrong around the same time. I am horrible with names, especially when the names are even vaguely similar, so I have a bad habit of not remembering who writes what correctly. I love the puns used as titles here--Dead Witch Walking, The Good, the Bad, and the Undead, For a Few Demons More. Even more, I love the way a genetically-altered tomato led to TEOTWAWKI of sorts.

29) the Kate Daniels series, Ilona Andrews. I have read all but the last one of these, and yes it makes me sad that there is an end. The world is an innovative one--in a postapocalyptic Atlanta, magic and technology trade places unreliably. Vampires are very different from the way they're commonly depicted in fantasy literature these days. The story is good, and there's at least one spin-off series in the works for me to look forward to.

That's enough for now. I've left out Diana Pharaoh Francis's books, some of which are well worth reading, and also Mario Acevedo's novels, and certainly others.

OH! Internet, I need your collective brain: there was a novel or duology written some years back. I don't remember the title or the author, naturally, but the main character was a veterinary student looking forward to contracting Huntington's Chorea (I think she got it in the second book or so), and traveling to a fantasy world put it in remission. She wound up becoming a sort of physician to magical species and decided to live in the other world full time, since the other option was prolonged death. Anyone remember the novel(s)?

(belated) Saturday Munchkin Blogging #11 (?)

2011-09-04T19:03:00.000-05:00

Ah, I am losing track of this thing. And being lazy about getting it up, which is obvious from the way it's Sunday.

Anyhow, here are a couple of photos I took with Erik's webcam & posted on Facebook yesterday; they turned out to be pretty popular with my friends there and so I figured to share them here as well.

Just minutes before I took this photo, she was trying to choke me. Arms wrapped around my neck, squeezing, the whole bit. She's a very affectionate baby. And very physical. This is a dangerous combination.

She will also chew on my clavicle. I haven't quite figured that one out yet. Makes her teefs feel better, maybe?

Not sure if I've mentioned this, but she is now a toothed baby. She has two little teeth just a couple of centimeters above the surface of her bottom gum. She cut them at almost the same time, no fussing involved. (Then again, the whole family was sick the week before I found her teeth, so it's entirely possible that teething fussies were masked by sickies.)

This is Marie in a nutshell: cutting two teeth at once, a certainly physically painful process? Meh. She's okay. Fill her diaper with rank poop? She'll just sit there 'til the smell works its way through my under-functioning nose (it was just the one time), happy as the proverbial clam.

Yet if I have the temerity to think I can, oh, go pee without her, she will flip her shit.

To recap: Physical pain/discomfort? Meh. Do something she doesn't want? RAWR! She's my mini-me. *snif*

This photo was taken in between attacks on the webcam. I love the devilish look on her face.

She looks quite a bit like Erik in this photo. Marie has her daddy's smile. She will wake up in a good mood and look for something to shred. I am always reading that boys are more physical than girls. My girls missed that memo.

Oh, and you can't tell from this photo, but her hair is actually light brown/dark blonde. I have failed yet again in producing a brunette child. So much for brown being the dominant. Still, I hold out some small hope; my mother told me that's the color my hair was when I was Marie's age.

Dig the wall behind her. I'm sure there's a perfectly good explanation for it. Alas, I have no clue what that explanation might be. We've been staying with my mother since yet another bizarre electrical issue at our house (and, yeah, we're outta there; I'll explain it later). She just moved in this place. She still lives in the 'park; this trailer was previously inhabited by our old landlord; he and his just bought themselves a house in Sunrise. (Hey, they haven't had a drive-by there in like three weeks.) I shudder to think what occurred here to prompt holes in the wall and subsequent duct-tape repair. They're dog people.

Speaking of pets, turns out Marie is terrified of cats. I blame it on Erik's faulty DNA. I have no idea what the issue is; she was sitting on the kitchen floor here and one of my mother's cats padded up near her (about a foot away) and she freaked out and started crying. Since then, she will lean over and stare at them, and has even patted Mr. B a time or two, but she's still pretty frightened.

Strange baby.

It's different...

2011-09-02T00:23:00.000-05:00

I got married for the first time at age 19, and for the second time at age 30. Of course, so much happened in the intervening 11 years that it almost goes without saying that things would be different the second time around.

Love for me, the first time, was all-consuming. Like a lot of young adults I was hungry for love and acceptance. I thought I had found it. I guess I read too many romance novels as a kid, or maybe it's just an artifact of having been young, but for whatever reason I thought love had to be hot to be real. I thought if it wasn't passionate and crazy what was the point?

Yeah, try not to laugh at me too hard.

This time...it's not like that. Not at all. It is the difference, if I can be allowed an overwrought metaphor, between setting your clothes on fire and sitting outside in the sun. Either way, you're gonna get warm, but one of them will hurt like hell and may just cripple you.

I've always been a bit of a homebody. I don't care where I make my home, and I don't much care about the physical possessions I have inside that home. I care about the people inside that home. The thing about Erik is this: I love him wholeheartedly. More, and better, I think, than I did my first husband. And it is calm.

Erik and I lie in bed at night, after the kids are asleep and after Marie goes to sleep, and we hold each other and talk. Of shoes and ships and sealing wax (and occasionally cabbage, but almost never kings). Sometimes, usually, it starts out as a discussion of something which impacts us both (or us as a family), but it almost always veers off from there. And...I love it. It's probably my favorite thing. It reminds me in a good way of my friendship with Mark; he and I almost always have a minimum of three separate conversations going on at once, and uncountable tangents to each of them. Erik and I are the same way.

I don't know why it took me so long to figure out that you need to marry your best friend. I had it the other way around--your husband will be your best friend. Subtle difference, I think, but important.

I can't say I didn't talk with my first husband, because I did, but the depth simply wasn't there. It was more me pontificating and him agreeing. I have a kind of strong personality and a habit of running over folks without even realizing it. Combine that with a guy who had a lifelong habit of agreeing with whomever he was with...

You know, I had a friend back in high school, John, and on his own he was great but when he was in a couple he wasn't John anymore, he was Kristenandjohn. He lost his own identity. It aggravated me as a teenager, and yet somehow I slipped into being Sabraandrobert. (Note the position of the names in these examples.) I never wanted to be there, but my usual ability to step outside of my situation and analyze it failed me utterly in that case. I was too much the little kid wanting to be loved.

The way the love is, though, is not the only difference. There are other things, more concrete things. Part of the first time around involved picking loose every scab, poking at every scar. This time, we both leave well enough alone. There are places in his head that I'll never go, and vice versa. And it really is better that way, although maybe it sounds like a cop-out. A good love isn't necessarily all-consuming; allowing privacy is just as important. (Should have dated a libertarian much sooner, eh?)

I've grown up, and Erik benefits. I've finally, finally gained somewhat of the ability to not snap another person's head off when they say something I think is dumb or overly obvious. Well, okay, I've gained the ability to not do that to Erik. Pretty much everyone else still needs to beware, but he can fumble, and at the same time I can let myself fumble, too.

See, part of it is simply that I've matured, but a lot of it is Erik. He doesn't set my back up the way my ex-husband always did; what I mistook for passion to begin with was really not much more than irritation. Hey, you get something stuck under your skin and you're gonna be jumpy, right?

That doesn't exist now. It is only an improvement.

Put it simply, Erik makes me a better person. I can't not be amazed by that.

It's okay, I have black friends.

2011-08-29T19:25:00.001-05:00

The new face of racism in America, apparently.

One of my Facebook friends, who in general is a very nice lady and typically open-minded (isn't that a hell of a disclaimer?) has been posting quite a bit of stuff from sites such as The Christian Left lately. I'm sure you've seen their work; they're the folks who will tell you Jesus would have been a liberal, and if you don't believe the government should forcibly redistribute wealth, you hate poor people and you're a bad Christian.

Usually I just roll my eyes and let it pass me by. To the best of my knowledge, she practices what she preaches, and she really does believe that the problem is too big to be solved without government help. (That the government has been helping, and the problem remains, apparently has escaped her notice. "Do it again, only harder!" is not an uncommon idea from my lefty friends.)

Last week, though, she came out with a doozy--some link from a leftist website that claimed the Tea Party is racist.

Now, anyone who has been paying attention should know this is bullshit. But I keep seeing it crop up from people who should know better, and it pisses me the hell off. Since the long slog to the next Presidential election has begun, the old saw about Republicans being racist is being bandied about again, and I am sick of it.

The title of this post is one of those lines supposedly used by racists to make everyone think they're not racist. Really non-racist folks, apparently, have all-white friends. And multicultural crayons.

Also racist.

Now, I am not saying that all Democrats--or even most--are racist. That would be stupid. What I am saying is that if all of your friends look just like you, I'm going to question how open-minded and inclusive you really are. Because let me tell you, it's one thing to say you think people are more than the color of their skin, but it's quite another to actually live those words.

I don't go around talking about how diverse a group of friends I have, but, well, I do. Of the 42 Facebook friends I have whom I went to school with, four of them are white. (I was gonna tell you how many weren't, but then realized it'd be a lot quicker the other way around.) Add in the people I know in real life whom I didn't necessarily go to school with, excepting the ones to whom I'm related, and you add in one or two white folks. Moreover, my friends--and these are people I know in person--are of various economic, educational, political, and religious backgrounds. Offhand I think I have three or four gay friends (one of whom is in drag in his profile photo as of this writing, and another of whom is my best friend). Lots of 'em are Democrats. (Hi, David!) A few are in interracial relationships. A few are biracial. Most of them are at least bilingual. Most, but not all, are Christian. (I even have Baptist friends.)

You guessed it...Racist! Why, they even watch Fox News.

Hell, if you look at my family, you don't suddenly gain a whole lot of white people. Well, except for the family I just married into. My brother-in-law is Mexican, and that means the obvious thing for my nephews and niece.

But because I think that government spending is out of control, I am racist.

Yeah. Sure. Whatever helps you sleep at night.

As for me? It will take a bit more than ad hominem attacks to make me change my mind on an issue as important as taxation.

Sunday Song #11

2011-08-28T14:02:00.000-05:00

I'd planned to use Shooter Jennings's new song, but I got distracted by this one...

According to the band page on Lone Star Music's website, the Tejas Brothers have been around five years now. They got their start jamming together at the Fort Worth Stockyards.

I love 'em because their sound is pure Texas. There's a heavy conjunto influence, and a strong Southern Rock vibe, and the whole thing coalesces into something greater than the sum of its parts and very, very fun. Dave Perez's accordion is the prominent instrument (which is as it should be; as far as I'm concerned the accordion is the most underrated instrument out there), and the song here, "Boogie Woogie Mamacita" shows off the playful style the band is known for.

This is one of those songs Miss Marie loves shaking her little butt-butt to. We've kind of adopted it as her theme song because she loves to dance so much. I call her my "Boogie Woogie Babycita" (and then have to explain to her sisters that Babycita really doesn't mean anything).

Here's the video:

(Boogie Woogie Babycita, by the way, has cut her two center bottom teeth without so much as a whimper. Kid never ceases to amaze me.)

Saturday Munchkin Blogging #7

2011-08-28T00:25:00.000-05:00

(I edited this photo using Pixlr-o-Matic. It nicely covers up the fact that it was originally a shitty webcam photo.)

As you can see, I now have not two but three school children. This is in spite of the best efforts of the girls' school and SAISD. Esther, apparently, was born in a goat hut in Kenya; Hawaii cannot find an electronic record of her birth certificate. Going off the school district's website, which says absolutely nothing about a birth certificate being a requirement, and also the piece of paper from the school that said I needed her birth certificate or some other form of identification (emphasis mine), I didn't think it would be a huge issue. Oh, but it was. We went 'round and round with the school district/school office on that issue and the issue of proof of residence, at one point being told two different things within about 20 minutes' time by the same person, and the end result is that Esther is only in school on sufferance, and we have 30 days' time to get her birth certificate.

Esther was ecstatic about starting school, though she's not so enthusiastic now. (She is still excited, though.) Her teacher said something to me Wednesday about Esther not always listening. I started to tell her that she has a hard time doing things without any sense behind them, but held off. Her first week of school seems to have involved only practicing how to sit quietly and line up. It's no wonder she's bored already!

Her homework folder has already made an appearance. On the front, above a grid with a few short words in it, is a sentence informing parents that they should go over these high frequency words with their children on a regular basis, as the goal of kindergarten is to "pre-pair" them for first grade. It really was spelled like that. Had it not been for the hyphen, I would have written it off as a mere typo, but this obviously took some effort to type. In the space for "other notes" on her student info sheet, I wrote "Please prepare her for first grade rather than pre-pairing her, as that 'word' makes no sense in context. She is not a shoe." My streak as "that parent" continues unabated.

There are actually two teachers, or perhaps a teacher and an aide, for the kindergarten class. The one who spoke with me Wednesday had a very heavy accent; I can only assume English isn't her first language. And, hey, I have no problem with someone who is ESL teaching my child, so long as they have demonstrated mastery of the language, which seems doubtful. (To be very clear, I want native speakers to demonstrate proficiency before being hired as teachers as well!)

When I picked the girls up the first day of school, Bobbie's third grade teacher called out to her to say she "really missed" having her in class. She said to me "I really, really do!" I imagine so. Bobbie is intelligent and kind-hearted; the sort of child who is probably in short supply in an inner-city school. (She told me last year around state testing time that she was the only child in her class not in need of extra tutoring.)

The older two are also doing very old work. Bobbie told me she'd first seen her math assignment in second grade, and Linda brought home a kindergarten-level number grid ("Write the numbers from 1 to 100!"). I can understand dropping back down to the previous grade level the first week of school just to refresh the memory, but two grade levels?

My mother told me that when she moved here back in the mid '60s, SAISD was the biggest and best district in the city. I don't know if that's true, but it certainly wasn't a great one by the time I hit school age, and it has only worsened since.

It is now my primary goal in life to get my kids the fuck out of here.

Book List & Bitch

2011-08-26T02:09:00.000-05:00

The NPR's Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy novels with the ones I have read in bold:

1. The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
3. Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card
4. The Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert
5. A Song Of Ice And Fire Series, by George R. R. Martin (I first read this before it became trendy, thankyouverymuch.)
6. 1984, by George Orwell
7. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
8. The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov
9. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
10. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
11. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman
12. The Wheel Of Time Series, by Robert Jordan
13. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
14. Neuromancer, by William Gibson
15. Watchmen, by Alan Moore
16. I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov
17. Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein
18. The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss
19. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
20. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
21. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick
22. The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
23. The Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King (I've read two of these. Do I bold some of the words?)
24. 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke
25. The Stand, by Stephen King
26. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
27. The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury
28. Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
29. The Sandman Series, by Neil Gaiman
30. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
31. Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein
32. Watership Down, by Richard Adams
33. Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey
34. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein
35. A Canticle For Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller
36. The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells
37. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, by Jules Verne
38. Flowers For Algernon, by Daniel Keys (Ah, this isn't a novel. It's a short story. I read it a couple of times in junior high; it was in our literature book in 6th grade.)
39. The War Of The Worlds, by H.G. Wells
40. The Chronicles Of Amber, by Roger Zelazny
41. The Belgariad, by David Eddings
42. The Mists Of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
43. The Mistborn Series, by Brandon Sanderson
44. Ringworld, by Larry Niven
45. The Left Hand Of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin
46. The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien
47. The Once And Future King, by T.H. White
48. Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman
49. Childhood’s End, by Arthur C. Clarke
50. Contact, by Carl Sagan
51. The Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons
52. Stardust, by Neil Gaiman
53. Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson
54. World War Z, by Max Brooks
55. The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle
56. The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
57. Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett
58. The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever, by Stephen R. Donaldson
59. The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold
60. Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett
61. The Mote In God’s Eye, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
62. The Sword Of Truth, by Terry Goodkind
63. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
64. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke
65. I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson
66. The Riftwar Saga, by Raymond E. Feist
67. The Shannara Trilogy, by Terry Brooks
68. The Conan The Barbarian Series, by R.E. Howard
69. The Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb
70. The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
71. The Way Of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson
72. A Journey To The Center Of The Earth, by Jules Verne
73. The Legend Of Drizzt Series, by R.A. Salvatore (I've read a few Drizzt novels, but nowhere near all of them.)
74. Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi
75. The Diamond Age, by Neil Stephenson
76. Rendezvous With Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke
77. The Kushiel’s Legacy Series, by Jacqueline Carey
78. The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin
79. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury
80. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire
81. The Malazan Book Of The Fallen Series, by Steven Erikson
82. The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde
83. The Culture Series, by Iain M. Banks
84. The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart
85. Anathem, by Neal Stephenson
86. The Codex Alera Series, by Jim Butcher
87. The Book Of The New Sun, by Gene Wolfe
88. The Thrawn Trilogy, by Timothy Zahn
89. The Outlander Series, by Diana Gabaldan
90. The Elric Saga, by Michael Moorcock
91. The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury
92. Sunshine, by Robin McKinley
93. A Fire Upon The Deep, by Vernor Vinge
94. The Caves Of Steel, by Isaac Asimov
95. The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson
96. Lucifer’s Hammer, by Larry Niven &Jerry Pournelle
97. Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis
98. Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville
99. The Xanth Series, by Piers Anthony
100. The Space Trilogy, by C.S. Lewis

So, I have 10/100, which looks pretty pathetic. But you know what? I've got a beef with this list. A big 'un. See, I read an ass ton of fantasy, and a smaller amount of science fiction. I have read in the sci-fi/fantasy genre almost exclusively--with some side-tracks into horror--for the past decade or more. The website io9 actually linked to the nomination/voting form when this list was being put together, and I had to shut the tab without contributing. Why? Because they purposely excluded a huge portion of the fantasy genre. I don't recall offhand what the specific criteria were, but I do remember it wound up excluding damn near everything Laurell K Hamilton has ever written. Urban fantasy was pretty much excluded altogether (I don't remember if it was a specific exclusion or merely a de facto one); you'll note that Jim Butcher's Codex Alera series is represented, but the absolutely fantastic Harry Dresden novels aren't. That right there makes me question it. Also, God knows I love me some Neil Gaiman, but there are twice as many of his novels as of Terry Pratchett's. WTF?

Then there's the other big problem with this sort of list. They're always presented as though they grant some sort of literary cred when really? Not so much. Look, I've read one Margaret Atwood novel to date. It's because I was forced to, and it made me regret literacy. On a similar note, although I've read both 1984 and Animal Farm, I didn't willingly read either, and I honestly thought both sucked. On the other hand, as noted above, there's quite a bit of excellent literature that just isn't on the list. Martin's work is fantastic, of course, but what of Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar series. Too pop-lit? She tackles some very weighty themes in those novels, from being gay in a disapproving society to misappropriation of religion in order to maintain political control. Oh, and while we're at it, what about Jennifer Roberson? No Chronicles of the Cheysuli, no Sword Dancer series? C'mon, how can you dis Tiger and Del?

Moreover, there are a good many authors represented on the list whose work I have read, though not necessarily what's listed there. I strongly prefer the short works of both Isaac Asimov and Marion Zimmer Bradley (who, frankly, was most in her element as an editor; her Sword and Sorceress series is really a must-read for any woman interested in the genre). And, while I'm a huge Stephen King fan, I don't think either The Stand or the Gunslinger novels are among his best. (Then again, I think his unabashed horror novels are his best, and horror is like the bastard stepchild of the genre; even though it deals with the supernatural in a similar fashion to fantasy especially, it's always kinda stuck off on its own.)

I won't complain how the list skews toward the older novels; classics are classics because they stand the test of time, after all. (Clarke's 2001 novels do, even though they're now somewhat outdated.) I do find it somewhat bemusing how many of the contemporary novels don't really seem to belong. I was never under the impression that The Time Traveler's Wife was ever really considered sci-fi/fantasy; to the best of my knowledge it was marketed as a mainstream literary novel. Likewise, I recall seeing Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell marketed as more of a mainstream novel as well; one which leaned toward horror, if anything. The inclusion of a handful of very commercial novels strikes me as apropos of nothing.

I should probably put some thought into a shorter, admittedly biased, list of must-read fantasy novels/series. (I'll leave the sci-fi to RobertaX or Tam; they're much better versed in it than I.) This will take some thought...

Of all the bad ideas...

2011-08-22T11:55:00.001-05:00

This is making the rounds on Pinterest and Facebook both, & I've gotta admit, I have a problem with it.

Oh, I get the underlying advice here: Don't whine and complain about things that really don't matter. Don't bitch just to bitch. Don't run down a good man just to have something to say. But that's not what this says, and what it says is just really bad advice.

Here's a lesson I learned the hard way (and painfully): no one is served by putting on a front. I'm nowhere near the only woman who rearranged the deck chairs as her marriage was sinking. No worries, Ladies and Gents, we're just taking on a wee bit of water. This ship is unsinkable, remember. Yeah.

Let me be clear here, I got loads of support when things went toe-up and the water closed in. But you know what? I could've used some help back when the iceberg was just barely visible on the horizon, just to help me get my own head straight, and if I had asked for it, I have no doubt I would have gotten it, and likely would have wound up in a much better situation than I was back in Sept '07.

I'm nowhere near the only woman who has done this, by the way. Not airing your dirty laundry is a lesson passed down from mother to daughter over the generations. You ever known of a woman who just up and left out of the blue? Of course you have; just about everybody's extended family has one of 'em. Thing is, it really wasn't out of the blue; she was just following the advice in the above picture.

Sometimes marriages can be saved, if someone speaks up before they hit the 'berg. Counseling each other to STFU doesn't make that a likely outcome.

Sunday Song #10

2011-08-21T09:52:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite things about music is its silliness. Oh, there are some people out there who take themselves and their art seriously all the time, but they're just not as enjoyable as the folks who can let loose at least part of the time. I'm not talking nonsense songs here, either, just silly bits of fluff that are guaranteed to lighten the mood.

This first song is one of those. It probably should qualify as a guilty pleasure, but the truth is I don't feel guilty for liking it at all. It's absolutely silly; a song about a rodeo clown who not only drinks but can often be found "smoking you-know-what". I'm also quite amused by the fact that the singer declares himself a "rock and roll rodeo clown" in a song that is very heavy on the fiddle. And as much as country cred songs have taken over Nashville recently, I rather appreciate the line "I'm from the big town; I ain't no damn hillbilly."

(Pardon the strangeness of this video, please; it's the only one YouTube has. Sound quality's good, though.)

When I was looking for that, I came across this next song, from the same fellow. (I'm bad with names, so pleasant surprises like this aren't at all unusual.) I've always said that country music is at its best with the sad songs, and this is one of them. It's a heartbreaking story of poverty and the bad things that fall on a family. Not an unusual story, and not a made up one. The video I'm linking here was apparently put together by Joey Green himself and is filled with family pictures.

Complete tangent: I am writing this up Saturday night while Erik's at work and I have access to his computer (I will shortly order a replacement keyboard for mine, finally!) and I just heard Shooter Jennings's new song "Outlaw You"...Ooh, snap! Best. slapdown. ever. If I can find a video for it, I'll get it lined up for next week.

Saturday Munchkin Blogging #6

2011-08-20T20:10:00.000-05:00

So I was working on a post I have scheduled for Monday and it prompted some navel-gazing of the "shit, I've come a long way" variety, and that made me think of this picture of Linda. I took it probably in '08, on the 550, but I don't remember offhand where we were going.

Things were very fragile back in those days. We were all trying to find our footing again, with land that was rapidly changing underneath us. But even in the midst of that shitstorm, there were days when we all were happy and the sailing was smooth.

I have always been an optimist (even though I do look both ways before crossing a one way street), and this is the soul of optimism: remembering to recognize the good times, no matter how few and far between they might be.

There were times when I was asked how I was doing and my response was "Great! Nothing else has gone wrong lately!" Sometimes, not losing ground is just as good as gaining it. Equilibrium FTW, yo.

I know this is old, but I gotta

2011-08-18T00:43:00.001-05:00

Because I'm the sort of wild child who likes to mix my social bookmarking tools, I was Stumbling around Tuesday night looking for stuff to Pin, and I came across this: Mighty Meaty Nachos (with homemade tortilla chips!). The recipe is from Jan 2009, but I just have to comment on it because as a San Antonian I am a born protector of the True Nacho (nachos were invented in Mexico for San Antonians; we're the ones who started making them here)*.

And this recipe...it is an abomination worse than beans in chili. There's so, so much here to pick apart, from the breakfast sausage to the Velveeta, to the tortilla chips made with flour tortillas. But one ingredient in this recipe outshines all the others as a horrific mockery of what nachos are and should be. What is it? Well, just look at her picture of the ingredients:

Do you see it? It lurks off to the right, behind the "cheese" and beside the tortillas: CREAM OF MUSHROOM SOUP.

ZOMG! People, this is the reason the weather has been so fucked up. It's not Obama, it's that lots of someones--judging by the 50+ comments--are putting cream of mushroom soup in their nachos! This is the Mark of the Beast, y'all. For reals.

*Or, at least that's the way the Express-News tells it, and if we can't trust them, whom can we trust?

Socially Acceptable Human Trafficking

2011-08-15T23:38:00.000-05:00

I don't know when I first started to doubt adoption. As a child and adolescent I was fed the line--as I suspect we all are--that mothers who give their children up for adoption do so out of a sincere desire for them to have a better life. As a very young woman, I fell in love with and married a man whose brother was adopted, and as a slightly older woman dealing with PCOS and the distinct possibility that I would never have children of my own (iknowright?) without the help of fertility drugs, adoption was the ready, obvious answer.

Actually, I think my former brother-in-law's story is what caused me to doubt adoption. This might come across as a bit weird if you know that my own brother was given up for adoption by our mother, but Peter clearly had a better life--at least economically--so I never much questioned that. But then I met my then-boyfriend's extended family and was brought face-to-face with the fact that, well, adoption is hardly a guarantee of a better life. Trey's parents favored his brother over him in a manner that was breathtakingly obvious to everyone other than them & their Darling Boy. I have often thought Trey's mother would undoubtedly be heartbroken if she found him as an adult and realized how he'd been treated as a second-class son for most of his life.

When I started to research adoption, and started to learn more about its history, I was appalled. There are reasons some states have laws prohibiting prospective adoptive parents from paying for anything but the birth-mother's medical care: more than that can be seen as coercion. Beyond that, many times women are coerced into giving their children up for adoption. It has gotten better, but it's still there. (LDS Family Services has a series of radio ads that try to guilt unmarried women into giving their children up for adoption, implying very strongly that only married husband-and-wife teams can do a good job of child-rearing. As the child of a single mother, you can imagine how well this sits with me.)

Back then--and even today--I could not understand why parents would travel to a foreign nation to adopt a toddler when there were plenty of American children waiting to be adopted. Why do white couples find it acceptable to adopt a Haitian or African but not a black child here in the US?

International adoption was explained to me this way (many times, by the way): domestic adoptions carry with them the specter of the adoption some day being overturned by the courts because of a mother who changes her mind; international adoptions obviate this concern. Implied but (generally) unspoken was the message that a child who is in an orphanage obviously needs adopting. After all, the very name implies the parents are out of the picture, either through death or through willingly giving up their kids.

Unfortunately, it's not that black-and-white an issue. It may just be that adopting internationally is a more fail-proof method of fucking someone over.

I came across this article series on Slate a couple of days ago. It's an interesting read, but a long one. The short version is this: a "school" was opened up in Makeni, Sierra Leone, and children were solicited from locals with the promise of paid-for education. Some time during that country's civil war, the children all disappeared. Where'd they go? America, where they found adoptive families. Adoptive families who believed that they were saving these children from a war-torn nation and who were, to a person, told lies about at least some of the birth families:

The case history provided by HANCI and paperwork from Sierra Leone's Ministry of Social Welfare both said that Adama's parents had died during the war—her father by snakebite, her mother of a heart attack. Meers was moved by that story and grateful that she could step in for parents who were no longer around to care for their child. She told me that she had immediately noticed that the girl's parents' death certificates were "in the same hand. There was no effort to hide the fact that they were fabricated." But she assumed they had been forged in order to get the child out of a war zone and safely into a new family.

And yet, as Meers and Adama have since learned, Adama's birth parents were both alive when she was adopted.

Nor is this anything approaching an isolated incident. The first article in the linked series discusses other, similar cases of fraud and duped birth parents. EJ Graff, the author, wrote a more general article for Democracy Journal back in 2010 called "The Baby Business". From that article:

I’ve heard a string of similar tales from families in Italy, Canada, Austria, and other Western countries adopting from Ethiopia, the current hot adoption source. In the past five years, Ethiopia’s adoptions to the United States alone have expanded exponentially: Americans adopted 442 Ethiopian children in 2005, and 2,277 in 2009, ranking Ethiopia right behind China as a source for our international adoptions. The combination of skyrocketing numbers and troubling stories suggests that Ethiopia has become the latest country beset by an all-too-common problem: a poor country in which unscrupulous middlemen are sometimes buying, defrauding, coercing, or even kidnapping children away from their families to be sold into international adoption.

It's troubling, to say the least.

I do not, mind you, hold adoptive parents liable in this. By and large, they are well-meaning people who honestly want to help impoverished children. I understand the impetus quite well. Who, looking at the latest Somali famine, hasn't wished to scoop up an armload of children and take them home? (Is that just me?) Empirical evidence pretty clearly shows that these kids will have "better" lives in the US. We don't tend toward wholesale slaughter of the wrong sort of people these days, for one.

I question the "better life" metric, though. I'm not going all culturally relativist on you, mind. Yes, it is better for children to not grow up in the midst of war. Know what, though? It's also best to not rip children from their roots because we see problems with their current lives. Well-meaning adoptive parents might be better off working to improve conditions in the country their children were taken from. Twenty-five to fifty thousand dollars can go a long way if it stays in country. Of course, if you want your own child, you probably aren't likely to mimic Sally Struthers and help from a distance. And that's understandable.

Me, though? I'm not sure I could live with the possibility--the likelihood, in many cases--that I had been an unwitting participant in child trafficking.

Sunday Munchkin Blogging

2011-08-14T21:42:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I know, this was supposed to have gone up yesterday. I was out of the house most of the day, though, and just really not feeling the blogging love. Also, I have no Sunday Song for this week, so I'm going to move Munchkin Blogging to today. I do have a few ideas floating around for actual, meaty posts, so I'm going to throw up a quick picture of the baby & then go off & do research for good posts.

While I work on that, enjoy this picture of Marie in a produce scale:

She weighs 20.25 pounds now, & would cost $15.80 if she were those onions beside her.

Am I REALLY supposed to take this seriously?

2011-08-11T20:31:00.000-05:00

For some reason, the Democratic machine on the Internet seems prone to the straw-man fallacy, mixed liberally with ad hominem attacks. Some sites are so into this that the two things are virtually indistinguishable; it's a veritable cob of horrible arguments.

Case in point: Michele Bachmann Supports View That Slavery Wasn't So Bad After All. It's a pretty short article, with a large part of it being a quote from a book Bachmann apparently considers a must-read, so it's hard for me to find a pull-quote from it, but I'll go ahead and run with this one:

This is the rising star of the GOP. If you are even contemplating voting for this woman, you are a goddamn idiot.

Well, then.

Brief detour for a personal story: My ex-husband? Totally still living in the homeless shelter (And still appearing in the paper! My girls were able to pick out both their dad and his girlfriend in a picture of Haven for Hope's one year birthday barbecue). For those not keeping track, he's been there 13 months now, with no real signs of getting ready to leave. Anyway, a few weeks ago Bobbie came home and told me that her dad and my cousin Scooter, who is his best friend, were both calling me stupid with startling frequency. I told her, "Honey, if I'm considered stupid by a guy living in the homeless shelter over a year and a guy who dropped out of junior high, I'm gonna consider it a compliment."

This is sorta like that. If intellectually dishonest liberals consider me an idiot, I'll wear it as the badge of honor it is, 'cause these guys obviously can't see beyond their own biases. (These are, after all, the same folks who came up with "Why saying 'I'm in the Tea Party is the same as saying 'I eat glue and like it.'")

Here's the thing (and again, I know I'm preaching to the choir). Saying a book is a "must read" isn't an endorsement of everything--or even anything--in it. For example, I consider Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickled and Dimed to be required reading, mainly because the elitism and condescension she displays throughout is breathtaking. I certainly don't endorse, say, her belief that she was hired as a waitress rather than kitchen staff by simple virtue of being white.

Now, don't get me wrong here. I'm no Michele Bachmann fan. But why put words in her mouth? If she's really that bad a candidate, can't you point to her policy positions and actions for reasons why to not vote for her?

And it's not just this one site and this one candidate. Here's another: "If Rick Perry is seriously a Presidential front-runner, there's something wrong with all of us." No pull quote, 'cause I can't quit rolling my eyes long enough to read the article. But you get the idea. Rick Perry can't possibly be a viable candidate because Texas leads the nation in job creation, can he? Naw, can't give the electorate that much credit...

An impossible standard

2011-08-09T18:54:00.000-05:00

One of my Facebook friends linked this article today, and I posted it on my wall. It's definitely a RTWT sort of post; an epic rant on the subject of femininity, which is as fraught a topic as you'd ever hope to find. I'll excerpt a small amount of it here, but again, RTWT:

Real women are feminine and smell good and they are masculine and smell good and they are androgynous and smell good, except when they don’t smell so good, but that can be changed if desired because real women change stuff when they want to.

Real women have ovaries. Unless they don’t, and sometimes they don’t because they were born that way and sometimes they don’t because they had to have their ovaries removed. Real women have uteruses, unless they don’t, see above. Real women have vaginas and clitorises and XX sex chromosomes and high estrogen levels, they ovulate and menstruate and can get pregnant and have babies. Except sometimes not, for a rather spectacular array of reasons both spontaneous and induced.

Real women are fat. And thin. And both, and neither, and otherwise. Doesn’t make them any less real.

Now, this is the take-away message of that post, and one which is applicable to men and women both:

There is no wrong way to have a body.

Had a pretty interesting bit of conversation with Breda about it when posting it. She brought up one of my favorite soapbox topics: Much as we blame the media for unreasonable standards of beauty, we mostly do it to ourselves. To one another, that is. I can't speak for boys, never having been one, but I can tell you that girls are nasty, hateful little creatures by & large. If you don't fit in, woe be unto you. My oldest daughter, who is tall and blonde and thin, is on the receiving end of no amount of BS from short brunette classmates because of her looks. There are girls who hate her for no reason other than that she is pretty.

Society's standards are Mean Girls behavior writ large. The above-linked rant is a tirade against the saying "Real women have curves." This saying gained popularity because fat chicks like me got heartily sick of an endless stream of being treated as lesser and women much thinner than average being held up as an ideal. (Some other time I'll rant about the fashion industry and how they value models who resemble coathangers.) There's some skinny-girl hate out there to go with the fat-girl hate.

The end result of this backlash, by the way, seems to have been a doubly-impossible standard: women are expected to simultaneously be very thin--a size 8 is no longer OK; you've got to be a size 4 or smaller--and "curvy", with big breasts and a Pippa Middleton-quality rear-end. I'd say Jessica Rabbit, but I suspect her thunder thighs would be wildly decried. (On a related sidenote, women are still roundly attacked for having big thighs and wide hips. No explanation of how one is to manage the bubble butt without correspondingly large hips, but there ya go.)

Now, all of this is bad enough, but it gets worse. I StumbledUpon an article called Whose Ideal Was This, Anyway? which traces some changes in the ideal woman's figure over the years. These were the photos used to illustrate just how bad it is:

At first glance, they don't look too different, do they? Both Hollywood elite of their time, both thinner than most American women. But, look at their stomachs. See the difference? In case you still don't get it (because I didn't, to begin with), I'll share the paragraph which followed the photos:

The thing that disturbs me most about these two images is how our daughters must feel about themselves when they see them. The girls in 1962, seeing Ursula rising from the waves in Dr. No, knew that what they were seeing was a real woman, something they could aspire to (if that was what they wanted). Seeing Halle Barry, above, holds no such comforts, particularly when digital film has so much option for smoothing out those flaws. Such perfection is absolutely outside the realm of anyone who is honest with themselves. They might as well throw themselves against a brick wall, because you can't live, and breathe, and be that perfect. It's impossible, and our daughters know it.

The issue of retouching digital film had never even occurred to me, although it should have. Shit, I retouched my profile photo to even out my skintone and get rid of a couple of pimples. (Of course, I also regularly post photos of myself I haven't fixed, so if I've some subconscious need to thoroughly control the way y'all see me, I've failed miserably.) Of course, I am not decrying any use of photo retouching--we've been doing it nearly as long as we've been making photos. But it is much more widely used now than it used to be. Don't believe me? Check this out:

Everyone knows this poster, right? Farrah Fawcett, 1970-something-before-I-was-born. Look at her. Critically. Now, I am not knocking her--this is an iconic bit of erotica for a very good reason. But: look at her mouth. She has smile lines. She has lines under her eyes. Her skin is imperfect. Look at her right arm. There's a crease just below her elbow indicating her skin as a bit loose there. There's a shadow on her right leg that indicates some curve to her thigh. All of this is as it should be.

Now, look at this:

This is presented as an updated version of the Farrah Fawcett poster. Certainly, the similarities are obvious--same background, same color swimsuit, essentially the same pose. But. Look closer. It's been edited. Not too heavily--she has smile lines too, that have only been somewhat reduced. But that's not all. Look at Fawcett's stomach & then at this model's. See the wrinkles on the first swimsuit, and how they're not there on the second one? Granted, the material is different (which also tells you something about how society has changed), but certain things are inalieable--if you hunch over, there will be some bunching of fabric. That's just how fabric works. That this is not in the latter picture gives you some hint of the retouching that went on. Overall, it's pretty light stuff, but if you've ever cracked open a Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition--or, hell, Cosmopolitan's swimsuit issue--you've seen much more heavily-retouched photos. Enough people get carried away enough with it that there's a website called Photoshop Disasters that documents the stupidity.

For whatever reason, which I strongly suspect is related to the ubiquity of theme parks and shitty pop music, we've more or less swallowed this unquestioningly, and adjusted our ideal to something which is quite literally unattainable.

Oh, and guys? This shit's happening to you too.

See this dude?

Cover model for Men's Health magazine. They've got a whole bunch more just like him. This is Men's Health, y'all, not Playgirl. Which is to say, it's aimed at straight men. This is the new male ideal.

Welcome to our hell.

Sunday Song #9

2011-08-07T23:10:00.000-05:00

Erik and I finally went out to Lone Star Music a couple of weeks ago and picked up, among other things, Rodney Crowell's The Houston Kid, which is just fantastic. Several of the songs are at least semi-autobiographical (including one I'd wager dinner money was written about Roseanne Cash), which is part of what makes it such a fantastic album.

I have a soft spot for sad songs with catchy beats. There's something about the juxtaposition of a peppy beat with a depressing subject that amuses the living hell out of me for some reason. Guess it's due to my own optimistic nature. Yeah, life sucks, but what's to do besides enjoy it?

This song also is a horrible ear-worm. It gets caught in both my head and Erik's on a pretty regular basis now. The music is happy. The lyrics? Not so much so.

Unless you're seriously fucked-up, you probably never thought domestic abuse could be so much fun:

Hmm. Strongly suspect that's not gonna work, so here's the link: http://youtu.be/bkZh6HY20dM

Saturday Munchkin Blogging #5

2011-08-06T22:03:00.000-05:00

This is the last day of World Breastfeeding Week. I was going to go out and nurse in public in celebration, but I always do that. So I'll devote this post to nursing instead, and see if I can dig in various places on the internet for nursing photos...

This one is my all-time favorite, mainly because Marie is flipping the bird:

She actually has a habit of doing that:

Now, I realize she's not really telling the world to go fuck itself, but it's funny anyway.

I think I'll make this a short entry, and leave y'all with this pleasant thought: I am not blogging my daughter's bowel movements. You should all be thankful for this, and for the fact that there is no way to embed a smell in a blog post.

More about the power thing

2011-08-04T22:04:00.000-05:00

Sorry it took me so long to get to it.

As RobertaX talked about here, there's another facet to the Powers That Be and their treatment of this country's poor: "the poorer you are, the more you need Help From The Government."

This is the thing: in order to keep themselves in Power, the Government has to justify its continued existence. To put it plainly, politicians have a vested interest in poor people remaining poor.

Now, I'm going to be fair as I can be. I do think most politicians, when they first get into politics, really do want to help people. Unfortunately, anyone who thinks that politics is the way to help people is doomed to be disillusioned quickly. Unless you're going to get into government and work to limit what you can do, you are going to be ineffectual. A few people will be helped, yes, but many more are going to be stomped on.

A friend of a friend of mine--a fellow who now works in city government--bemoaned to me once upon a time that federal government workers, as he was at the time, advanced not from skill but from merely hanging on long enough. The mother of another acquaintance, who at the time worked at BAMC, regaled me once upon a time with a tale of the end-of-fiscal-year buying spree her department was working on. See, if they didn't spend every red cent they have and ask for more, their budget would be cut. Nevermind that they clearly didn't need the budget they had, if there was a surplus. Any cuts were unconscionable, simply because they were cuts.

This isn't isolated. Government agencies have to justify their continued existence. Government agencies which work with the poor have to have a steady supply of poor people in order to do this. Upward economic mobility is therefore anathema. For these agencies to continue to exist for decades, poverty must continue for generations. It is truly that simple.

I've mentioned before that Robert Kiyosaki, of Rich Dad, Poor Dad related in the book he and Donald Trump wrote that Kiyosaki's father discovered, once he got up high enough in the organization, that Hawaii's schools had an agreement with the Dole folks to flunk out a percentage of students every year so that the pineapple company would have a steady supply of uneducated workers to employ at low wages. I am of the opinion that something similar likely exists in this city, given the need for a continual supply of hotel maids and theme park workers. Well-educated people will not want to work for $8/hr. This is why laid-off college graduates so often have a difficult time finding low-rung employment: their prospective employers know they'll jump ship at the first opportunity for a decent paying job.

Because of my divorce agreement, my daughters have to be put in either "public" or private school (long story short, I didn't think homeschooling was worth going to trial over; I've been proven wrong). So I'm unfortunately in a position to tell that, yeah, government schools really are as bad as all that. Worse yet, teachers and administrators are vehemently opposed to anything which might change that. Know that whole "teaching to the test" thing it's hip to decry? Those are basic skills tests. There should be no such thing as teaching to the test, but it happens anyway. Know why it happens? Because jack-all is done in the grades kids don't have to take standardized tests during. Teachers present the information in a lackluster manner, but no one ever fails. Instead, clueless kids eventually wind up in a pass-or-else position and the teacher lucky enough to get them has to force-feed the knowledge to them just enough to get them past the test.* There's no doubt in my mind that this is a cumulative effect. And a lack of education is the fast route to public housing.

As is no surprise to pretty much anybody, the only thing most students have a knowledge of when they graduate high school is what a good person they are. They lack critical thinking skills, or many skills at all, but they know they deserve all that is good in the world.

Enter the government. Poor? Really, really poor, as in your cupboards are bare and you have no way to fill them? Go to the food pantry. Learn you can go there maybe once a month. That's in the big city (and an improvement, mind, over when I was a kid & you could hit them up once a quarter). If you want to do something as crazy as eat on a regular basis, you need the government. You need food stamps, in fact.

Know what the bitch is about the SNAP program? You requalify once every six months or so, and you have to report income and holdings. In other words, if you want to save up to do something crazy like go to school and improve your lot in life, or sit on a smallish emergency fund so you're not caught with your ass in the wind, and the government is going to decide you don't need to eat until that money is gone. They make it as close to impossible to get ahead as they can.

And then there is the flip side of means testing. If you're a single mom making $12,000 a year and you get food stamps and Medicaid for your kids, the point where you are disqualified for these programs comes a lot sooner than the point where you can realistically afford these things yourself. So if you're actually a good parent--defined here as "one who puts her kids' well-being above her political principles", you will eventually have to answer the Do I take a slightly better-paying job and lose the ability to feed my kids, or do I stay where I am to make sure their stomachs are full? (My mom never got food stamps when I was a kid. I went hungry a lot so she didn't have to take government assistance. It's bullshit, sorry.)

It's a vicious cycle. And not one that is easy to get out of. Yes, making better decisions when you are very young will prevent much of it, but look up there at my paragraph on government education. Most people aren't being given the ability to make those decisions.

So here I come to my inevitable question: What the fuck do we do about it? It's a pervasive problem; a symptom of a system that is rotten through and through. We cannot burn it down to the ground and start over again. We should not sit back and talk about how things ought to be; because reasoning from what is to what ought to be never really accomplishes anything.

But the problem is big enough that it kind of overwhelms me, if I am to be honest. I can, as Dave Ramsey says, change my family tree. I can work to make sure my kids have critical thinking skills. I can unplug the television. I can force my children to reason things through. On a larger scale, though? I don't really know. I'd like to tell the little girl next door that she doesn't have to follow her family down the path of drug abuse/selling and illegitimacy and hatred of intelligence, but it's nigh impossible to tell a kid that what their family is doing is wrong, even when it is, because that implies that the child is wrong. And I only have the opportunity to engage so many people in real life.

I think that's part of the reason I have this blog. It gives me the opportunity to tap into the hive mind.

What the heck do we do, y'all?