More Good Company

Today is one of those days where I'm gratified to see that other people recognize the government's leeward drift toward a fascism and are speaking up about it. I think I lack naive assumptions about privacy and reckon if the government wants to disappear me, that it can happen easily and conveniently. It doesn't matter that I'm just your garden variety wage earner and not a mover and shaker. It does matter that I have a basic education and that I can write.

Didja notice how our Congress has oh so quietly on cat's paw feet approved billions more in spending for this damn war in Iraq. Are you watching out there? You ordinary jacks & jills? Are you ready to get mobile? Get out and vote? Ready to take back what's your's by right?

Check out Wild Chihuahuas in my Good Links while you're at it. I ran across it via Truthdig.org.

Fact is I'm just an ordinary American gal. I love my country. I'm neither liberal nor conservative. Extremes worry me. But I'm just real sick of BU**SH**. That's just the truth.

Recent Nooz...cough

Even since I was a kid, I've had a notion about what an ideal society is and what I'd like in that society. I also learned early on that notions of what constitutes "ideal" is subject to frequent and regular change.

It's no surprise that in my ideal universe a lot of things get tossed out...

... like the son-of-a-bitch who molested that kid in Nevada that was on the news this week. Tossing him out the airlock of the space station would do it for me. Gods, I really hope she's a strong, tough one with a good mind and a strong, loving family surrounding her closely for as long as she needs. One part is over for her, but there is a whole other part ahead of her. I'm glad the news is the kid is safe. The cops really want the scum-bag. I hope they do get him!

... Now OJ's circling the drain again. He couldn't have had his attorney hire a private investigator for this business over his memorabilia since, according to him, the cops don't want to come to his aid when bad things happen to him? It would've been a whole lot simpler and tidier.

... that prosecutor in Jena, LA outta be packin' it in, too. That kind of human being just does not belong in my ideal world. I'm a 53 year old white woman and I figure that if I were a black person of any age, knowing the history of the south, that seeing a noose hanging from a tree would make me feel fearful, upset, defensive, hurt, disappointed and angry all at once. That's what threats do to people. The intention behind that particular threat display IS to make people feel those things emotions and more. Specifically, it's meant to make Black's feel those emotions. That's wrong. That's terrorizing behavior and it's a lot worse than fighting back against being terrorized. What on earth is he thinking trying to haul kids up on attempted murder charges when the result of the boy's fight so clearly had no little medical effect on the other as it did? That's just unreasonable.

... still, Dubya hangs on with the tenacity of a rat to his so called foreign policy and things like the Patriot Act which I wrote about in the previous article. If someone had told me 40 years ago that I'd view my own country's government as morally bankrupt, I'd have told you it couldn't happen. Base corruption like Teapot Dome and Watergate existed. But it takes a little extra something gone bye-bye to become morally bankrupt as well and I sure couldn't have imagined that growing up.

Patriot Act News

TIME and the AP reported that a gutsy judge ruled that the Government & FBI screwed up badly when they arrested attorney Brandon Mayfield, a convert to Islam, on the basis of a mistakenly read fingerprint and tried to use it to link him to the Madrid bombing in Spain that Al Quaeda carried out.

The Patriot Act is an abomination of the highest order in my ordinary-person-on-the-street opinion. It is not constitutional and does nothing to preserve our rights, but strips them away in a very Fascist manner. Mayfield and his attorney prevailed on the basis that his 4th amendment rights were violated against unreasonable search and seizure.

(I seem to recall that when I joined the Air Force way back in '73, the oath I took included "...to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic... " I reckon doing away with our constitutional rights through "letters of intent" and crap like that is domestic enemy action.)

The article is at:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1666016-1,00.html

After reading it, don't y'all just love that phrase about the FBI making "inaccurate and ambiguous statements" to get their warrant. Isn't that what us ordinary mortals call lying? And if we do it under oath, isn't that perjury? A criminal offence?

Heart Sick

My depression and related anxiety & agoraphobia has escalated on me again. (No, not all agoraphobes are 100% housebound.) November 8th of '05 I tried to commit suicide --- the stresses of my job had finally gotten to me. I went back to work after 3 months on temporary disability. I was supposed to be in a more general tech support category and was succeeding, but in the intervening months, was transitioned back into the same position I was in when I tried to check out. I was told basically there wasn't a choice, that was the direction the company was going. The kick in the ass, was I was doing better in the lower rated position than I had in some time. But got transitioned back into failing. We have this thing called "handle time" and I've been under a huge amount of pressure to get it down to the company standard. Last month I beat it. This month I'm over again. I've left work the several days crying that I just can't seem to be perfect--to get that balance of handling all my calls perfectly the way the company wants.

Day before yesterday, I found out resubmitted disability paper work never got to the company's MRO because it was paperclipped to someone else's paperwork. Yesterday, after my shift was over I found my handle time was some 1500 seconds. I left in tears and punished myself, punching and slapping my face and wanting to be dead. I cried in my car for over an hour. Cut myself for the first time too. Four slices on my arm. It's not like I haven't done other things to hurt myself either -- I've burned myself with hot wires & cigarettes too. Usually self hitting is the limit, but not always. I feel/felt like a failure and like I wanted to be dead for the gazillionth time since I was 11. The only smart thing I did was call my pDoc who told me in no uncertain terms to NOT go to work.

I feel lost. I'm 53 and I'm just so tired of this. I have long periods when things go well with me and I'm relatively ok, but then my life gets stolen again by this depression and everything, including work, home, life management (like paying bills) goes into a decline. Even more, I'm sick to death of people thinking it's a character failing and that if I really WANTED it badly enough, I'd be happy and well all the time; so that I should think "happy thoughts" or look at those worse off than me and be grateful (which I am when I'm not sick.) I don't write much about this.... it's ugly to me. Ugly to be thinking of dying, to be or becoming suicidal, to admit I hurt and mutilate myself, to show my self as weak.

The Liar's Game

Read a great book review this afternoon, now that I'm home & all cleaned up from camping since Thursday. It's about the Duke University Lacrosse rape case. I never felt the accused were guilty. In fact, I recall thinking they were getting railroaded and short while back blogged about Nifong being forced into resigning and being disbarred. I plan to read the book too.

I'm deeply revolted at finding out that Duke didn't support it's students and that the faculty excoriated the accused maybe even worse then the legal system. I think the faculty members who participated should all do an examination of conscience, reassess their characters downward and then just get real. They lied about their own students in a way that really smacks of world class betrayal. Anyway....

The title of the review is:

Durham Bull
The phony Duke rape case, and who was really assaulted.
by Charlotte Allen
09/24/2007, Volume 013, Issue 02

The book Ms. Allen is reviewing is:

Until Proven Innocent
Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case
by Stuart Taylor Jr. and K.C. Johnson
Thomas Dunne, 432 pp., $26.95

As usual, click the subject line for the link to read the review.

Autumn Equinox Camping

Going camping Thursday thru Sunday! Ah yes! I can barely wait. It's almost midnight here, but I've been up and down half the evening packing. Now this is festival kind of camping, so in addition the usual jeans/shirt/sandals, now I get to add in a skirt, a pretty length of cloth for a sarong or top or shawl, a few extra gauds and baubles not to mention warm clothes for possible rain and cold. After all that, a pair of boots, sneakers and sandals. I've got an old Army parachute bag I pack it all. It's that time of year in New Mexico when the weather in the mountains can go between two or even three extremes. I mentioned this back in "Winter In A Can" on another site.. That was the first of May-o! And it snowed.

I've already pre-cooked a pot of vegetarian pinto beans and frozen them up (thawing and reheating ie easy), and I'll be making up a separate batch of hamburger meat cooked with green chili for the omnivores who like meat with their beans. And then there's a batch of mac and cheese to cook up as well. I've got a stove top recipe that's really good!For 4 days of festival camping in the woods, I want the convenience of food I just have to reheat. I'm seriously wanting to meet up with a tree to lean against while reading a good book for part of an afternoon, attend a ritual or two, maybe a workshop. Maybe even dance around the fire if there's a fire to dance around. The moon's waxing full in the first quarter, so I probably won't need a flashlight to walk around with, my night vision is still pretty decent. Hmmm... maybe I should bring a couple of the solar yard lights? Put 'em near the tent.

Oh... and we're bringing the dog too. I don't get out of walking her, just for this. And you said what about the kitchen sink?

Urinals....Practically Speaking

I was reading Joel Stein's "The Impossible Dream" in the LA Times wherein he talked about a modest home improvement -- installing a urinal in his house. It made sense to me. But there were :::gasp::: realtors and others who were throwing up their hands aghast at such a thing! It would devalue the house! Hmmm?

Stein's got a point and the comment that urinals are "too aggressively masculine" to us women is apt, too. Of course, back when in-home bathrooms truly became a fixture, the urinal was absent even then, so we women aren't even used to the idea in our visual references. Realistically, Stein makes sense and we could get used to seeing a urinal in the bathroom. After all, for some Americans a bidet is as important to their bathroom experience as it is to the French. We don't even blink twice seeing bidets featured in mid-to-high end ads for bathroom fixtures.

The simple fact is I'm unambitious about vigorious housekeeping these days. If something is easy to clean and keep up, I'm all for it. These days, it a thing contributes to water or fuel economy, I'm also in favor of it. The urinal seems to fit the bill and if my dear husband and I ever do get to afford adding on and doing a proper bathroom, I will be sure to include a urinal in the plans as well. Probably a waterless variety. Given that my daydream for a proper bath add-on includes installing a composting toilet, a simple urinal is hardly a stretch mentally.

Lest you think the urinal should be hidden, see http://www.clarkmade.com/show.html for an artist's exhibit of floral inspired urinals.

As always, click on the blog title to go to the original article. Thanks!