%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
| A eclectic Blog for people who like ketchup on their truffles. |
| Illegal immigration is a toughie for a liberal. On the one hand, we are racially tolerant, so no problem there. On the other hand, most of the illegals hail from cultures dominated by the Catholic Church, old fashioned family values, and hard work. Well, I don’t want any more of that crap crossing the border into the US. The US is a pretty liberal country. Liberal values would dominate even more, except that the conservatives keep importing more conservatives. California just had an initiative on recognizing marriage between homosexuals. The vote was close, and I believe that marriage between homosexuals would have been recognized, had it not been for all the Catholic illegals to whom we’ve granted amnesty over the last 30 years. So now we liberals must retake ground we thought we had already taken. The people born here have a right to advance our culture, which while not perfect is pretty good. If all those conservative values are so great, why is it that EVERY country that embraces those values is so messed up. Coincidence? I don’t think so. Now illegal immigrants from those countries are messing up the United States, culturally and economically. The United States was at its most prosperous when organized labor was at its strongest. The wealthy elite couldn’t stand sharing corporate wealth with ordinary workers. The CEOs wanted ALL the wealth, or at least a couple of thousand times more than what the lowest paid workers made, so they illegally imported cheap labor. I don’t blame the illegal immigrants at all. If I lived in some third-world shithole and somebody told me the US Government would look the other way while I slipped across the border into the richest country in the world, I’m there. But I’d also remember why I swam swollen rivers, braved bandits and rapists, trudged across burning deserts, and crawled through rat-infested tunnels to get out of that shithole in the first place, and except for the food, I’d leave the rest of the shit behind. I live in Tucson, Arizona and I know illegals. Most of them are proud of their heritage, just not proud enough to go back to it. I am as conflicted as they are. As a citizen of the planet, I know that in the past US policies have helped oppress poor people in other countries, so we are to a great extent responsible for the immigration problem. As an American worker, I don’t want a lot of cheap foreign labor flooding the labor market and helping conservative US governments create a 2-class feudal system of the very poor working for the very wealthy. In the end for me, what it comes down to is that no country can endure without controlling its borders, and the fact that the United States is not controlling its southern border is a death knell for the US as we know it. No problem there for the wealthy elite. Being rich, patron types is what they had in mind all along. Big problem for everybody else. We already see serious shrinkage in the size of our middle class. I can live with one more amnesty. Once again, we liberals will just have to make up ground lost to imported conservatives, and eventually gay marriage and a woman’s right to choose will be irrevocably recognized. The US can survive with one more amnesty, but it’s time to take back control of our borders. If the politicians in Washington can’t show real gains toward controlling our borders by the next mid-term election, the voters should kick them out of office, and after this next amnesty, any new illegal immigrants should be kicked out of this country. |
| ... And suddenly it occurred to him that he had to push her off the cliff and watch as she fell... head first?... feet first?... end over end, arms flailing, and screaming like a Banshee?... until she struck the rocks below with such skull-cracking force that her brains would fall out and free her inner consciousness to rise upward and illuminate him like a fart filling up a room; and he would finally know if she had ever really loved him. Except there was no room because they were outside, and even if she did fart at the end of her fall, the wind would blow it away before it reached him. And suddenly it occurred to him that spelled backwards and pronounced phonetically, fall was laf. Unless he did that funny thing the Spanish do with the two 'l's the beginning of a word, in which case, it be yaf. But they weren't in Spain, and she wasn't Spanish, and neither was he. So, yes, she would laugh at him, even as she plummeted toward that last sickening thud. And suddenly it occurred to him that if he replaced the 'h' with an 's', thud spelled backwards is dust. Ashes to ashes? Dust to dust? But there were big waves crashing over the rocks and waves are made of water, so how could there be ashes or dust, which meant that she might live. And suddenly it occurred to him that live spelled backwards is evil, and if she lived to get medieval on his ass, the situation could become grave, and all because the acceleration due to gravity, 32 feet per second square or 9.8 meters per second square, if they had been in Spain, which uses the metric system, might not be enough to send her to her grave with the waves crashing over the rocks. And suddenly it occurred to him that if he replaced the 'v' with a 'd', over spelled backwards is redo. But of one thing he really was certain; if he really pushed her, he might never really know if she had really loved him, but if she had really loved him, then for their love, it really would be… THE END At this year’s Pima Writer Workshop, this was my entry into the contest for the ending to the worst story ever written. I got second place. |
| Abortion is nothing but a non-issue “issue” fabricated by the wealthy elite for keeping their Christian, fundamentalist stooges frothing at the mouth with political support and attacking anyone with some sense like a bunch of rabid dogs, thus allowing a privileged few at the top of the economic food chain to plunder the wealth of the American people. No level of government has any compelling reason for intruding into the reproductive processes of any individual woman. The closest thing the Pro-Life bowel movement has for a compelling reason is the argument that a fetus is a human being. So? Who cares? This country is, as I write this, dropping bombs on people who are unquestionably human beings and blowing them into much tinier pieces than any aborted fetus because we have decided that it is in our best interest to do so. Abortion is like bombing, except on an individual or micro level rather than a macro level. If there is a core issue here, the issue is not whether a fetus is a human being, but whether a woman has sovereignty over her own body. The fact that a woman has a baby growing inside her neither helps nor harms society. The fact that a woman aborts the baby growing inside her neither helps nor harms society. An unborn fetus is not by any stretch of the imagination a member of society. It is a citizen only of its mother’s womb, and if she wants to execute it: Well, see ya. Wouldn’t wanna be ya. That is what it means to be sovereign over yourself. Unfortunately all the Uncle Tom women in this country, who like being controlled by men, have obscured the fact that whatever goes on inside a woman’s body is nobody else’s goddamned business. I don’t care about the butt-sucking bitches of Pro-Life. If they want to be slaves, let them. But like crabs in a bucket, these women insist on dragging all women into reproductive involuntary servitude. Last time I checked, the 13th Amendment to The Constitution bans slavery except as punishment for a crime. Is fucking a crime now, because a woman is a slave to an unborn fetus? In fact, a fetus is the dictionary-picture definition of a complete parasite. Forcing a woman to carry a fetus when she doesn’t want to sounds, to me, like the very definition of slavery. There’s not even a compelling religious argument against abortion. At least not for Christians. Jesus Christ didn’t say anything about abortion, and even if he had, there is no such thing as a Christian country. According to the gospel of Luke, no such thing is possible on Earth. These Satanists, doing business as fundamentalist Christians, are doing what followers of the devil do and deceiving people. At this point, I have to say that while I support a woman’s right to an abortion, I am not an advocate for abortions. I am for doing everything we can as a society and a nation to encourage women to have their babies. But I am for positive reinforcement, not negative reinforcement, and I don’t even want the positive reinforcement done in the name of preventing abortions. Why can’t we have a national healthcare system, so a woman can afford to care for her baby properly? Why don’t we have free higher education, so a woman can still achieve her aspirations, even with a baby? Why don’t we have free daycare, so a woman can pursue her career, even with a baby? Why can’t we create a system where it’s in a woman’s INTEREST to choose life? Hell, we want to force a woman to give birth, but we won’t even force a deadbeat dad to pay up after she gives birth. When I look at the partial list above of what needs doing, the items look like LIBERAL initiatives rather than conservative initiatives. Pro-Life, anti-abortion conservatives will never have the money for making the sort of efforts that I list because that would be funneling the earnings of the American worker back to the people who earned it. Yet these same “Pro-Life”, anti-abortion conservatives will always have money for another bomb or another aircraft carrier or agriculture subsidies or any other rip off that funnels money away from the people who earned it. |
| It's time for my mid-life crisis, and any decent mid-life crisis involves having an affair. But cheating on my SO would leave me awash in guilt, and since I can't stand feeling guilty or having my SO angry with me, an affair is out of the question. It seems I’ve worked hard for four decades only to be denied my mid-life crisis. I feel violated. What I need is a guilt-free affair, so thank goodness for the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Since women make up over 50% of the population, we could use another three or four women on The Court, and once the ball gets rolling, maybe we’ll see an increase in the percentage of women for other important fields as well. I would like to see a lot more female doctors. My only hope is the fact that anything untoward occurring in a doctor’s office is automatically the doctor’s fault. Any time a doctor’s smock or frock or whatever that little overcoat they wear is called, is unbuttoned even one button, the doctor, and the doctor alone, is to blame for any funny business. I see it all the time on those lawyer TV shows. The lawyer asks the doctor, “Was your smock unbuttoned?” and the doctor answers in the affirmative and the courtroom gasps in horror! Then the lawyer asks the alleged victim how they were dressed, and the alleged victim says, “I was butt naked.” and the courtroom coos in sympathy. So if I had a female doctor, I could have an affair with her, and it would be all her fault. After my mid-life crisis was over, just to clear my conscience before going into my dotage, I could tell my significant other about the affair, and she would be like, “Oh, you poor sweet baby. You didn’t do anything wrong… I'LL KILL THAT STETHOSCOPE-WEARING BITCH!” Except that all the female doctors are taken. So many other middle-aged men have already had my idea that it’s not even worth getting on the waiting list for a woman M.D. I’m hoping getting women properly represented on the Supreme Court will be just the impetus that motivates women to increase their representation among M.D.s as well. All those new (and young and nubile) female doctors will probably come on line too late to help me, but at least future mid-life crisis'ers may benefit. |
| I know I'm a little too shrill when it comes to conservatives, but I'm in a bad mood lately because of the beating The Constitution of The United States of America is taking at the hands of Dick Cheney. While he was vice president, Cheney championed the water boarding of captured Al Qaeda. He claims he felt that it was the right thing to do because his goal was to “keep us safe”. I’ve seen this felt-like-the-right-thing-to-do defense in action before. It used to be really big in The South: • The prosecution: “Gee, why did you torture and murder Emmett Till, an innocent, teenaged boy?” • The witness: “Well, he whistled at a white woman, so it seemed like the right thing to do.” • The jury: “Oh well, you can go home then.” Where in The Constitution does it say anything about keeping us safe? In its preamble, one of the six reasons listed for ordaining and establishing The Constitution is to “Provide for the common defense”. That is the closest thing I can find to “keep us safe”. The preamble is the mission statement for The Constitution. The rest of the document explains how the government is organized and what it can and cannot do to achieve the mission set forth in the preamble. Amendment 8 of The Bill of Rights explicitly prohibits inflicting cruel and unusual punishment on anyone for the purpose of accomplishing the mission set forth in the preamble. So Cheney, assuming that we’re stupid, and probably assuming correctly in the case of conservatives, substitutes phrases, like “keep us safe” and “enhanced interrogation techniques” that don’t appear in The Constitution. I don’t see how any one who isn’t an idiot, evil, or an evil idiot can make a case that water boarding isn’t cruel and unusual punishment. According to the highest law of the land, it is illegal to water board people to provide for the common defense, to secure the blessings of liberty, to keep us safe, or just to make the bad guys pee. Water boarding is illegal. Period. Full stop. There are no ifs, ands, buts, or maybes. No legal “opinion” can change that. Vice President Dick Cheney and his cohort, including President Bush, attacked and undermined the very constitution they swore on The Bible to defend. Instead of supporting of supporting The Constitution, the conservative minions, like the little fascist wannabes they are, support Cheney. That is why liberals must insist that the miscreants who wrote those phony and un-American legal opinions, who approved torture, who just followed orders and tortured other human beings, and who tried to cover up the crime of torture are brought to justice and punished for their crimes no matter how loathsome Al Qaeda terrorists are. I too raised my right hand and swore to defend The Constitution. There are those of us who are true to highest law of the land and those who shit on it every time something bad happens. My one huge disappointment with President Obama, who put his hand on The Bible, is that he doesn’t have the balls to be true to his oath. There are distinct sides here, and it’s time to pick one. Many liberals have already made the truly patriotic choice. Unfortunately I don’t think we’ll find many conservatives who'll stand up, other than the 2nd Amendment, for The Constitution. |
| Hey! I’m back. I’m shouldn’t be here because I had decided on leaving blogging until I got a novel published. I haven’t gotten the novel published yet, but I can’t take any more of these dung-diving conservatives and their ridiculous crap. Somebody needs to say something. You see, I’m a liberal, a card-carrying, dyed-in-the-wool, unapologetic, if-you’re-a-conservative-you-can-kiss-my-ass-twice! liberal in the tradition of other famous liberals like Jesus Christ, Gautama, and Thomas Jefferson. OK, I know that these days, Mohammed kind of blows, but 1500 years ago, even he was liberal for his time. Liberals have something worthwhile to say, so why can’t I turn on the TV, just to see what Obama’s up to, without being deluged with diatribes from the likes of Dick Cheney, Rush Linbaugh, Ann Coulter, and John Boehner. …As an aside, you ever notice how straight-as-a-rod Ann Coulter looks like a dick, while Rush Linbaugh looks like a big old, shaved pussy. Maybe if we could get these two together, they’d leave the rest of us alone… Since liberals are supposed to be tolerant, I have tried being tolerant of conservatives because they’re stupid. A person can’t help it if they’re stupid. Most stupid people are born that way. But there is no excuse for being ignorant, and what conservatives don’t know would fill up almost all the books ever written. In fact, what conservatives don’t know is already filling up almost every book ever written, except those written by Ann Coulter and Rush Linbaugh. The real reason right-wing, fundamentalist assholes have gotten on my last damned nerve is that they are willfully ignorant, meaning they don’t want to know the truth about anything. I guess they’re afraid of truth, which makes sense. People fear what they don’t know. I’ve checked out other liberal blogs on the net and these blogs speak to the issues, but they try to be nice. Now just listen to your average conservative radio talk show host. Do they sound like somebody who understands nice? Of course not! We liberals need to put a toe tag on nice and start getting verbally medieval on their asses. And that’s exactly what I intend on doing. |
| I don’t celebrate Halloween, and I really resent having to coach people on how to look classy instead of nerdy on Halloween. I try to deal with Halloween and Christmas the same way: ignore them(although I do love Xmas music), but it’s hard to ignore Halloween when I’m at work, and grinning people keep running up to me going, “Look at me! Look at me!” A few pointers are in order. There is a big difference between a costume and a uniform. I see a person walking around in army fatigues and I think boring. Who doesn’t wear fatigues? Now, if the person had been wearing fatigues with a big piece of shrapnel sticking out of the side of their neck and crepe paper blood flowing down, that would have been a Halloween costume. I saw woman dressed as a nun—Boring! But then I saw that she had five kids in tow—Good costume! Also, if the uniform is obsolete, then it’s a costume. Bismarck is good, Schwarzkopf is bad. Vampires, ghosts, ghouls, etc… are always proper for Halloween, but these costumes have become clichés. You need to accessorize, and no cute witches either. If you want to look cute, be an angel or a fairy or something, not a witch. But what do I know? I can't see any reason for Halloween except to make money. for retailers. |
| For the last couple of years or so, in magazines such as “Popular Science”, I’ve been reading articles about the decline in the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field. I never take science seriously until I see it on Nova. Yesterday I saw an episode of Nova in which scientists said the Earth’s magnetic field is going to go away. It’s time to panic! The magnetic field is important. It’s like an invisible security blanket that protects us from all the invisible bad stuff bouncing around in space. I don’t want to get hit by a lot of invisible space junk. And that’s not all. The magnetic field is waning in strength because it’s going to flip. That’s right! North will be south. The Northern Lights will be at the bottom of the world. Cows will quack and ducks will moo. If you think people go crazy under a full moon, you haven’t seen anything yet. Fortunately for me, I’ll be dead before it happens, but maybe this is just the beginning. Maybe the Earth is striking back. Maybe the Earth will be nice to us if we stop tearing everything up and breeding like asteroids… Naaaah! |
| Having the perfect life spoiled me. Now I have annoyances that loom all out of porportion because everything was so perfect until THEY--the Bombastic Brit's kids and their kids--came to live with us. Having a bunch of people in my house is like seeing a ding on my car. The car stills runs fine, but every time I get out of it, my eye is drawn to this insignificant mark that only I can see because I know it's there. I'm getting irritated on a daily basis and I don''t get irritated. So, I've decided to take extreme measures. I going to build a shed in my backyard and use it as a den. I've already picked out a nice, fancy one that looks like a little cottage. After the Bombastic Brit's crew clears out, I'll move back into my old den. When I'm pissed off, I find it theraputic to buy stuff. I fugure buying a shed and all the tools I'll need to put it up ought to just about heal my troubled soul. I'll have to dig up part of BB's garden to set the shed up too. Now I'm being mean, but I figure I've earned it. How deliciously evil. I feel better already! |
| In the days long before the bombastic Brit, I had a favorite little diner. I used to eat breakfast there. If I had been desperate, I could have eaten lunch and dinner there too. My greasy spoon of choice was much like Mel’s Diner from the TV sitcom “Alice”. Except maybe Mel’s was nicer. After a while, the waitresses kind of adopted me. I tipped well and after a little while longer, I had my own table and the attention of the cute waitress who’s table it was. If I skipped a few days, she would scold me like a wife scolding a husband who’s stayed out all night and comes home drunk. Well, maybe she wouldn't scold that bad. I, of course, loved it. She would ask me where I’d been, and I would tell her about my business trip, and she would tell me about her troubled life and how she was so ready for something better, and how she’d like to go somewhere too. (I just went to Denver and Albuquerque for my job. Go figure.) My interaction with the waitress was almost like being married, except my relationship was with the diner and not with her. At that, of course, was the beauty of it. I am selfish and self-centered, and I’m totally OK with that. If it weren’t for the sex thing, I’d go as far as to say that I’m totally self-sufficient. That wouldn’t be true, but I’d go as far as to say it anyway. The problem is that, as every regular guy knows, in a real relationship, selfish and self-centered are a recipe for disaster. It was a good feeling to command the attention of women, but I certainly didn’t want a disaster, and these little safe environments, where women barely on the periphery of my life could fuss and gush over me, was the almost perfect solution. It was only an almost perfect solution because there was still that relentless sex thing, so I still had to go out on dates. Unlike your diner waitress, you never know what the amour du jour has on her plate. Tiresome and iffy business, dating. And it affects your judgment. One day, or to be honest about it, one night, I decided to enter into a serious relationship with a woman and I never went back to the diner again, but I still think about the place. They used to do my eggs and pancakes just right. I love a woman in uniform, especially those little waitress outfits, and not only did all the waitresses wear such a uniform, but she knew just when I needed my coffee topped off. For forty five minutes to an hour, she was as attentive as any spouse. All of that for the price of a meal and a tip. Some people say that dog is man’s best friend? For a married man, that may well be the case, but a single man’s best friend is his diner. |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
