Relevant Quotes

Do you lead an examined life? How's your self-mirror? Are you satisfied with what you see? Could you be doing better?

No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself." -- Thomas Mann

Happy To Be Me

In another blog I read, we were to match our zodiac sign with the color of our eyes. Hence:

VIRGO: Dominant in relationships. Sexy. Someone loves them right now. Freak in bed. Always wants the last word. Caring. Smart. Addictive. Attractive. Loud. Loyal. Easy to talk to. Hard to forget. Love at first sight. Everything you ever wanted. Easy to please. The one and only. Ultimate sexiness.

Blue Eyes-People with blue eyes last the longest in relationships. They are pretty or handsome & very good kissers. They always fall in love with their closest friends and never understand why, they are very funny and outgoing and don't care what people think or say. They are very satisfying and love to please. They will always exceed your pleasure standards. The best of all. If you repost this and you have blue eyes you will have the best kiss sometime in the next 4 days.

Dang, it's good being me! LOL!

Big Media & Bad News

If you want real News - speak up. Entertainment news is NOT real news. It's just bread and circuses to spare you from having to think critically and analytically about serious things like foreign policy, civics and good government, human rights and more.

Little Bites

The last few days, I've had a helluva a time getting anything written. The only things that have come easily is commenting on other blogs.

This last week I read Zainab Salbi & Laurie Berklund's "Between Two Worlds; Escape From Tyranny: Growing Up In The Shadow Of Saddam." It is a compelling and harrowing read of Salbi's life as the daughter of Saddam's personal pilot and the stark fear in which silence becomes one of the keys to survival in the face of Hussein's rule. Reading this makes me aware again how privileged we Americans and Europeans really are. Don't pass this book by.

21 on the 21st. DH and I will be celebrating our 21st Anniversary the day before this year's Winter Solstice. I was really kind of hoping the Solstice would be on the 21st this year as well, but :::sigh::: it isn't to be. Does this mean our marriage is now adult, too?!?

Pedalling my ass. Later this afternoon, DH and I are going to get me a new bicycle. The weather is NOT perfect for bicycling, but that's ok - it will give us time to get the tires puncture proofed and the bike set up comfortably for me . I've already scoped it out and it's not going to be anything fancy, but it will have some nice features -- like a wider seat and shocks with a 'soft tail'.

Two weeks of hell. PDA Training at work. Starting tomorrow: from 6 a.m. in the morning to 2:30 p.m. :::whimper::: I'm not a morning person. Really. I promise. I've got to start waking up at 4:15 in order to be up on my feet and out the door by 5:20. This means bed time by 9:30 at the latest. And I still won't be really alert until somewhere around 10 a.m. :::grumble:::

Jay's memorial service is finally set for January 13th in San Francisco. My time off was approved, I've got my and place to stay. All I need to do when I get there is pick up a Muni pass and I'm set for getting around. I do hope the weather's good because when I'm there I love walking up most of the hilly streets there - it does wonders for my legs and arse. That kind of exercise also means I can enjoy things like clam chowder in sourdough bread bowls on the wharf and chocolate truffles from Joseph Schmidt's. Mmmm... chocolate....

Stone Soup

Winter isn't here yet, but it is the coldest day of the autumn so far. One of my favorite things to do in college was to call some of my friends who were every bit as broke as I to come help make Stone soup. The idea was for each person to bring something they had on hand to add to the pot -- onions, potatoes, carrots, celery, mushrooms, peas, herbs, just whatever. Sometimes there was meat or clams to add, sometimes not. In an hour or two, we'd end up with the soup bubbling gently in a 10 quart stock pot -- enough for everyone to have a bowl or two of a hearty soup and enough left over to take a bowlful home for the next day. If a friend invited you over to make Stone Soup today, what do you have in your fridge or pantry to add to the pot? Or would you be the one bringing fresh bread and butter to go with it? Do you like soup with or without tomatoes?

Wispy

Clothed in wispy pink

I met my lover at the door

as evening air wafted through.

His face lit up

at the sight of me.

Never had he been met

like that before!

A whim, a bit of wispy pink

delighted him.

copyright MS 10/4/06

Progress, Not Perfection

"We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on." -- Richard Feynmann

I don't want to believe...

...that my country's goverment leaders have sunk so low as to sanction torture. What fuggin' barbarians! This does not make us better than the terrorists.

I think for this one, I don't need to be drunk in order to wanna hug the porcelain god.

Some People Don't Want Certain Citizens To Vote In The US

In this latest incident, Hispanic residents got letters that sure looked like threats to me: it was reported in Brietbart in an AP story:
"Note Warns Calif. Hispanics on VotingOct 17 10:28 AM US/Eastern

The state attorney general's office is investigating a letter received by some Southern California Hispanics that says it is a crime for immigrants to vote and tells them they could be jailed or deported if they go to the polls next month. "It's a very malicious and degrading letter. It's to pull Latinos down and make them afraid," said Benny Diaz, who is running for City Council in Garden Grove. He said his wife and five other people he knows had received the letter.

The letter, written in Spanish, tells recipients: "You are advised that if your residence in this country is illegal or you are an immigrant, voting in a federal election is a crime that could result in jail time." The truth is that immigrants who become naturalized citizens can legally register to vote.*

Nathan Barankin, a spokesman for state Attorney General Bill Lockyer, said the letter was "something we are investigating aggressively right now." He said the sender could be charged with a felony and receive up to three years in state prison. Several of the people who received the letters appeared to be naturalized citizens, said John Trasvina, interim president and general counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund.""

*Ya think people are being discouraged from and intimidated into not voting? I do!

Exercise your rights and vote!

Just In Time....

The polite company version:

Sunday's CASHEW Tea was quite nice and I met a few new people. My Irish Cheddar cheese puffs were a hit and there were none left over. I'm going to try a variant tomorrow as we're having a potluck at work on Wednesday.

One of the guests at the tea was a voter registrar who brought his stack of forms. Now, this was handy as I needed desperately to switch my party affiliation back to Democratic. I'd registered Rep... er...the Dark Force, back when Shrub first ran for office, in order to be able to vote for any OTHER candidate, including a write-in, in the primaries.

As a moderate Democrat, I've long found the old Goldwater style priniciples of Republicanism tolerable and livable in a sustainable sense. I don't want the government to be anymore intrusive than is absolutely necessary and I want it minimally intrusive at best.The Republican hold on the House has got to be broken.

Darlings, we internet denizens may be sex-hungry here and there and practice things like on line dating, polyamory and even plain old cheating, but those suckers are just fuggin' debauched gluttons surrounded by sycophants, the New Pharasees of the Religious Right and a rapacious business elite. Gag me. Rep Mark Foley (R-F. Piously pro life this poison pill chaired the Center for Missing and Exploited Children Caucus, mind you, was forced to resign because of his chatting up Capital Hill pages and getting a little too worked up about his and their woodies. And another Rep...er... one of them, heh-heh, Speaker Hastert behaves like a clumsy oaf denying any previous knowledge of information about Foley's precosity. Mmm-hmmmm... Obviously they've overlooked the fact that there is this field known as computer forensics.

Next, there's that handsome Dr. Bill Frist (R-TN). He thinks that the Taliban are too popular to in parts of Afghanistan to be militarily unbeatable and that they should be brought into participation with Afghani government again. The Taliban. You know: Those superstitions, ignorant men who deny their people education, pushed them back to the near medeival era and murdered men and women by the thousands for disagreeing, being "secular", being educated, who prohibited women from receiving meaningful health care and who cause their infant mortality rate to plummet as a result. Oh, no! Mr. Billll!!!

Well, darlings, whether you agree with me or no, the mid term elections are on the horizon! Remember: Those negative campaign ads you see aren't entirely meant to put down the other guy -so much as their EVEN BIGGER functions is To Make US Voters Stay Home And Not Vote!