Life on the edge

New Webby Page

2006-06-02T17:56:00.000-07:00

For all of you good souls who are wondering why I haven't been posting here for...well...forever, that's because I have a new blog that I meant to let you know about and being me, totally forgot.

Anyway...here's the URL, please click and update your bookmarks!!

www.gothicrevue.com/wordpress

Ever have one of those days?

2006-03-25T16:27:00.000-08:00

You know how it is. You’re doing that usual Saturday morning lazing around the house stuff, and by the end of the day you’ve half the local police force in your driveway.

What? You mean you’ve never had a day like that? Well have I got a tale for you.

We were sitting in the living room this morning, just kicking back, and all of a sudden there was a loud noise outside. Knowing how the UPS man tends to throw boxes at the screen door, rather than walk up the steps and place them there, I figured more review materials had arrived. The dogs were barking like crazy, but well…it was pretty loud. Xander went to check the door, but there was nobody there, and curiously, not even a package on the porch. We just figured one of the dogs knocked something over and thought no more about it.

Until an hour or so later when Ailema went to let one of our many cats out of the front window, and discovered two holes, presumably BB gun pellet holes. When Xander went outside to check, he noticed that there was a third one in the kitchen window. So someone decided to take it into their heads to strafe the crazy goth house. Brilliant.

So I called the insurance company, and the guy took the details and told us he’d be sending out an adjustor on Monday, and oh, by the way, did we call the police? I told him that I didn’t see much point as there wasn’t much the cops could do about it now. But little insurance claims guy said we should always call the police and have it noted by them in case they should catch the guys or something. Oh, and could we call glass places and get some estimates? Oh, and we have a $250 deductible but they’ll be happy to pay anything it costs to replace them over and above that $250.

Nice. Thanks a lot, you little BB-toting shit, whoever you are. I had PLANS for that $250.

So we called our local sheriff’s office who told us they’d send out a deputy at some point, since it obviously wasn’t a big emergency or anything. Fine. Half an hour later, the deputy arrived, and took a look at the windows. Then he went to the back of his big Suburban to retrieve something he needed.

Now the people across the street have two dogs. Pitbulls. Dogs they don’t see any reason to keep fenced in or coralled in any fashion. Dogs which may not have mauled or killed anyone yet - in fact they’ve been fairly friendly up to this point - but who are still an annoyance whenever anyone goes to the mailbox or tries to walk up and down the driveway, as they barrel over and try to jump up.

Well the deputy opened up the back of his truck just as these two dogs - who had been chained TOGETHER for some bizarre reason known only to their owners - decided to show up and investigate the deputy. The cop, who has no idea who these dogs are, or where they’re from, or what their temperaments are, merely sees two pitbulls who are chained together and approaching him. They start circling him, and he yells at them to get away. One of the owners decides to come out of the house and start yelling at the dogs (who never listen at the best of times, so god knows why he thought they’d start now.) The deputy drew his gun and pointed it at one of the dogs. They carried on circling around him and trying to get at him, so he shot the older one in the neck.

Now the owners finally decide that maybe they should come and rescue their dogs, one now mortally wounded and bleeding profusely, and the other one trying to escape by dragging the dying dog along on the chain.

And that’s when things started to get ugly.

Everyone piled out of the house across the street - there were about ten people there. Our neighbors on the left side ran across the street because they sensed a fight was in the offing and they wanted to be part of the excitement. Now the husband of this couple already knew about the problem we had with the windows since he’d been talking about it with Xander earlier in the day. His wife, however, howls from across the street to Azrael, “Why did you call the cops over and have them shoot the dog? YOU'RE the freaks!”

Azrael, who actually had much finer feelings for the dead dog than I personally ever did was as shocked as anyone at the speed with which everything had happened, protested that we only called the cop to report the windows.

The deputy was on the radio the minute he’d shot the dog, and pretty soon, other police started showing up on the scene. The people across the street were yelling at the cops. Our shit-stirring neighbor was still pointing fingers at us, as though we’d called out the cop deliberately to shoot this dog we knew would be out roaming in our front yard when he showed up. It took six patrol cars and one fire truck showing up before people finally dispersed.

Azrael went over across the street at one point to apologize to the owner of the dog for his dog getting shot, because that was obviously never our intention. It’s not like we IMAGINED the damn holes in the windows. The young guy who owned the dog was quite okay about it and said he knew that we didn’t do anything to cause it. The guy’s father, however, ordered Azrael out of his yard, with the admonition that he was going to beat the crap out of him, and he was going to kill him.

Terrific. We started the day with our windows intact and wound up with three pellet holes, a dead dog and a death threat. It’s a funny old life.

I guess, like Xander says…when someone breaks a window, God kills a puppy.
Damn.

My Favorite...Obsession...

2006-03-07T09:21:00.000-08:00

No it’s not a man with blond hair and a tan. But it is good for relieving my tension Brownie points for placing that reference? Anyone??

The obsession in question is something I didn’t really want in the house in the first place, and wasn’t going to pay for. So Azzy and Xander did their level best to keep Mountain Dew in business, as they were giving them away free for a certain number of codes from the lids of Mountain Dew bottles - don’t ask me how many. All I will say is WAY too much caffeine.

It is an X Box 360.

I really didn’t want to like this console. I don’t particularly like Microsoft much as a company. I use a Microsoft operating system on my IBM clone laptop only because my work files have to be completed in Microsoft Word. Left to my own devices I’d jump into a Mac and swim away blissfully in stable operating system heaven. But the reality of things is that we basically live in a Microsoft world, however much we may dislike their flaws and fixes and endless patches.

I also thought we had enough consoles. We have a Dreamcast and 2 Game Cubes and a regular X Box. We used to have 2 PS2s, but one broke, so we’re down to just the one. And that’s without counting all the obsolete systems and handhelds in the house. (Did I mention we’re media sluts?) The offerings for the X Box were crap if you don’t like first person shooting games and sports. So the 360 didn’t fill me with excitement the way it did Azzy.

Well it arrived last weekend. And much as I have tried and tried to resist its siren song, I have finally caved in. It’s an excellent machine. There are no two ways about it. You could basically lose all of your stereo equipment, dvd player, etc, etc, and replace it with this one sleek and fancy looking piece of electronics. It plays audio CDs and DVDs with aplomb. It has a very respectable sized hard drive which is capable of storing a large amount of downloaded games from the X Box website. You can then download your own music and replace the music from the games with your own personalized soundtrack. Bliss and deep joy. And by hooking it up to the internet, the thing keeps track of your high scores and measures them against everyone else’s who owns one. It has goals and achievements to reach in each of the games, which afford you other little goodies. Oh, and you can play Robitron. And Joust. And Bejeweled 2 just by downloading them from the X Box website to the hard drive for a very small amount of money - less even than what you’d pay if you downloaded Bejeweled 2 to your computer.

But our favorite part of the X Box 360 has to be its controller. It’s a wireless controller, which is actually a really cool and nifty gadget. Firstly, it really is wireless and you really can use it anywhere in the room. It doesn’t have to be pointed at that little electronic eye in the way most wireless devices do. It takes a little getting used to at first to be able to sit with your hands at a 90 degree angle facing away from the unit and still be able to play the game. It doesn’t seem as though it should be that easy. The controller turns the console unit on and off for you, pages through the options menus for all the various games, and basically makes the concept of legs an outdated one. If it werent for feeding/elimination, you could sit in your comfiest chair and play to your heart’s content without having to worry about the dogs chewing your controller cables.

So...come up to the lab...and see what's on the slab. We like. We like very much indeed.

Pioneer Days

2006-03-04T02:02:00.000-08:00

Once again our half of Washington State has been rattled by killer windstorms. You think we'd be used to them by now, right? Right?? Actually my personal belief is that the power company really ought to be used to them by now. We get them every stinking year. Something about the Cascades acting like a barrier that creates a wind tunnel effect or something similarly stupid. Whatever the reason, you can guarantee that October/November and February/March we're going to see mighty winds.

Okay, so here's what I don't understand about the whole power company thing. The whole western side of the state is infested with 60ft+ fir and pine trees. They line 70 percent of the roads here, particularly in the more rural areas. So why does the power company in its infinite wisdom see fit to string power cables alongside these accidents waiting to happen? 'Cause of course, the evil twin of the winds we get here are the rains we get here. 40 days of rain + soil = a muddy, horrible mess which isn't capable of maintaining its hold on something 60ft tall when it's assailed by 70mph winds. Ferchrissakes, draw a diagram, figure it out.

The obvious result is that the trees wind up crashing down on various parts of the power grid, cutting off electricity to large blocks of the population and plunging us into an icy blackness from which the power company promises to rescue us in...oh...three days or so.

The problem is our situation. We live out in the boonies. Not as in solitary cabin on the lake kind of boonies, since new developments are springing up in the area all the time, but still 30 miles away from Tacoma and about 60 miles away from Seattle, and 100 miles away from Bellevue. Why is that important? Because your power is restored relative to how close you live to these urban areas. I know that Seattle/Tacoma/Bellevue are all yuppie land where one can't go ten minutes without a caramel latte before suffering a severe anxiety attack, but geez, Louise. We gots needs fer the shiny lights too darnit.

The nutty part of the equation is that if you happen to live closer to one of these aforementioned urban areas, you are also within spitting distance of 100 different hotels and motels where you can, at a pinch, go to get a hot shower or a computer hookup. People who live in the yuppie heaven of Bellevue also make more money than they know what to do with, and so can afford to purchase little extras like portable generators - which they might just have the time to dust off and power up before they get their power restored. Us simple folks don't necessarily have that extra moolah to drop on a generator.

And my family are one of the lucky ones, for we have a woodstove. More on that instrument of torture later, but at least we have one. I know that most of my neighbors here are lucky if they have a fireplace. The vast majority of them live in mobile homes which are entirely powered by electricity, with maybe a back up fireplace. Some have no fireplace at all. And let me tell you when it's freezing and below outside, it gets pretty cold inside pretty fast.

But, as I mentioned, we have a woodstove. It has seen us through many power outtages in the past, bless its little infernal heart. It is also an instrument of the devil. It has two heat settings. Off and blast furnace. Oh, you can let it go out, but then you have to go through all of the rigamarole of relighting it and trying to get it to stay lit for the first hour. It's capable of eating its way through an entire tree in the space of a day. And once it's going...oh bless your hearts...if you don't open doors and windows to allow some free flow of cooling air, you all wind up prostrate on the couch gasping like a fish out of water. And as it's the only source of heat/hot water/cooking in the house, you can't let it go out.

Power outtages turn me into an insomniac. Already half-insane through lack of percolated coffee (no electricity), surviving on only instant made with boiling water that you have to heat on the flat top of the woodstove and which might boil in fifteen minutes/half an hour/next week, depending on where the wood is stacked within the fire and how long you let the fire race before closing it up, I gather the children into the living room with their sleeping bags and quilts and mattresses. I mean please, having two teenagers confined together in one room for an extended period of time without TV, stereos or video games is enough to send you batshit crazy to begin with.

We hunt around for candles in the dying light of early evening. Yes, we have candles. The trouble is that they've usually been grated up for some kind of chemistry experiment (Xander) or burned in some kind of wiccan ceremony in her bedroom (Babybat). We have five dogs and six cats, so these candles have to be placed strategically in petproof areas in case one of the animals decides to have a spaz moment and leap onto a table, setting fire to the place in the process.

We hunt down firewood from the pile over by the fence - strategically placed there in order to keep our dogs from arguing vociferously with the dogs on the other side of the fence, and which we meant to bring back under cover before we had that 40 days of rain. So then we have to make a run to the store which is operating on backup power, through streets without working traffic lights and fight like demons to pay $5 for a bundle of half a dozen pieces of wood which will at least make a hot enough fire to burn the damp wood we're bringing in from outside.

As darkness falls, we light the candles and play cards for a couple of hours, remembering to feed the woodstove every half an hour so it doesn't turn into a heap of smoldering ashes before you open the steel door in front to check on it. We eat salads and drink milk and instant coffee and try to pretend it's a big adventure. We can't play board games as there isn't room to place the board and the candles without one upsetting the other, so we play word games. Sing the first line of a song that has a girl's name/color/city/animal in the title. And thusly we pass Friday evening.

The children drift off to sleep at around 10, soothed by the dimness and the warmth of the room, and I drink instant coffee and doze fitfully, ever conscious of the need to feed the woodstove monster so that the fire doesn't go out and we don't all die of hypothermia before morning comes. I make a call to the power company's automated update line and discover that our power should be restored by Sunday morning at 5am. I also remember that I have a transcription job due on Tuesday morning which runs about 12-15 hours of actual transcription time, and a battery on my computer which is good for less than two. I'd at least make a start on it, but then I remember that I have yet to download the audio files, and since we have cable internet and not good old dial-up, I have no internet access.

Azzy returns home from work at around 6:30 am, bringing with him a couple more bundles of wood which he managed to find at a convenience store closer to where he works. I send the kids out for more wood from the back fence. We find the big carving fork, and attack a loaf of unsliced bread with a carving knife, cutting it into big hunks that can be stuck onto the carving knife and toasted over the fire. This procedure involves opening the steel door in front which allows the air into the fire and causes it to roar wildly as I sit on the floor in front of the stove hoping that the bread cooks before my face and hands do. We have butter and lemon curd - and five dogs who suddenly think I'm the greatest thing since the invention of the automatic watering bowl.

At least it's daylight now, so we can blow out the candles and open the curtains as wide as they'll go to try and encourage what tiny bit of winter light there is outside to penetrate into the dim and smoky interior. The kids are simultaneously thrilled because they don't have to do dishes - no hot water, and bummed out because they can't shower (Babybat) or take a 2 hour bath (Xander) - no hot water. We at least manage to find more candles in preparation for the evening to come. I dig a pork loin out of the freezer - which the kids have been helpfully opening and closing all day to see whether it's still cold in there - and stick it in a covered roasting pan on top of the woodstove at 7:30 am. The hope is that it'll be cooked at some point today. Frozen vegetables in a saucepan, same thing. I give a sympathetic thought to all of the people in the vicinity who don't even have the option of cooking since they don't have a woodstove. That makes me call the power company again. Oh deep joy. Apparently there have been more windstorms overnight, which has cut off the power to people in important places, so now they don't even have an estimate for how long we'll be in the dark. In my mind I'm X'ing out Seattle, Tacoma and Bellevue with a big black marker, feeling deep and powerful hatred for people I've never met.

Azzy's sleeping in the bedroom, despite it being cold in there, since Xander and Babybat are in the living room where it's warm and they've already spent waaaaaay too long in each other's company. The first night of a power outtage is always fine. People are nice to each other, and respectful of one another. That's usually starting to erode by mid-morning of day two. I put Xander in charge of cooking dinner, since it's his favorite thing in the whole world, and Babybat settles in to read "Crime and Punishment" for English class. I try to sleep. On the couch. With five dogs. And the CLUNK sound that the fire damper makes every half an hour when Xander opens up the fire to check on it. In other words, I sleep not a lot.

There's a little excitement when Xander announces that food is ready at around 3pm. We wake Azzy, who has to be back at work at 6pm in a place that has power and internet access cause it's homeland security and vital to the nation and all that. I hate him for his electric lights and his internet access and video game console and coffee pot.

We settle in for another evening of darkness. The kids sack out earlier tonight, since they're bored and stupified with the heat. There is a moment of anxiety when Ashes (our pyromaniac cat, so named because he had a tendency to set his tail alight as a kitten, and a deep desire to become one with the inside of the lighted woodstove) spazzed out and jumped up onto what we thought was a safe area housing a candle. He jumped right down again and took off outside. Xander and I both sat there sniffing the delightful aroma of singed cat fur and hoping he wasn't darting around the underbrush out back like a little roman candle setting fire to everything, but too stupid from the heat to raise the enthusiasm to go check. (Don't worry - he was fine)

And then - oh miracles - the lights came back on. The TV flicked on and off, the fridge whirred into action and we were transported back to the 21st century again. For all of about five minutes. Then it went out again for another forty five minutes. Then it came on again - oh joy, oh joy, oh...I hate the power company. Then off it went. Xander got on the automated line and actually got to speak to an operator.

Xander: Why do you taunt us?

Operator: Excuse me?

Xander: Why do you taunt us with the power? You tease and torment us by turning it on for five minutes and then off again. Why are you so cruel?

Operator: Maybe you should turn off the breaker switches in your house and that way you can turn them on again at 5:30 when the power's supposed to be restored?

Xander: Are you making fun of me?

No, they were perfectly serious. And to be honest, I wouldn't have wanted to be a power company operator that weekend. But she just didn't understand how crucial that first blooming of electricity is when you've been without it for a couple of days. You could turn off the breakers, yes you could. But....but what if the power was restored at 4 am and you missed it? Or, even worse, if you turned on the breakers at 5:30 only to find the power still not there? Yes, living without power really does turn you into a mental case.

Power was finally restored in the early hours of Sunday morning. The kids slept right through it and I blew out candles and continued with my firewatching, since our heating system has a lockout which doesn't allow it to work for the first hour or so after power is restored. And I used my insomnia time to work on some transcription.

Then I came down with the flu. But that's another story, gentle reader.

All I can say is that I SO do not do pioneer woman well. Oh, and I was sneezing black gunk out of my nose for days. TMI?

We Come In Peace, Shoot To Kill...

2006-03-01T04:14:00.000-08:00

Okay, so you either remember The Firm and their excellent "Star Trekkin'" or you don't. This line from the song does, however, illustrate a wonderful dichotomy happening in India today.

Apparently we aren't the only country in the world who doesn't trust Bush any further than they can throw him. And he seems to be as blissfully unaware of it there as he does here at home.

Two different AP stories on the wire today concerning the shrub and his trip to Afghanistan and India. The first is devoted to the speech he gave in Kabul, where he sent a message to all Americans from a safer place than the White House where more press might have been on hand to question him, I guess. The message was that he's confident Bin Laden will be brought to justice - despite the fact that it's been five years and nobody seems at all interested anymore, least of all the shrub's own regime. He also went on to describe how:

"It's a thrill to come to a country which is dedicating itself to the dignity of every person who lives here...We're impressed by the progress your country is making. I come as a friend and an ally"

And a conqueror - forgot that part. Oops.

It's a good thing that it's "Mission Accomplished" over there in Afghanistan too, and that the embassy workers in Afghanistan are on "The front line of freedom's march" since it would be awful if "Bush's entourage flew into the city from Bagram Air Base in a flotilla of heavily armed helicopters. Two door gunners on a press helicopter fired off a short burst of machine gun fire at unknown targets as the aircraft flew low and fast over barren countryside. "

Oh wait...

Then he was off to India where "Our relationship with India is broader than our discussions about energy," Bush said. "Ours is a strategic relationship."

Which brings us to story number two from this morning, entitled "Tens of Thousands Protest Bush India Visit"

Funny thing. Tens of thousands of Indians waving black and white flags and chanting "Death to Bush!" rallied Wednesday in New Delhi to protest a visit by President Bush.
Surindra Singh Yadav, a senior police officer in charge of crowd control, said as many as 100,000 people, most of them Muslim, had gathered in a fairground in central New Delhi ordinarily used for political rallies.
"Whether Hindu or Muslim, the people of India have gathered here to show our anger. We have only one message _ killer Bush go home," one of the speakers, Hindu politician Raj Babbar, told the crowd.

And: Muslim groups also have called for a daylong strike to protest Bush's visit to Hyderabad, a key center of India's booming information technology industry. Muslims account for nearly 40 percent of the city's 7 million people.

And: Members of the leftist Students Federation of India and the Communist Party of India burned effigies of Bush at three intersections in Hyderabad on Tuesday. The communists, who are key allies of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government, also plan to protest Thursday at India's Parliament in New Delhi, a few miles from where Bush and Singh will meet.
"Up to 50,000 people will take part in the march, and we have the police permission to express our feelings," said Pushpender Grewal, secretary of the Communist Party of India.
"We will protest against the U.S. policies, especially the inhuman atrocities in Afghanistan and Iraq, a likely invasion of Iran and its continuing support to Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine."

And the same story goes on to talk about how the shrub is more popular here than he is in many countries.

So this kind of begs the question, when you have millions of people all around the world telling you that you're on the wrong track, how long do you continue down the megalomaniacal path you're marching down? There was a time when America had the backing, support and sympathy of most of the clear-thinking peoples of the world. The country had been attacked by a bunch of loonies at the behest of a mega-loony known as Osama Bin Laden. Everyone wanted to help us to bring this guy to justice. We knew where he was. We even had guys in the area. Had the shrub thought it necessary to send in a large contingent of troops, we could have rounded him up and brought him in. No harm, no foul. No other country in the world would have begrudged us our justice.

And maybe, with a different presidency at the helm, that's precisely what would have happened. A president who had half an idea about foreign relations. A president who didn't already have an agenda to "liberate" those parts of the world he deemed in need of liberation. Or at least the assets of those countries.

But unfortunately we had a whole different animal at the head of the country. A group of neo-cons whose mission was to create an American empire, replete with conquered nations and puppet governments. I'm not sure whether they really believed that the targeted nations of the world would just be so overwhelmed at the idea of western democracy that they'd throw themselves to the floor and kiss our jackboots, or whether, like most other megalomaniacs throughout history, they just didn't give a damn.

Either way, it's sad to look back at the chances we had to be the better person in the fight, and how we blew them by manufacturing evidence to back up assaults on peaceful (against us anyway) nations. When you look at the money that has been spent in this nation building effort, and how our children, old folks and veterans are suffering in order to finance it, it's a criminal shame. And what do we have to show for it? Those countries which don't hate us with a passion, don't trust us. There is no goodwill anywhere in the world with the exception of Britain which has always followed blindly along behind whatever garden path America has taken it.

Why Babies Shouldn't Have Babies

2005-12-07T07:53:00.000-08:00

Here's what I found today when I was scoping out Court TV.com. Think of any infant you've ever met, and then any 18 yr old, and see if this makes you wince.

BOGALUSA, La. (AP) — A mother was booked on a charge of first-degree murder for allegedly placing her 3-month-old son in a clothes dryer and turning it on.
The infant had third-degree burns over 50 percent of his body and suffered blunt force trauma to the head, the St. Tammany Parish coroner said.
Police Sgt. Darryl Darden said Lakeisha Adams, 18, called police to her home on Monday to report that someone had killed her child. When officers arrived, they found Jailand Adams on a sofa. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Darden said Adams admitted during questioning to putting the infant in the dryer and turning it on, but did not say why.
Adams also has a 1-year-old child who was placed in state custody, police said.
If convicted, Adams faces death by injection or a life sentence. The first-degree murder charge is mandatory under Louisiana law because the victim was under age 12.

Now, before you all start thinking I'm just a sanctimonious old fart, let me share with you that I had my first child at the age of 20 years and 2 weeks. Oh boy, did I think I was grown? You betcha. I also remember resenting the hell out of that my plight within the first couple of days. Teenagers and young adults are notoriously self-centered. We know this. They, unfortunately, do not. Luckily I was surrounded by a wide support network in the shape of family and friends, who helped out tremendously.
And the funny thing is that I didn't realize quite how young, stupid and ignorant I was until I had my next two children, at the age of 27 and 29 respectively. Less selfish. Less irritable, and much slower to anger than I was in the early part of that decade of my life.

Now I don't know, because it doesn't make it clear in the article, what manner of support this young girl had in her life. The fact that it doesn't mention a husband or even a father sort of speaks for itself. And I've been a mother with children spaced 16 months apart, and even with the patience that came from being almost a decade older than I was when my first child was born, and even though I had a husband who could step in and take a little of the stress off, them was some TOUGH times, I tell you. I can't imagine what it must be like to be all alone at 18 trying to raise a 1-yr old and a 3-month old baby.

Do I think what she did was right? Of course not. Justified? Hell, these are babies, we're talking about...they don't know any better than to howl incessantly. Do I think that she was unprepared for and incapable of dealing with the stresses she was under? Hell yes.

In England's social medicine system, we have health visitors who come out to the house and pay unexpected visits on new mothers for the first few months of the child's life. These people are social workers, trained to pick up on clues that maybe things aren't going so well at home; that the mom maybe has too much on her plate and needs help. It's a shame this young girl was born in a country which prides itself on being the most wondrous country on the face of the planet, and yets babies have multiple babies without following up and making sure they're handling things okay.

I look at 'Lema, who is 16, and who, had she been this girl, would have already been pregnant with her first child, and think how ridiculous it would be to assume that she could be capable of taking care of an infant 24/7. Much as I love my dear, sweet girl, and no matter how smart she is, I've seen her anger rise like a skyrocket when her brother provokes her, as younger brothers will, and lash out at him without thinking. That whole 'thinking before you act' aspect of being a grown up has yet to completely mature. And in a situation with an older child who is still pretty much a baby in his own right, and a new baby who is nothing like those ads in magazines or TV where they smile and coo and never yell incessantly for hours on end for no cause at all, and nothing you do seems to be enough to shut it up, how many of us wouldn't feel the need to step out of the room and take some long deep breaths and count to 100 before going back in the room to handle the situation? A teenager acts and then thinks. A fleeting moment where the anger that has been building up towards this tiny tyrant - and please....we all know that that's all tiny babies are - explodes and she does something so heinous that she'll never forgive herself for it, but which she can't take back.

It's a tragedy all around.

One more example....

2005-12-01T01:21:00.000-08:00

...that the country is run by idiots only concerned in their own popularity, and not with what's best for the long-term health of the nation. Fresh from a piece of transcription I worked on today comes a gem from the Center on Budget and Policy (www.cbpp.org) in the body of the new Tax Reform Proposal.

Here are some of the highlights that well-respected young economist, Jason Furman uncovered about this brilliant new proposal:

"Compared to current law, the two plans that the Panel proposed each would add $1.8 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. (Making the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent would add $1.5 trillion to the deficit over the next ten years, while the President’s additional tax cut proposals would add another $0.3 trillion, for a total of $1.8 trillion.)

Over 75 years, the Panel’s plans would cause the deficit to increase by about $14 trillion (measured in “present value”), relative to what the deficit would be if no changes were made in the tax code (i.e., relative to current law). This increase in the deficit is more than three times as large as the 75-year shortfall in Social Security.

Moreover, the Panel’s proposal is not revenue neutral over 75 years even by the Panel’s own standard of what constitutes revenue neutrality. The Bush tax proposals that constitute the Panel’s baseline would cost $12 trillion over 75 years ($9 trillion for making the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent plus $3 trillion for the President’s additional tax-cut proposals). The Panel’s reform plans, however, contain additional proposals that would not lose much further revenue in the first ten years but would burgeon in cost in subsequent decades. Over the 75-year period, deficits would be roughly $2 trillion larger under the Panel’s plans than if the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts were made permanent and the President’s other tax proposals were enacted.

Based on economic research and standard economic models, the increased deficits that the Panel’s plans would reduce national income by about 8 percent after 50 years. This is substantially larger than most estimates of the potential economic gain that could be produced by reforming the tax code. Thus, despite making a number of thoughtful, innovative reform proposals, the Panel’s plans as a whole would likely reduce economic growth rather than increase it.

Also of note, some of the revenue loss that would result from these proposals would come out of revenues collected from a tax that is dedicated to the Social Security and Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Funds. By reducing this dedicated revenue source, the Panel’s proposals would enlarge the Social Security and Medicare shortfalls and thereby accelerate the dates when the two programs would become insolvent. That would necessitate deeper cuts in Social Security and Medicare benefits, or greater increases in payroll taxes, to restore solvency.

Finally, in addition to being portrayed as revenue-neutral, the Panel’s plans also have been presented as being neutral with respect to the distribution of tax burdens. This merely means, however, that the distribution of tax burdens would be the same under the Panel’s plans as under the Administration’s proposals to make the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent and to enact several new tax breaks tilted to high-income households, such as Retirement Savings Accounts and Lifetime Savings Accounts. The Administration’s proposals, which the Panel’s plans are designed to mirror distributionally, would make the tax code less progressive.

Now would somebody remind me what it was Clinton did while at the helm which was so terrible for the country? Now bear in mind that the majority of these tax breaks are aimed at megolithic companies and very high income people in this country - not you and I, by any stretch of the imagination. And they're trying to tell us that they have to slash spending in Medicare, Social Security and School loans in order to put the country's coffers in order? Puh-leeze.

Sure...let's saddle our grandchildren and great-grandchildren with backbreaking and crippling debt in order to make our constituents and lobbyists happy, shall we?

Bastards.

Um...isn't this a little bit bass ackwards?

2005-11-29T12:14:00.000-08:00

Quote from our fearless leader's right hand man (Rummy) in response to question regarding exit from Iraq:

"I believe the answer is clear," he said. "Quitting is not an exit strategy. It would be a formula for putting the American people at still greater risk and an invitation for more terrorist violence."

Um...hello? Didn't we INVITE terrorist violence from Iraq by invading them in the first place?? It would sure as hell piss me off if I were them. Particularly when it was that guy...what's his name now....geez..it's on the tip of my tongue....it's just been so long since I heard anything about him. Oh yeah...that's right, Osama Bin Laden - that Saudi Arabian dude - who unleashed the 9/11 attacks on the USA.

Gotta love that revisionist history stuff :)

1,000 and Counting

2005-11-28T08:23:00.000-08:00

A recent news report reminding us that we're almost at the milestone of 1,000 people who have been executed in the US since the 10 year moratorium ended with Gary Gilmore's "Let's do it" as he faced a Utah firing squad in 1977. My immediate thought was...that's almost 30 years and it's ONLY 1,000? When you consider that death sentences seem to get handed down like candy, it just seems like a pretty small figure, doesn't it?

I am still inclined to be opposed to the death penalty, which will probably come as something of a surprise to those of you who've seen how much I loathe and detest the criminal element. My big problem with it, I guess is that it's kind of like bad parenting. For a deterrent to work, it has to be enforced, doesn't it? Is anything worse than seeing the parents who are constantly telling Junior that if he doesn't stop his behavior, xyz will happen. And then constantly telling him over and over without ever producing xyz. The child catches on pretty quickly that xyz isn't a real deterrent at all.

I think of the death penalty in much the same way. If you're going to have it, you should enforce it. People shouldn't have the chance to die of old age on death row before their sentence - issued two or three decades earlier - is carried out. If you're so convinced that you have the right guy in prison for the crime, then why give them more than say a year or two to exhaust the appeals process before carrying out the punishment? By the time these people are executed, nobody remembers what they were put away for in the first place anyway, so what kind of deterrent is that?

And yes, it does bother me that innocent people have been executed. Posthumous pardons are all well and good but they don't do much for the wrongly-accused, do they? England's famous Dr. Crippen, who saw young, borderline retarded Timothy Evans hanged for Crippen's own crimes springs to mind.

But don't get me wrong. I think if you're going to abolish the death penalty, then life should mean life. There shouldn't be the stupid option of life equalling 30 years - out in 15 with good behavior. If you commit a crime like murder in the first, you shouldn't ever get to breathe free air again. And I'll go you one further. People doing LWOP should be doing their time in a penitentiary. And I'm not talking about the new age prisons with all the creature comforts. I'm talking penitentiary in its 19th century definition. A place where you went to repent your crimes and live in nasty conditions, sometimes at hard labor, for the rest of your life.

Look - if these people are never going to see the light of day again, why do we have to spend time and money and resources making sure that they get treated as well as possible under the circumstances? Save that for people doing minor sentences, who have a chance at being rehabilitated. I don't want people convicted of heinous crimes having access to cable tv and social programs designed to make them better people. Sod 'em. They abdicated their rights to live like a human being when they took the life of a human being.

Yeah, I know, that's not a popular way of thinking, and many criminals faced with a small dark stone cell 24/7 might prefer the death penalty. Oh well...too bad. I believe in public birchings too :) You can bend so far over in an attempt to protect the civil rights of a defendant that you leave yourself open to the possiblity of forced sodomy. It's about time that the victim started to be the one who had the rights.

Mythbusting the Budget

2005-11-25T00:33:00.000-08:00

It seems as if everywhere I look lately I'm seeing rationalizations for cutting taxes. As a regular person who has to manage their financial dealings ensuring that what I'm spending is less than what I'm bringing in, I thought it was time to take a little closer look at some of the myths around the present taxation strategies, with a little help from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Myth #1: The deficit is the result of excessive spending on domestic programs.

In fact, recent domestic spending increases come in a distant fourth as a cause of the current deficit, well behind tax cuts, spending increases for defense, homeland security, and operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the economic downturn.
If we focus just on the causes over which Congress and the President have control — that is, if we look at all spending increases and tax cuts enacted since the start of 2001 and see how much they are costing the government this year — we find that tax cuts amount for nearly half (48 percent) of those costs. Increased spending for defense, homeland security, and international affairs (including Iraq and Afghanistan) account for another 37 percent. Increased spending on all domestic programs combined accounts for just 14 percent.

Myth #2: Taxes are higher than they used to be.

In fact, taxes are at their lowest levels in decades when measured as a share of the economy, the standard way that analysts and institutions such as the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget examine such trends over time.
This year, total federal revenues are a smaller share of the economy than in any year since 1959, a time when Medicare, Medicaid, most federal aid to education, most child care and environmental programs, and anti-poverty programs such as food stamps did not exist. Federal individual income tax revenues are a smaller share of the economy than in any year since 1943.

Myth #3: Tax cuts spur so much economic growth that they ultimately pay for themselves.

In fact, no reputable economist — liberal or conservative — has ever shown that the economy expands so much as a result of tax cuts that it produces the same level of revenue as it would produce without the tax cuts.

The President’s own Council of Economic Advisers explicitly acknowledged in their Economic Report of the President last year that tax cuts are unlikely to pay for themselves.

The history of the past two decades bears this out. If we compare the 1980s (when taxes were cut) to the 1990s (when taxes were raised), we find that the economy grew just as quickly during the 1990s as during the 1980s, and income-tax revenue grew nearly three times as quickly in the 1990s as in the 1980s.

Moreover, a major recent study by Brookings Institution scholars William Gale and Peter Orszag concludes that the tax cuts are likely to reduce economic growth over the long term if they are extended. This is because the large, persistent deficits that are forecast if the tax cuts are extended would reduce long-term investment by forcing the government to borrow large sums of capital that otherwise would go toward private investment.

Myth #4: The President's 2006 budget would reduce deficit over the next several years.

In light of the current fiscal situation, the Administration says it plans to get serious about deficit reduction. The President’s fiscal year 2006 budget proposes cuts across a range of domestic programs in a purported effort to cut the deficit in half by 2009.

While the deficit is projected to decline as a share of the economy over the next few years, this is in spite of the policies in the Administration’s budget, not because of them.

Despite proposing cuts to scores of important programs, the Administration's budget would expand the deficit over the next five years, mostly because those proposed cuts are more than outweighed by proposed tax cuts and increases in defense and homeland security spending. As shown by the Administration’s own figures, deficits over the next five years will total $1.364 trillion if no policy changes are made but $1.393 trillion if the Administration’s proposals are enacted.
Moreover, the deficit is projected to rise significantly in years after the five-year period the budget covers, when (among other things) the cost of the Administration’s tax cuts would mushroom from $39 billion in 2010 to $287 billion in 2015 if they are extended.

Someone hand those boys a pocket calculator and enrol them in an economics class before the country goes completely down the toilet.

It's all in the gender.

2005-11-22T22:35:00.000-08:00

Note to teachers with a sexual penchant for young children: If you're a male, don't even think about it. If you're a female - and particularly if you're movie star gorgeous, it's not such a bad thing.

Yet another flagrant case of gender discrimination has raised its head in the shape of Florida vs. Lafave, which resolved itself today with a plea agreement. Ms. Debra Lafave, extremely cute, young, blonde hair, big baby blues, pled guilty to two counts of lewd and lascivious battery on a 14-year old boy. (To you and I who aren't au fait with legalese, that's lawyer speak for child rape when committed by a pretty woman).

She was charged with having sex with one of her students on numerous occasions, and a trial had been set for December. Her lawyer had previously stated back in July that his client wasn't going to agree to a plea negotiation involving any jail time, since it would be scandalous to send someone as attractive as Ms. Lafave to prison, where it would be like throwing a piece of meat to the lions and she could be seriously harmed.

Aww....my heart bleeds.

Today she pled guilty to the L&Ls, and received a slap on her pretty little wrist in the shape of 2 years of community confinement, followed by seven years of probation. Community confinement is kinda sorta like house arrest without the nasty ankle bracelet and...well...confinement aspect. She'll have a curfew from 10pm to 6am, and she'll be able to leave the house to go to work, to go shopping, and well, pretty much anywhere else she wants to go as long as it's not around children.

So pretty much nothing that's going to impact her life too severely then? That's good. Especially being as how she's supposed to be engaged to a divorced guy with a couple of kids of his own.

So here is the latest scoop on prisons. Apparently they're now only for ugly people, and pretty people shouldn't have to break a nail or miss a bikini wax while being forced to hang around with other criminals who aren't as physically perfect as they are themselves.

Glad we got that straightened out then.

Do We Want To Touch Him?

2005-11-21T19:55:00.000-08:00

Um...answer....not with the proverbial six foot pole. Gary Glitter, that nasty little glam wannabe from the '70s, whose hits included 'Rock and roll parts 1 &2' - the second part of which is still routinely played at every football stadium on the planet, and 'Do You Want To Touch Me', is in serious legal trouble again.

I'll tell you that I always thought Gary Glitter was a bit on the slimy side, even back when he was dressed in his shiny gold suits and camping it up on Top of The Pops. And no, doesn't have anything to do with the glam. I thought Marc Bolan and David Bowie were gods in human form when I was a teenager :) Gary Glitter was just....slimy. Not something you could particularly put your finger on, but I knew that I didn't like him for some reason which went much deeper than his music.

I'd almost forgotten about him until he resurfaced in the news in the late '90s, having been found guilty of 54 counts of possession of kiddie porn. He went to prison for a couple of months and then slipped out of the UK. Hopefully to live the rest of his life under a rock somewhere.

But no. Here he is again, and in some very, very serious shit this time. He apparently should have read the punishment statutes for the various countries he had the option of residing in, as he might well have found that not all countries take fiddling with kiddies as lightly as we do in the west.

He decided to settle in Vietnam, and rented a house by the seaside to which he invited lots of little small girls to play. He went missing from there last week after local newspapers started looking into what he was doing, sparking a manhunt for a depraved 61 year old with bouffant wig and really bad taste in clothes. He was finally found on Saturday, attempting to board a flight from Ho Chi Minh City to Bangkok (which is apparently where he thought he was - less stringent child sex laws and all).

He was arrested on charges of child molestation, which may be upgraded to child rape as the investigation continues. The Vietnamese consider sex with anyone under the age of consent to be automatically child rape, no matter how willing the child in question.

Child rape also carries the sentence of death by firing squad.

Do they want to touch him? You betcha.

Another Katrina Tale

2005-11-20T01:31:00.000-08:00

Most of the time, as I've remarked in previous postings, my job as a transcriptionist leans between mostly tedious, and extremely boring. I can't begin to get excited by quarterly financial reports from companies I've never heard of, and committee meetings at stockbroker firms are wonderful insomia cures. But once in a while something comes along that really touches me.

It happened again this week in the person of an audio file from a Spike Lee documentary, which is in progress as we speak. The portion I was working on dealt with a couple from New Orleans who were displaced by the hurricane.

They spoke of how living in New Orleans you get used to the idea of hurricanes. That they're just something you learn to live with, much like earthquakes for us up here in the Northwest. And how this one was different. How the pictures they saw on TV of that huge hurricane with its gigantic swirling winds and its eye focused right at New Orleans made them feel uneasy. They were talking about moving out even before the mayor issued the evacuation order on Sunday.

So they did what they were asked to do. They got in their car, the mom and dad and their five children, along with everything they could think of that was important for a couple of days away from home. Because that was all they figured they were going to need. Just to get far enough away from New Orleans to miss the hurricane, and then be back home within a day or so. They were accompanied on the trip out of town by the wife's sister and brother-in-law, and their two children, and by the family matriarch.

They saw people around them uneasily tuning into the weather forecasts. Those that could, packed up their belongings and joined the exodus out of town. Those unlucky enough to be without a way to leave hoped that it wouldn't be as bad as people were saying.

The traffic out of New Orleans was bumper to bumper, and it took them four hours to cross the bridge which usually took them six minutes. But eventually they were far enough out to pick up speed, and they drove until they were exhausted, landing up in Memphis, TN where they checked into a $89 a day motel and sat back to watch their city on CNN.

They saw the hurricane, and then they heard that the levees had broken and the water was rising. No worries, they thought, they'll just pump out the water, like they always do.

Only they didn't.

Now this family were here in Memphis, with the small amount of money they'd been able to scrounge together before they left, and they couldn't afford to remain in the motel. So they went to a shopping mall and stood there with a sign explaining they had run away from Katrina, had no money and nowhere to stay. A woman told them about a shelter, which they went to, 5 adults and 7 children, living with a bunch of other families. No way to live. So the two families each put up $325 out of their rapidly dwindling finances, and rented a two-bedroomed apartment for all 12 people to live in, because it was better than being in the shelter. Finer feelings about Katrina survivors be damned, the apartment manager still made them sign a six-month lease on the apartment before they could move in.

As soon as possible, the mother made the call to FEMA, who sent a check for $2,000. It was received at the end of September, and they had trouble cashing it as they'd spelled the lady's name wrong. $2,000 to feed and clothe and pay rent for two adults and five children.

And since then? Nothing. They try calling the FEMA number, and when they get through after hours and hours, they receive a recorded message. They've tried to get work. They're looking for work. They need to work. But nobody wants to hire them.

And most of all, they want to go home.

They had tried to hard to raise themselves up. They had bought a little house, and they had been working on restoring it from the uninhabitable condition it was in when they purchased it. They'd worked so hard. For five years, every spare penny they had went into restoring this house. They had finally put in the cabinets and the carpets and everything was just about ready to move in.

They went down to see their little house a couple of weeks after the hurricane hit. The water mark was five feet up the wall. There was no need for a key to the front door, as there was no longer a front door. All the cabinets were hanging off the walls. The new carpets were ruined. The whole place stank. It was worse than it was five years before when they took it over. And the cruelest joke of all? They had tried to get insurance on their little house. But the insurance companies told them that as long as they were working on it, they couldn't qualify for insurance. The only insurance they could get would be extortionately expensive, and, well, if they'd had that kind of money, it wouldn't have taken them five years to renovate it, now would it?

So now they're lost in a town they have no roots in, jobless, penniless, and everything that they have is gone.

And the world has moved on.

The rest of us, with our MTV attention spans have moved on to the next big thing. Forgetting that these are real people who have lost everything through no fault of their own. And forgetting that it's not a movie of the week and it wasn't resolved at the end of the two hours.

It makes me feel very grateful for the things I have, and complain a little less about the things I don't have.

Slightly longer memory than Katrina...but not much.

2005-11-15T22:03:00.000-08:00

Pop quiz: When the Government promises you something you can:
1. Take it to the bank.
2. Take it to the bank, cash it and run like hell before they change their minds.
3. Assume that their word on anything is as good as their intelligence about WMDs in Iraq.

The answer would be either of the last two options.

Following the 9/11 attacks on New York City, the President and the rest of his chums up on the hill pledged $20 billion to rebuild the city. Apparently they neglected to mention that this money was only good provided that the city cashed the check and spent it within five years.

In the latest installment of the Comedy of Errors which our fearless leader's gang have turned the government of the country into, the House and Senate voted to take back $125 million in aid. Money which the city had earmarked for the present and future medical treatment of those heroic individuals who toiled for weeks in the kind of toxins Saddam only WISHED he'd had a chance to launch at somebody.

Apparently the reasoning behind this retraction of largesse is simple. It hasn't been used yet.

The Senate did try half-heartedly to let the city keep the money, but the House doesn't agree and so the latest edition of the huge labor and health spending bill which is passing through the corridors of power as we speak will reverse the flow of the funds back into the near-empty coffers of the government. Probably in order to finance some other little throwaway stopgap measure for the Katrina survivors.

Now think for a minute how many millions of dollars are going uncollected in taxes in the coming year thanks to our fearless leader's love of sprinkling tax cuts merrily on the very rich of this country.

And then think of the firemen and others in NYC who are going to be left with chronic lung problems - to say nothing of ongoing mental issues dating back to that period in US history that our fearless leader loves to parade in front of us as his reason for spending billions of dollars we don't have in order to fund a war against people who weren't at war with us to obfuscate the fact that it was less about the war on terror and more about the war on who controls the oil fields.

It stinks so bad I wonder how those Congressmen can stand themselves.

Homegrown Case of Judicial Stupidity

2005-11-14T12:47:00.000-08:00

Okay, this one hits close to home, since Port Orchard Washington is only a couple of fingertips away on my map.

Less than 12 hours after being freed on bail following an arrest on a domestic complaint a man killed his estranged girlfriend, and wounded her father before committing suicide. Twice during last week, the girl in question had appealed for help in avoiding her ex, Shane Case, a likely lad whose past felony convictions included yummy things like harrassment and second-degree assault. Finally on Friday, he followed her to a bar where he set off a quarrel severe enough to warrant the bartender calling the police.

Case was arrested for intimidation, and at an arraignment Saturday morning a judge ordered Case to have no contact with his ex-girlfriend, and set bail at $75,000, an amount which Case promptly posted that afternoon.

The police, who seemed to have been genuinely concerned that something serious might happen, took pains to warn the ex-girlfriend that Case had posted bail, and even went as far to follow him to the bar where he'd left his car to ensure that he drove off towards home and not towards his ex's house.

Apparently he merely waited until the police had left and then turned around and went to his ex's father's house where he shot her to death, grievously wounded her father and then killed himself.

Who's to blame here? The cops did all that they could do within the limits of their authority. The ex was warned and took refuge with her father. Maybe the fault lies with a judge who sets a bail within the means of the suspect, and tells him he mustn't contact the girl. Was there ANYTHING in this guy's past history that would have made any judge suspect that Case would abide by this restriction?

Why aren't there better safeguards out there for bruised and battered and scared women who come forward against their tormenters only to find them back out on the streets and even more pissed off than they were before they were arrested? How many cases do there have to be of women who get tired of being treated like punching bags deciding to make a break and move on and are killed by their victimizers? Can we say O.J?

I hope that the nameless person who laid out the bail money suffers. Greatly.

Park and Ride or Quake and Smush?

2005-11-13T01:33:00.000-08:00

Dost mine eyes deceive me?

Now we know that Californians have this reputation for being ever so slightly kooky, as well as married to their cars, but the most recent plan to come out of the offices of the Los Angeles and surrounding suburb planners is a little bit odd, even for them.

Apparently the counties around Los Angeles are having major traffic problems, with crippling congestion between Orange and Riverside Counties, which are separated by the 25-mile long Santa Ana mountains. Nearly 400,000 people commute into Orange County daily from four surrounding counties and nearly all of them drive.

Highway 91 is the only major road connecting Riverside County- the one with affordable homes - to Orange County - which has most of the jobs. It carries 268,000 cars a day, which is 50,000 more than it was designed to carry, and officials believe that by 2030 it will be carrying half a million cars daily.

Clearly there's a major problem here, and planners in Orange and Riverside counties have spent 18 months and $15 million in federal funds puzzling over a solution. Now I think you could have put a bunch of eight-year olds in charge for a couple of hours and paid them in Happy Meals and arrived at the same solution.

There's a mountain range in the way? Well....build a tunnel...duh!

Um...small issue here. The area they're talking about creating this tunnel happens to sit right next to a major quake fault. This is southern California, ferchrissakes, people. So yeah, let's construct a four or six lane underground tunnel which stretches 15 miles through the mountains and then....uh.....well, keep our fingers crossed I guess.

Let's examine this. They can't build double decker highways because they're considered too dangerous since the pancaking of two of them during recent earthquakes, but they can tunnel into solid rock and send half a million people through it daily?

How about a really truly radical idea? How about getting people OUT of their freaking cars and into shuttle buses? Cheaper than driving a car, less wear and tear on roadways since they carry as many people as would fit into 30 different vehicles. And then make it extremely painful on the wallet for people who choose to drive their car instead of parking and riding a shuttle bus. Geez...people whine about the length of a commute, but would rather sit in a car than ride on a shuttle??

One guy in particular grabbed my attention. Howard Gottesman, 44, a property manager in Orange County who lives just over the border in Riverside County, is quite willing to spend 1 1/2 hours in a car to drive a total of six miles. SIX FREAKING MILES, PEOPLE!! He whines: "I call it the longest six miles in the world. It's wear and tear on the car and it's wear and tear on me," said Gottesman. "They need to do something, whether it's double-decking the freeway or tunneling under the mountains. We need relief."

Anyone remember the Scarecrow song from 'The Wizard of Oz'? ".....if I only had a brain...."

I'll Never Look At An Ad For Medication The Same Way Again

2005-11-11T00:33:00.000-08:00

And neither will you if you click to this site for the brand new drug Panexa. My advice would be to not try and consume anything which could conceivably ruin your monitor, keyboard or laptop if expelled forcibly from your mouth.

http://www.panexa.com/

It's such a delight to know that warped people still exist in this world! :)

Poem of the Week

2005-11-08T08:03:00.000-08:00

Actually isn't a poem at all. It's a song by gloriously gothy singer/songwriter, Voltaire. You've got to love a guy who cuts through the bullshit about religion and people who try to strangle us with it :)

GOD THINKS - VOLTAIRE

God thinks all blacks are obsolete farm equipment

God thinks the Jews killed his son and must be punished

God thinks the white man is Satan

God, they know what God thinks.

God thinks we should all convert to Judaism

God thinks we must all be Christian

And God thinks we should all embrace Islam

God thinks the only true religion is Hinduism

And I, I know what God thinks

God thinks you're a waste of flesh

God prefers an atheist

God, God,

God thinks all people like you are hateful

God thinks all people like you are an embarrassment to creation

Self-righteous, judgmental, first to throw a stone

And you're using his name for your own protection.

God thinks the sun revolves around the earth

God thinks there was something very wrong with Capernicus

God thinks abortion is murder and

God thinks everything that science gave us is wrong

God thinks women deserve it

God thinks AIDS is a form of punishment

I hate people who blame the devil for their own shortcomings

And I hate people who thank God when things go right

And I, I know what God thinks

God thinks you're an idiot

God prefers a heretic

God, God

God thinks all people like you are hateful

God thinks all people like you are an embarrassment to creation

Self-righteous, judgmental, first to throw a stone

And using his name for your own agenda

God is a liberal, God is a Democrat

God wants you to vote Republican

Never trust a man who puts his words in the mouth of God

And says it's absolute truth

It's lies and it smells like death

It's all in a day's work

Taking money from the poor

Why do you think that God would need your dirty money

If he wants to start a holy war?

Self righteous, judgmental, first to throw the stone

And you're using his name for your own protection

God thinks puppies need to die

And God thinks babies need to drown

'Cause God is neither good nor bad

God is you and me

God is everything

It would be laughable....

2005-11-07T22:37:00.000-08:00

...if it weren't so pathetic.

The owners of a Wichita Kansas group home for the mentally ill were convicted Monday of enslaving their residents, forcing them to work naked and perform sex acts, and illegally billing their families and the federal government for therapy. Arlan Kaufman, 69 and his wife Linda, 62 were convicted of 30 federal charges, including health care fraud, Medicare fraud, forced labor and holding clients in involuntary servitude.

Federal prosecutors contended the Kaufmans controlled the lives of the mentally ill residents, including forcing them to work on their farm and deciding who could wear clothes.
The couple was accused of forcing residents to masturbate, fondle each other and shave each other's genitals _ activities Arlan Kaufman videotaped.

The Kaufmans claimed that nude therapy sessions and other treatment methods had therapeutic value for schizophrenic patients, and that having residents act out problem behavior helped them avoid repeating it. Arlan Kaufman insisted at trial that the residents' behavior was voluntary.

Prosecutors called it abuse and said it spanned more than 20 years while the couple billed Medicare more than $216,000. The Kaufmans incorporated their unlicensed treatment center in 1980 and ran it until their arrests in October 2004.

That's the pathetic part. The humorous part is the lengths a defense attorney will go to these days to prove their client not guilty. According to Arlan Kaufman's lawyer in a speech to jurors, "It was therapy. No one was harmed. They were helped." Oh...oh...and Linda Kaufman's lawyer told the jury that prosecutors had no solid evidence against her. Why, in one of the videotaped sessions, she was reading a newspaper and didn't even look at the nude resident.

Oh that's all right then.

Luckily the jury didn't buy these defenses any more than I do, and found them guilty as charged. Am I alone in thinking that some defense attorneys credit jury panels with little or no intelligence whatsoever? No one was harmed? That smacks of the bleating of kiddie pornographers and the people who subscribe to it. And no, sitting reading a newspaper while this crap goes on right in front of you does not expunge your guilt in the process. It just shows how jaded you are by the whole thing after 24 years of making interesting home movies.

Hopefully the judges in Kansas are a little more on the ball than the ones in Florida (see story below) and throw the book at these nasty little people who abused these poor folks who were not in any position to do anything about it.

The Worth Of A Child's Life

2005-11-05T02:22:00.000-08:00

Just another little update to inform you that the American system of justice is slipping even further down the road towards certifiably insane.

How much is a child's life worth? And I'll double that...how much are the lives of two children worth? How about if they're brothers, aged 13 and 3 respectively, who were doing nothing more heinous than walking home from their local community center?

I'll tell you how much the court system in Tampa, Florida figures it out to be, shall I? Oh..and make sure you're sitting down.

2 years of house arrest.

Apparently on April 1st of 2004, four siblings were walking home from the community center close by their home. Three young boys, ages 13, 3 and 2, and their 8 year old sister. A woman, driving 10 miles over the speed limit on her way home from the elementary school close by the community center struck the children with her car. The 13-year old and the 3-year old were killed instantly - the 3-year old being dragged under her car for about 150 feet - and the 8-year old and the 2-year old were injured.

Now that, god help us all, would be awful enough. But then the driver of the car, Jennifer Porter, sped away from the scene of the accident to her parents' house where she remained for FIVE FREAKING DAYS before coming forward. And even when she DID come forward, she made a claim that a white van had hit the children and knocked them into her car. The authorities blew that claim out of the water, and placed the blame squarely on her shoulders.

She says she didn't stop because she was too scared.

The noise you hear is my heart bleeding for her.

She could have faced a 15-year jail term if convicted at trial, and was previously offered a plea deal that would have sent her to prison for three years, but her attorney said that she decided to plead guilty and hope that the judge would impose a lighter sentence.

LIGHT?? Ferchrissakes, this sentence is so freaking light it needs strings to anchor it to the pavement!! Circuit Court Judge Emmett Lamar Battles (aka Judge Left My Brain In My Other Suit) said he weighed Porter's clean record and the 'extreme trauma' she endured during the crime in sentencing her to 'community custody', which he described as 'a stricter form of probation - essentially house arrest', along with three years of probation, 500 hours of community service benefitting children, and psychiatric treatment. For the trauma - you know.

Excuse me a second....I think I need to vomit.

Extreme trauma? EXTREME FREAKING TRAUMA??!! What kind of trauma did she suffer exactly? The kind suffered by the 8 and 2 year old babies who watched their brothers turned into roadkill as they themselves were injured? Or maybe the kind suffered by the mother who now has only half of her original number of children? I mean hell, her trauma was so extreme that she went to work as normal the following day and taught children to dance.

I've never been very big on the whole race card issue. But one has to wonder how much the race of the parties involved factored into the eventual judgment. Had Porter been a black man who hit four little white children and fled the scene of the accident, how many of us believe he'd be walking the streets or breathing free air again for another 15 years? But the eight little empty shoes left in the roadway on that April night belonged to four little black children, and Missy Porter is just about as white as you can get, complete with high-priced attorney, retained by her parents before they finally got around to letting the police know where they could find the Toyota Echo with the broken windshield and damaged hood and blood and flesh still attached.

And why do we even have laws against tampering with evidence when Porter's father can take a can of Lysol and a roll of paper towels and clean blood and brains from the windshield and receive no sanctions for it? Why do we have obstruction laws when the parents told Porter not to call the police but just to hide the car and carry on as if nothing had happened, and the prosecutors turn a blind eye? And why do we have vehicular manslaughter laws if you can speed down a road, injure two children, kill two more and receive house arrest for leaving the scene of an accident?

Sometimes I think America has stepped so far out of the realms of taking any kind of personal responsibility that it turns aggressors into victims. She received a light sentence because of her clean record - despite having 8 points out of the possible 12 necessary to get your license stripped from you, for things like doing 65 in a 45 mile an hour zone - and for her extreme trauma during the event. Um...isn't that a bit like killing your parents and throwing yourself on the mercy of the court because you're an orphan? Didn't she CAUSE her own extreme trauma by HITTING THE KIDS WITH HER CAR??!!

The world is too much with me sometimes.

Brownie, Brownie, Brownie.....

2005-11-04T03:01:00.000-08:00

Wagging finger at you. Didn't your mommy ever tell you never to leave a paper trail? Or are you as mystified by internet technology as you are by disaster planning and response, and didn't realize that nothing in cyberspace is ever really gone for good??

I'm referring of course to our favorite "in over my head and don't have a freaking clue" guy, Michael Brown, the erstwhile head of FEMA, and his latest round of humiliations re: emails he was writing during the time he should have been planning how to get a crapload of people out of New Orleans.

Email exchanges like this one between Brownie and Cindy Taylor, his deputy director of public affairs at 7:10 am local time on August 29th:

Taylor: "My eyes must certainly be deceiving me. You look fabulous _ and I'm not talking the makeup,"

Brownie: "I got it at Nordstroms. Are you proud of me? Can I quit now? Can I go home?"

An hour later he added: "If you'll look at my lovely FEMA attire, you'll really vomit. I am a fashion god."

*Chortle Snarf....Chortle....Stop it...stop it....can't...breathe....*

Now bearing in mind that FEMA officials were already in New Orleans at this point, and reporting back that the situation down there in the real world was getting a tad...well....critical. Good to know his mind was in the right place.

Oh and hey...now we know that our fearless leader wasn't actually complimenting Brown in a job well done in regards to his work in Louisiana when he uttered the infamous remark, "Brownie, you're doing a hell of a job." He was, in fact, referring to his sartorial sensibilities, as evidenced by the following warning pre-Bush visit in an email from Brown's aide, Sharon Worthy, reminding him to pay heed to his image on TV.

"In this crises and on TV you just need to look more hardworking ... ROLL UP THE SLEEVES!" Worthy wrote, noting that even President Bush "rolled his sleeves to just below the elbow."

Glad to straighten that one out for you. No really...no thanks necessary. But honestly. These idiots are IN CHARGE OF STUFF! If this doesn't scare you, you're probably either brain-dead or a rabid right-wing Republican. Oh wait...same thing.

Puppy Dog Tales

2005-11-04T00:00:00.000-08:00

Okay, someone tell me why, because I just don't get it. Why don't all states have stricter 'dangerous dog' laws? Why are people still allowed to keep not just one of these so-called 'dangerous dogs' but PACKS of the bloody things?

Another child got mauled yesterday. He came home and his front door was locked, so he went around to the back yard...and that's all she wrote. He was greeted by 3...count 'em 3 pitbulls, who packed up against him and put him in the hospital with grievous wounds. Luckily he was 10 years old, and not 4 or 5. He'll probably survive, with scars that won't disappear. Authorities aren't sure at present who owns the dogs. Hell, they could even belong to the family for all I know, as I've heard way too many cases of the family pack turning on one of the children. And why? Why on earth would anyone want a PACK of these dominant and difficult to train dogs?

Yeah, like I can talk, right? Me of the 5 dogs? And let me tell you something. If you were to walk up my driveway, the dogs would go completely apeshit. They'd bark at you, snarl at you, hurl themselves against the fence.

But there's the thing. The issue of the fence. My dogs are enclosed not in the front yard, but in the back, behind a six-foot chainlink fence and a gate which is not only latched, but tied closed.
And hey, if you were dumb enough to mistake their warnings for affectionate greetings, open the gate and enter the backyard, you would run the very real possibility of getting bitten.

But here's the thing. A bite from a pekingese would be annoying, but not life-threatening. And even if all three of the older ones packed up against you - which is doubtful, but possible, if you can't fend off a cocker spaniel and two dogs which are a foot off the ground, frankly you're a bit of a pussy then, aren't you?

Pit bulls and others like them are an entirely different kind of dog. No one who's seen film of these dogs latching onto something and being pulled off the ground, and still refusing to let go would argue that they have the potential to kill.

And I'm so tired of hearing that there are no bad dogs...only bad owners. Yeah, but how is it that bad owners never seem to pick chihuahuas or yorkies? They go for these macho muscle dogs with the capability to tear a human being limb from limb. I'm sure they're probably compensating for something, but still...

And I'm also sure that there are some absolutely great dogs of this ilk out there, who are blessed with wonderful owners who take the time and trouble to train them, microchip them, and most importantly recognize how territorial they are. They monitor them when people come to the house and they don't let them run loose in the neighborhood.

Does anyone remember the Diane Whipple case out of San Francisco? The lady who was torn apart by the two massive Presa Canario dogs who lived on her floor, when she was doing nothing more offensive than trying to get from the elevator into her own apartment. Who can honestly say this scenario wasn't an accident waiting to happen? Two huge dogs with heads the size of the steering wheel of your car. Two dogs who were of a breed which is the personification of dominance and territorial.

And let's examine the idea of territory. A dog's territory is where he lives. In the case of my dogs, that would be the house and the backyard, or the car if they happen to be with us on a trip. Don't try sticking your fingers through my car window to pet one of them if you don't want to get them nipped at. Let me bring them out of the car first. Out into a place which they don't feel responsible for. They're much more likely to be amenable to your attention out there.
In the case of the San Francisco Presas, they went out for walks in the neighborhood daily. They used the elevator, and walked in the hallway. So they figured the entire apartment complex was their territory. Diane Whipple was on their territory when they attacked her. She wasn't family. She wasn't part of their human 'pack' and therefore was a threat to them. So she died.

And worse yet, the owners who bought these pit bull puppies who were cute and small and manageable, and found out that they grow, and they're bigger now and they knock things over and chew things and get into mischief when their owners aren't around. So these owners turn them out of the house when they leave for work.

What happens then? What do these dogs perceive as their territory? Right. Their territory becomes the area they live in. The outdoors. They may roam and patrol an area which stretches for several blocks. And guess what? These people who own them may be telling the gospel truth when they say that the dogs are sweethearts and wouldn't hurt a fly and have never bitten anyone. Of course not. Because their human family are part of their pack. Unfortunately the little kid who lives down the street is not.

So what's the answer? Beats me. You can't wave a magic wand and turn all pit bull owners into responsible people. Maybe there should be an ordinance preventing people from owning multiples of these breeds - and yes, I'm just using pit bulls as an example. I do know that Rottweilers and Chow Chows and others can be every bit as vicious and unpredictable. And maybe if you want to own one of these potentially dangerous dogs, you should have to get a special license, and get them microchipped so that in the event of a mauling, you can be held responsible for the actions of your dog. And yeah...I do think that people who own one of these dogs - or multiples of these dogs - and allow them to run loose and cause harm to a person or someone else's pet should be punished severely. The judge in the Whipple case was well on the right track. Owning dogs you know have the capacity to hurt someone and not exercising proper control and dominion over them at ALL times isn't just negligence. It's manslaughter waiting to happen, and should be punished accordingly.

*Bows to the crowd and steps down from her soapbox*

He giveth and he taketh away...

2005-10-14T14:17:00.000-07:00

Unless you happened to retire as the CEO of a major global company or are the beneficiaries of money your ancestors made (aka Old Money), life is tough for old people these days. Not that it's ever been easy, particularly under Republican regimes, but one cannot look at retirement with envious eyes lately unless you happen to fall into one of the two groups mentioned above.

Big news! Retirees are to get a HUGE increase in their social security! A whopping...earthshattering...shall I spend it all or invest part of it sum of...wait for it...$39 a month!! The average social security check will rise from $963 to a giddy $1,002 in January! Be still my heart. Such largesse. Such an incredible gift to our senior citizens. Such total crap.

$39 a month.

It doesn't sound like much of a windfall to me, even assuming that God - or President Bush as those of us in the know call him - wasn't giving with one hand and taking back with the other. Some AP reporters need to go back to English class to learn the meaning of certain words. I even have a dictionary they can borrow.

$39 a month is not a HUGE increase. It's chickenfeed. It's half a meal for four at Applebees or The Outback. It's 9lbs of ground beef, or ten gallons of milk or ten loaves of multigrain bread. It's two packs of Depends undergarments or two bottles of Advil. And depending on your location, it's roughly ten gallons of gas.

But hey...want to hear the funny part? This'll slay you.

At the same time they're trumpeting this HUGE increase of $39 a month for the average senior, the government is also raising Medicare premiums by $10.30 in January. So I guess that's now down to a VERY LARGE increase of $28.70 a month, right?

Well wait. It gets better. If a senior doesn't want to pay extortionate amounts for prescriptions (and being old, they tend to wind up needing quite a few of these on a monthly basis), they can sign up for the BRAND NEW prescription drug benefit, also beginning in January. The cost for this new benefit to the average senior? A mere $32 per month! A steal! Ingenious!

Now let's see. $28.70 minus $32 leaves us with the princely sum of.......minus $3.30. Say it ain't so!! Say we're not screwing over people in the twilight of their lives yet again??!!

Wait a sec...did I say screwing seniors? How about those of us who work and pay social security? Buried in the piece was this little gem:

"The Social Security Administration also announced Friday that 11.3 million workers will pay higher taxes next year because the maximum amount of Social Security earnings subject to the payroll tax will rise from $90,000 to $94,200 next year. In all, an estimated 159 million workers will pay Social Security taxes next year."

So the $39 per month increase is our own little gift to the seniors of the country. And there I was thinking that the government might actually doing something beneficial for someone earning less than $100,000 per year. It's the Republicans, what was I thinking!!??

Sunrise...Sunset...

2005-10-10T11:46:00.000-07:00

Do you remember the song from "The Fiddler on the Roof" by the name of "Sunrise, Sunset", where Tevya and Golde are talking on the eve of their oldest daughter's wedding about how their children are growing up?

Whoa! It just struck me today as I'm making arrangements to pay for Lema's PSAT how true that is. Doesn't seem five minutes since she was surreptitiously tossing books and diapers into the playpen on top of her baby brother while my back was turned. And now here she is, a junior in high school, preparing to take her college preparation exams. And the baby brother she used to try suffocating with cloth diapers? He's now 6'3" and a freakishly good cook. She wants to be a psychologist. He wants to be a chef - although he'll consider nuclear physicist as a career and gourmet cook as a hobby as long as he gets to practice blowing things up.

Isn't it a weird thing that when you have small children - or I should say when I had small children, because I know there are some people who actually ENJOY babies. Personally I think those people are certifiably insane, but I digress - that period seems to swallow you up. Toddlers are little bundles of NEED, who WANT things constantly and are the dictionary definition of contrary. Mired in the under-five portion of motherhood, it seems as though things are NEVER going to get better, and that you'll NEVER have any freedom again.

And then someone puts your life on fast forward, and all of a sudden you see these midgets becoming grown people. Yeah, they're still Teen Peeps and they still need their momma. But the time is fast approaching when they're going to spread those wings and fly on their own. It's astonishingly amazing and pretty darn wonderful to watch.

Groups and Hot Button Topics

2005-10-07T22:51:00.000-07:00

OUCH!

A writing list of which I'm a member - Momwriters - has a thread going at the moment, and it's one of those hot button topics. You know the kind...you can look at the very first email and just know that it's going to end in tears. One of those topics upon which people have extremely strong opinions, and which, in my own humble opinion should probably have been squashed by a moderator within the first day or so. That didn't happen, and I just read a post which made me wince. I know that an email which has that strong an effect on me has to be one which is an invitation to a flame war waiting to happen.

The topic is whether women who work outside of the house are justified or not. Oh bless ya...a question which is laced with dynamite. It deals with how we value ourselves as women. And you would think that a list full of women might just be a little gentle with each other, and that sisterhood would cause us all to band together and sing a chorus of Kumbayah.

Of course, that doesn't happen. People tend to fall into three groups. First are those with a laissez-faire attitude of whatever works for you is just fine, and it may not be my way, but I'm cool with whatever you want to do. Second are those who are bitter and angry about feeling they have to do XYZ and wish they didn't have to do it, and are resentful that they do have to do it. The third group are the self-righteous ones who feel that their way is the one and only way to live and people who don't live up to their lofty expectations are not living properly.

I love the first group, as it's where I also reside. Yeah, I might grumble at having to work more hours than I wanted to in a particular week, but that doesn't mean I don't think women shouldn't work. I've lived in a relationship where my every move was controlled by another person - another person who was the only breadwinner and as such was the one who made every decision, and made me feel like a third-class citizen. So yeah...live like you want to live, baby. Whatever floats your boat.

I understand the second group, as I was once a member of it. Having husbands who don't appreciate a single thing you do in the house or with the kids, and who think your job is some kind of 'cute little hobby'. These are usually the men who also believe that women should do everything that needs doing in the house, and then proceed to leave clothes, shoes, plates, mugs etc, all over the place rather than picking up behind themselves. I equate this to having one extra child to take care of.

The third group, frankly, piss me off to the nth degree. Particularly those who pepper their emails with christian references, and try to make us all feel that if we don't live like little chattels, then we're not honoring our marriage vows. Now if this is the way you want to live...cool for you. But do NOT try to make me feel guilty or insinuate that you are doing things the only right way.

The lady in question wrote this little diatribe about how those of us who don't martyr ourselves along the lines of Martin Luther King and Mother Teresa are going to have kids who don't want to have anything to do with us when they grow up.

Reality check here. My own mother was oh so much like this lady. And she made damned sure we knew how much she was sacrificing in order to make sure she did everything we needed, and our father was a lazy ass who came home from work and was waited on hand and foot and thought of her as a piece of furniture, and lived like a dictator. Head of the household as the bible would have us believe.

And guess what? Of the four children these two people produced, two of them do not speak to them at all, and two of them only hang around because they provide free room and board to one and free daycare to the other. Are they respected and adored as the writer of the letter would have us believe? Hell no. It's hard to respect someone who martyrs themselves for their family. Don't kid yourself that by devoting yourself to your family to the exclusion of personal interests and outside activities, and yes, a little selfishness, if taking time for yourself is selfish will win you undying affection and rewards from your children. We tend to see right through it. And we know that deep down you blame us for the life you missed out on.

The writer of the email wrote these words:

It's not easy and it's not perfect and sometimes I'm resentful and I have to tell my husband in plain English (they really are very simple creatures and they can't read our minds) that I need something more from him. But when we hit these bumps in the road, the solution is never to just focus on what I want, but to swallow my pride, offer up my suffering, and push myself to care a little bit more about other people than I do about myself, especially the one person I stood in front of God and 200 people and pledged I would love and honor and cherish for better or for worse, not as long as he did what I wanted in the way I wanted him to do it. This path has only brought me inner peace and greater self-confidence and the feeling that right now I am doing what God asked me to do, and that is what we are all here for.

I'm sorry, but this just SCREAMS martyr to me. Why the hell should anyone feel that the solution to doing too much for no respect and no appreciation should be "to swallow my pride, offer up my suffering and push myself to care a little bit more about other people than I do about myself..." And then insinuate by the last sentence that this is the RIGHT way for everyone to live...including me. No. Martyrdom isn't for me. It took me many years to escape my mother's influence and feel astonishingly guilty about buying a new pair of jeans for myself rather than an outfit for the kids. Not any more. The teen peeps have so many clothes that Lema's closet rod actually SNAPPED. They're not exactly missing meals. They have a warm house, they know where the washing machine is and how to use it.

I like to think that they're being raised to be self-sufficient and able to take care of themselves and not having the baggage that my siblings and I have had to spend the past twenty five years shaking off. Xander loves to cook, so he cooks. Lema doesn't love it in the same way, but she does it too. How else do they learn? This knowledge isn't just suddenly imparted to them by osmosis when they reach the age of 18. They can clean up after themselves. They can wash their own laundry. They're very capable young humans and I'm fiercely proud of the things they can do.

Motherhood is all about letting go. From the moment that child's umbilical cord is cut, raising them is a process of learning how to let go of them and let them live their own lives. And as such, though the temptation to write a vitriolic response to the lady's email is an extremely strong one, I will instead resist the desire and hope that she wises up to what she's doing with herself and her family by doing for them and denying herself.

And I'll get down from my soapbox now.

Made in the USA

2005-09-28T11:21:00.000-07:00

Okay, this is another soapbox posting, sparked by a piece of transcription I did yesterday. The work was for a company whose name I'm not allowed to give, but who, suffice it to say, is one of the major computer/printer/software/networking companies in the United States.

The subject of the transcription was a forum given by the company about outsourcing.

Now I am not against outsourcing as a rule. How could I be, being as how I work in that industry myself? The transcription I work on is outsourced from other companies. Outsourcing is wonderful. Outsourcing is our friend - not to mention my paycheck. It's merely a way that companies can be more efficient by hiring people who are more skilled in a certain area than people working in their own companies, who can be hired on an 'as needed' basis. People who pay their own tax, insurance, medical benefits, etc, which saves the hiring company money by not having to pay for a full-time worker with attendant benefits to do nothing until they're needed. My company pays me money, which I put back into the economy of the US, and everyone's happy.

No, the type of outsourcing which has got my goat is the kind known as offshore outsourcing. To the uninitiated this means major companies taking entire sections of their business, such as call centers, IT departments, financial departments, and HR departments and contracting with companies in other countries to do the work at a fraction of the cost they'd have to pay American companies to do it.

Why should this bother you? You're not in my industry. Well, here's why. The kind of outsourcing I do keeps work inside of the US. My wages go back into our economy every time I go to the store.

Offshore outsourcing on the other hand, takes jobs in American companies away from American workers and puts them in the hands of people in third world countries such as India and China. This money doesn't return to the American economy. It remains in the country where the outsourcing is performed when these people go to their own grocery stores. It puts whole departments of people out of work and chasing jobs in other companies - more and more of whom are going for the offshore option, meaning there are less US jobs to be had for Americans.

And these are the companies who are getting tax breaks from the government at the same time they're adding numbers to the US unemployment rolls, and getting richer on the backs of people in third world countries who will work for peanuts. There's something intrinsically unfair about that.

The good thing, of course, is that these companies can still stick a 'Made in the USA' sticker on their merchandise, because the company is an American company, despite the fact that when you buy this merchandise you're actually helping to put Americans out of work, rather than what you may believe you're doing. You're not helping the American economy in any shape or form, since wages in India and China don't wind up getting put back into the American economy. All you're doing is making rich companies richer, and putting your fellow Americans out of work.

There used to be company owners like Hershey - he of the chocolate empire in Pennsylvania - who cared so much about America and Americans that during the depression he actually had people working in his factory who were doing basically nothing. He was making work for them to do. All because he loved his country, and he figured he was rich enough and it wouldn't hurt him to give a little of it back by helping out his fellow man and keeping them off the bread lines.

When did the almighty dollar become the benchmark by which we measure success? When did it happen that years of loyalty to a company mean nothing when the option of offshore outsourcing comes up? And why are we rewarding these companies with tax breaks? Shouldn't it be more along the lines of making them pay a penalty if they are offloading American workers in order to hire workers in third world countries? Why reward people who are damaging the economic structure of the US to make a few extra dollars per hour off the backs of people they can work like dogs in conditions Americans wouldn't tolerate? And shouldn't something nasty befall companies who turn their customer service over to people who can barely speak English?

Apparently one of the hugest manufacturers of electrical equipment in the US were told by their CEO before he retired that what he wanted to see was 70 percent of the business being outsourced offshore, with 70 percent of that percentage being in India. 70 freaking percent. These are people's jobs we're talking about. And trust me...this is a company that is just about as 'Made in the USA' as you can get.

Since when did it happen that you get rewarded for putting people out of work so that you can make a profit? Maybe it's just because I'm an old hippie, but I think it's wrong.

A pox on all their houses.

Coughs and Sneezes Spread Diseases

2005-09-23T11:13:00.000-07:00

They used to have that witty little bit of doggerel on the wall in the doctor's office (if I skip to using the word 'surgery' during this blog btw, don't be alarmed. In archaic England, that's what we call a doctor's office. It doesn't mean a visit to the operating room - or operating theater as we call them back home. All clear? Good. Then I will proceed :) )

Anyway...where was I? Oh yeah. On the wall of the doctor's office when I was a kid, they used to have posters like that one. Of course, when I was a kid, it meant nothing, as kids don't know what germs are and don't have the hand/eye/brain coordination to time a cough or a sneeze with a handkerchief or their hand.

I do remember getting my immunizations at the clinic. I remember liking the polio vaccine best because the type we were given was oral and so they gave it to you on a lump of sugar. Never had the smallpox thing, as England is an island and smallpox was eradicated there. They did give us TB immunizations, and rubella immunizations, as well as the diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough or DPT, which were the only immunizations available at the time. They were free, so hell...why not?

By the time my oldest daughter was born - also in England - there were already rumors circulating about the pertussis or whooping cough element of the DPT vaccine. Apparently if you give aspirin to a child who has had the DPT, certain sensitive children can suffer serious health problems.

This led to a rise in misinformed and uneducated parents deciding that this meant the pertussis vaccine was BAD. This vaccine was EVIL and therefore they shouldn't have their children immunized. The health authorities even started coming out with an alternative immunization which scrapped the pertussis vaccine altogether and just kept the diphtheria and tetanus portion. After all - what's whooping cough? Just a bad cough, yeah?

See...the problem with people of my generation is that our parents and grandparents, depending on your age and the age of your parents when they had you, had grown up with a very real sense of what whooping cough is and what it does. They snapped up the immunizations as fast as the doctors could give them out because they didn't want their children to suffer what they had seen their siblings or siblings of their friends go through who had not had the chance to be vaccinated against these horrendous illnesses.

The downside of that is that my generation grew up without that knowledge. Because of the success of the vaccination campaigns, we didn't have to see children in iron lungs because of the drowning effects of diphtheria. We didn't go to school with children who had been crippled by polio. And we had never had to watch infants dying of whooping cough. That left us free to decide that the infinitesmal chance of an adverse reaction was much worse than not vaccinating and allowing the child the opportunity to catch the disease.

We'd also lived through certain other medical uh-oh's that seemed like a good idea at the time, so we were less trusting of the medical establishment and their assurances of the safety of the drugs. My own mother was offered Thalidomide when she was pregnant with me, as it was a great cure for morning sickness and handed out to pregnant people like candy. At least until all of the horrendously gruesome birth defects started to show up. I'm not sure quite how long Distillers (the manufacturer) kept Thalidomide on the market before it was banned as a drug for any purposes at all. See, it worked well for the purpose it was designed - which wasn't morning sickness - but they hadn't tested it well enough to realize that pregnant people shouldn't even be allowed to smell it.

Luckily my mother didn't believe in taking drugs of any kind while pregnant. The mother of one of my friends wasn't quite as stringent. Vincent was a really cool guy - once you got your mind beyond the fact that one of his hands grew out of his shoulder. And his was a very minor case.

So many people of my generation decided against the vaccination route. After all, there was no such thing as diphtheria or polio or whooping cough any more, was there? Have you ever seen it?

The trouble with this is that these diseases are tricky and bad and evil. They lie in wait until we're complacent and then they attack. Our generation didn't vaccinate everybody. The generation after mine vaccinated even less. And sometimes an older child can get whooping cough and it can be no more severe than a chest cold. Because it never did kill older children. It always preyed on the babies.

I did a heartrending transcription a month or so ago dealing with a family whose infant son had died of whooping cough. They weren't one of these families who don't believe in vaccination. They had plans to vaccinate the baby, as they'd vaccinated all of his older brothers and sisters. In fact, his first round of vaccinations was already scheduled. But a week before the due date, he got sick. And the doctors cuuldn't figure out what was making him sick. And he got sicker. And he was admitted to the hospital. And within nine days his parents were having to make the decision to turn off the machines which were keeping him alive. He died of whooping cough.

The problem being that because so many older children are walking around without immunizations, they have the ability to turn into the equivalent of Typhoid Mary. They themselves may be only a little on the sick side, but they could be harboring a virus which has the capability to kill its intended target - a tiny infant who doesn't have the means or the body mass to fight that kind of infection. And all it takes is a direct hit from a single tiny viral organism, thousands of which are released into the atmosphere every time one of these older and unvaccinated children coughs or sneezes, in order to breed a colony that can kill an infant.

My oldest was also born at a time previous to there being a vaccination for Hib flu. After coming to the States and the advent of this wonderful vaccination, I am always aghast when I hear that parents don't think there's any point in vaccinating against it, especially when if it goes wrong (again, an infinitesmal chance) the child could wind up with meningitis.

Here's my Hib flu story. Sophie was 3 and her father and I were divorced. He would take Sophie on alternate weekends. One particular weekend, he picked her up on Friday evening, and returned her early on Sunday morning - even though he wasn't supposed to return her until the evening. He said, 'she wanted to come home', parked her in the hallway and drove off. He probably hadn't reached the end of the road before she started vomiting.

Let me preface the next part. I'm a 23 year old single mother who doesn't have a car. I also - since my ex-husband's new girlfriend can't stand me, don't have my ex-husband's phone number. Even though in England doctors make house calls, the surgeries are closed on weekends and they have what are called emergency doctors who cover for the regular physicians. Because these people don't know you from Adam, they have no idea if you are a hypochondriac or an overprotective parent.

Well Sophie kept vomiting, and she started developing a very sore throat. I called the emergency doctor and a guy came out to the house and looked in her throat with a tongue depressor. He gave the diagnosis of tonsilitis and left her some amoxycilin. Which I fed to her and she promptly barfed back up. I called my mother because by this time Sophie's breathing was beginning to bother me. She was seeming to be having difficulty taking in a full breath. My mother told me to call the doctor again, which I did.

This time, far from the nice, jolly young man who came out the first time, I was visited by a woman I can only describe as a consummate bitch. She was full of attitude from the moment she walked into the house. When she heard that a doctor had already been out to see Sophie that day, the attitude increased 1,000 percent. She stuck a tongue depressor into Sophie's mouth, and said, 'You've already been told what it is. You've been given amoxycilin. She's got to take it. What do you want ME to do?' I said, 'But she can't keep it down.' And then she packed up her bag of tricks and fixed me with an expression which spoke volumes of how highly she valued my parental wisdom. "Well you're going to have to MAKE her keep it down, or else she's going to wind up in the hospital in a drip and you don't want THAT do you?" And left.

So there I was alone in the house with this little 3 year old that I knew in my mother's heart was sicker than a case of tonsilitis, but who I'd been told by two medical professionals was suffering from no more than that. And she wasn't getting better. By six that evening she had gotten to a point where she was using every ounce of her concentration just to breathe. She was drooling, because she didn't want to swallow, sitting forward and just breathing.

My brother dropped in to see me, because he'd heard she wasn't well, and he lived a mile or so away. He took one look at her and said, 'We have to take her to the hospital.' I said, 'But they told me she's got tonsilitis.' He said, "I don't give a f**k what they told you. She's obviously got more than that.' So he got on the phone with my brother-in-law, the only person in our family at the time who drove, and lived ten miles away, and told him to come over so we could take her to the hospital.

When we got there, the doctor in the ER took one look at the way she was breathing, didn't even look in her throat with a tongue depressor and told me they were going to take her up to the operating theater to give her an emergency intubation. He thought she had epiglottitis.

My own physician came to visit me on Monday evening after her office hours - I loved this doctor and we'd always gotten along, and she was apologizing all over herself for not having been there on the weekend and us having to go through what we did. She explained to me what epiglottitis is, because I'd never heard of such a thing. Apparently it's caused by a germ which in some people does no more than give you a sore throat. Hib flu. In some people it can cause all kinds of respiratory problems, including the one Sophie was suffering from.

The mechanics of it are simple but deadly. The epiglottis, that little flap of skin which slips forward to cover your breathing tubes when you swallow, starts to swell up. Every time you swallow, it swells a little more. Using a tongue depressor makes it swell A LOT, which is why when they suspected it in the ER, they didn't even bother using one. Had I followed the advice of the bitch who came to the house, and put her to bed, she would not have woken up the next day. Her epiglottis would have choked off her airway completely and she would have suffocated to death. The ONLY cure for epiglottitis is intubation. The drugs they use to treat it are simple ones, but without intubation the disease will beat the cure and the child will die.

And this is the same virus which I heard people talking about so cavalierly when making the decision whether or not to vaccinate with the Hib flu vaccination.

I am a strong believer in vaccinations. My reasoning is simple. These diseases have not survived for as long as they have because they're stupid. Viruses are very smart. And they are smart enough to wait until we relax our vigilance against them. And if you are just putting your own child's health in danger, that's one thing. But you're not. You're also risking the lives of other innocent little victims who can't fight these diseases off. It's like the ripples from a stone dropped in water. My little child, too young for immunizations could be in front of your unimmunized older child in the checkout line. And your misinformation could be my child's death sentence. And my child may never know his murderer, and you may never be aware that your short-sightedness has killed my child.

In Which We Whine

2005-09-19T23:08:00.000-07:00

Conspicuously absent I have been, thanks to a heavier than usual work schedule from The Big Office in New York. See, for a while there, I was going through a little bit of a work drought - one of the drawbacks of being on the wrong coast. They get work in the morning, and then by the time I get to the computer I have to deal with what they have left over.

And then along came Tammy.

Tammy is my assignments editor at TBOINY. She's fairly new there, and just a slip of a gal at 25 years old. Well, the chief assignments editor, a guy named Andy, following some problems getting in touch with me via telephone (probably having something to do with the fact that I turn it off while working), had the brilliant plan that I should download AOL instant messenger, since that's the system they all use at TBOINY in order to communicate with each other and with the satellite offices. Okay...I can do that. And Tammy started IMing me with assignments, which worked out much better for all concerned.

I wasn't counting on her deciding to make a buddy out of me. She now drops me chatty little IMs about what she's doing on the weekend and where she was born and what her interests are, etc, etc, and I IM her back and say, that's nice, dear. Cause after all she's in effect my boss, and even though I'm WORKING and those little pop up IM screens are a real annoyance when you're in the middle of a serious transcription which needs all of your attention and concentration. I can't exactly ask her to knock it off, when she's responsible for giving me work.

Well the upside to all the Chatty Cathy stuff is that Tammy tends to think of me first when she has work. Which is good. Unless it's last Friday. Last Friday she was receiving a big job of work that she was going to have to spread among several transcriptionists. So would I do four hours due Tuesday...oh pleeeeeze? Sure. I can do that. OH...and we've just had another big job come in that's due Wednesday...can you take four hours of that? Oh pleeeeeeze? Sure I can do that. OH..OH..and she has a rush job that's not coming in till Monday morning, it'll be about an hour and due at 5 their time. Can I do that? Oh pleeeeeze? Sure I can do that. Oh, and today? She has two teleconference jobs that are an hour long each...due by 5...can I do those? Oh pleeeeeze? Geez! Tammy. Yeah...go ahead...gimme.

So needless to say, this has been somewhat of a harried few days. Tomorrow I'm not turning on my AIM. AT ALL. You know it's bad when your invoice starts on Monday and runs weekly through Friday, and I already have close on $300 earned on THIS WEEK'S INVOICE!! And it's only MONDAY. (And this is at 0.00635 per word, remember...)

Thank God that Katamari Damacy II is due out on Wednesday cause by that time I think I'm going to be seriously ready for a break and ready to veg out in front of a veedeeo game for an entire day.

And my fingers hurt

Make do and Mend

2005-09-10T15:27:00.000-07:00

Here’s a funny thing.

Hot on the heels of the news that our fearless leader is going to be robbing Medicaid to pay a fraction of the amount he’s giving away in tax benefits to the ultra-rich, comes another little piece of legislation I wasn’t even aware of until today, and I doubt many others had gotten the heads up either.

There’s a little law, known as the Davis-Bacon law, which was enacted in 1931, and in essence, here’s what it says. Federal contractors are required to pay workers at least the prevailing wages in the area where work is conducted. It applies to federally-funded construction projects such as highways and bridges. It should also apply to the federally-funded reconstruction of severely damaged areas in the Gulf States, such as New Orleans.

I see your puzzlement. “So?” you ask, “Isn’t this a good thing?”

And my answer to you, gentle reader is that yes, it’s a phenomenally good thing, because who wants their house to be put together by workers who are grousing over being paid less than the prevailing construction wages in that area, right?

Only…funny thing…on Thursday, the president decided to add insult to injury by suspending the requirements of the Davis-Bacon law for designated areas hit by the storm. What that means is that the federal contractors can basically pay what they like to their workers while they’re undertaking the grand reconstruction of the Big Easy.

Aside from the immediate, knee-jerk reaction of ‘the guy is out of his head’ – a moot point, since we know he’s barking mad, one has to wonder why this law is being suspended for the duration by Bush’s own executive order.

Could it maybe have anything to do with the fact that two of the contractors who have already signed up to receive federal money to help reconstruct the area are a couple of names we know and love? Halliburton (Dick Cheney’s former – and some would say pretty current – place of business), and the Shaw Group ( with ties to Joe Allbaugh, Bush’s former campaign manager, former head of FEMA (Ooh…wonder how he landed THAT job!) and the person responsible for giving Michael Brown (aka the Horse Whisperer) his job at FEMA.)

Maybe it’s just my innate cynicism that makes me suspicious when two firms with VERY close ties to the government snag reconstruction deals under a federally funded plan on the same day that our fearless leader suspends a law which would have forced these companies to pay people working for them in that area a decent wage. Surely nepotism doesn’t stretch that far?

And maybe there’ll be flying pigs on tonight’s evening news.

Shell Games

2005-09-09T10:17:00.000-07:00

A very interesting piece of legislation is soon to be put forward by the Bush Administration. Legislation which, under the cover of Katrina, may not be as noticeable as it should be. The budget reconciliation process was meant to take place on September 16th, but probably will be pushed back towards the end of the month because of the disaster in New Orleans.

The budget reconciliation is supposed to be a way that we get a little closer to paying down the country's debts. Most people know that we're sitting on an enormous deficit at present, and that cuts in spending will have to take place in order to reduce some of that deficit. However, most people aren't aware of the giant shell game about to unfold in front of our very eyes.

Step right up and watch the lady....round and round she goes and where she stops nobody knows.

Here's the deal. The government is going to announce the need to slash $35 billion from mandatory spending over the next five years. Mandatory spending, to you and I, means little programs such as Medicaid, Food Stamps, Section 8 housing, Federal School Loans. You know...nothing really important. The types of programs that all of those extremely poor people in New Orleans who didn't have the means necessary to leave were reliant upon, along with a whole chunk of other Americans living below the poverty line.

The President is going to appear on our TV sets and let us know that these cuts are distasteful, and nasty, and he hates having to do it, but it's for the good of the country, and we need to reduce this deficit because we're paying a huge interest payment on it every month. Hey, it's a wartime economy and we all have to tighten our belts, right? Even those whose belts are cinched so tightly they don't have any holes left on the leather. They can just go ahead and punch in some more.

But here's the shell part.

For one of the first times in the 25 years we've been doing these budget reconciliations, the reconciliation package will be split into two parts. The first is going to be these cuts in mandatory spending. The second package is the one dealing with revenue from taxation. And why are they splitting it into two pieces? To disguise the fact that the first part - the cuts in spending which we're going to be told are necessary in order to reduce the deficit - will actually do absolutely NOTHING to reduce the deficit.

Why? Simple, my friends. The second part of the package deals with tax cuts. And slated in on that part of the budget are a whopping $70 billion in tax cuts over the next five years. And guess who most of this largesse is going to be aimed at? Half of the tax cuts are aimed at the 0.2 percent of households with income over $1 million. More than three quarters of these tax cuts - 78 percent - are going to the 3.3 percent of households with incomes over $200,000 per year. (From the Center on Budget and Policy http://www.cbpp.org )

Hands up all of you who can do math? If we lose $70 billion in revenue, and we add the $35 billion we're going to get by taking healthcare out of the reach of needy people, how much of the deficit do we actually pay off? Hmm....I get minus $35 million. Anybody else get a different answer?

So yet again, our caring and sharing Administration is showing its empathy and finer feelings for the low-income working poor by squeezing money out of them in order to finance another summer house for the rich. And the deficit, far from shrinking by $35 billion courtesy of taking away diabetes shots and heart medication is actually increasing by $35 billion courtesy of giving a $70 billion present to the high echelons of the populace who always vote Republican.

And the part which irritates me the most is the Administration's reliance on me having the attention span of a two year old. They think that by splitting this package and introducing the two sections a couple of weeks apart, that I won't realize what they're up to. One week I can be told that essential programs and services need to lose a huge chunk of money so that we can pay the deficit bill. Two weeks later they'll slide through the $70 billion in tax cuts to the rich, and I will just say....oh okay...guess you found money under your mattress or something. Cool!

Um...Mr. President? Why not just chop some of the costs of administering these mandatory programs, including some of the ridiculous costs Medicaid pays to healthcare providers, and save the $35 billion that way? And...hey...here's something REALLY radical. Don't spend money we don't have on giving $70 billion in presents to your buddies!! That might work.

But hey....that would imply the existence of a heart and a brain. Two vital organs this Administration has shown over and over again it doesn't possess.

Step right up....watch the lady.

Rich White Boys

2005-09-07T10:38:00.000-07:00

At last, Mayor Nagle of New Orleans is doing what should have been done more than a week ago. She has ordered mandatory evacuations of the area, and said that those who refuse to leave will be removed forcibly. She's giving them the means and the transportation to leave and providing them with somewhere to go once they do leave. Which begs the question, why couldn't this have been done before the storm moved in, while the streets were still passable by vehicle and the trains were still running?

I've seen people - including the president - say that while they expected the hurricane, they didn't expect the flooding. Um, hello? Apparently not only did the weather channel, CNN, and other TV pundits know in advance of the storm, but apparently so did the people in charge in New Orleans, had they been listening to their own engineers - one of whom was pictured on the news on the Saturday before the storm hit, talking about how even a category 3 storm directed at New Orleans would probably overwhelm the levees, and the pumping out would take weeks. So yeah...the people in charge DID know or at least SHOULD have known that this would happen.

And sometimes, we have to do things which we don't want to do.

New Orleans would have been a much easier town to deal with post-Katrina if it was also sans people. The looting issue would have been taken out of the mix. The people who are now risking their own health and safety in that toxic cesspool in order to evacuate people wouldn't have been put in jeopardy. And all the people crowded into the Superdome and the Convention Center wouldn't have been stuck without basic services for days on end.

But that would have involved a little forward planning, and a little advance thinking, and most importantly, leadership from the very top. Leadership which doesn't seem to be there. It amazes me that we held impeachment hearings for a former president whose only crime was a matrimonial one. He had oral sex with an intern. This is something which should have concerned nobody but his own family. Did it get in the way of his diligent running of the country? No. Was any major rescue or relief work held up because he was in the Oval Office with Monica? No. And yet here we have a president who thinks finishing his five week vacation is more important than being in Washington and doing his job.

Sometimes we have to do things we don't want to do.

Are impeachment hearings going to be held following this unmistakable debacle? How many times are we going to have to sit and listen to why what he did was the right thing to do under the circumstances, and let him slide for it? Bad enough we went and invaded another country under the pretext of looking for weapons they knew were not there. Bad enough we're now mired in another farce which is looking more and more like Vietnam the longer it continues. Bad enough that all of his rhetoric about there being severe penalties for whomever outed the lady spy came to naught when he found out it was his good buddy, Karl Rove, who far from being ousted is now being sent to New Orleans to help coordinate things there. All of those things pale when measured against a chief of staff who refuses to give up his daily nap and hunting expeditions despite being told of the very real impending danger of a natural disaster of gargantuan proportions. A man who even on the day of the flooding was across the country in California, instead of being where he is being paid to be. In the White House with his finger on the pulse and his ear on the phone coordinating evacuation efforts from a city which was devastated by something predictable.

Throughout his entire presidency, Bush has been a dollar short and a day late. How many times is he to be rewarded and lauded for this ineptitude?

I think it's a criminal shame that despite what little kids are told about anybody being able to grow up and be president, the truth is that it's a job for the rich - or at least those with rich backers. What we need in the White House is someone who knows what it's like to be poor, and to be disenfranchised. Someone who's actually worked a minimum wage job. Someone who's had to worry where they're going to find the money to take the kid to the doctor. Someone who has empathy for his fellow man, and more importantly has had to bear the brunt of his own actions for the majority of his life. It's funny that the closest we've come to that in recent memory was Bill Clinton. You may not agree with his morals, but you can't fault the fact that he took a country which was mired in debt and made it almost solvent again, or that his caring for people in distress was genuine. The man did awesome things for this country and will be remembered for an intern and a cigar.

What we do instead, seemingly, is we take rich kids, who've been supported and helped out by their rich daddy for the majority of their life and who have never caused a mess that daddy couldn't influence or buy their way out of, and make him a president. I mean, did nobody check this guy's resume? Didn't you KNOW he was the governor of Texas?? Didn't you realize that he'd screwed up every job he'd ever had...jobs he'd gotten for the most part on the fact that his daddy was rich and knew people? What ever possessed folks to think that putting him in the White House would change the habits of a lifetime? Even now....when he's deep in the brown smelly stuff, who does he call to make him and his incompetent regime look better to the country? His DADDY and BILL CLINTON, the guy he maligned so much during his own campaign for presidency. AKA the guy who's gotten him out of all his messes in the past, and the guy who really knows what it takes to run a country. And what's the shrub doing while all of the stuff is hitting the fan? He's doing his best to put the blame on somebody else, like every other spoiled little brat you've ever met. I don't know about you, but I think impeachment is too good for this man. How many chances does he have to have? How many times are we going to let him screw up the country before we tell him enough?

Sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do.

The Dog Ate My Homework

2005-09-06T11:15:00.000-07:00

Well no, actually. I did complete my homework assignment as requested - in a million words or less, and handed it in via email. It wasn't as bad as it could have been, since I've been known to rattle out 1,000 words in half an hour when I'm on a deadline. So...phew.

Now we just have Lema's homework to complete. And hers is somewhat different. Since she's going to be doing Careers in Health this semester, she apparently needs a TB test - and presumably, since I doubt very much she has any immunity to it, a TB shot. At least that's what I'm assuming, as the paper doesn't make it very clear if they just want to make sure they don't HAVE TB or whether they are supposed to be immunized AGAINST TB. Yummy, eh wot? And the yummiest thing is that the doctor she's been going to since we moved here to Buckley has now retired from the group practice we used to go to. Where she went I have no clue, since the clinic doesn't appear to know either. So we have to take her to a new doctor - who naturally won't have a record of her immunizations and will have to request it from the old clinic who have no doctors who are accepting new patients. Brilliant, huh?

She asked me about the TB test, and the immunization, since she knows I had it in school - as did all Brits of my age group. What I didn't realize was that she didn't want to hear the truth about it...she wanted me to tell her it didn't hurt. Silly me. From what I remember it hurts plenty. The tine test is like a stapler with lots of needles in a circle. They punch your forearm with it, and then leave you for a week to see if anything develops. I guess mine didn't develop the way it was supposed to, since along with most of my classmates, I had to have the TB jab too. And that was not yummy in the slightest bit, since the vaccination, kind of like a smallpox immunization, has to be scratched into the skin with a hooky needle. It's not just a straight in and out jab like most of them.

So here I am, waxing lyrically about TB tests and TB jabs, and not noticing that Lema is looking very pale by this point. Oops.

There are certain things about England that I really miss. One of them is healthcare. To me, it makes so much more sense, if you want people immunized, to do it as part of a school thing. When we reached the age of 15, all kids were routinely tested for TB as part of the school day. We were taken by class to the nurse's office, where a county health doctor administered the tests in an assembly line kind of way. The girls also had to have a rubella immunization, since the MMR was years away from production, and they didn't want us all having babies later that would have the chance to be deformed courtesy of us girls getting german measles. So whether you'd had the disease previously or not, you were immunized against it at 15. Naturally this made all of us hate all the boys who only had to endure the TB tine test, and didn't have to get the rubella jab also.

But because it was part of the school day, there wasn't the fear or the anticipation that there would have been if we had all had to go and get it done at our family physician's office. Obviously you don't want to appear to be a wuss in front of your classmates, so you're so busy thinking about that, that by the time it's your turn for the test, it's over before you realize it.

All kids had free dentist exams and free eyeglasses if they needed them. Oh, and free prescriptions and doctor visits. In fact, adults received free doctor visits also, although they had to pay a nominal amount for prescriptions. And contraception was free. To everybody. I don't understand a society which doesn't want abortions, but doesn't make contraception free. When I first came over here, I was astounded that Boeing's health insurance (arguably one of the best in the country at the time) didn't cover the cost of the contraception pill, but did cover the cost of an abortion. Is it me or is that a majorly screwed up way of looking at the problem??

The downside to the National Health Service was that you might have to wait for a while for surgery which wasn't an emergency. The upside was that you would never been turned away from a doctor's office or a hospital because you didn't have the money to pay for it. I took all of that for granted until I moved here and saw people having to make the choice between seeing a doctor and eating. For a country which thinks of itself as being the most civilized in the world, and proclaims it at every opportunity, that's something of a disgrace. Yeah, there's Medicare and Medicaid, but what if you make too much money to qualify for it? And trust me...you don't have to be rolling in money to not qualify for Medicaid. Their maximum allowable income is scandalously low, low enough to make it a joke considering the cost of just keeping a roof over your head and the lights turned on. Sometimes earning enough to just provide those simple necessities of life can disqualify you from Medicaid.

I also miss my family allowance. In England, every child is given an allowance (at the time I left, it was about $30 a week), in a coupon book redeemable at the post office and payable to the parents. It doesn't sound much, but it helped me out a tremendous amount when it came to purchasing things like shoes and winter coats. You just saved up your family allowance for a month or so, and then went down and cashed the whole thing and purchased what you needed for the child.

Oh, and school supplies? Provided by the school. My sister, who was a teacher before she burned out and went off to be an educational psychologist, was scandalized at the school supply list we had for the children to go back to school with. Even now, the bulk of that is provided by the educational department in England. They don't do the 3 ring binder and loose paper until they reach the equivalent of a junior in high school - our 6th form. Prior to that, the kids use workbooks which are provided by the school. Basically the only thing the parents are responsible for purchasing are pens, pencils, markers and colored pencils.

I know, there's a lot of people who will moan about the fact that schools can't afford it. Well that's the way it's been set up here. Despite the fact that parents are responsible for purchasing all of the supplies, and financing most of the rest of the activities which take place in school, the end result is still an education which will not give them a direct place in a British University. American students who want a University education in England, generally have to do a year or two in a community college first to get them up to the level that native British children are at when they leave the 6th form, the equivalent of high school here. By the time Brits enter the 6th form, they are usually focusing on three or four academic subjects, and these are the ones they will take their examinations in. You take an examination in each subject at the end of the two years of the 6th form, and the results of these exams will determine what kind of University will accept you. It's not just a blanket high school diploma based on credits, the way it is here. So for acceptance into a British University, an American high school graduate would have to go to a lesser college and complete an intensive course in whatever they wish to major in at University, just to bring them up to the required level for entrance. Which is pretty sad, when you consider again, that the US is supposed to be the most advanced nation in the world.

And now...catch me...for I am stepping down from my soapbox.

Reading Rainbow

2005-09-03T23:15:00.000-07:00

Oh...be still my heart for I have discovered paradise here on earth. It resides within the walls of a small, squat whitewashed building on Tacoma Mall Boulevard, and it's name...verily I say unto thee...it's name is HALF PRICE BOOKS. And thou shalt worship this place, and pay homage to it and tithe most of your grocery money. For it shalt bring you joy beyond your comprehension.

Azrael and I took the Teen Peeps down to this store today. We've been meaning to go for a while, but certain things - like having no money after buying a ton of school clothes and supplies - kind of got in the way.

If you have never stepped inside one of these places, let me warn you that if you have the slightest tendency toward book-sluttishness as my entire family do, this could turn out to be a pretty expensive outing. But well worth the visit. The Stephen King 'Hearts in Atlantis' I wanted to read after seeing the movie? $1 people! ONE FREAKING DOLLAR!! I even unwittingly picked up a couple of first editions, which are always cool, and which cost the same price as it would have without its FE status.

Xander found books on science and computing, 'Lema swooped down on the Wicca and Psychology sections, Azrael took an entire ARMFUL of Dell Abyss books ("I don't know these authors but this publishing company is BRILLIANT! They publish the BEST horror books!"), and yours truly found her way to the true crime and slimy death sections, along with "Fried Green Tomatoes...", "The Shipping News", and "We Were The Mulvaneys" all at $2 a head. You can't beat those prices. We managed to fill 3...count 'em 3!! shopping baskets with books and music and the occasional computer game, and staggered back home to surround ourselves with the printed word for the rest of the Labor Day weekend.

And lo...there was much rejoicing.

School's Out....

2005-09-02T23:42:00.000-07:00

...for three days! Yeah, I know it's not as good as Alice Cooper's original but hey...here in Buckley WA they do things in an odd way. Like having the kids go back to school on September 1st so that they can attend for two days and be off for three. Who's idea was this? Seems like up until a couple of years ago, school never started until after Labor Day here.

The Teen Peeps are having a blast now they're back in school. 'Lema is wowing her treble choir class with her amazing brilliance, as she was in chamber choir (the big choir) last year, and knows a whole bunch of stuff these other kids don't. She's loving drama - and I could make some remarks about drama queens, but I am MUCH too nice for that...heh heh. And as for Xander...aka Hates To Do Homework Boy...he's making a dent in his plans to become Boy Of The Year by becoming the teacher's aide for his life skills class. I told him he should think about helping out in the library too, since you can always use a working knowledge of the Dewey Decimal System, and those library page jobs at the county libraries are pretty cushy deals during the summer.

Of course, the teachers sent home work. Not for the kids, you understand, but for yours truly. One of the wits sent home a request for an essay about Xander in a million words or less. Oh...ha ha...one of those just out of teacher's training school and hasn't been beaten down by life in the REAL world yet teachers!! I've had those before. They're the ones who send home lots of notes about how they think education is a FAMILY event, and as such, look...note well...I have concocted a whole PAGE of exciting and fun-filled activities for the entire FAMILY to share together!! Listen, lady. I am more than willing to do my share of making sure the kids get their homework done. I'll look it over. I'll make sure it gets into their backpack and threaten them with grievous bodily harm if it fails to reach you for the 20th time this month. But you know what? I work on a job which is piece work. I get paid by what I turn out. That means during the day until the kids get home, and after they go to bed, sometimes until 3 in the morning, I'm working my fingers numb and my eyes fuzzy. So please...excuse me if I find your list of exciting and fun-filled activities the whole FAMILY can share together....which usually entails a trip to the craft/stationery/hardware/grocery store and money I can ill afford to spend.....a little IRRITATING! Particularly when you make the damned thing part of the kid's grade, and they neglect to tell me about it until the evening before it's due to be turned in. Yeah...I TRULY loathe and despise and CURSE you all the way down to your hippie little Birkenstocks when I'm single-handedly attempting to recreate a model of the Parthenon at midnight.

Hopefully this guy isn't going to turn out to be one of those teachers. Or we may have to have an email exchange. In a million words or less.

Pekish Update part deux

2005-09-02T11:52:00.000-07:00

I took Rosybelle back to the vet for her follow-up urinalysis today, and the news is good, although he still has a couple of things he's a little bit concerned about. First, the good news. Her white cell count on our last trip was about 200 cells per field - mega mega infection. Today it was just a couple of cells per field. That shows that the antibiotics are working and things are looking up, which is super great news.

The only things which concern him are the fact that there are still white cells there, and that her bladder itself is a little hardened. As the urine is extracted via a needle, there should be zero white blood cells in it, since there is no chance of contamination. So that, plus the hardening leads him to believe that the urinary tract infection persists, albeit in a very reduced state from last time.

So...another week of antibiotics and a call to the vet a couple of days before those ones run out so that he can ask me some questions to determine if he thinks it's a good idea to bring her back in or if he thinks she'll be fine. Got to love people who don't make you pay more money than you have to, don't you?

Ms. Belle herself is feeling much better, as evidenced by the fact that she's once again leading me around the house. Apparently she thinks I'm too dense to find my way to the kitchen without her help, and trots along ahead of me, looking back over her shoulder to make sure I'm still following. Oh...and she's once again bringing me presents. Now Rosy is 3/4 Pekingese and 1/4 Poodle, so I don't know where the whole Retriever tendency thing comes in, but since she was a puppy she's always felt a need to greet you with a present in her mouth. Not knowing where her roots are, I guess she could be a southern belle, who are famous for their hospitality, but whatever the reason, as soon as she knows you're approaching, you can see her panicking as she looks around the general area wildly. "Oh my gosh...you're here. I need a gift. I need a...I need a....dirty Xander sock! The perfect thing!" And she'll leap on it and scoop it up in order to present it to you as you approach. Of course, sometimes socks aren't available and she's had to make do with lesser offerings such as discarded popsicle sticks or pieces of cardboard, but she's ALWAYS sure to bring you SOMETHING. While she was sick, I guess she just wasn't up for all the preparation and gift-giving, which is understandable. Hey...from my memories of bladder infections, I merely wanted to kill anything around me that was moving, so she's handled herself like a little trouper.

I also bought something at the vet which is guaranteed to make her heart flutter. SHAMPOO!! and better yet...the vet threw in some eye gunk for FREE! Since she's got those bulging Peke eyes, there's a tendency for the shampoo to get into them, no matter how careful you are, so this stuff basically just gives a protective filmy coating for the duration of the bath experience. Rose is....well...let's just say if she were a human she'd be a beauty parlor junkie. She adores being groomed, and doesn't even mind being bathed - aside from the whole eye thing. During the whole sick and peeing all over the place thing, there didn't seem to be much point in bathing her, as I didn't think she'd feel like being messed around with. But now I think she's ready. I KNOW she's ready, since while I was waiting in the vet's office for the results of the urinalysis, I was stroking her head absently while she napped in my lap, and happened to notice my fingers were coming back...well...greasy and dirty. SO...later today La Belle Peke will receive the full beauty parlor treatment, and will be in absolute heaven.

Seems only fair after having a thermometer stuck up your bum and a needle in your bladder, doesn't it?

Can we say 'OUCH'?

Pekish Updates and Other Things

2005-08-24T11:54:00.000-07:00

We have a pekish update.

Not exactly film at eleven type update, but update nonetheless. Rosy's bloodwork shows that her kidneys are within the normal range, and although there is an elevated white count of the kind of white cells which signify either an inflammatory condition (like rheumatoid arthritis) or an infection, the vet dude is going with the infection thing. He still thinks that the bladder infection probably is also in her kidneys, which would explain the high white count. So...phew...for now.

Rosy is getting a little better about being able to actually make it to the pee mats on the floor before doing the squatting and straining bit, which is a good thing. It's still on the bloody side, which is not such a good thing to look at, but presumably is normal for this condition. She's back to eating and playing Prima Donna though, so that's definitely a bonus.

It's funny though, the way that animals can sense weakness in others of their kind. We have two alphas...or would-be alphas in the house. Rosy, natch, and Katie the Shih Tzu. Ordinarily they kind of have an uneasy truce, which very occasionally will result in a battle with much screaming and tearing of fur. However, although Rosy's smaller, she's much fiercer when roused, so it's a pretty even match, so they tend to respect each other's space and just pick on Clinton, the cocker spaniel, who is so subservient it's the biggest wonder he ever gets off his back in front of these two women.

But since Rosy got sick, Katie has been taking full advantage. Up to now it's just been that Katie was growling at her whenever she got anywhere within eyeshot, and Rosy would back off. But yesterday, Rosy went to jump on the couch to sit next to me, which Katie has decided should be her spot now. Immediate no-holds-barred battle ensued, with Katie flipping Rosy and grabbing her by the throat. Now I know that dog fights are more bluster than anything else, and they usually don't harm each other in their dominance games, but sheesh. It's at times like those where it's very difficult to separate what you SHOULD do from what you WANT to do. My first instinct is to protect Rosy because she's ill, but I've read enough doggy pack behavior books to know that it would be absolutely the wrong thing to do because it could wind up aggravating the situation and intensifying the problem.

Imagine your baby being bullied by that kid down the street, and not being able to do anything about it. Yeah...kind of like that :) I can't wait until she's better and back to kicking some Shih Tzu butt again!

Oh....Lema and I wound up having a very girly night last night. I was trying to install Norton on Azrael's computer, which wasn't being very cooperative, and which I finally gave up as a bad job at about 2:30. Lema was still awake, and so we decided to do girly painting nails and toenails things, and lay sprawled on the bed watching Lifetime Movie Network and drifting in and out of sleep. Oh and many Ramen noodles and dry roasted salted peanuts were imbibed and a good time was had all round.

Of course this morning we're suffering the torments of the damned, and we're both prickly and irritable and SO not wanting to do anything resembling transcription cause something happens to your EYES on four hours of sleep. But that's why God invented Starbucks French Roast and intravenous drips. And Azrael, the misguided sweet thing, brought home an AM/PM caramel flavored expresso for me when he came back at 8:30 this am. He wasn't to know that I'd only been asleep for a couple of hours at this point....so I fell back to sleep and awoke two hours later and the expresso was COLD. Damnit. I love that stuff. That'll teach me.

Hallooooooo

2005-08-23T15:28:00.000-07:00

I'm back...with kisses all round. Did you miss me? Huh? Huh??

I hasten to inform you that staying away so long was DEFINITELY not my intention. And furthermore, I will state that it was NONE OF MY DOING! In FACT...if you would know if you came to visit me more often...I DID post a new post on Sunday night. A poem of the week and a pekish update.

That was before I realized that SOMEBODY had been surfing with MY computer...and broken it all to pieces! Here's the drill in our house. YOU DON'T TOUCH MAMA'S COMPUTER! And before you think that is a trifle harsh, let me add quickly that everyone in the house has at least one computer to their name...some of them have more than one. So YOU DON'T TOUCH MAMA'S COMPUTER!

The reason is, plain and simply, this is my bread and butter. The tool of my trade, if you will. When I'm sitting somewhere underneath a mountain of transcription as big as the pile of laundry waiting in the laundry room, yes, I may curse it a little bit. And yes, it's not the speediest or the smartest laptop on the block, and it may have it's own little pecadilloes as computers are wont to do.

But it's what I use to work with. And therefore is sacrosanct and immolate and YOU DON'T TOUCH MAMA'S COMPUTER.

The reason I put this rule in place is a simple one. The other people in the house have no respect for the concept of viruses and/or spyware/adware. They surf with wild and merry abandon, throwing caution - and bandwidth - to the winds. They absolutely cannot resist anything which screams "CLICK HERE, YOU MAY BE A WINNER". Which, of course is the reason why Lema has to run Ad Aware every single day - sometimes multiple times in the course of a day, and why Azrael's computer isn't running, period. Oh he can check mail if he wants to wait for half an hour for it to load Outlook. But Explorer? Fuggeddaboutdit.

So somebody...and I'm mentioning NO names...decided to use mama's computer for a little surfing expedition. Oh they were fast and sneaky and covered their tracks well. BUT somewhere along the top of whatever wave they were riding on, they hit the motherlode. I attempted to access my folder on the server of the Big Office In New York, only to find the page superceded by an advertisement for fertilizer or some other odd full-page thing. I clicked out of that to find another advert for a mastercard. and one for a virus protector below that.

Adware. The bane of professional computer users. There should be a very special place in hell for people who put this stuff out. Particularly the kind of malware adware which gets into your SYSTEM REGISTRY AND MESSES STUFF UP SO THAT YOU HAVE TO GO IN AND MESS AROUND WITH THINGS WHICH COULD TURN YOUR COMPUTER INTO A BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH IF YOU HIT THE WRONG THING!

So...a more up-to-date and expansive (and expensive) edition of Norton which includes spyware/adware protection later (Ad Aware I love you, man, but you just don't have what it takes to deal with the whole malware stuff), and an entire working day wasted trying to remove said malware from my system, I'm happy to announce that I'm up and running again. I still have adware in there...somewhere in the registry...but Norton won't let it access the net to spawn itself. Which is fine with me.

I even went to the trouble of deleting my last piece of bloggy goodness because when I looked at it with MY admittedly messed up Explorer yesterday, half the words had turned into underlined hyperlinks which took me to weird shopping sites.

So I'll have to replace poem of the week and pekish update soon. Until then, I'm happy to announce that I'm back. And that my computer now has a lock.

Sick Puppy

2005-08-18T01:43:00.000-07:00

Today was kind of a fraught one.

If you've been with me for a while you know all about Rosybelle - la prima donna of prima donnas - the uber pooch of the Racek household. She's the dog who singlehandedly turned me from cat person to decidedly crazy dog woman. I have a bag for her so that she can travel in style on our not too frequent trips away from the house. She is so much in control in this residence that she merely has to climb onto the side of the bathtub in the master bedroom and mew plaintively in that decidedly vocal way which is singular to Pekingese, and people jump up and rush over to turn on the bath tap so that she may indulge in pure running water, rather than suffering the indignity of a shared water bowl with the other dogs - who she feels are vastly inferior and will avoid when at all possible. She is too short to jump onto the bed, but instead springs up and down on her back legs while vocalizing loudly until someone picks her up to her rightful place. She can bark in short bursts which mimic what you say - two barks for 'coffee' (to which she is shamefully addicted), three barks for 'beef jerky'. She's stoic to a fault, and would rather die than admit she's in pain, as we discovered when she was still a puppy and developed a luxating patella - which to you and I is a kneecap which slips out of joint. She allowed the vet to palpate what must have felt like hell on earth rather than a leg joint without so much as a whimper. She's brave and fearless and would die for any one of her people without question.

And she's sick.

How sick, we don't quite know yet. At the weekend she was unusually clingy, wanting to be held and petted all the time - and though she's very much a spoiled and pampered little thing, she's usually fairly independent, so this was kind of odd behavior for her. She was laying around panting a lot, so I figured maybe the heat was getting to her, and made sure she had lots of water.

By Tuesday, things had changed dramatically. Usually so boisterous and madcap, she spent the day for the most part simply laying on the chair with her head on her paws and a sorrowful expression on her face. When she wasn't peeing that is. And when I say peeing, you have to understand that this is Rosy. The dog who cannot go while you watch her. The dog who when we took her on vacation to Quinault last year for a week, refused to...um...poop. At all. Because she couldn't disappear to her own little section of the back yard and do it incognito. So when I say she started peeing in the house, this was extremely unusual behavior for her. And the WAY she was peeing was odd. She'd drink something and take a couple of steps and pee...about the size of a dollar coin. And she'd give every impression of straining really hard to produce this miniscule amount.

But then I went to clean up one of these tiny puddles and realized it was red.

I called the vet immediately, but we couldn't get in to see him until today. He took her into the back (thank god) and inserted an instrument into her bladder to get an uncontaminated urine sample which he then centrifuged and tested. The diagnosis is not immediately clear. She for definite has a urinary tract infection, because of all the white cells he found there. But what's not quite so obvious is how far this infection has spread. Because the urine he tested was way too diluted to be normal, the vet explained that she had either gulped down a huge amount of water, or her kidneys weren't functioning the way they're supposed to and removing the waste products from her blood. Also, the fact that she's depressed and clingy and so not herself also leads him to believe that it's more than a urinary tract infection and at the very least the infection has spread into her kidneys. At worst? I don't even want to think about at worst.

So we were sent home with 3 weeks of antibiotics, with instructions to watch her very closely between now and next Wednesday, by which time even if it's a kidney infection, we should start seeing a change in her behavior for the better. And she has to be given another urinalysis before we suspend the antibiotics after 3 weeks to make sure that the white cells are gone. He told me that if it's a kidney infection, 3 weeks might not be enough to get rid of the problem. And we should be hearing from him either tomorrow or Friday in regards to the bloodwork he took today to see if he can narrow down any underlying issues with her.

My little furball, my little pekish girl, the house dominatrix could use some good thoughts. And some doggy Depends.

Porn Site Speak With Forked Tongue

2005-08-16T13:44:00.000-07:00

Why didn't anyone tell me about the proposed .xxx domain for porn sites? I would have voted for it! Or..at least on its face, I would have voted for it. Cause how could any parent object to a special designation for domains dealing with "adult" material?

And then I read more, and apparently there are a lot of folks objecting to it. Why?? Who are these crazy people??!!

Well here's the deal. The whole .xxx domain thing is voluntary.

What?? Okay, let's review. Everybody but the porn...ahem...excuse me..."adult" industry wants SOMEONE to crack down on the easy availability of porn on the internet. Right? So why in the world isn't SOMEONE in the government courageous enough to step forward and say that it's time to create a red light district on the internet highway?

Follow it through...cause it kind of makes sense. Pass some kind of legal thing which states that anyone running an "adult" site can only register with a .xxx domain. Back it up with the severest of legal remedies for anyone who continues to use .com or .net. or .org or any of the others. And extend that to anyone who uses one of these domains as a front in order to forward the web surfer to a .xxx domain.

That would free up a whole lot of .com and other domain names for non-"adult" related material, as well as making it possible for people to block .xxx domains completely from their computers, and for libraries and schools to do the same. If we're so interested in protecting our young people from smut, what's the problem? Take it further and make it so that you have to provide some kind of proof of age in order to access the .xxx domain system.

How can anyone find fault with this system? If...as civil liberties people like to tell us...it's the right of these people to publish whatever filth they choose to do on the internet, provided that it's only for the enjoyment and edification of adults, then why would anyone argue with the concept of a 'red light district' accessible only to adults?

But no....let's come up with a new .xxx domain, but make it voluntary for the 'offending' sites to register with these new domains. End result? The 'adult' sites get to KEEP all of the .com and other domains, and create a new .xxx domain...which would result in twice as many porn sites as are presently available!

You don't have to be insane to work here...but it helps....

Movie Mania

2005-08-12T01:44:00.000-07:00

Swooning over 'Hearts' (coupled with my latent insomniac tendencies) reminded me of a list I saw over on Jen's blog when I was going through her archives the other day. (Yes, Jen...you amused me for hours that day...and I can only WISH I was a real stay at home mommy who cans and bakes and does REAL MOM THINGS! :) ) So anyway, swiped from Jen's blog, here is the AFI's list of the top 100 movies. The ones I've NOT seen are in red. And after looking at this list, I can safely add Movie Slut to my list of sluttisms!

CITIZEN KANE (1941)
CASABLANCA (1942)
THE GODFATHER (1972)
GONE WITH THE WIND (1939)
LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962)
THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939)
THE GRADUATE (1967)
ON THE WATERFRONT (1954)
SCHINDLER'S LIST (1993)
SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (1952)
IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946)
SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950)
THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI (1957)
SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959)
STAR WARS (1977)
ALL ABOUT EVE (1950)
THE AFRICAN QUEEN (1951)
PSYCHO (1960)
CHINATOWN (1974)
ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (1975)
THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1940)
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)
THE MALTESE FALCON (1941)
RAGING BULL (1980)
E.T. THE EXTRA TERRESTRIAL (1982)
DR. STRANGELOVE (1964)
BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967)
APOCALYPSE NOW (1979)
MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (1939)
THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE (1948)
ANNIE HALL (1977)
THE GODFATHER PART II (1974)
HIGH NOON (1952)
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (1962)
IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934)
MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969)
THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946)
DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944)
DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (1965)
NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959)
WEST SIDE STORY (1961)
REAR WINDOW (1954)
KING KONG (1933)
THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915)
A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951)
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971)
TAXI DRIVER (1976)
JAWS (1975)
SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS (1937)
BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1969)
THE PHILADELPHIA STORY (1940)
FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953)
AMADEUS (1984)
ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (1930)
THE SOUND OF MUSIC (1965)
M*A*S*H (1970)
THE THIRD MAN (1949)
FANTASIA (1940)
REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955)
RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981)
VERTIGO (1958)
TOOTSIE (1982)
STAGECOACH (1939)
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977)
THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991)
NETWORK (1976)
THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962)
AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951)
SHANE (1953)
THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971)
FORREST GUMP (1994)
BEN-HUR (1959)
WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1939)
THE GOLD RUSH (1925)
DANCES WITH WOLVES (1990)
CITY LIGHTS (1931)
AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1973)
ROCKY (1976)
THE DEER HUNTER (1978)
THE WILD BUNCH (1969)
MODERN TIMES (1936)
GIANT (1956)
PLATOON (1986)
FARGO (1996)
DUCK SOUP (1933)
MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1935)
FRANKENSTEIN (1931)
EASY RIDER (1969)
PATTON (1970)
THE JAZZ SINGER (1927)
MY FAIR LADY (1964)
A PLACE IN THE SUN (1951)
THE APARTMENT (1960)
GOODFELLAS (1990)
PULP FICTION (1994)
THE SEARCHERS (1956)
BRINGING UP BABY (1938)
UNFORGIVEN (1992)
GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER (1967)
YANKEE DOODLE DANDY (1942)

Hearts and Hopkins

2005-08-12T01:21:00.000-07:00

Oh be still my heart.

I just got through watching 'Hearts in Atlantis', courtesy of Comcast On-Demand. Did I tell you I gave up on Stephen King books quite a while ago? I don't know why, but they just stopped moving me. I stuck with him through the godawful 'Gerald's Game', and 'Dolores Claiborne', and even went as far as 'Rose Madder', but finally a girl's got to call a halt to the madness, you know? The plots, and worse still, the characters in his books had started to become old and stale and tired.

So along the way, I missed 'Hearts in Atlantis'.

I still don't know whether it's any good in book form. But the movie definitely made me want to go out and try it. Now how much of that is due to Stephen King's writing, and how much to the sublimely brilliant acting of arguably one of the best actors around has yet to be seen. Anthony Hopkins makes acting look like something anyone could do. He just seems to meld into whatever character he's portraying, and make it completely plausible.

It's strange how he seems to have improved with age, too. I remember seeing him oh so many years ago as Frederick Treeve in 'The Elephant Man', and not being unduly impressed by his acting. Although having said that, I have to add the caveat that next to John Hurt in that movie, anyone would have been less than impressive. But by the time he starred in the remake of 'Mutiny on the Bounty' with Mel Gibson, he was on his way to brilliant. His light as air touch in '64 Charing Cross Road' makes it still one of my all-time favorite movies. And who could deny his skill in movies such as 'Howard's End' or 'Remains of the Day', not to mention the brilliantly evil Dr. Hannibal Lecter in 'The Silence of The Lambs'.

A good SK movie and Anthony Hopkins...my cup runneth over :)

Poem of the Week

2005-08-11T19:59:00.000-07:00

Okay...a little delayed this week, courtesy of The Big Septic Caper.

Whenever I hear stories of young men and women heading off for Iraq, this is the poem which never fails to come to mind. I think no matter what your feelings may be on the wisdom of the current conflict, and whether or not you agree with it, you have to feel for those young people over there who are fighting and dying for something much bigger than they.

Wilfred Owens served in World War I, so he knew from where he spoke. Unfortunately for the world, he was killed a couple of hours before the Armistice was declared, robbing us of one of the most eloquent of the war poets.

THE SEND-OFF - WILFRED OWENS

Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way

To the siding-shed

And lined the train with faces grimly gay

Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray

As men's are, dead.

Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp

Stood staring hard

Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.

Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp

Winked to the guard.

So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up they went.

They were not ours,

We never heard to which front these were sent.

Nor there if they yet mock what women meant

Who gave them flowers.

Shall they return to beatings of great bells

In wild trainloads?

A few, a few, too few for drums and yells

May creep back, silent, to still village wells

Up half-known roads.

In Which We Sing In Praise of Thomas Crapper

2005-08-10T12:01:00.000-07:00

No posties yesterday.

And there was a reason for that. The reason was grounded to a large extent in the fact that I was making regularly scheduled trips to the grocery store in town all day long. Was I being forgetful? Was I cooking vast amounts of food which required many many trips to the supermarket?

No.

As a matter of fact, everyone in the house was afraid to eat yesterday. Because eating...eventually...leads to waste production. And waste production wasn't being very well addressed yesterday, even though it was on all of our minds. In a BIG way.

You might recall that a week ago we had a problem with a toilet which backed up and overflowed. And then got better. Well, the thing is, we only THOUGHT it got better. What actually happened was that it was in constant communication with the toilet in the kids' bathroom on the other side of the house, and they were formulating a plan. To both decide to malfunction on the same day.

By Monday afternoon our toilet was stubbornly refusing to work. Oh it would flush all right. And the water would head downwards. Only not downwards as in ...down the U-bend. More like downwards as in ....all over the floor. Oh...and the sink and shower drain and tub drain would all gurgle in an extremely unholy fashion.

Now as it's the time of the month where we are desperately awaiting the next paycheck, I thought...oh well...at least we have the kids' bathroom. We can use theirs until we have to dig deep and shell out for a plumber. But oh no. The toilets had other plans. We were informed by the children that THEIR toilet had also overflowed, but that Xander had plunged it and everything was fine. I know, I know, this should have caused warning bells to go off in my brain, but it seriously didn't. Until Monday afternoon when I went to use their bathroom and flushed it. And all of the water went down like it's supposed to....and promptly came out all over the floor THROUGH THE BOTTOM OF THE PEDESTAL!!

We do have this kind of insurance protection which covers certain items in the house. We used it when our range decided that it wanted to throw a wobbly and only use three burners instead of four, and make the last one live even when turned off. But I didn't think it covered plumbing. So we got it out and checked. Hey Presto! It covers plumbing! So we called, and after finding ourselves in computerized hell for a while, finally got to talk to a real person who said she would call plumbers in our area and find one who could come out.

And then....nothing.

That's when I started transporting the kids to our local Fred Meyer in order to use the toilets. I thought that maybe it was too late for a plumber to come out, and we wouldn't hear from them until tomorrow. So we all went to bed...except for Azrael who's taken a filler job while he waits to hear from the job he really wants...and he's presently working graveyard at an AM/PM..with a WORKING BATHROOM damn him.

First thing yesterday I had to get all the kids up and drag them, sleepy eyed and complaining, over to Freddy's so that we could use the facilities. I had to wake Azrael up from his slumbers in case the plumber called. Which of course they didn't.

They still hadn't called by the time we made our SECOND trip of the day to Freddys. By this time, I was starting to get a little peeved about the lack of plumber contact. So I called the insurance company again. Who didn't have a record of us calling them the night before. So I had to make out a new ticket. And she'd call me back. Which she did, in half an hour, to let me know that she'd called the plumbers that contract with them in our area and learned that the earliest someone could come out was Thursday. THURSDAY???!! You expect me to use Freddy's bathroom facilities for TWO MORE DAYS??!!

The second option was that we get a plumber ourselves, pay upfront, and then the insurance would reimburse us. Well, naturally by this time, it was a case of you've GOT to do it. So I started calling plumbers. Now the other problem with the insurance not getting back to us was that the time was now 10:30 in the morning, and most plumbers have already decided their schedule for the day. The first one I called told me they were fully booked, and despite the fact that it was an emergency, and they have emergency 24/7 coverage, that doesn't mean 24/7 coverage like actually coming out and fixing stuff. But I could call them back if I didn't get a plumber.

Then I called the man who has now become Saint of The Week in my eyes. See, I don't much care for plumbers, having been ripped off by many of them during my tenure as a homeowner. I actually spoke to a real plumber rather than the receptionist, and he asked me to tell him what was happening with the toilets. After hearing the sorry tale, he asked me where I lived.

HIM: Being out in Buckley, I bet you're on a septic aren't you?

ME: Yep.

HIM: When did you last have your septic tank emptied?

ME: Um...it's been a while....

HIM: A while as in more than two years?

ME: (Not wanting to tell him that we've lived here almost ten years and never had it emptied)
Um...yeah...?

HIM: You need to call someone and have them come and empty your tank, cause see, there's
this baffle where it joins the house that can get full of like....soap and stuff, and if it gets
too full and too plugged up, nothing can get through.

ME: And that will fix the problem with the backing up of the toilets and the gurgling drains?

HIM: I would be very surprised if it didn't.

OMG...an honest plumber!! Someone who didn't want to come out, charge us an $80 service fee and then tell us we needed a septic company!! After writing down the name of this company which is the ONLY plumber I will use in the future EVER, I called the septic compay he had recommended to us. The lady there recognized the fact that four people cannot share a space without a working toilet for very long, and said she'd have someone out to us within two to six hours.

And they were there. WHEN THEY SAID THEY WOULD BE THERE. And the pumping was done, and the smell was created - bad news for Lema who sits right next to a window air conditioner pulling in air from the outside right over this septic tank hole. And within an hour, we had ....ta da!....working toilets and ungurgling drains. And there was much rejoicing.

So now we are back to using the grocery store for buying groceries, and we can start looking at people in the eye again instead of avoiding eye contact with the clerks in case they recognized us on our fourth visit of the day.

I SO do not do the pioneer thing well.

Courageous Convictions

2005-08-08T20:02:00.000-07:00

Know what I despise more than people who don't have the courage of their convictions, and are swept into voting with the herd, even when they believe something completely different?

Those who disagree with the herd, but go along with them because they have plans to write a book further down the line, knowing that they'll make a killing because it's an insider's view of a controversial topic.

There should be a special place in hell set aside for people like the two ex-Michael Jackson trial jurors who came forward today to say that despite the fact that they voted not guilty when it actually MATTERED, they actually felt all along that MJ was guilty as charged, and really did violate that young boy and all of the others who were mentioned but not charged in the indictment.

It made me feel physically ill to see Eleanor Cook, 79, telling the interviewer how she knows God has forgiven her, and she's forgiven herself. Well I'm so glad for her. And that she's 'speaking out now because it's never too late to tell the truth'. Um...hello? Actually it IS a little bit on the tardy side. Maybe the time to have 'told the truth' would have been on the actual verdict form. Sorry, but 'they went along with the others once they realized that the others would never convict the pop star' is a big heaping scoop of something brown and smelly. Standing firm on their convictions would have resulted in a hung jury. A hung jury would have given the prosecutors the option of retrying the king of pop in front of a different jury. One which maybe wasn't so 'full of blinders that they wouldn't take them off long enough to see the evidence that was there.'

It made me especially sick to recall the infamous press conference the jury gave following the acquittal, and Ms. Cook's attitude towards the victim and his mother during this conference. If you really and truly disagree with a verdict, and only go along because you feel pressured and intimidated into doing so, why are you sitting there so smugly following this verdict you so adamantly disagree with, and letting us know what grifters you think the boy and his family are?

So that leaves two options. Either you're changing your tune now that you have a new book coming out telling the world about the insider's view of the Jackson jury, and those dollar signs are looming large in front of your eyes, or, and this is way more sinister, you had plans for the book from the very beginning, and despite your difference in opinion with the bulk of the jury, went along with them anyway. Because...for god's sake, who wants to read a book from a juror on a hung jury? So much better and so much more lucrative to read one written by a juror who actually came up with a verdict, particularly if we can add the pathos of being forced into a decision we disagreed with.

Either way you slice it, it reeks to high heaven. This poor kid, along with all of the others MJ has used and abused, was vilified in the press courtesy, in a large part, of these two people. I'm so glad that God has forgiven Ms. Cook, and that she's forgiven herself. Maybe someday all the victims will be able to also.

The Wide-Awakes

2005-08-08T04:00:00.000-07:00

Ah...insomnia's a wonderful little beastie.

It's presently 4am, and I'm watching the delicious eye candy that is Brad Pitt in 'The Devil's Own', as a little Irish follow-up to 'Waking Ned Devine' which I watched previously. The rest of the peeps wimped out hours ago, so it's just me and Comcast's On Demand, and we're getting along famously. It occurred to me that I could have SO used On Demand 14 years ago when Xander, the colt boy was a newborn.

I was reading blogs the other day and came across a tortured post from a lady who had just had a baby and was unlucky enough to come up with one of the 'wide-awake kids' on her first attempt. OUCH! I remember when Xander was a week or so old grumbling something along the lines that had he been my first child, there would NOT have been two others!!

This was a child who hadn't read the manual. He wasn't aware that babies are supposed to sleep for large portions of the day. In fact, he seemed to have completely skipped over the 'sleep' section of the manual in its entirety. Don't get me wrong...he wasn't a nasty, colicky, can't sleep and cries a lot kind of kid. He was more of the 'okay, I'm here...amuse me' type of breed. For the first two or three months my husband and I didn't occupy the same bed at the same time. We slept in shifts. He'd go to bed at 7 and get up at 12:30. I'd go to bed at 12:30 and get up at 5:30 when he had to leave for work. Sleep when the baby sleeps? HA!! I also had a 17 month old, who couldn't be left alone for the 30 minutes the baby might close his eyes during the day. And their naptimes NEVER coincided. And I thought...like the mother in the blog...that I would die of sleep deprivation. All of the well-meaning advice from other people, all of the expensive toys and gadgets purchased out of desperation, the slings, the swaddling, phased this kid not one jot. He wasn't going to miss a second of this brand new life if he could help it.

And of course, like all the other mothers of 'wide-awakes', I lived to tell the tale. I didn't tell that to the lady in the blog. She wouldn't believe me. I wouldn't have believed me.

I haven't thought of those days in quite some time, until I'm sitting here at 4am watching all of these deliciously good films, and remembering back through all of those years to when we didn't even have decent cable, and there was precious little to keep me occupied aside from a certain tiny person, who, to be frank, as much as I adored him, I could really have done with seeing JUST a little bit less of.

And maybe it's that 14 years of forgetting about those horrendous early days which, despite knowing my child-producing days are over, makes me feel broody.

Either that, or I truly have lost my mind.

The Killing Moon

2005-08-06T14:47:00.000-07:00

There's a reason why lunatics are so named. Something to do with truly crazy people reacting to the various phases of the moon with increasingly insane behavior until the full part of the moon has passed.

I think this holds true for those of us who are classified as plain old mentally ill, also.

I have a cornucopia of psychiatric disorders - lucky me!! Never one to pass up something if it's free, I seem to have stuck my hand into the barrel and pulled out a mountain of them. My old psychiatrist - back in the days when we had Boeing insurance and could still AFFORD a psychiatrist - gave me a laundry list on my first and second visits with her. Some were not a shock to me. I was visiting her because my panic attacks had reached the point where I was seeking medical attention, concerned that I was having some kind of problem with my newly biopsied lungs. Nope. Just good old-fashioned hyperventilating so no matter how much you breathe, you feel like you're suffocating by degrees kind of panic attacks.

And I knew that my inability to leave the house without someone with me, and my tendency to avoid shops, markets, tube stations, road bridges, long car trips, etc were probably rooted in the wonderful mental illness known as agoraphobia. (Which I discovered had an altogether different and higher plane, which I had achieved through my brilliant karmic skills - agoraphobia with panic disorder.)

And yeah, I guess I should have caught on to the fact that not wanting to get out of bed in the morning, having no energy and no zest for life, and wishing I didn't have the agoraphobia so I could get to the store and purchase large bulk volumes of pills and sundry bottles of alcohol with which to wash them down, just MIGHT have been bordering on the eventual diagnosis of severe major depression.

But a couple of them caught me unawares. I didn't know that my insistence on minor rituals in order to be able to write, and my having to go back and check that I'd actually completed a task several times before I was certain could be borderline OCD. And I didn't know that some of the other wonderful symptoms I'd been experiencing my entire life could be PTSD, inspired by some less than wholesome childhood and early adulthood experiences.

And so it came to pass that I became a pharmacological warehouse. I was popping more pills in a day than I'd seen in a year prior to my foray into the world of mental illness treatment. And I was visiting a psychologist on a weekly basis to 'chat about things'. And it did work. It really did. I began to see why I acted the way that I did in certain situations. I learned how the things we are taught, both overtly and subliminally about ourselves as children and adolescents are burned into our psyches like acid through a plastic bottle. And I learned that people with depression and agoraphobic tendencies usually have a minor problem with passing seratonin from one neuron to the next. Hence the advent of the new breed of anti-depressants, the SSRIs, (selecrive seratonin re-uptake inhibitors), which prevent that first neuron from grabbing all the seratonin and not sharing with its neighbors.

I worked my way through the pharmacy shelves, from Prozac to Paxil, and Zoloft to Effexor, with some nice little shots of Xanax thrown in for good measure when the hyperventilation monster bit me in the arse.

And then I began to notice that odd things were happening to me. Yes, I was nice and level, with no real mood swings, and no desperately miserable lows to speak of. But there were no highs either. I couldn't find myself giddy or jubilant or excited about anything. The same magic which had evened out the depression had also robbed me of the other end of the emotional rollercoaster.

So when my husband died, and we lost Boeing benefits, and none of the affordable medical coverage available to us included mental health treatment, I stopped taking the pills. Seriously - who can afford to pay $500 a month in prescription costs alone? I weaned myself from them, remembering my psychiatrist's dire warnings, backed up with internet research, about the dangers of stopping any kind of psychotropic medicine cold turkey. And it was hard. And having been free of the sour parts of the depression for a long time, I had forgotten how bad they can feel. But I reclaimed myself - my mood swings, my depression, my agoraphobia - they're all a part of me.

But at what cost?

For I now find that having stood outside of it without all of the insanity going on in my brain, I can kind of see a pattern emerging. And it's directly tied to the phases of the moon. My own personal moon - the menses. What other women suffer as moodiness and irritability during that PMS week, and the first couple of days of a period, manifests in me as wild and wicked mood swings. Times when I need to closet myself away from other people, and hope that the week does not bring something which runs the risk of unbalancing my fragile equilibrium.

As happened yesterday.

I woke up to find Azrael and Xander had left the house. There was a scrawled message on the chalkboard, "Gone Fishin'", and an email from Azrael telling me that they were out 'driving around' and 'male bonding'. I felt a flash of irritation at the fact that they had a) not told me they were going in advance. b) not told me WHERE they were going, and c) not given any indication of when they would return.

But I swallowed it and started working on transcription. However, on looking up finally and realizing that the clock was reading 3pm, and they'd been out of the house since 10 am, and there had been no phone call to let me know where they were, or that they were okay, I began to start to worry.

Now in this stakes I have a few things going against me. Firstly, as previously stated, I am not exactly the world's most well-balanced individual at this time of the month. Secondly, I am a writer, which gifts me with the ability to imagine all manner of hideous events able to befall two people out in a car, who knows where. And thirdly, I lost my husband very suddenly. He was in the hospital for exploratory surgery. He'd had the operation and was recovering nicely. Until two days later when I had an emergency call from the hospital telling me I needed to get down there right away. He was dead before I could arrange for transportation (I didn't drive at that point). So I know that people - even those who are the closest to you - can suddenly disappear from your life without any warning whatsoever. And that can make you crazy in itself.

By the time the clock had wound its way to 5pm and there had still been no word from them, I was borderline hysterical. I couldn't believe that anyone would torture a person in such a way. Don't they KNOW how much I worry? Haven't they SEEN my reaction when one of the Teen Peeps is fifteen minutes late coming home from their friend's house? By this time I could already imagine the knock at the door, and the nice policeman shuffling his feet because he knew what he had to tell me and how I would react to the news. I mean, this wasn't just a thought...this was I could ACTUALLY SEE IT imprinted in my mind.

They arrived home finally at a little after 5:30. Azrael stuck his head around the door and said, 'Just wanted to let you know we're home.' and went off out the back to hammer things into the porch. And the panic monster which had been threatening to break loose for hours, finally exploded into something more akin to white-hot fury.

How DARE he?! How DARE he make me suffer like that, and then breeze into the house and act as though nothing had happened? Did he honestly have no CLUE what the past few hours had been like for me?

Much snarling and gnashing of tiger teeth ensued. The two horses bolted off to their rear paddock and cantered around, throwing me glances of disbelief, as though they couldn't figure out how I was being so terribly UNREASONABLE about the whole thing, when they had just been out having FUN.

So now my problem is thus. I don't know how much of my reaction is normal. See notes on mental illness above. Yeah, I probably overreacted, but did I have the slightest cause?

Your call.

Enquiring lunatic minds want to know.

Books

2005-08-05T00:11:00.000-07:00

...and why we like to get them for free rather than through Amazon.

Well firstly, obviously cause of the whole 'free' thing always being super-appealing. As we have a book review section on our website at http://www.gothicrevue.com I have become a book snatcher. Thanks to wonderful PR folks like the ones at Time Warner, and Bantam Dell, and lots of small independents, I've been somewhat spoiled. These folks give me lists of upcoming books, with accompanying blurbs and snippets, and invite me to choose which ones we'd like to review. Ah yes. Such a chore it is. *sigh*. So I amble through the offerings and point out my choices, and request that they be culled from the herd and dispatched to the office at all speed.

And lo...does it come to pass. And it is good.

And since I have to be extremely attached to a book/movie/videogame/cd - or conversely, think that it's complete and utter shite - in order to write a review, I am often in the lucky position of getting to read a book and THEN send it on to a reviewer so that they can use their skill and brilliance and craft a well-reasoned and thoughtful review. It's a bit like droit de seigneur or prima nocte without the virgins.

But sometimes I find myself in a position of seeing a book I want which is either no longer hip enough that the publisher wants to push it, or the property of a book publisher who doesn't believe that a website with 130,000 hits a month is trafficky enough for them to send out a review copy. Or they want a guaranteed perky little review. Which I don't ever guarantee.

And in those events, I am left with no alternative but to....gasp....BUY A BOOK!! *lays back in chair and fans herself with the top of the laptop* My poison of choice is Amazon.com, just because they're from Washington originally and have a huge distribution center here, and you get your books at lightning speed without even having to pay 2 day shipping charges. Always a big plus. Patience has never been one of my virtues.

The problem with this is that now I have something invested in this book. When I'm getting promos from publishers, there's no expenditure beyond the postage necessary to send it on to a reviewer. Amazon.com makes you PAY for their books. (Unless you get one of the *second hand* books...more on that later.) And lately I've been making some really crappy choices. I just finished reading Sarah Wise's "The Italian Boy" - a true crime tale of bodysnatching and murder in pre-Victorian London. It received some decent reviews. The little sneak peek at the first two or three pages looked promising. And I am hideously attracted to true crime stories, particularly those which are a little unusual. It should have been a WINNER.

Actually it was boring as hell. She went into some nice detail about Victorian England and poverty and crime...but not enough. She delved into bodysnatching....but not deep enough. It felt like skating over a lake where you could see rotten things below the surface, but the ice was too thick to make out any real details. I fell asleep on it. I have NEVER been known to fall asleep on a good book.

Oh, and by the way, what's UP with Amazon's used book thing? Time was, a person could make quite a profit by selling their used books there. Those days seem to be LONG gone. Amazon's obviously done deals with large second hand book sellers, who are pricing their books at ridiculous rates. Considering at Amazon owns the first 99 cents you make on a sale, how can anyone compete with people selling books at 90 cents? Unless you have an 'in' with Amazon, you're paying them 9 cents to get rid of your book!.

A pox on those people.

Unless they have a book I want and can deliver it in less than 2 days.

I am SUCH the book slut.

The Family That Plays Together....

2005-08-02T22:04:00.000-07:00

...should have been out here today helping us to get the back porch ready for screening. We had originally hoped to begin the actual process of replacing the screens today, but after getting out there and taking a look at how sad the woodwork looked, I decided that we needed to rip out all of the old nails, staples and bits of old screening, sweep it all down and repaint it.

So Azrael, the Teen Peeps and myself spent the afternoon and early evening pulling and sweeping and hammering and painting. Luckily none of us are arachnophobics, since most of the spider population of Buckley, Washington seem to have been renting space in our back porch. Unfortunately, I haven't been seeing any of the rent money, but I think we met The Landlord. I was sweeping the last area, underneath the overhang above the steps, and uncovered the LARGEST non-tarantula I have ever seen in my entire LIFE! Hey...I'D pay money to this guy.

After causing a huge spike in the homeless arachnid population, we started painting the areas which are going to be screened hopefully tomorrow. Now it's all glisteningly black and scrummy looking instead of faded brown and moss-covered. Much more upmarket, much less redneck.

As we're all music junkies - specifically '80's music - we had to drag a computer outside and set up speakers in the porch, and have the music going loudly enough to cover up the noise of hammered fingers, and our less than perfect vocal accompaniments. Surprisingly enough, this had the added attraction of frightening off the lecherous old redneck brothers who live next door, who didn't show their faces out in their backyard ALL EVENING! Maybe we've hit on the perfect way to take a plunge in The Pool Of Death unmolested in the future. Just play Frankie Goes To Hollywood at ear-bleed volumes and we'll have the backyard area all to ourselves!

We might even get these screens up before the end of summer!

Poem of the Week

2005-08-01T23:47:00.000-07:00

I've decided that I'm going to start sharing one of my favorite poems once a week wit y'all. So here is the first one which came to mind. I remember studying W.H. Auden for O level English Literature in school, and this was by far my favorite of his poems. Very, very simple language, which makes the underlying menace even more horrible.

O WHAT IS THAT SOUND - W.H.AUDEN

O what is that sound which so thrills the ear,

Down in the valley, drumming, drumming?

Only the scarlet soldiers, dear

The soldiers coming.

O what is that light I see flashing so clear,

Over the distance, brightly, brightly?

Only the sun on their weapons, dear,

As they step lightly.

O what are they doing with all that gear,

What are they doing this morning, this morning?

Only their usual manoeuvres, dear,

Or perhaps a warning.

O why have they left the road down there,

Why are they suddenly wheeling, wheeling?

Perhaps a change in their orders, dear.

Why are you kneeling?

O haven't they stopped for the doctor's care?

Haven't they reined in their horses, their horses?

Why, they are none of them wounded, dear,

None of these forces.

O is it the parson they want, with white hair?

Is it the parson, is it, is it?

No, they are passing his gateway, dear,

Without a visit.

O it must be the farmer who lives so near.

It must be the farmer so cunning, so cunning.

They have passed the farmyard already, dear,

And now they are running.

O where are you going? Stay with me here!

Were the vows you swore deceiving, deceiving?

No, I promised to love you, dear.

But I must be leaving.

O it's broken the lock and splintered the door.

O it's the gate where they're turning, turning.

Their boots are heavy on the floor,

And their eyes are burning.

Good Vibes Needed - Apply Within

2005-08-01T23:17:00.000-07:00

All kinds of good and happy vibes are required for Azrael right now, as he awaits the results of a job interview he had today. If you could throw some in the general direction of his prospective boss too, that would be great. If he gets the job, he'll be running a supply rental company just up the road from where we live - almost zero commute - making a sizable chunk of money and decent benefits.

If he doesn't get the job he's going to be thoroughly miserable and downhearted and sulkified.

Guess which option I want?? :)

On a different note, we finally had to move all of the books out of the bathroom today. Which is kind of funny, because earlier I was going to blog about how many books we actually had in a relatively tiny room which holds a toilet and a shower. I think I counted ten books - all in varying stages of completion - and was curious as to how many other people wind up with a library in the toilet? It's not exactly a question one can usually throw out there in polite conversation.

Anyway...before I could get around to blogging about all the books, we had a slight - ahem - is there a polite way to say this? Toilet malfunction. Luckily all of the books got tossed into the larger bathroom area (we have a bathroom off the master bedroom, and the toilet's in a separate closed off area...kind of thing) and so escaped being swamped by the cascading and non too sweet-smelling toilet run-off. Aren't you glad I shared this with you?

At least we didn't wind up having to call a plumber, which is a good thing cause I didn't fancy having to sell a child in order to pay the bill. And the floor is tiled - although it's carpeted outside of the door, so now you have to walk through this swamp in order to reach the nice, dry floor of the toilet.

But the books are safe.

Hot, hot, hot.

2005-08-01T11:42:00.000-07:00

How in the world do folks in the South DO this hot weather thing on a permanent basis? Is it something that you're just genetically more able to deal with cause you're born there or what?? And I know...I know...what we call HOT to you guys is more like..."Oh, better get your jacket cause it's going to be a chilly 86 degrees today", but there's nothing as relative as the kind of heat you're used to.

I'm not a Washington native. I was born and raised in England - specifically Nottingham, which is in the Midlands, and where 75 degrees is considered a heatwave. I still remember the day I arrived in Seattle-Tacoma airport on a sunny day in August of 1988. I was dressed for English weather, meaning a long sleeved shirt and jeans, as it was a warm summer day around 70 degrees. I stepped out of the airport terminal in Washington and it felt like I was walking into a blast furnace, as the temps here were closer to 85 degrees. I immediately melted into a large, sticky puddle on the sidewalk and was never heard of again.

Actually that part was just something I added for emphasis.

I've now lived here for almost 17 years, and I STILL can't take this summer heat. It turns me into this languid slob creature who lies around panting like a dog when I'm not flinging myself into The Pool Of Death with wild abandon, knowing that the creepy redneck guy next door is leching over the fence but being completely BEYOND CARING.

Our nice, proper English weather behaves in a very nice, neat and orderly fashion. Our weatherman once said that English summers tend to follow a specific pattern of having three hot days followed by a thunderstorm, with attendant cooling rain, before going back to the heat again.

Now that's a pattern I can work with.

Washington is somewhat different. Here we have rain which begins at the end of October and doesn't let up until April, followed by a couple of months of indecision - umbrella or t-shirt - umbrella or t-shirt - screw it...take both. And then we have summer.

Summer is a time when we see NO rain. And the grass shrivels up and dies, and we can't water it because the local governments have no short term memory and are incapable of coming up with a method of retaining all the zillion gallons of rainwater and snowmelt from the mountains and giving it back to us during the summer. Instead, on the second day of summer there's always a dire prediction of drought, and threats of cutting off the water if we keep using it for rash things like bathing and drinking. Of course, that 'drought' never comes to pass. I think there's just a drought department in Olympia which has to justify its existence on a yearly basis.

Summer is when things just DON'T GET DONE in our house. It's also the time when I have fond thoughts of moving to the north of Alaska and getting up close and personal with some polar bears.

This heat is too much with me.

Updates on The Pool Of Death

2005-07-30T16:05:00.000-07:00

It's been a few days since I had the epiphany concerning the foolishness of having the canopy over the pool which turned said pool into THE POOL OF DEATH. In an attempt to avoid the inconvenience of having stir-fried Teen Peeps, someone in the house...mentioning no names but their name starts with RA and ends with IE...had the incredible idea of putting up a canopy over it to protect swimmers from the sun's ULTRAVIOLET DEATH RAYS. Only problem being, of course, that a pool covered with a canopy doesn't have the warming effect of the sun's rays on its BELOW FREEZING waters, and Teen Peeps weren't suffering from skin cancer, but flirting with the real possibility of HYPOTHERMIA and IMMINENT DEATH.

So I thought I'd let you know how it's coming along.

It's an almost triumphant success. Removal of the canopy has caused the water temperature to rise to roughly three degrees above freezing now! Remember - this is Washington, so by the time the rains come again, we might just have a pool that doesn't make all males cry at the prospect of sitting down!

Of course, removing the canopy has also added the attraction of wildlife to the mix. You can swim with....well...not dolphins exactly but majorly sized beetles, spiders, huge ants, bees and other sundry crawly things which have discovered that the surface of the pool might look nice and shiny and all, but tends to freeze the life clean out of you if you actually touch down on it.

We've also learned that Rosy the Peke, and Katie the Shih Tzu have excellent swimming skills. And that they tend to run like hell inside of the hot house whenever anyone's outside and looking like they might be heading in the general direction of The Pool Of Death, for fear that said human person might decide that the dog looks hot, and they might wind up being plonked inside the freezing waters of The Pool Of Death. Clinton, the cocker spaniel - he who is terrified of the hose pipe, and needs to be sedated before grooming has learned to run very fast.

The major drawback I can see with The Pool Of Death is the odd effect it has on your muscles. Once you overcome its freezing embrace, it's actually quite pleasant to be out in it until your fingers turn pruney, particularly when the temps are high, like they are for a couple of weeks a year in the northwest. Trouble is that when you get out, and come back to the table to work on the latest batch of transcripts for The Big Office in New York, your fingers rebel, and you find that your usual typing speed of 80 wpm has completely disappeared. Your well trained fingers are still somewhere in the bottom of The Pool Of Death, and have been replaced by these weird sausage things that resist every order you give them, and refuse to type certain letters, and balk at anything above 20 wpm.

The consolation to all of this is that my piece of crap Compaq laptop (I will NEVAH buy Compaq again...do you hear me??) can actually keep up with me at this speed, so I don't have to go back and correct that misspelling I made ten words ago when it finally has the grace to show up on my screen.

I am blessed.

And frozen.

My Girl

2005-07-29T01:18:00.000-07:00

Talking 'bout my girrrrrl....my girl.

I got sunshine on a cloudy day....and when it's cold outside I got the month of May....

My girl.

The one who has carved out a whole new identity for herself over the past year or so. The one who is now 'Lema, the almost sixteen-year old. For those of you who've never met her - and how unlucky are YOU - here are some little known facts about the oldest of the Teen Peeps:

She would have guessed that song in the first few notes because she's PHENOMENALLY musically talented.
She would have guessed it by frantically singing all of the words of the song and racing them to the chorus so she could proclaim victory.
She's the only blonde in the house, and has gamely heard every blonde joke known to man with the grace to do no more than shake her head slightly in consternation at us.
She can spell consternation.
Cats are her favorite beings, and even after we regaled her with the knowledge that unlike dogs, who will only eat a dead human if they themselves are starving, cats will pounce on you and eat your eyeballs while you're still WARM, she welcomes them to her room by leaving her window open - even in the dead of winter. (Cause they need somewhere warm to sleep.)
She's nervous about being a junior in high school, and worries about paying for college.
She plans on GOING TO COLLEGE!!!
She has such a wonderful spirit that she makes friends with everybody - no matter how much this may downgrade her 'popular' status in school.
She loves underdogs.
Without being asked, she's helping out with transcription for The Big Office In New York, cause she knows we need the money.
She's thoughtful that way.
She cries at soppy movies - particularly if they involve glove puppets or animals.
She'll be really mad I told you that.
She likes it that I cry at soppy movies too.
Her teachers think she's a gift from God.
One of her teachers used to say that when she walked into the room it was like the sun came out.
I know what she meant.
When she was 3 months old, she started sleeping through the night.
I thought she died.
I'm glad she didn't.
She still loves to spend time with me, despite being almost 16 and basically grown.
That doesn't mean she's tied to the apron strings. It just means that the transition from child to adult and offspring to friend is becoming a seamless thing.
She likes to talk. A lot. So much that once, when she accompanied me to the hairdresser to get my hair permed, and stood 'helping' the hairdresser by passing the rollers, chattering all the time, the poor hairdresser lady took advantage of temporary absence for a bathroom break to ask me "Does she EVER shut up??!!"
She reads voraciously. And although she's too grown for me to control what she reads, she makes good choices.
She makes good choices period.
She is inflamed by injustice. Watching 'Hotel Rwanda' with us last week sparked some furious blogging, a movie review AND an article for the website. ALL IN THE SAME DAY. Because what happened and the world's reaction to it was unjust. And she couldn't have that.
Her absolutely to die for meal is spaghetti and meat sauce.
Her absolutely to die for ideal mate would be someone who cooks spaghetti and meat sauce.
Like her mom cooks it.
She has an older sister that she doesn't see and it hurts her heart sometimes that there's a continent and a body of water between them. And that her sister doesn't email her.
Once, when she was three years old, her older sister, who was eleven years old found her playing with a pair of scissors. When her sister tried to take them from her, she cut her sister's finger so badly that she required stitches.
That's not why her sister doesn't email her.
I have a favorite baby picture of her, when she was very, very new, dressed in a pink all-in-one outfit and lying on a changing mat. The sun shines through the blinds behind her in such a way that she seems to glow from the inside out.
But not in a nuclear fallout kind of way.
She was a heart-stoppingly beautiful baby. The anesthetist in the hospital came to see her the next day, and said she looked just like the Gerber baby...as she had that perfect curl at the front of her head.
She's still beautiful. She has that ivory skin and great bone structure that puts you in mind of Veronica Lake.
She understands the concept of algebra.
She can recite Wilfred Owen's poem, 'Dulce et Decorum Est'.
She wishes latin wasn't a dead language, because it fascinates her, and they don't teach it in her school.
To 'Lema, eyeliner is not a fashion accessory. It is a necessity.
She has taken over the running of the website while I am working at transcription so much lately.
Since she took over, our hits have gone up.
She sings in the choir. And in her bedroom. And in the bathroom. Loudly.
Luckily she has perfect pitch.
She swore off Harry Potter books following 'The Order of the Phoenix" because they killed off Sirius Black.
She makes incredible coffee.
She doesn't drink coffee.
She makes it for me.
Her favorite treat of all is a can of olives.
If I were to tailor-make the perfect daughter for myself....it would be her.

Tom Cruise is Nuts

2005-07-29T00:37:00.000-07:00

And I'm not the only one who thinks so.

Honestly.

There's an honest to god website out there at http://www.tomcruiseisnuts.com and it's a happy place to spend an hour or so. Caution: Avoid drinking liquids while reading some of the comments TC is credited with making. Your computer will thank you for it.

You know, I guess I just assumed people understood what Scientologists believe - even when it comes to the Teen Peeps. So when Xander was watching tonight's episode of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, and Steven Colbert gave his wonderful description of the Scientology belief system, and colt boy almost had a CORONARY from laughing so hard he couldn't BREATHE, it was cute as hell.

I also learned, courtesy of the website in question, that Mimi Rodgers (TC's first wife), Nicole Kidman (TC's second wife), and Katie Holmes (TC's brainwashed little pal) have an age difference of eleven years between each of them respectively. Katie's actually 22 years Mimi's junior. It has you worried about Dakota Fanning.

The great thing about reading interviews with TC which are from other countries is that the interviewers seem to be much less concerned with his status as SUPER HUGE HOLLYWOOD MEGASTAR and are much more comfortable with telling him he's FULL OF SCIENTIFIC THETAN POOP. Why is it that US interviewers seem to be so incapable of asking the important questions - and following them up when he skates around them. There are things we'd like to KNOW about this guy and this weird as hell thing he has going with Katie Holmes, which just aren't being addressed. So to get them started here are:

THINGS I'D LIKE TO KNOW ABOUT TOM CRUISE AND KATIE HOLMES

Does Katie mind that you seem to have approached three other starlets - all of whom balked at the whole Scientology deal - before settling on her?
If it's just you, Katie and Cupid, how come she seems to have turned into some kind of glazed-eyed little thing who parrots phrases like "Tom is good and generous" and "I am the luckiest girl in the world" in inappropriate responses to questions?
Who is this creepy little Jessica chick that Katie has hanging around her 24/7, who claims to be a 'Scientology chaperone', and 'a good friend', but is a bit fudgy on when they actually got to be such bosom pals that she no longer needs anybody else in her life? Oh...and who even prompts Katie in interviews ...'You adore him.'
If Scientology isn't a cult, why does it appear to be such a powerful force in your life that you can't put a sentence together without it relating back to Scientology?
How is it that nobody can get an interview with you without having first attended a 4-hour presentation about what Scientology is?
If you can fix all medical and psychological problems without the aids of modern medicine and drugs, what's the deal with your freaking teeth? Don't you have some kind of machine for that?
Where did you actually meet Katie Holmes - and when? Was it around the time she dropped everybody out of her life and disappeared from the media radar for a couple of weeks before coming back with that hypnotic mantra and slightly glazed-over expression?
Don't you think it's a bit daft for a high school dropout to be waging a war of words with a Harvard grad? And you're such a little bugger - in a fistfight, my money's on Brooke Shields. She could take you with one arm tied behind her back. Or she could just cream you nicely and serve you on toast with her words, the way she did in her NY Times article.
Have any of the other celebs who have been practicing Scientology reasonably quietly for the past however many years - like John Travolta, and Kirstie Alley - come knocking at your door to ask you to shut the fuck up yet? Surely they have to see that you're not exactly the BEST advertisement Scientology could have come up with?
Are you really so out there that you don't see what a dick you're making of yourself?

The Rhythm of the Rain....

2005-07-28T13:35:00.000-07:00

My parents used to have a little folk wisdom in regards to bad events. Along with their "bad things come in threes" idea, there was another homily for bad events which didn't hold to the triad theory of arrival. "It never rains but it pours."

I never really understood that one as a kid. It wasn't until I was sitting in the middle of a dozen different things screaming for my attention - and my already-stretched-to-the-limit finances - that the comprehension came to me.

Bad enough that Azrael can't find a job that gives him more than 3 hours of work a week.

Bad enough that the insurance adjustor came to our house following a burst pipe which ruined the flooring in two rooms, and then decided that we had to repaint the shed and re-screen the back porch or they would cancel our home insurance.

Bad enough that it's that time of the year when jobs from The Big Office in New York are not as common, because of a lot of companies having vacations and not so many company events requiring the aid of a transcriptionist.

Bad enough that I had to pay $200 to buy screening material for the back porch, and now have to figure out how to cut it, staple it, and then buy replacement wood to cover the edges.

Bad enough that our brand new pool now has punctures on the edge because the two horses in the house decided that they had to see if the cats could swim. (Answer: Yes...cats can swim. Cats also tend to puncture the hell out of the inflatable ring at the top of the pool because even though they can swim, they DESPISE WATER)

All that is bad enough. But this morning I got a little package from the IRS to inform me that since my late husband took out a loan from his 401k in the amount of $43,500 the year before he died, we owe tax on this amount. Somewhere in the range of $3,500. Doesn't sound that much, until you figure out all the other expenditures we have at the moment.

Somebody get me an umbrella.

All growed up

2005-07-26T14:43:00.000-07:00

Sitting here waiting for my latest assignment from The Big Office In New York to show up in my inbox, my gaze wanders over to Xander, the Colt Boy, the youngest of the Teen Peeps, my baby.

He came in here to spend some time with me, discussing recipes and curry variations, and jubbbly memories of my youth, and watch The People's Court. We've a similar sense of humor, he and I - a similar sense of the ridiculous - so he's fun to watch TV and veg out with sometimes.

While I was watching the show, I noticed that his breathing had deepened, and looked over to the other pillow to see he'd fallen asleep. That's always a trip for me, cause it means I can look at a squirmy adolescent without them squirming away in embarrassment.

It's astonishing to me that he was ever a tiny baby, this huge 6 foot plus manling. Head to foot he was smaller than the length of his forearm.

Where have the years gone?
*sob*

Once in a Lifetime....

2005-07-24T15:45:00.000-07:00

The Lifetime Movie Network is the work of the devil.

I say this after spending most of the day yesterday vegged out in front of the TV unable to pull myself away from its evil clutches. I felt like Al Pacino - "Just when I think I'm out, they PULL ME BACK IN!!!"

Then I felt guilty and made potato salad and fried chicken, so all was not lost. This isn't something I do very often, because the Teen Peeps love it, and CRAVE it, and I enjoy basking in their adulation. I do it rarely enough that it never becomes a mundane kind of food.

Having purchased the new shiny pool this week - which I forgot to mention in my previous postings - we're kind of financially strapped until the next paycheck rolls in from the Big Office in New York, so I'm bending further and further over to reach the deepest depths of the chest freezer. Aptly named, I might add, particularly when your bra size is a DDD and you're pressed against the walls of the thing trying to figure out if there are any more bags of chicken underneath all those half-used bags of vegetables.

The pool is indeed NEW and SHINY and very, very freaking COLD. This is mostly my fault, as I had the earth shatteringly BRILLIANT idea that the Teen Peeps might CATCH FIRE FROM THE SUN or some such thing while they were out in it, so decided to purchase one of those canopy things that protects you from the sun while you're having a picnic or whatever. Put it over the top of the pool....et voila....no HORRENDOUSLY DISFIGURED TEEN PEEPS WITH SKIN CANCER!!

Of course, I wasn't following this thought through to its logical conclusion. Which is, we live in Washington State. Not Arizona or Southern California. We've got sun for two months out of the year - tops. And it never reaches 100 degrees aside from when Andy Wappler (Kiro TV weatherman) says something along the lines of "Expect a heavy breeze", and mushmouths it into being: "Expect 100 degrees".

I also was completely forgetting that a pool full of icy cold water from the garden hose is likely to FOREVER REMAIN icy cold water when the sun's rays are blocked from its surface by the addition of the spiffy new canopy! It's a sad thing when you're happy that your legs have gone numb because at least you no longer feel the BITING COLD of the ICE WATER in the pool!

Great thinking Rachie. No Teen Peep inferno out in the back yard. Instead they're all walking around the house in twenty layers of clothing in the middle of summer because they can't stop shivering after being in the POOL OF DEATH for ten minutes. Um...can anybody spell PNEUMONIA??!!

We removed the canopy yesterday. And hopefully the water warms up to just plain COLD before summer ends.

Mea culpa. Mea culpa.

He IS the greatest chocolatier

2005-07-23T01:46:00.000-07:00

We finally managed to see 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' today. And I have one thing to say:

Johnny Depp IS Willy Wonka.

I got into Roald Dahl's books when my oldest daughter was an infant. As she grew old enough to sit and listen to a story, Charlie became one of her favorites, and we'd read it at bedtime (I'd actually carry on reading it after she fell asleep just because I was enjoying the story so much.) So I'd have to say that I'm pretty up on all things Charlie.

Gene Wilder's version of the character never really appealed to me. None of the characters really seemed to hit the spot, or at least match up to the way I'd envisaged them through countless readings of the story. The bright orange Oompa-Loompas were completely wrong, and yeah, their little ditties were catchy and all, and the bouncing ball was a cute touch, but I much preferred Roald Dahl's original Oompa-Loompa songs - dark and nasty as they were!

I mean, let's face it. Willy Wonka flat out doesn't like children very much. The whole thing's supposed to be a cautionary tale about bad kids coming to a sticky end, and the good kid coming out on top. The original Charlie Bucket was from the 'gee whiz' school of child stars, whose fresh-faced, open-mouthed fake innocence was way too saccharine for my liking. He could have taken lessons from Freddie Highmore, the young lad who plays Charlie in the new version of the movie and manages to say his lines while appearing to be a normal kid.

Grandpa Joe is brilliant. I've been a huge David Kelly fan ever since I used to watch the ancient British TV series, 'Oh Father'. Grandma Georgina? Omigod...Emmerdale Farm lady!! She's a class actress. Noah Taylor and Helena Bonham-Carter are Charlie's mum and dad. I miss Roy Kinnear as Veruca Salt's indulgent daddy, but James Fox plays the character in a completely different way, and it rings perfectly true.

But of course, the absolute star of this movie is Johnny Depp. He truly is one of the best actors of our generation, and plays this role masterfully. I don't know when I've enjoyed a trip to the movies more. I don't remember the last time that I left the theater saying aloud that I can't wait until it comes out on DVD so that we can watch it as many times as we want to.

Tim Burton, Danny Elfman, you've given us a masterpiece. Thanks ever so much!

We're all wild about Harry....

2005-07-17T03:01:00.000-07:00

I just got through reading 'Harry Potter And the Half-Blood Prince'. And I was good. I shine with holy light, having denied myself the pleasure of reading it until I had conquered most of the transcription due this weekend.

Was it worth the wait?

If you have to ask me that question, who are you and what are you doing reading my blog??!! J.K. Rowling's writing affects me in much the same way that really old and really good Stephen King used to do. There are few books that I can't put down and go do something else if I have to. There are many books that I can read in tandem with other books, and still keep a handle on the plots.

And then there is the kind of writing which makes you want to find a nice little private space where you can be totally uninterrupted for the block of time it takes you to read the book from cover to cover. A book where the author creates a world, and the characters who populate it with such brilliance and clarity that you can fall into it and it overwhelms you and surrounds you and you forget about mundane things like eating or sleeping or other people. 'The Talisman' was such a book. Straub and King created such a plausible alternate reality that the ending came as a jolt because I didn't want to leave it. And J.K. Rowling has that talent.

Now since I am the only one of the household who has read this particular book, I won't go into detail at this point. Xander waited up until midnight in the hopes I'd be done, so that he could take over, and I think Azrael has called dibs on it for the third reading, since Babybat has decided she's never going to read another Harry Potter book again EVER after they killed off Sirius Black. She'll cave. It's just a question of time.

What I will say is that I am so completely unlike all of those brilliant people on Amazon who claim to have already KNOWN who the half-blood prince is, cause my guesses were WAY off the freaking mark. And I had no clue who she was going to kill off in this particular book, and when it came, it was one of those....NOOOOO!!! SAY IT AIN'T SOOOOO moments. I have a lot of respect for authors who aren't afraid to kill off major characters in their series - Darren Shan and his Cirque Du Freak series is a great example of that. You really risk pissing off a lot of your readers (as with Babybat, who adored Sirius even before she saw him portrayed by Gary Oldman and who has LOATHED J.K. Rowling ever since she dispatched him.), but I really like it when an author keeps me off balance that way, and makes sure that I know nothing is sacred, and everything can change with the turn of a page.

Is this a book for six-year olds? No, of course not. The series has grown up, along with the characters, who are now 16 and 17-year olds. And, I would assume, along with its faithful readership, who have aged 6 years since the series commenced. Keeping it G rated would have been stupid. Teenagers don't behave like 10-year olds.

What I can say is that it is a book I'll be more than happy to read again, and which makes me want to go back to the beginning of the series and start over.

I don't know how I'm going to wait another year to find out how it turns out!

Ghoulies and ghosties and long legged beasties and things that go bump in the night....

2005-07-14T02:38:00.000-07:00

Here I am blogging away at 2:40 am and feeling righteous for I have yet again cleared my transcription pile and am TTF (Totally Transcript Free). Tonight I was working on some 'scripts for a future TV show (HA...and you thought transcription was all about BORING INSURANCE CLAIMS didn't you??!!) Anyway, this TV show is about haunted houses, and bringing in a ghost of psychics - since I don't KNOW what a group of psychics is called - into the house to tell you how IMPOSSIBLY HAUNTED IT IS and how they're going to stay the weekend and FIX all the lost souls who just need to GO TO THE LIGHT. And all of it is recorded on TV for our viewing pleasure.

It was while working on this that I had the idea to go on one of these shows, just to see if the psychics REALLY are psychic or if they just feed into whatever you tell them is wrong and SCARE you half to death by TOTALLY AGREEING that the house creaks because you've got a POLTERGEIST in your house. And it's probably your DEAD UNCLE CHARLIE who could never find the way to the KITCHEN when ALIVE let alone to the LIGHT now he's DEAD. He thought fluorescent lights were the work of the DEVIL so there's no wonder he's AVOIDING the brilliantly hurts your eyes to look at it WHITE LIGHT!

I want to invent dead bodies that I ALONE CAN SEE and then step reverently over them on my way to the laundry room. And I want to wake SHRIEKING at the top of my lungs that someone is LAYING on me and I can't BREATHE and the reason nobody else can SEE this presence is because I alone am sensitive to such things. I want to tell hideous tales of doors that OPEN BY THEMSELVES and dogs that BARK AT NOTHING! I want to tell them I haven't slept in 2 WHOLE FREAKING WEEKS because I am being TORMENTED BY THE SOULS OF THE DEPARTED!

Now see, if you acted like that with most people, they'd call people in white suits to take you away for a good long rest and lots of nutritious narcotics. But having typed several of these audio files, I have come to see that my imaginative talent is being plain WASTED. It would be such an immense treat to feed the hungry psychics one HUGE fib after another, washed down with a heaping helping of whine, with self-pity and helplessness to follow. Because they seem to THRIVE on such fare.

The dead body? Well that's because someone DIED in your house and you just see the IMPRINT - the MEMORY if you will of his lifeless form. In fact, they may even go you one better and let you know that one of the HOST of ghosts residing in your home is probably a MURDERER and is only biding his time until he can figure out a way of DOING YOU IN WHILE YOU SLEEP. So it's a pretty good thing that you've not been sleeping at all. OMIGOD the ghosts are falling OVER themselves in your house! They come in through the MIRRORS and spy on you while you go about your daily lives, and it's ALL YOUR FAULT because you're probably drawing them in with your latent psychic ability that you didn't even KNOW you had till they told you.

Not that I think all psychics are charlatans. Just most of them. Mostly the ones who agree to appear on cheesy TV shows about haunted houses. And the people who live in these so called haunted houses? They're either fibbing like mad or they've got a freaking screw loose and belong in a nice quiet bouncy room eating meals with a plastic spoon. How else do you explain why someone would have all of the above CRAP going on in their house and NOT WANT TO MOVE??!! And we're not talking about financial restrictions. It's not a question of hey, if we could get out of here we'd be gone like YESTERDAY. No, gentle reader. These are people who are supposedly suffering the torments of the DAMNED and yet bravely say that they don't find it too bad to live there.

HELLOOOO??!! Oh right. I'm falling over dead bodies, being choked by creatures of the night and can't keep a door shut and I DON'T THINK IT'S TOO BAD TO LIVE THERE??!! Where have they lived previously?? A CRYPT?? So that tends to raise the bullshit meter as far as I'm concerned. And if they're just either barking mad or lying for attention, how do you explain the reaction of the psychics??!!

Maybe I'm just too darned cynical for my own good.

Anyway, it's way past the witching hour, so I need to go muzzle the dog, padlock the door and step over that CORPSE by the bathroom on my way to get CHOKED IN MY SLEEP!

Of course...it's not bad enough that I want to leave.

Bwah ha ha ha ha ha.

Smells Like Grass Clippings

2005-07-13T16:12:00.000-07:00

So I'm sitting here in the bedroom, which is where I do the transcriptioning, and I am in utter and complete olfactory HEAVEN! Azrael's been out mowing the lawn this morning (and I use the term 'lawn' in the broadest possible sense as it's now more MOSS and WEEDS than lawn). He's managed to make it actually LOOK like a lawn, but more importantly he's generated this incredibly yummy smell of CUT GRASS!! Which is being wafted into the bedroom courtesy of the window fan. How does cut grass manage to smell so good you could EAT it??

I boggle.

PLUS!! And I absolutely pinky swear this has nothing WHATSOEVER to do with me waking up early yesterday morning. I woke up with a jolt today and myopically perused my watch to find it was 11:40 am! And Azrael was still ASLEEP!! So I dragged myself out of bed with cup in hand and went to the Babybat doing my best rendition of Oliver Twist meets The Thing. Extend cup and grunt meaninglessly. Then I wombled back to the bedroom and woke Azrael.

Me: So you're planning on staying in bed ALL DAY?

Azrael: Mmm nowhattimeisit?

Me: (sanctimoniously) It's almost 12!

Azrael: I didn't go to bed till after 1.

Me: (sanctimoniously AND smugly) THAT was almost 12 HOURS ago!!

Heh...victory was mine. And it was MINE right up until Azrael got dressed and went into the other room and realized that it was actually 7:30 and my watch had stopped.

Oh well...maybe it KNEW I was due for a little vengeance after yesterday!

The Tiger Sleeps Tonight...

2005-07-12T12:10:00.000-07:00

Okay, pop quiz! What irritates the Gemini tiger even more than someone acting like they may be thinking about making menacing movements towards her cubs?

Yeah...some fool waking her up from a deep sleep. Which Azrael chose to do this morning, since he obviously has so little desire to live beyond his 39th birthday. And even though I GROWLED and even though I BATTED HIM AWAY with sheathed claws. He still had the temerity to look surprised when I turned around and CLAWED OFF HIS FACE WITH MY LONG TIGER CLAWS while howling balefully at the top of my voice: "Will you STAY ON YOUR SIDE OF THE BED!!! YOU'RE SMUSHALYZING ME!!!"

So now Azrael is POUTING and AGGRIEVED and acting like the INJURED PARTY he believes himself to be. He SHOULD be happy he SURVIVED the wild tiger attack ferchrissakes!

And why was it necessary for the tiger to sleep tonight? (Well actually it WAS 10 am to be fair to the rude awakener - not that it's any real EXCUSE because he KNOWS the REASON the tiger needed to sleep tonight!) MY TRANSCRIPTION FILES ARE ALL DONE - TRA LA!!

Yeah I know I could have been boringly normal and worked during normal working hours, but I don't work that way. For some reason it's so much easier to concentrate on what's coming through my earbuds when the house is absolutely quiet. And that's not something that you tend to find in the house when Azrael and the Teen Peeps are all at home for the summer.

It's not that they are constantly bothering me. In fact they're usually good about leaving me alone if they know I have earbuds in and laptop in position. They bring me coffee when I need it and slip in and out of the room like little ghosts.

BUT

I KNOW THEY'RE THERE.

I can hear their TVs or stereos. I can hear their voices. I watch them passing by my bedroom window on their way to the DDR shed to play dancing games. And a part of my brain gets all pissy and 'why should I work when they're noooooot! - ish'

Hence the late night when everyone is in bed working. And the need for a nice long sleep after staying up till 6 am working on the files.

So Azrael is mooching around the house wearing GAUZE on his face because of the tiger claw holes, and may be DEAF from the yelling. And I'm up and feeling mean and foul-spirited and wanting to bite off the heads of small children just for SPITE.

Life bites.

Rhapsodies in blue

2005-07-11T23:52:00.000-07:00

For God's Sake Stop Me!!

I have discovered the delights of Comcast cable's "Rhapsody" service. And it is the work of the DEVIL.

For those of you unfamiliar with this service, it operates on a similar principle to my much-missed Napster. A bunch of songs you haven't heard in a million years, and you can add them to a playlist and - and - and get LOST FOR FREAKING HOURS in the process! And then, gentle reader, they have you. And boy do they have you. For it appears that you can download these songs to your own little playlist, and listen to them as long as you are connected to the Rhapsody server. BUT to actually burn them to CD, you have to pay an additional amount on top of the quarterly fee for the service - for each track! But...but...this is CRUEL!

Here I am listening to "Sixty Eight Guns" by The Alarm, and knowing that I can't actually listen to it at any other time but when I'm chained to the computer and plugged into the server is IMMORAL!! Now I can understand that you have to pay a fee to download the songs. Napster is no more and never will be again. *sobs* But I don't understand the concept of paying a fee for the service and then paying additional fees to download the tracks on your playlist to a CD so that you can take it with you to the supermarket.

A pox on them. And yeah...I can count. And I don't intend to be with this service any longer than my 14 day free trial. For they are INFERNAL and MONEY-GRUBBING and- and- omigod...'This is Not America - David Bowie & Pat Metheny Group'.

Aieeeeee!!! They TORTURE ME!!!

That's Entertainment!

2005-07-10T12:41:00.000-07:00

Well Azrael and the Teen Peeps (Sounds like a '60s band) are off down at the lake this afternoon, so I thought it was prime blogging opportunity time - even though it's SUPPOSED to be prime working working working and finishing stupid transcriptions time.

Hopefully they don't all come back with pneumonia. I mean it's not exactly 90 degrees outside. And it is Washington. And they're just wearing SWIMSUITS ferchrissakes! And you can take the kids out of my sight but I'll still worry about them because that's something mothers do. I have this sneaking suspicion that fetuses excrete a parasitic worm which burrows into the host mother's BRAIN and makes her forever fret and pace floors and worry about all the minutiae of the child's life until the day she dies.

So I'm here, suppposedly with stupid insurance claims running through my headphones, while I type, type, type my fingers into nubs. And instead my earbuds are feeding me The Jam in great big creamy earfuls. That's Entertainment all right. OH YEAH!! The Jam hit at the right time in my life. Late '70s, early '80s. The years when I was young, free and single and wanted carpets and not kids. That really did use to be my catchphrase at that time. Of course, by the time the Jam broke up, I was married with a year old daughter, but that's quite beside the point!

I have a good musical sense memory. You know what I'm talking about? When you hear a song from ten or twenty or even - god...it pains me to admit it....THIRTY years ago, and are instantly transported to a point in time when these songs were new and being played over whatever kind of crappy wireless or stereo you had at the time? Not just - oh yeah that was 1980, so let's see, what was I doing then? More along the lines of closing your eyes and knowing that you were listening to this song while you were crouched in front of that tiny mirror on the front of your mother's china cabinet - the only mirror in the whole downstairs - and getting your face on to go to work in the morning.

I bought an old Carpenters CD last year, and made the mistake of listening to it for the first time when I was in the van and ferrying one of the Teen Peeps to one of their school activities, when a song came on that had such a powerful sense memory attached to it that I had to pull over until it was done. The song was "Maybe it's You" - 'Maybe it's you...maybe it's me...maybe it's just the constant rhythm of the sea...maybe it's just that I've never been the kind who could pass a lucky penny by....' All of a sudden I was 5 or 6 years old and sitting on my older sister's bed in our shared bedroom. She was in there with her friend, and I was feeling so privileged to be allowed in the same room, since they were a lofty 13 or 14 at the time. My sister was a HUGE Carpenters fan, and they'd purchased this Carpenter's LP which they were playing on the old and decrepit Decca she had. This was like a big box with a speaker that's not much bigger than most modern radios in ther front grille of the box. But it was portable - if you call something that weighed 40lbs 'portable' - and even had a carrying handle in the front grille. It was white with a red base, and at the time was the only 'stereo' we had in the house! It was summer, and our bedroom floor was linoleum and loved to catch the dust. So as I sat there quietly on the bed, basking in the joy of admittance to the inner sanctum of teenage girls, I watched the dust motes dancing in the air like the fairies our mother always conned us into thinking they were. I could smell that hot and dusty room as I sat in my brand new van which should have smelled of leather seats and brand new van-ness. And not until the CD had moved on to the next track could I bring myself to get back out into traffic again.

This doesn't happen with every song I hear. Which is probably a good thing, or else I'd be stuck in a room with bouncy walls and eating meals with a spoon. But when it does it feels like a gift. Like now...back to the Jam...."Going Underground". Sitting watching them on Top of the Pops with the smell of the bacon and eggs we just had for dinner still lingering in the air. Loving the politicism and activism of the lyrics and making plans to go down and chain myself to the fence of some US military base in southern England in protest over the nuclear warheads they had stored there. Back when I wanted carpets and not kids.

Back before the parasitic worm entered my brain and I abandoned politics for Playschool and activism for ABCs. Back before I realized that you don't need to chain yourself to fences to make a point about nuclear arms. Instead you can educate the generation that follows you to have a global conscience and care about their fellow planet-sharers.

All in all, it's a decent compromise. I have Teen Peeps who can't wait till they're old enough to vote and make a difference. Who know about politics and activism and the lessons of Live Aid and Roe v. Wade. Teen Peeps who can sing the words to more Jam songs than I can.

And That's Entertainment!

London Calling.

2005-07-09T13:20:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me after uploading that last epic that I have yet to refer to the bombings that took place in London the other day. So for what it's worth, here are a couple of musings on that little show.

I guess what surprises me most is how the US is amazed at the British ability to carry on with life as usual as though a handful of bombs going off in the tube stations and on a double decker bus happen every day.

I think a lot of you forget that England's not new to terrorism. We lived through a whole heaping helping of it during the last three decades of the 20th century, courtesy of our friends across the water, the Irish Republican Army. Whenever I hear about a terrorist act, be it the World Trade Center or the Madrid train bombings, or the latest London fiasco, it takes me back to the days when I lived in England and lived through the IRA's happy little bombing campaign.

For those of you who weren't there, here's a little hit list:

10/31/71 Bomb explodes in Post Office Tower
12/04/71 Bomb demolishes crowded Belfast pub.
2/22/72 IRA bomb kills six at Aldershot barracks
9/10/73 Bomb blasts rock central London
2/4/74 Soldiers and children killed in coach bombing
5/17/74 Dublin and Monaghan bomb kills 23
6/17/74 IRA bombs Parliament
7/17/74 Bomb blast at the Tower of London
10/5/74 Four dead in Guilford pub blasts
10/22/74 Bomb blast in London club
10/28/74 Minister's wife survives bomb attack
11/7/74 Two die when IRA throws bomb into Woolwich pub
11/21/74 Birmingham pub blasts kill 19
12/22/74 Heath's home is bombed
9/5/75 London Hilton bombed
11/27/75 TV presenter Ross McWhirter shot dead
1/29/76 Explosions rock London's West End
3/22/79 British Ambassador assassinated in Holland
3/30/79 Car bomb kills Airey Neave
8/27/79 IRA bomb kills Lord Mountbatten
8/27/79 Soldiers die in Warrenpoint Massacre
7/20/82 IRA bombs cause carnage in London
10/27/82 RUC officers killed by IRA bomb
12/17/83 Harrods bomb blast kills six
10/12/84 Tory Cabinet in Brighton bomb blast
3/23/87 30 hit as car bomb hits army base
11/8/87 Bomb kills 11 at Enniskillen
3/16/88 3 shot dead at Milltown cemetery
2/12/89 Belfast lawyer Finucane murdered
2/20/89 IRA bombs Tern Hill barracks
9/22/89 Ten dead in Kent barracks bomb
7/20/90 IRA bombs Stock Exchange
4/10/92 IRA bombs Baltic Exchange in London killing three people
12/3/92 Bomb explodes in Manchester
3/20/93 Child dies in Warrington bomb attack
4/24/93 IRA bomb devastates City of London
2/10/96 Docklands bomb ends IRA ceasefire
2/18/96 Bomb blast destroys London bus
6/15/96 Huge explosion rocks central Manchester
3/3/01 Car bomb devastates BBC news center
5/6/01 Second blast at London post office
8/3/01 Car bomb in west London injures seven

And there we have it - a partial list of the IRA's greatest hits.

I remember coming over here to the states and discovering that contrary to my long-held belief, the IRA were NOT a para-military terrorist organization. They were, in fact a bunch of patriots fighting for their freedom from the wicked old colonial United Kingdom. These patriotic freedom fighters targeted places like Enniskillen at a Remembrance Day service, killing old veterans, mothers of slain soldiers and little kids. They blew up a coach full of children because there happened to be a couple of British soldiers on it. They assassinated Ross McWhirter, the editor of the Guinness Book of World Records, for having the temerity to speak up against the IRA.

Freedom fighters.

When the WTC exploded in flames on 9/11, I was as shocked and horrified as the rest of the world. I also thought - at last - now they will understand that the difference between freedom fighters and terrorists depends on how far removed you are from the results of the actions they take. Will you now take a second look at your beliefs in regard to the IRA and their bloody reign of terror?

And then came the new bombings in London. This time not by the IRA but by our latest adopted bunch of terrorists, the Islamic extremists we've acquired courtesy of our adherence to the policies of the US. I watched the news broadcasts, and was heartwarmed to see how my countrymen and women picked themselves up, dusted themselves down and went back to work, having learned that nothing warms the heart of a terrorist more than to see a nation cowering in fear of more attacks, and altering their behavior and restricting the movements and freedoms of the citizenry of that nation just means that the terrorists have won, and achieved what they set out to do. I also noticed that the US broadcasters were swimming in their usual hyperbolic stream and boggling at Londoners' ability to carry on with their daily lives. And then I heard the newscasters talking about how the Brits were showing the good get-up-and-get-on-with-it spirit they showed during the London Blitz in WWII.

Apparently the IRA bombings and the terrorism of the last thirty years never happened.

Funny that.

Appypollylogies and Accents

2005-07-09T12:08:00.000-07:00

As Ailema-child (aka The Babybat) reminded me in her usual succinct style, this is supposed to be a near-daily and not a near-weekly blog. So mea culpa....mea culpa and much beating of breasts and rending of garments. I'd promise to do better but sheesh, peeps....you KNOW how THAT one goes. I'm one of the least organized people I know. I only WISH I could be one of those folks whose every microsecond is graphed and diagrammed and on some kind of orderly list-like thing. THOSE people. The ones whose homes smell of Pine-Sol and Lysol and all the little baby Sols. The ones who never leave laundry till they're down to a single pair of knickers. The ones who ACHIEVE things!! THOSE people. Probably most of you.

I could blame it on the job that never ends - the unceasing flow of audio files being thrown at me from the Big Office in New York. And yes...there has been a ton of that lately. But the real reason for my not writing lately is shamefully this.....LAZINESS! Something about being a Gemini Tiger and doing a lot of chasing down food and then needing to sleep for a week. I did a mountain of transcription last weekend while you were all playing with your 4th of July fireworks. And then spent the next couple of days collecting audio files to do later in the week and being hideously LAZY and playing Crescent Solitaire and reading Stephen King, and LOOKING at the files I had to complete by Monday next and not actually making a START on them until a couple of days ago.

I thought I was in pretty good shape with the files until yesterday. All week I've been having an email problem. My email will talk to anyone and everyone. It's not picky at all. It welcomes all those little missives that tell me how I can achieve a more satisfying erection and buy a house with the lowest rates EVER. It talks to those people EVERY HOUR. Unfortunately it isn't talking to the one and only address I NEED it to talk to - the Big Office in New York where I send my completed transcripts. It's been this way since last Sunday. We had to reset something at the site because it wouldn't upload the new edition of the website that BB had worked so hard on. Unfortunately I think that when the system administrator at Infinology reset it, they did something wacky to the email settings. So now it won't talk to my employer. AT ALL. It'll communicate with them via their back-up Hotmail address, and even by their French office....but the actual Big Office in New York? NO!

So anyway we've been trying to figure out why this is happening all week long. Yesterday I had the brilliant idea that I could use a different email address to send in my files, and contacted one of the peeps in NY who assigns them - using my trusty AOL messenger (which I've not had up for days because I didn't want to be socked with any last minute files) - and the first words out of her fingers were "OH I tried CALLING you earlier. I have a question" Questions from the Big Office in New York usually never bode well and usually have something to do with me spazzing and uploading the wrong file or something stupid. But noooooooo....they had another file due on Monday next which has BRITISH ACCENTS and I was the ONLY one they could THINK of that was good with accents so pleeeeeeease....PLEEEEEEEEASE would I do this file???!!! Ack. So now I'm not in the good shape I thought I was. It's doable, but REALLY puts a dent in the plans I had for laying around in bed and watching movies and eating dark chocolate peanut M&Ms. Good with accents....bwah ha ha ha....I'm BRITISH ferchrissakes! Of course I can do British accents. It's the yank ones I have issues with :) !!! Although I did have one last week which was funny as hell. It was one of those financial statements to shareholders meetings kind of thingy, but it was a French guy trying to speak English. And it was obviously originally written in French and translated by a Frenchman who doesn't know the nuances of the English language. The funny part was that as I was transcribing it, I became aware of the fact that the only reason I could do it so well was because of all the years I frittered away watching shows like MONTY PYTHON'S FLYING CIRCUS and NOT THE NINE O'CLOCK NEWS where they often used to put on ridiculously over the top French accents and butcher the English language. HA! And I thought I was just WASTING TIME watching those things!!! All I had to do was picture John Cleese or Rowan Atkinson up there talking about shares and end of year averages. Peasy!!

I know...these things tend to go on forever because I don't write often enough and then wind up with a bazillion things to say, but bear with me for one last thought about accents and the way people talk.

There is NEPOTISM in local TV in Washington state.

Anyone who doesn't believe me has only to tune into Kiro 7's weather forecast in the evening. See, they used to have a weather guy at Kiro called Harry Wappler. (Which when Americans say it sounds like some nasty breed of insect.....and today we'll be dissecting the Harry Wappler....) Anyway. Harry was at Kiro forever. For like 20 years or some such thing. And he was REALLY good. Not necessarily his predictions (although they did name the Kiro doppler after him...the Wappler Doppler ....*chokes*), but his presentation. He spoke well. He was plausible and not the slightest bit irritating to my ears.

Well Harry retired a couple of years ago, and who took over his role at Kiro as the weather guy? His son, Andy Wappler. I guess they needed another Wappler so they didn't have to rename the Doppler?

And herein lies the problem. Think of all the TV news guys and girls you know. They all have one important thing in common. They can speak in clear, comprehensible sentences and read a teleprompter. Andy might have inherited his father's last name, but I think the speaking gene missed a generation. He's a freaking MUSHMOUTH. I don't know how many times I've been listening to the weather while doing something else and turned to the TV and asked WHAT?? WHAT did you just say?? He can't pronounce the word Seattle - which for someone doing the weather for this region one would think should be a pretty obvious requirement. It comes out of his mouth more like Settle. And when you hear something like 'Settle's 'onna have some shevy showers issevenin' " you'd say WHAT too!!

I'm a transcriptionist. I translate for mushmouths all the time. And even I have difficulty in following what he's trying to say most of the time. It says a lot for the loyalty of Washingtonians to their TV guys that nobody's started a campaign to get him a speech therapist yet. And it says a lot about the nepotism in local TV that he got the job in the first place.

Shevy Showers.

Bwaah ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Live 8 encore and other stuff

2005-07-03T13:56:00.000-07:00

I've had a day to recover from my aggravation over Live 8, and have since read media accounts of the coverage from various parts of the world. So I'm back to render an updated version.

Live 8 good....MTV so unbelievably bad that a degree of badness has yet to be created which could come close to matching how bad it actually was.

Apparently in England they were treated to Live Aid-esque coverage courtesy of Auntie Beeb. They got to watch whole entire sets of songs by musicians and bands people actually care about. In fact, I was gobsmacked to read in the BBC talkback section that someone was griping and whining because the BBC had the temerity to talk over the end of a Muse song.

Laughs hysterically.

I take it back. Bob is king, and I'm waiting for the official Live 8 dvd to come out. Hopefully it won't take the 20 years that the Live Aid one did.

And moving right along...
Can I say - at the risk of sounding more and more like Oscar the Grouch every time I open my mouth - that I'm fed up with 4th of July festivities? Yeah...you know and I know that it's only July 3rd. But apparently nobody else in the neighborhood does. I'm becoming very aggravated by the ongoing firework displays which have been taking place since the beginning of the week, which quite often proceed until around midnight each day. You're really getting on my LAST NERVE people!!

It angers me more than anything because of the neighborhood pet population. As you know, we've got 6 cats and 3 dogs. Who HATE fireworks. If anything, they hate fireworks more than I do. By the time the festivities are over - not on July 4th...oh noooo....cause apparently not only do the mental defectives around here not realize when July 4th actually begins, they have no clue that it lasts a mere 24 hours either, and so we'll still be going through this shit by NEXT WEEKEND!...every pet in the neighborhood is going to be completely traumatized by the noise and the craziness. And I'm going to be insane from worrying that those dickheads who can't even tell time and date will be just as clueless when it comes to plotting a rocket's trajectory and it'll come down and set my house/car/one of the pine trees on fire while we're sleeping. And then we'll all die a horrible fiery death.

At least in England we celebrate Guy Fawkes Day (or bonfire night) on November 5th. November....when it's a) dark by 5 so kids don't have to stay up till 10 to be able to enjoy the majesty of a TNT Grand Patriot, and b) it's usually raining and has been for days so there is MUCH less chance that anything's going to get loose and set things ON FIRE! Oh and people have more respect for their neighbors than to treat Guy Fawke's DAY like Independence DAY and turn a DAY into a WEEK AND A HALF OF BOTTLE ROCKETS AND M 80s.!!

Oh and finally...finally....here's my ending rant. I never really felt one way or another about Tom Cruise. I liked him in 'An Interview With The Vampire', and 'Rainman'. Beyond that, I never thought he was that big of a deal. Now he's in my face so much that I actually wish him some kind of major disability. Like the permanent loss of his voice so that I didn't have to hear another inane comment about how this actor, who up until the age of 15 wanted to become a priest; who never took the time for a college education of any kind, has more knowledge about EVERYTHING than anyone who disagrees with his rabid belief in Scientology. And furthermore is exceptionally rude about pointing out this fact in interviews.

I'm sure that Wanda Yates who along with her husband believed that drugs were not necessary to aleviate the post partum psychosis she was slipping into, wishes now that she had taken the drugs and kept the 5 babies she drowned in the bathtub. Brooke Shields was brave enough to come forward and write a book about her struggles with PPD and how she was helped by means of anti-depressants. As someone prone to depression, I can sympathize with her totally.

I can also testify to the fact that Tom Cruise has his head so far up his rear end that he can see the vitamins he just ate for breakfast. How this little nobody can sit there and make such fatuous statements in front of a TV audience is a mystery to me. The scary thought is that if just one person comes off their anti-depressants cold turkey based on some irrational belief that Cruise actually does have more knowledge than all of the history of psychiatry put together, and then, as is plainly stated in the warnings section about these drugs, suffers a boomerang effect and commits suicide while in the pits of depression, is Cruise going to be held accountable?

I don't have a problem with anybody practicing their own religion. And I don't have a hatred of people who espouse scientology. I don't understand them, but if that's what they want to believe, all well and good. But cramming it in other people's faces is annoying. Making grand announcements and denouncements based on this religion is irresponsible. After all, John Travolta's been a Scientologist for years and we don't have to listen to him telling us at every single opportunity how he knows more than the collective scientific wisdom of the ages.

Tom Cruise should just shut up. And go somewhere. Far, far away.

It's not very PC to say so but....

2005-07-02T16:59:00.000-07:00

Live 8 sucked.

There. I said it.

As someone who lived through the whole Live Aid experience back in the '80s, I was expecting some kind of spectacular musical extravaganza, of the kind we saw back then. Being in England, I guess I was a little spoiled, as the BBC put on a stellar show. The BBC is a government-sponsored network, so there were no commercial interruptions, but that was only a part of it. There was a layout to it - a structure if you will. A band would come onstage at Wembley, do their three or four songs, and then they'd cut back to the studio for their "this is what we're here for, give us your money" pledge drive kind of thing. Most of the best-known bands of the '80s - and some from even earlier decades - came along and played their sets without remuneration of any kind - they even had to buy their own coffee and soda - with the understanding that all of the money raised from the day would go towards famine relief in Africa.

Of course there were glitches. It was a live show, the scale of which had never been previously attempted. It was taking place on two different continents. So naturally there were occasions where a band would take the stage in Philadelphia while Britain was still showing a PR piece, and they'd have to cut to the band's song in progress. That was expected. There were points where a microphone went dead - as in the Boomtown Rats' rendition of 'Rat Trap', or when the live feed from Wembley cut out and left Philadelphia's stadium in the dark during The Who's performance. These things happen when you're doing it by the seat of your pants.

But for the most part it worked, and it worked well, raising millions of dollars in aid for Africa to feed starving children, and raising the world's consciousness about a problem most of us had been in the dark about.

So when I heard that Bob Geldof et al had planned another Live Aid-esque spectacular for July 2nd which was aimed at making a pointed statement to the leaders of the G8 conference on how we would all very much like them to stop making life so freaking tough for folks in Africa and other third-world nations, I was most interested. When I heard that bands like U2 and Pink Floyd and The Who and REM were going to be making an appearance, I was even more interested. I wasn't quite sure how they were going to arrange the feeds from the seven or eight different countries which were hosting concerts - particularly because of the aforementioned problems with scheduling at Live Aid - but I figured they had come far enough along from Live Aid that they had ironed all of this problem out.

Well today was the day of the show. So we tuned to VH1 - the only source for this concert in the USA - in anticipation of seeing the best of today's bands in tandem with the huge stars of yesterday. Who wouldn't love a free show (as they made clear this was NOTHING to do with money) with this kind of line-up?

I can honestly say that I've never been more disgusted with a show in my entire life. With the exception of Benny Hill shows, but then you know in advance what you're going to get with that, so it's really your fault if you're dumb enough to watch it.

Instead of seeing a band come onstage and perform a set - cut to announcers to do their spiel - back to the stage for the next band, what we got was a couple of peppy announcers who seemed to have clones of themselves all over the place, who were talking to the crowds, talking about Live 8 (even though some of them weren't that knowledgeable about the facts), and generally just talking to hear themselves talk. WHILE THE FREAKING BAND PLAYED ON THE STAGE A COUPLE OF HUNDRED YARDS AWAY!!!

Oh they'd cut in for a song every now and then. They might even let you hear the beginning of the next song. Then they'd cut back to the announcers, who were already tiresome by the second time they showed their perky little faces, who'd spiel off and name drop some more before cutting to a commercial. And then they'd come back from commercial and cut to some other little dingbat duo who'd spend ten minutes letting us know what a GREAT time they were having and how much WONDERFUL music they'd heard, and how this show was JUST LIKE Live Aid except how they WEREN'T asking for money this time. And then they'd cut to a different city and talk to another of these cloned couples while ANOTHER band was playing in the background, before cutting to the band for ONE SONG IF WE WERE LUCKY!!

The only exception I saw was during the Pink Floyd set, where they actually got to play TWO AND A HALF SONGS IN A ROW before the incompetent idiots with microphones in hand were back in our faces telling us how much they were enjoying the show and how this was JUST LIKE Live Aid except how they WEREN'T asking for money this time. And then they cut to a commercial.

Well, I'll tell you this. It's a good thing they weren't asking for money, because if they had been, I wouldn't even have given them the handful of assorted foreign currency I've got in the bottom of my nightstand drawer. I've never seen such a complete waste of television time. And that includes golf. At least you get to see the players playing in golf. It's not just ten hours or so of announcers telling you about the GREAT shots being played in the background.

What the hell happened?? Is this just an Americans don't know how to run this kind of shit thing? Was the UK version any better? Was it a question of biting off more than you can chew and not being able to schedule anything properly because there was just TOO MUCH going on?

Those are all the charitable explanations. However, Azrael and I were born with a cynical spoon in our respective mouths. Aside from giving you a wonky grin, it also gives you a somewhat jaded view of the world, which isn't always a good thing. Anyway, Azrael's take is that this is one step removed from the whole Napster fiasco. Bands are so paranoid about the idea that anyone might use their home recording equipment to record their performance and pirate it for money that they didn't want the show to reflect their complete sets.

That's a fair enough point. Here's mine. I think the reason why they didn't show these acts live as they were being performed - or at least show the entire set - and the reason why they were making it SO KNOWN during the hours and hours of presentation that NO MONEY was being requested during this day of concerts, was for one simple reason. They want you to wait for a month or so and then buy the DVD when it comes out in time for Christmas. Yesiree Bob. All of these acts that we tuned in to see, and saw just a smidgeon of are going to wind up on a compilation or two - with the purchase price (or most of it) going towards funds for starving people or whatever they have in mind for it.

And that sucks. Cause it's a lie. At Live Aid they reminded us after every set that the performers were giving their time and talent for free so that we would reach into our pockets and help to feed people who were dying of starvation and starvation related diseases. And we gave. We gave because to get in to see a Bowie concert would have cost us $10. A Queen concert or a U2 concert would have cost as much. A Duran Duran or Elton John concert, or a concert by The Who or The Boomtown Rats would have set you back easily that $10. And here we got to sit in the comfort of our own homes and watch band after band come out and perform for hours. Whole performances of multiple songs. It was WORTH sticking your hand in your pocket for. Live 8 was supposed to be about raising awareness for the G8 summit and NOTHING as they kept so tiresomely repeating to us, NOTHING to do with raising money.

Well if that's the truth, and the cynical reason of money from DVD doesn't apply, and the only reason the bands are doing these free concerts is to raise awareness, why the hell should they CARE if someone tapes their performance from the TV? If they're not intending to make ANY money off it, why does it MATTER that their fans tune in and record them?

If they're that paranoid, why even televise it? Why not just have a show where these annoying announcers got together in a studio and yakked for ten hours? It was basically all they were doing on the show in any case. Hey, you could even have music playing in the background, so it would ALMOST seem like we were there. Oh wait...that's what we got, wasn't it?

If this was the way Bob intended it to go when he started making plans for Live 8, then I've lost my respect for him. If you're not going to give the world a real concert, then don't advertise it as such. If all we're going to get is parts of a song from our favorite bands, then don't announce it as though they're going to be doing a live performance. And if you're doing it to raise awareness of an issue, why would you want to piss off the people whose awareness you want to raise? That seems to make no sense at all to me.

Live 8 needed aid today. Aid in deciding what it wanted to be.

Now you'll have to excuse me cause I'm off to go find our Live Aid DVD (and no - I didn't mind paying for something I'd ALREADY SEEN cause that's a different thing entirely) and watch how a REAL live benefit concert should be put together.

The President's New Spiel

2005-06-29T02:33:00.000-07:00

Does anyone remember the old fairy tale about the Emperor and his new clothes? How he was conned into purchasing this brand new suit of the finest cloth in the whole universe, which was so rare that it could only be seen by someone of massive intelligence? And how the Emperor wore these fine new clothes out in public and finally some kid was smart enough to yell that the Emperor had no clothes on?

Oh where oh where is that freckle faced young urchin when you need him? Probably off doing an audition for 'Oliver!' or something. Anyway, is the proverbial street kid the catalyst required before the country comes to realize that the President's new spiel has neither form nor substance?

Boggle with me for a second or two would you?

"Bush said he understands the public concerns about a 27-month-old war that has killed more than 1,700 Americans and 12,000 Iraqi civilians and cost $200 billion. He said the sacrifice "is worth it and it is vital to the security of our country."

"The war reached our shores on September the 11th, 2001," Bush told a national television audience and 750 soldiers and airmen in dress uniform who mostly listened quietly as they had been asked to do.

"Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war," he continued. "Many terrorists who kill innocent men, women, and children on the streets of Baghdad are followers of the same murderous ideology that took the lives of our citizens in New York, in Washington and Pennsylvania. There is only one course of action against them - to defeat them abroad before they attack us at home."

"We fight today because terrorists want to attack our country and kill our citizens, and Iraq is where they are making their stand. So we will fight them there, we will fight them across the world and we will stay in the fight until the fight is won."

"We have a clear path forward," the president said. "As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down."

Okay, let's analyze this for a second, shall we? We'll deliver a rousing speech about why we're in Iraq and how the fight must continue, by referring to 9/11 five times - count em - FIVE FREAKING TIMES in a 28 minute speech. Um....the last I heard? Everybody who matters - including this puppet warmonger boy wonder - has admitted there were - how many links between Iraq and the attack on 9/11 again?

Hold on...let me count them.

Oh yeah...that's right. That would be um NONE!!??!!!

So by reminding us that we went into Iraq because you told us they had links to 9/11, along with millions of WMDs all pointed at our shores, which turned out to be a complete falsehood, you expect to gain SUPPORT for the war in Iraq??

We fight today not because terrorists want to attack our country and kill our citizens, and Iraq is where they are making their stand, but because we're in their bloody country and they're sick of the sight of us. WE INVADED THEM!! Um....WITHOUT PROVOCATION!!. Without even A LITTLE PROVOCATION!! We unilaterally decided to depose the leader of a foreign country and spread democracy and Christianity amongst the heathens, and expected them to fall down and kiss our feet with gratitude.

We've KILLED 12,000 OF THEIR CITIZENS.....AT LEAST!! So I guess for a lot of people living there, Saddam is looking pretty good round about now. And then we wonder why more young terrorist wannabes are springing up by the hour?

This addle-brained failed oilman decided to disregard all evidence to the contrary, and rather than spend the 200 billion dollars we've spent so far actually LOOKING for the guy responsible for setting up 9/11, he chose to go after a much easier (not to mention unsuspecting) target in Saddam Hussein. 'Ahm gonna git 'im fer mah daddy'

So 1700 prospective or current mommas and daddies have lost their lives because this lunatic decided to bring home the prize that had eluded his own father.

Trouble is, he's never actually ever had to make any real decisons in his life. There's always been somebody there to do it for him. You only have to look at that petulant, smug little smirk to realize he's the spoiled little brat that every child would love to kill - only he has the daddy who would run up to the school and sue them into the ground if anything happened to little Junior. And he knows it. Hence the smirk. Children like this grow up to be unpleasant adults, particularly if this sense of entitlement and safety net remain with them throughout their lives. Junior was given tons of toys to play with. Oil companies and the like. He broke them and threw them away. He never had to worry about the consequences of a single decision he made, because daddy or someone else's daddy was always there to fix it for him.

That's probably why when all the smart and intelligent army type people who are supposed to be kept around the president to advise him of minor details like how to run a PROPER WAR were telling him how important it was to stop and think and then to work out not only an invasion plan, but also an exit plan were ignored. Anyone can pick a fight. It's getting away from it that's tricky. Most people - including generals and other smart and intelligent army type people - also realize that there's strength in numbers. You don't go into a fight with the Sharks unless the rest of the Jets are there to back you up, right? Particularly when it happens to be on the Sharks' home turf. And if you're any kind of a Jet, you don't stand by while one of your own is getting the holy crap beaten out of him. You go round up the rest of the gang and go at it.

I guess Junior grew up watching John Wayne win every war since the dawn of time singlehandedly. If only his daddy had been into show tunes! See it's easy to sit there and say that war is hell, when you're the Duke and you've just mown down the enemy with nothing but a cattle prod, but you can only truly understand the futility of war by watching the final fifteen minutes of West Side Story!

So he sent a teeny little contingent of men into a country where the damn CRUSADES were fought (and didn't stop to remember that they went on for freaking CENTURIES - these guys don't back down easily!) and figured that the war would be over within six months tops. Of course he didn't need a plan for getting out because after all, who wouldn't want what the grand old US of A had to give, right?? We'd be welcomed like the HEROES we are, and after we'd rounded up Saddam and his bad guys, the Duke would arrive on his horse and the credits would roll and everyone would leave the theatre saying how great a movie that was.

But - as so often happens when we don't listen to those people who KNOW WHAT THEY'RE FREAKING TALKING ABOUT - that didn't happen. And Americans are dropping like flies alongside the Iraqi civilians who are dropping like flies who've just feasted on poisoned meat. And all of those folks who thought that going to Iraq was a HECK of a good idea, and even voted the lunatic in for a second term on the STRENGTH of him going to war in Iraq, are getting a little bit fed up. His popularity in the eyes of the great general public is dropping faster than those stray Indian extras in a John Wayne movie. So it's time for a big PR event. Dress him up, hand him a speech and send him down to Fort Bragg to stand in front of the next bunch of cannon fodder slated for death, and have him deliver a speech about how things are going to get better.

I'm sure that must have been the plan. I can't see how ANY IDIOT PR PERSON would possibly have suggested that he go to Ft. Bragg and tell the troops and the rest of us how he's made his stand and he's not going to quit until the Iraqis do. Just like that spoiled little ass kid who would stand at the top of the slide and not let any of the other kids come down, knowing that his daddy would always take his side. Wearing that nasty little smirk that we've come to know and love on the face of our president. He'll ALWAYS get his way. No matter what. Even if the children who are LOGJAMMED on the stairs leading up to the slide start having panic attacks and crying, he'll stand there with that smirk and insist that he's not moving. Even if 17,000 servicemen and 12,000 civilians are dead, he won't move from his position. And he won't send in any extra troops because....and if you have any boggle left...boggle right along with me on THIS ONE:

"In his speech, Bush rejected suggestions that he set a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq or send in more troops. Bush said a timetable would be "a serious mistake" that could demoralize Iraqis and American troops and embolden the enemy.
He also said sending more troops would undermine the U.S. strategy of training Iraqis to be able to as quickly as possible take over the security of their country.
"Sending more Americans would suggest that we intend to stay forever," he said.

The Emperor isn't wearing any clothes, and the president needs a new spiel

Child's Play

2005-06-21T23:33:00.000-07:00

Okay, a number of issues today.

Firstly, anyone who knows me should be aware that I think Michael Jackson got a raw deal in his child molestation trial. For god's sake, the man should be sanctified for the work he's done with children. He should have been presented with a great big huge shiny halo for the suffering he was forced to endure during this judicial process.

Yeah....right. MJ is the archetype of a pedophile. He just has the kind of money which cushions him from any kind of prosecution.

This was never shown more eloquently than in two separate events over the past few days. Firstly the Jackson family gave a little bash for friends of MJ on the weekend. And guess who showed up? Yep...you got it. One of the jurors who had found him not guilty a few days earlier.

Let's boggle over this for a second shall we?

Imagine for one second that we lived in a land where real justice was doled out to people on an equal basis, regardless of how much money, fame or celebrity they had. Imagine further that MJ had actually been found guilty of all ten counts on the indictment form. Now imagine that the prosecution team rented a local casino and had a big celebratory rally. And imagine that one of the invited was a member of the jury which had convicted MJ. Is there a defense lawyer in the country who would not have been running down to the courthouse to file an appeal based on the juror's obvious prosecutorial bias? Of course not. And yet when the situation is reversed, nobody thinks anything about it? No defense bias in a juror who shows up to a Jackson bash shortly after finding him not guilty?

And then today one of the infamous jurors appeared on Court TV for an interview. She basically came out and said that unless there was eyewitness testimony from someone with an absolutely unimpeachable past, she would not have found MJ guilty of molestation.

Boggle. Go ahead. I did.

And now MJ's mother says that Saint Michael has decided that he will only help children 'from a distance'.

Guess that means he's going to fly them in from Mexico?

Dandy Lions

2005-06-18T14:23:00.000-07:00

I just spent the morning working my dog over. Not in a really nasty abusive kind of way, I hasten to add - although she might disagree with me. Rosybelle got brushed.

Sometimes when I'm fighting with dog and brush and scissors and wishing I actually HAD a third hand, I question why someone so intrinsically lazy (Me) would be dumb enough to acquire 3 dogs. And these aren't your Jack Russells or your Boston Terriers or even your Pugs with their nice short coats that basically just need dunking in a soapy bath once a month. Noooo. We have a Cocker Spaniel (Clinton), a Shih Tzu (Katie Xiao Lin) and a Pekingese/Poodle mix (Rosybelle).

Now I've seen people who have packs of Yorkshire Terriers and manage to keep them all perfectly silky, with matching little pink bows atop their heads. And it's not that mine CAN'T look that way. Every time Rose and Katie go to the groomer, they arrive back with a little topknot in a bow (Katie) or bows over each ear (Rosy). Naturally this lasts until they figure out how to either remove the bows themselves or enlist the aid of one of the other dogs to do it for them, but that's beside the point. When they walk out of that groomer's store they look absolutely fabulous. If only they STAYED that way for half a second.

Pekingese and Shih Tzus were called 'Lion Dogs' in China. Mostly for their temperament, but also because of the mane-like fur which sheathes them from head to foot -or floor in Rosy's case. It has a thick undercoat below the top coat which has a tendency to mat. Wait a second, did I just say a 'TENDENCY' to mat? How about you can sit there and WATCH it matting. How about it can mat from ONE DAY TO THE NEXT!! Especially when your little teeny dogs who are so close to the ground on their little teeny short stubby legs go outside to use the facilities. And the ground is covered in pine needles. And the soil is clay-ish. And their fur drags on the floor.

And mats are what we absolutely extra specially LOVE! Now a human - even one with hair as long as mine - can go for three days without brushing their hair and the most it's going to do is tangle a bit. Not so with my dogs. They go for three MINUTES without brushing their hair and it BONDS. It forms big clumpy wads of hair - picture human hair + lump of chewing gum you forgot was on the nightstand, and you sort of get the picture. You cannot brush out a mat. The only solution is to cut it out with a pair of scissors. And dogs have a sixth sense about scissors. They know they can hurt them. Don't ask me how they know this, since I've never accidentally cut one when removing a mat. But the MINUTE I pick up the scissors, the nice quiet dog who was rolling over languidly from one side to the other during the brushing process turns into a squirming little creature who needs to be held down bodily while you hold the mat in one hand and cut with the other. That's where the need for three hands comes in.

So now Rosy is groomed, and I have a clump of fur big enough to make a tribble out of sitting on the nightstand beside me. But my little Pekingese is all prettified and looking like the dandy lion she is. And she looks up at me with those big liquid chocolate eyes and makes that cooing noise that I never heard come out of a canine mouth before I met her, and stretches herself before snuggling down as close to my lap as she can get without actually sitting on the laptop computer. And that's when I remember why I have these small dogs with their impossible to maintain coats. Nobody else in the world could adore you in such a shameless and absolute fashion.

Days of Whine and Roses

2005-06-16T03:37:00.000-07:00

Okay.

I'm pouring the whine today so break off a hunk of cheese and a nice bit of French bread and pull up a seat.

I hate my job. There. I said it. I loathe and detest it with every fiber of my being. There's so much of the writer in me that I'm drowning in creative juices. I want to write. I want to go back to the days when my other half pulled down a 60 hours a week job, and any money I made through transcription was gravy. To the times when I could write essays and articles instead of transcribing words spoken by others, because it wasn't necessary to earn money to pay bills and buy food and all of that boring un-bohemian stuff. And never more so than today.

What's so special about today? I'm glad you asked. Today I received a slew of emails from the company I transcribe for informing me that there were problems with a) the invoice I submitted on Monday, and b) the work I'd done over the weekend. The invoice problem was twofold. First was the problem that I am crap at math. Asking me to figure out what is a 15% increase from 0.00635 per word is like asking me to describe what the moon tastes like. Dunno. That's the fast answer to that. So I did my best, and came up with a figure which was apparently off by several points of a cent. Well twist my nipple nuts and call me Frank. I fucked up. It happens. Maybe if you had a figure in mind you should have TOLD me what it was instead of making me guess. There's a thought for ya. And WHY was I being asked to do mathematical gymnastics? Because some of the work I had to do this past week were so crap that nobody else wanted to do them. Oh bless ya...I'm not talking about difficult to hear audio. I'm talking about almost freaking IMPOSSIBLE to hear. Work which instead of being a ratio of 1:4 (one hour of transcription audio equals four hours of real time when it comes to transcribing it), but more like 1:6 by the time you've replayed and replayed and guessed and surmised and googled your little ass off. THAT kind of crap. And for this, I was promised the princely sum of 0.00635 PLUS 15% per word!! YAY!! The kind of money you can go on a Caribbean cruise with - NOT!.

But, gentle reader, that is not the worst. Oh no. See, I did 3 of these incrediblecrap audio files last week. The first one was pretty bad, but hey, they don't come up TOO often. Then on Friday afternoon the sysop who assigns these things sent an email saying she had work to be done over the weekend which was due Sunday, and they were going to be offering 15% above the regular rate for it. YAY! So I IM'd her and asked her directly if the reason was because the audio was crap. NO she says, it's because the files have to go directly to the client and half a dozen other people, so you have to double check them before you send them. OK....no problem. I can do an hour by Sunday. Well actually there's an hour for Sunday and I've got 3 hours due Monday. Can you PLEASE do that??!! So I agreed. Now, I need to remind you that the office is in New York, and I'm in Washington, so they're 3 hours ahead of us. I was assigned this work at the end of the NY day on Friday afternoon. No problem. The audio's fine, right? I'm just getting the 15% because of the time constraint, right? And the submitting direct to the client stuff? Yeah.

Only then I take a look at the assignment sheets I've received and discover that a) the hour job for Sunday is actually 1 10 minute and one 92 minute job. Oh, and the 3 hour job is 257 minutes. And they tell me I can't do math?? My four hours has suddenly risen dramatically to more like six hours. Which wouldn't be so bad aside from the fact that the office also has work that you can assign yourself via the internet - those little pissy insurance jobs that I've spoken about before? They're usually an average of 9 or 10 minutes long, and I'd previously self-assigned 30 of them. So do the math, gentle reader and realize I have a SHITLOAD of work due by Monday. But you haven't heard b) yet. So here it is. b) I start working on the stuff due by Sunday - the stuff which goes directly to the client. The 10 minute one...not too bad. Then I load up the 92 minute one and....holy shit batman. I can hear one word in ten. And that's being generous. And this is the transcript which is supposed to go directly to the client. Without being edited or worked over at the office first. So I was lucky enough to find someone online who works for the California office of the NY company I work for, and explained my dilemma. She had to call NY (which at 9pm their time didn't make her very popular) and tell them about it. The upshot was hey, this is a wiretap...it's very terribly important....and you're just going to have to do the best you can with it. Send the first ten pages of the transcript to address A, and then go on and finish the whole thing and send it to addresses everybody else. Wiretaps, for those of you not in the know, are the audio files from hell. Because they're taping someone in secret with the microphone secreted who the hell knows where, the ensuing sound resembles someone whispering from across the room. IF the room is underwater and IF there's an old steam train between you and the microphone. But gentle reader, I stayed with it. I replayed and replayed and replayed until I'd scraped out a transcript of those 92 horrendous minutes - finally emailing it to parts unknown slightly before midnight on Friday.

And yes...I completed the other so-called 3 hour job, and the 30 insurance jobs and had them all in and emailed by Sunday night.

So this is where the other part of the office email comes in. Apparently, because my sysop told me in an email (which naturally I had deleted over the weekend), and in IM that I would receive 15% increase for the 10 and 92 minute jobs - but DIDN'T PUT IT IN WRITING ON THE FRIGGING ASSIGNMENT SHEETS, the office manager Nazi who was reconciling my invoice didn't think I was deserving.

Now that would have fucked me off enough on its face. But this email came after the other emails. The four emails I'd received which pertained to four of the insurance jobs that I'd turned in. The four emails which threatened to take away my A grade (yes folks, 0.00635 per word IS in fact an A GRADE RATE) because of mistakes on the submitted transcripts. And let's put this in perspective for you, shall we? These were not mistakes on the scale of misspelled words or chunks of missing audio. Oh bless you no. These were mistakes on the scale of 'you put a double space where there should have been a single space' and 'four door sedan should be written four-door sedan'.

So the reality is that despite the fact that I transcribed about 10 hours of work this weekend - work which they were falling over themselves for me to take on Friday, they have the temerity to piss around with a double space and a missing hyphen and 15% increase I was promised but not in the place I should have been promised. I never came closer to telling them precisely what they could do with their job. Complete with flawless punctuation and impeccable grammar and razor-sharp spelling.

But I couldn't.

Because now I'm the one who has to work. Not because I want to but because if I don't work, we don't eat. Babybat doesn't get her new contacts. Xander doesn't get his new shoes. And I know, I know they're my responsibility and it's my job now to get them through their childhood and off to their own lives.

But that doesn't mean it doesn't SUCK! I can't chuck this job because we live in this place which is in the back of beyond and jobs aren't readily available. I can't chuck this job because Azrael isn't my ex (for which, most of the time I am eternally grateful, I add very hastily) and much as I love him, he's not the most reliable of people when it comes to holding down a job. So now the situation is reversed. What goes around comes around. Here I am working at this job I despise and can't quit and I'm longing for those halcyon days where my ex was working at a job he despised and I was taking care of children and writing articles and essays and being incredibly bohemian with the safety net of someone else bringing in a steady paycheck every month.

And yes, I hear people say that if I wanted it enough I could make time to write. And I suppose they're right. I could. But these well-meaning people are not sitting hunched over a computer transcribing forty hours of real time in a weekend, at the end of which gentle reader, you have to believe me when I tell you, creative writing is the very LAST thing I want to be doing. In some weird, sponge-like vampiric fashion the very act of transcribing the words of others drains my own creativity.

Oh, and by the way....I hate my job.

Second Star On The Right And Straight On Till Mourning

2005-06-13T14:44:00.000-07:00

Those wonderful California juries have triumphed yet again. This afternoon they found Michael Jackson Not Guilty By Reason Of Celebrity. Not guilty on every single count.

The media isn't certain as of yet whether the jury will speak out in a news conference regarding their verdict. Presumably it will take a little while for the surgery required to remove their heads from their respective asses.

Anyone fancy a sleepover at Neverland??

They Shoot Horses Don't They?

2005-06-12T13:49:00.000-07:00

I've never been a believer in astrology - the western ideal of sun sign astrology. Even as a kid it made no sense to me that every Geminian on the planet would be having the kind of day outlined for me in the 'Daily Horoscope' column of the newspaper. And the astrologer would draw with such broad strokes that obviously he/she was going to be correct for some Geminian somewhere on the planet at some point.

In my teens, however, I discovered Chinese astrology. Not for them the concept that all Geminians are carbon copies of one another. No, they work in years - maybe something to do with their culture being ancient or something, they've got more time to play with. The Chinese work in 12 year cycles, with each of those 12 years being devoted to an animal. When they've run through all twelve creatures of the Chinese zodiac they start over with the first animal on the 13th year, and so on and so forth. I was born under the sign of the Tiger, which makes much more sense to me than I'd comfortably admit. I can be brave and fearless when someone threatens my cubs. I can also work frenetically in short bursts (consider the Tiger chasing down its prey), but I'm also lazy and need lots of long naps to recover from all of that activity. The list goes on. The Chinese zodiac can be married to the western zodiac which tempers the signs. For example, I'm a Gemini Tiger which means certain of my attributes are going to be at the fore - the communication part of it, for instance. A Virgoan Tiger might enjoy having a REALLY tidy den, where I'm happy to live in piggery. But underneath we're both Tigers.

My children are a Snake and a Horse and fit their attributes well. Tiger parents and Horse children are supposed to be a great match, which is true. I understand my little horse on levels where I don't understand my little snake.

The problem comes thusly: The love of my life is also a Horse. This is obvious when you see the two of them frolicking in a paddock. Or in their case hunched around a video game. But it's never more obvious than when you see them rearing up and kicking one another to try and figure out who is the boss horse in the corral. Of course, little horse's age doesn't help much. He's 14 going on 21. That would make him ornery in anyone's reckoning. It's also the age - teetering on the edge of manhood - where if he were a colt he'd be testing the mettle of the surrounding stallions in that time honored attempt to be the head of the herd. The head stallion, on the other hand, just sees an upstart little baby horse trying to usurp his position and feels it's his station in life to thwart every possible attempt at getting the upper hoof. This always winds up the same way, with the two of them happily sharing a bale of hay and cantering around the paddock.

But the posturing in the meantime is exceedingly difficult to take. Read back to Tiger attributes. Threatening one of my cubs makes me turn into some kind of ubertiger with sharp, sharp fangs and claws all set to rip out your brain by way of your intestines.

I try. I try to stay neutral. I try to stay out of the head butting and away from the flailing hooves, but the whinnying drives me insane. The big horse and I discuss this in more rational moments.

HORSE: He should respect me and not answer back when I tell him to do things.

ME: Then you shouldn't let yourself get caught up in arguments with him. If you let him have the last word, he will. He's you..but younger.

That's what I say. What the actual unspoken dialogue between us is:

HORSE: He should respect me and not answer back (because I'm the only one allowed to have the last word and I can go on and on and on even after he's not allowed to say anything else because I've told him to shut up. That's because I'm the boss and I need to make sure that I don't just WIN but WIN BIG)

ME: Then you shouldn't let yourself get caught up in arguments with him. (Because you're as bad as he is). If you let him have the last word, he will. (And that last word usually will be some kind of expletive tossed over his shoulder before he stomps off to his room). He's you...but younger. (He's my cub...and no matter what I might say NOW while I'm calm and rational, I'm going to hate you if you try and force your authority (pick on him) or insist that he does things without question (pick on him) and hurt his little self-esteem (pick on him).

Today, the horses went at it again. Baby horse didn't do what he was supposed to do or do it quickly or quietly enough for big horse. Big horse immediately pulls the card I'd given him the night before and tells him to stop arguing right now. Baby horse mumbles and does as requested. Big horse then takes advantage of the lull to tell baby horse why he should be listening to big horse etc. etc. (WIN BIG), and baby horse tosses expletive over shoulder and heads for a different part of the pasture. (His room). This would ordinarily have ended with both of them cooling off in various parts of the field and then coming together for a communal feed from the hay bale.

Only today was different. Today big horse came into the room to rehash what I had just heard through the walls. Only big horse's tale was slanted to make big horse look better. This brought out the Tiger in me with full force and I said some REALLY MEAN THINGS! Only they didn't seem mean at the time when they were being delivered with righteous tiger anger. At the time they seemed like a good alternative to ripping out his brain by way of his intestines with my SHARP SHARP TIGER CLAWS. So big horse left to find baby horse. Only baby horse wasn't in the pasture. AT ALL. Baby horse had jumped the fence and gone off to join the circus or something. Of course, he arrived back later after running wild and free for a while. By which time big horse was off licking his tiger wounds in the stable (the games room).

So now the two horses are happily sharing a bale of hay and I'm the mean evil tiger person who gave the big horse nasty nasty tiger holes in the abdomen with my mean and nasty tiger words.

And the little snake is sunning herself on a rock and wisely keeping well out of the way.

They shoot horses don't they?.....

A Class Act

2005-06-07T19:49:00.000-07:00

Anne Bancroft. A Class Act.

One of my favorite actresses, Anne Bancroft, died today of uterine cancer. This was one talented lady. I mean she had the kind of acting ability that made you completely forget she was just playing a role. She BECAME whoever she was playing at the time. She played the cradle-snatching Mrs. Robinson and the poorly-sighted teacher of Helen Keller - Annie Sullivan - with equal grace and aplomb. I loved her portrayal of the actress who kissed John Hurt in 'The Elephant Man', and of her role as Sir Anthony Hopkins' penpal in '54 Charing Cross Road'.

She was Mel Brook's wife for 41 years, and Max's mother for 33. How sad it must be for them to lose her to this horrendous and insidious killer of women. And how much I wish that as much money, time and effort was being plunged into the search for a cure for 'women's diseases' as was being ladled into helping men get an erection. Not that I think the scientific community are in any way biased, but if we're betting on which comes first, a serious treatment of breast, cervical and uterine cancers, or one for prostate and testicular cancers, my money has to be on the second batch.

Thanks for everything Anne. You were a class act. Sleep well.

Work Part Deux

2005-06-07T10:30:00.000-07:00

My job - my real - actually makes money from it - job is transcriptionist. For those of you who don't know what a transcriptionist is, allow me to enlighten you. A large firm in New York hires transcriptionists, who don't actually work under the auspices of the firm, which would entitle them to things like health benefits and other silly things, but are private contractors and responsible for making their own tax, social security and other arrangements. This firm then notifies you of a job they may have for you. You log onto a special ftp folder on the company site and download the audio file you find there to your own pc.

Next you plug in your footpedal and your headphones (all hardware provided at your own expense since you're a private contractor and absolutely get ALL the perks, natch). You open a template provided by the company in New York in your MS. Word program, hit your foot pedal, listen really, REALLY hard, and type what you hear. All of this for the princely sum of 6c a word. This should show you two things: Firstly that the ideal place to do this job is somewhere where the cost of living is REALLY cheap (Washington doesn't fall into this category). Secondly you'd better be able to type REALLY fast and REALLY accurately so you don't have to spend too much time in the proofreading part of the job. Cause really, gentle reader, 6c a word gross, before tax and social security and health benefits is NOT A LOT!

But it's an odd little job, as it gives you a window into the lives of people other than yourself, through listening to the audio they've created. I've been a fly on the wall in ACS cases where parents who blatantly don't deserve their children back are fighting to regain custody of them. I type those with an inward snarl and root for the ACS prosecutors. I've listened to groups of top directors in fields like pharmaceuticals sitting around a table discussing better ways to fleece the public, or financial and banking professionals giving the inside scoop on how the public should be glad they even allow us to keep our money with them. I choke back my anger and try to avoid deliberately renaming the participants as 'dickhead' and 'dorkwad'.

I've also done plenty of Board of Education transcripts, where the schools are attempting to suspend students for behavior which makes me appreciate how good my own teenagers are. I type those with kind of a righteous fervor, and pray that the hearing officer makes the decision I would have come to and doesn't send the little miscreant back to the school to further torture its teacher and fellow students. I also subscribe to the Judge Judy school of thinking that the worst children quite often have the worst kind of enabling parents who will defend their child even in the light of the most outlandish behavior imaginable.

After doing a transcript for a firm of stockbrokers where one of the participants was describing taking phone calls about work while she was in LABOR WITH HER TWINS! I decided that some people are WAY too devoted to their jobs.

But I think my favorite transcript of all was a film maker who decided to make a celebration of her elderly parents' life by sitting them down for an interview on the eve of their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Listening to these two sweet old people talk about meeting each other, marrying, and raising their not insubstantial brood was incredibly touching. At the end of the interview, their daughter had them read the verses inside the card another one of the daughters had designed and made for them which would serve as the announcements for the festivities. It was a poem about old love vs. young love, and the old lady's voice was breaking as she was reading it aloud, and TRUST ME...it's not easy to transcribe audio when you can't see through your own tears. So YEAH, I'M SAPPY...SUE ME! That one transcript was like a bonus for all of the cut throat, wheeler dealer, NASTY people I get to transcribe a lot of. I would have done that one for free for the enjoyment it gave me, and I hope that the two of them had an absolutely SPLENDIFOROUS anniversary bash.

So now I'm off to type up some more car insurance claims. You know, there was a British comedian named Jasper Carrott (yes honestly) in the seventies who used to make a big part of his routine the true details of what people would put in their car insurance claims. Things like:

Coming home I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I haven't got.
I bumped into a lamp post which was obscured by human beings.
The guy was all over the road. I had to swerve a number of times before I hit him.
I knocked over a man. He admitted it was his fault as he'd been knocked down before.
I saw a sad-faced, slow-moving old gentleman as he bounced off the hood of my car.

I used to think those things were a clever comedian's comic invention. Now I know that people actually say these things and more besides. 6c a word? Yeah....but the entertainment is free!!

Michael, Michael Michael!!!

2005-06-07T01:14:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the first full day of jury deliberation in the Michael Jackson trial. And what a day it was. That led me to a little thinking about all of the....

Things I have learned from the Michael Jackson trial

Joseph Jackson - family patriarch of the Jackson clan has a tendency to lose family members - or bits of his mind - as evidenced yesterday in his little crowd frenzying futile trip to the courthouse in search of one of his children. We weren't ever sure which one it was, but it did whip the fans into a frenzy of "Michael is innocent" chanting outside the jury room.
Michael Jackson is not the pedophile we thought he was. He actually is someone jailed because of his political beliefs by a racist regime - at least according to Jesse Jackson who loves to compare him to Nelson Mandela. (Oh and btw...Jesse is not the oldest Jackson brother, although he'd like to be.)
A good legal team always involves at least two spokespeople who are not covered by the Judge's gag order, along with your personal agent and your personal magician. Marvo the Magnificent may soon be looking for extra work since I'm not sure that they allow personal jugglers inside the big house.
Grown men sleeping with small children who are not related to them by blood or marriage for 365 days straight are doing absolutely nothing wrong as this is perfectly natural and innocent and means pure love. Ask NAMBLA.
Bubbles the chimp is eternally grateful he died before the real circus began.
The Jackson prosecution is actually a conspiracy between prosecutor Tom Sneddon and Tommy Mattola of Sony Records in order to bankrupt Jackson and regain the Beatles catalogue in perpetuity for Sony.
The Jacksons have another sister! Janet, Latoya and Rebbie, who apparently didn't have a cool enough name to be a Jackson sister. She does have all the right moves though, as evidenced in the staged standing up and walking out in unison with the other two girls when the prosecution got up to make their closing argument. Ohhh, that hurt. That really hurt. NOT.
Contrary to what Azrael has always believed, Michael and Latoya are NOT the same person! We've now seen them side by side without mirrors. However as Azrael points out, MJ does have a constant magician on staff. Hmm.
Most people can name more of Snow White's dwarves than the actual members of the Jackson Five.
I've noticed that out of all of the talking head defense attorneys who guest on Court TV and support Michael Jackson in his plea of innocence would as a common rule of thumb NOT want their own children to stay overnight at Neverland. Go figure.
Wearing actual military medals from foreign lands, when one has not actually done anything to earn said military medals from foreign lands, tends to really piss off the people who live in foreign lands.
When you are facing something you don't want to face, it's a good plan to have a low back injury. It even allows you to go to work in your pajamas. (Or to court, depending on which is closer or more pertinent for your situation.)
Michael Jackson wears REALLY ugly and boring pajamas.
Azrael doesn't think Michael Jackson would make a good straight porn star due to his distinctive skin coloration. I think Michael Jackson would make a bad porn star because his nose would probably choose an inopportune moment to fall off.

Whoever Invented Work Should Have Stayed And Finished It!

2005-06-06T19:21:00.000-07:00

Yes, I have been conspicuously absent from my brand new baby blog since my b-day weekend. The reason behind that is the horrendously awful devil demon which masquerades as 'work'.

To begin with I had to get the website put together. Now I don't know if it's that time of year or what, but lately I just have not had the patience for it. Time was, I would play with it, and pet it, and feed it lots of lovely articles and reviews, as though it was my absolute favorite soft little new puppy. Lately, the puppy and I have been having major disagreements.

I think it probably began when some fathead hijacked our mirror site. Thanks to the hijinks of our web domain renewal company who told us to renew. Okay, so I forgot to renew that one cause I thought Azrael was doing it. He thought I was doing it, even though it was only the MAIN site I thought was my 'sponsibility. Hmph. Well anyway, the main site (my 'sponsibility) got renewed. The mirror site (Azrael's 'sponsibility) didn't. Trying to renew it at that point according to the web domain people wasn't possible. We'dhave to wait until it came back out into the land of available names again. Then something hideous happened in January of this year. We'd been doing so well! Our hits had been leaping and bounding up every month until they were teetering at the 70,000 a month mark!!

Then January came along, and all of a sudden instead of getting 3,000 hits per day, we were getting like...well...300 or so. Steps back in amazement! This can't be right!! What the ferk is going on here?? Azrael did his little site search thing, and found out...shock, horror, that the mirror site didn't have a mirror of our main site anymore. Noooo....it had one of those nasty nasty "Page not found" things. That's when we figured out that it was time to go and renew the mirror site. I went to the webdomainplaceIhate and put in the details for the site, and my credit card info, and renewed it. Yowza. All done. No problem. I even got my credit card bill the next week and checked it, and saw that they'd debited my account for the renewal. Cool beans.

Cut to February. Checking our hit total, we found the same dismal problem. When we checked the mirror site, we found that it didn't have a mirror of our main site anymore. Oh no. It didn't even have a nasty nasty 'Page not found" thingy. Oh no, gentle reader. What it did have was a site that WAS NOT OURS!! It was a stupid page of ads and gothic links that didn't actually have any links on it.

Of course I went to the WHOIS look up thingy, and found out that the day AFTER they'd debited my credit card, the webdomainplaceIhate had sold our name to some other weasely little squeak of a slimebag. Of course, at the time I didn't actually KNOW he was a weasely little squeak of a slimebag. That knowledge didn't come until later, after I'd contacted him and explained the situation and offered to buy the site name back from him, and he gave me some smart ass little shit reply about 'never selling his sites'. Ugh. So our mirror site was gone. It was like losing a favorite pet. Well okay, more like that cat that climbs in through the window and sleeps on the bed but you don't actually OWN and you wouldn't want to because it probably has fleas and you can do without the extra vet bills anyway what with the menagerie you already have. But it was a pet you LIKED and had come to expect to be there whenever you checked on it.

So now we just have the main site. Forever. As long as we remember to pay the bills. And our hits have gone back up again to pre-site-hijacking levels. But all of a sudden, I find that I don't have the energy for it anymore. I don't spend time throughout the month getting the site ready for its unveiling on the first. I wind up having to work like a demon fiend from hell the day before the first in order to update and archive and do all of the other stuff that's necessary, and because of that, I don't want to visit it anymore. But I do...cause I'M 'sponsible!

Cross and stitching

2005-05-29T17:14:00.000-07:00

Okay so I could sit here preening because I actually am more of a techno geek than I thought I was or I can get on with the hard business of journaling the daily events of this group of creatures who share my house. That would be Azrael, Babybat, Xander, and sundry dogs and cats.

Today's my birthday....yay for me. That meant I was the lucky recipient of the gifts everyone else in the house would have chosen for themselves had it been their own birthday. At least they're not going to actually start pestering to borrow said new prezzie objects until tomorrow, as they don't want to it to appear that they had any kind of self-interest in their careful choosing.

What I really wanted, no, I mean what I REALLY wanted, what I wanted from the deep DEEP DEPTHS of my little black heart was...ahem....a cross stitch kit. Not much to ask for. Trouble is that nobody ASKED! So I have videos and music and chocolate and so on and so forth...but what I wanted....what I so DEEPLY wanted, remains locked up in somebody's arts and crafts store.

Sob.

Not that I don't love Peter Gabriel, and the Jam immensely. I do. Not that I haven't been looking for a copy of a Pixies CD that contains 'My Velouria' - the song from hell which torments my every waking moment. I have. But would I have put them at the top of my list of things I absolutely had to have or I would die? Um...no.

Oh well. Azzy and Xander are off in search of Subway sandwiches since for my birthday Xander would like to eat at Subway, and before they left I dropped many heavy hints about the joy and delight I take in cross stitch, and how these kits are available at our local Ben Franklin's store which is oh so near to Subway.

I'll keep you posted.

Later - Heh. The Diva Princess stomped her little glass slippered foot and won the cross stitch prize. The men staggered back from their sojourn to the outer reaches of Bonney Lake (buried deep in the heart of Redneck territory) and returned with...wait for it...not one, but TWO cross stitchy kits! YES real men can buy cross stitch kits.

I am loved and petted and pampered and have declared the entire weekend to be my birthday. It's Memorial Day tomorrow so that also counts in the reckoning. Ah...bliss.

Testing...Testing....

2005-05-29T17:12:00.000-07:00

If my luck is running true to form, this miserable attempt at joining the rest of the blogging society will end in tears. So here goes nothing.....