March 24, 2008 archive

Updated – On Tibet, and the LA Riots

I have lived through one city-wide riot in my life: Los Angeles, 1992. In Hollywood it wasn’t “ground zero”, but you could see the rioters coming, block by block, up the long, straight road known as Normandie Ave.

Just as unpredictable as a wild fire caused by flinging a lit cigarette out of a car window, riots like this are nimble, incendiary events, fueled by the anger and frustration of a community that has simply had enough. Masses of people don’t take to the streets, destroying everything in their line of site, and senselessly looting stores like Fredericks of Hollywood just to get that last, remaining fuscia-colored sized 42DDD bra and matching leopard print thong, without some reason other than a hankering for cheesy women’s lingerie (and yes, plenty of these items ended up in tag sales countless weekends after the riots ended).

Something bigger is always at work…

Pony Party, Monday Madness

Docudharma Times Monday March 24



I’ve known no war

And if I ever do I won’t know for sure

Who’ll be fighting whom

Monday’s Headlines: Patients’ Data on Stolen Laptop: When Barry Became Barack: Fears of summer bombings as Eta steps up attacks: Protest fear as Greeks set Games in motion:  Peruvian leaders cry foul as Chávez exports healthcare: Ecuadorean death report confirmed: China accuses Dalai Lama of being a terrorist: Young commuter bloggers snatch Japan’s literary laurels:  Hamas and Fatah agree to hold talks: Endemol exec sent to Dubai jail after police find ‘speck of dirt’: Funeral costs rise as Zimbabwe elections loom for Robert Mugabe

A.P.’s Death Toll for Iraq War Reaches 4,000

BAGHDAD (AP) — A roadside bomb killed four U.S. soldiers in Baghdad on Sunday, the military said, pushing the overall American death toll in the five-year war to at least 4,000. The grim milestone came on a day when at least 61 people were killed across the country.

Rockets and mortars pounded the U.S.-protected Green Zone, underscoring the fragile security situation and the resilience of both Sunni and Shiite extremist groups despite an overall lull in violence.

The attacks on the Green Zone probably stemmed from rising tensions between rival Shiite groups and were the most sustained assault in months against the nerve center of the U.S. mission.

Wa, war her papa go to war.

He gonna fight but he don’t know what for.

Wa, war her papa go to war.

Her mama say one day he’s gonna come back from far away.

Muse in the Morning

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Muse in the Morning

The muses are ancient.  The inspirations for our stories were said to be born from them.  Muses of song and dance, or poetry and prose, of comedy and tragedy, of the inward and the outward.  In one version they are Calliope, Euterpe and Terpsichore, Erato and Clio, Thalia and Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Urania.

It has also been traditional to name a tenth muse.  Plato declared Sappho to be the tenth muse, the muse of women poets.  Others have been suggested throughout the centuries.  I don’t have a name for one, but I do think there should be a muse for the graphical arts.  And maybe there should be many more.

Please join us inside to celebrate our various muses…

4,000

No Comment just this report!

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1,191,216 Iraqi’s

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“…and say why not.”

“Blank document”. I recall older Word versions and I seem to think it used to be “New Document”. New is so much more positive than Blank.

I had an English teacher in high school, Teresa Brandon, who’d say “Go for the guts.” She was a rebel teacher who brought Dunkin Donuts to our early morning English Lit/Shakespeare class each Wednesday, in defiance of the “No food in class” rules. Beyond her exemplary teaching, she also had an extraordinary talent – she could neatly shove a billiard ball in her mouth without locking her jaw. These are skills that impress a high school junior.

You are forewarned: if you are not up for reading ramblings of a reminiscent, tangential and seemingly unrelated nature, please move to the next diary…;)

In honor of Ms. Brandon (though against her desire of clean, concise length), I’ll unashamedly go for the gut and dammit, I won’t apologize. And this is not purely a candidate diary.

That said…

(crossposted at Dailykos)

Got Eggs?

I should have known.

I’ve seen it many times.

Hell, I’ve swerved out of the way often enough that when I hit that turkey late one rainy afternoon I felt like I ran over an old acquaintance. Amazed at its heft, I moved the bird off the road and walked down the only driveway around.

Have you ever knocked on a stranger’s door to tell them you killed one of their animals? I did, and it’s not fun at all. The door was answered by an elderly couple who warily looked at my wet self through the glass door.

Not having the words, I just turned and pointed at the road.

They opened the door and I explained what happened and the man was quite stoic and muttered something about it being inevitable. I already suspected the bird was a pet and this was pretty much confirmed by the old woman. She looked like someone had just run over her…dog.

I was invited inside but I had this horrid feeling that I would see framed photographs of the couple along with their turkey. I apologized once again and offered to fetch the bird from the end of the driveway. They declined and I was relieved because I was not sure if I could carry it that distance in a dignified manor. I left feeling lousy.

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The brain works in strange ways. It was spring and the sun was shining and that always brings out the best of people in Oregon. I had completely forgotten about the turkey incident from weeks before and therefore was quite surprised when I found myself whipping into the Wilco feed store parking lot. If I was surprised, then my girlfriend Rhonda was a bit freaked. Did I hit something? Is it car trouble? “No,” I said, “I have to check something out. C’mon in,” I waved.

Behind us, out in the parking lot, the sign read Spring chicks! Turkeys!

It was like I was on a mission and knew exactly where to go; weaving through the isles at a brisk pace, Rhonda close behind. I could feel her getting ready to question when I suddenly stopped, turned, and pointed. How smart and purposeful I felt when I uttered that one word: “turkey.” Rhonda’s eyes followed to where my finger was pointing and asked, “what the …?”

That was a question I had a hard time answering.

My knowledge of turkeys was quite limited. Growing up within sight of the Boston skyline, I had made turkeys out of colored construction paper and paste, I had participated in many wonderful thanksgivings, and I knew the Wild kind made the bed spin. Beyond that? Ziltch. I only identified the turkey to which I was pointing by brilliantly deducing that it was bigger than a baby chicken (about twice).

There was a lot of activity around the other racks, all of which contained day-old chickens. Chickens! Who needs chickens? I just needed a turkey to give to that nice old couple. Price tag: $2.00.

I was hunched over, studying the small bird while waiting for a salesperson to free up. What’s wrong with these salespeople? Don’t they see that I am purposeful and ready to buy? Around me I keep catching bits of conversation about chickens. What a bunch of freaks, I thought. Do they gather at Wilco and just stand around talking about chickens?

Then I noticed the sign that read “FREE CLASS! The Care and Feeding of Chickens. Sunday, 1:00pm.”

Hmmm, 10 minutes. I turned to Rhonda and talked both of us into staying for the class because, after all, the old couple might not be home and we might end up having to care for a turkey for a day or two. I like to think she was trying to absorb these new events but I suspect she was contemplating the depth of my insanity. So either out of love, or fear, she agreed.

I thought it was mildly hokey that they had bails of hay for benches set up in the back of the store. I thought it was extremely hokey when the 25 or 30 people started to clap when the speaker came out. I mean, c’mon! It’s not like this guy wrote a book or anything.

My cynicism has a way of biting me in the ass. It turns out the book he wrote was a tome that documented about 2000 diseases that can afflict chickens. This was a man who was seriously concerned about the safety of our food supply.

He began with “Yep, this is the book”, while hefting the tome off a table. “This is the book none of you will ever have to buy unless you purchase your chickens by the millions.” (Laugh). “If you have a few chickens and let them run around and eat bugs in your yard, then you will more than likely never have a sick bird…”

Hey, this was going pretty good! He was dismissing worries I didn’t even know I had. I figured the same must hold true for a turkey, after all they taste similar.

Then Wilco did something truly evil.

Those bastards sent a couple of kids, presumably slave labor, around the room passing out paper bags that contained “One Free Chick, Compliments of Wilco.”

I didn’t see it coming and I’m sure that was the plan. Oh, yeah. Here’s your free chicken, and by the way it needs food and water and heat or it will die, killer.

Heat? Where the hell do I get heat? How much heat? It turns out they sell lamps that heat up baby chickens. Cost: $10.00.

What the hell do you feed a chicken? My guess was bread. Bzz, today is “you’re wrong” day. The feeding options for baby chickens are real simple. You feed them Chick Starter and they live, or you feed them nothing and they die. They are not picky; you can feed them Starter in the morning, and then Starter for lunch, and later, feed them some Starter for dinner. Or you can just put Starter in a dish that they can reach and let them eat whenever they want.

They also need water. Chickens like fresh water. They don’t need nearly as much water as, say, a horse but they appreciate it just as much.

I’ll give you one guess how I know all this about baby chickens. That’s right, I ended up leaving Wilco with:

6 Rhode Island Red sex-linked baby hens $6.00
1 baby Bronze turkey $2.00
1 Special heat lamp for poultry $10.00
25-lbs. Chick starter (turkeys love it!) $5.00
Total $23.00

Before you go running out and doing the same, there is something very important I have to tell you. It concerns turkeys and their survival. It is crucial that you understand that baby turkeys are very ugly. All of them. Mine was and yours will be too. They are hideous, and you will have to cultivate that paternal or maternal bond and resist the urge to put it out of its misery.

As they get older something incredible happens. Simultaneously, they get both uglier and shockingly beautiful. From the neck up they look like they had a real bad case of acne whose cure was attempted by dunking their heads in boiling water. Vivid, angry colors and wattles – that’s what their heads look like. But the rest of the turkey? Well that’s another story. A Bronze turkey, especially a Tom, has outrageous plumage. Sometimes I didn’t know where my turkey began, and where it left off.

The turkey never did get over to see that nice old couple. When you take care of something living, you become vested in it. That little turkey would respond when I talked to it and if I took it out of the box and held it in my hands, it would hop up onto my shoulder and then onto my head of curly hair where it would go right to sleep. Rhonda would look at me with that ugly little bird on my head and say “yep. It’s a definite improvement. I’d go with it.”

Rhonda cracks herself up all the time.

As the days went by I found out that when a turkey rubs his head on you that means he likes you. It’s good to have them like you because turkeys grow very large, very fast. My turkey was not aggressive but he did startle me sometimes. He had a thing for the rivets on my jeans and would occasionally try to remove them with his beak. It didn’t hurt but it would give you quite jump if you didn’t know he was behind you.

Another thing to know about turkeys is that they are monumentally stupid. My turkey was known to waste the better part of a day just staring at himself in the bumper of my truck. On Monday mornings I’d always find him out by the road sitting next to the bright blue garbage barrel. It was trash pickup day and my theory was that he thought the yard had moved out to the street because that’s where the bright blue thing was.

Alas, it was my stupidity that did him in. I work from home and sometimes I’d work late into the night and not get up until 10:00 or 11:00, which is too late to keep the birds cooped up. I got to leaving the door open on the small shed that I used for a coop. I was aware that predators like to sneak into chicken coops for a meal but I rationalized this by thinking that Turkey was big enough to scare anything off. The problem is, chickens and turkeys become very docile at night and can be handled quite easily. More than once I’ve had to pick a bird up after dark and carry it to the coop. This usually happens on nice evenings when the bugs are plentiful and there’s maybe a piece of watermelon to peck around the yard. Just as when we were children having fun in the summer, I think the dark just sneaks up on them.

Predators are a fact of life when owning animals. This is especially true of fowl because they taste so good. You like chicken, I like chicken, Mr. Raccoon likes chicken, Mr. Fox likes chicken, and I suspect one of my neighbors dogs likes chicken.

Which brings us back to chickens.

I told you that I purchased half a dozen Rhode Island Reds but actually I lied. I only thought I did. I’m going to be talking about cocks and sex-links but rest assured I am staying on subject. The Reds I got were actually sex-links. Don’t Google it because you will be getting chicks of a whole different kind – mostly without feathers. Sex-links are hybrid birds specifically bred for better performance and easy sex identification at hatch time. The males and females are either a different color or the feather patterns are different. This is important because, unbelievably, roosters don’t lay eggs.

The first few weeks after bringing home the birds was somewhat uneventful. I kept them in a large box on to which I clipped the heat lamp. I would have to regularly change the water and I would take them outside to run around so I could replace the lining in the box. Unlike Turkey, who learned to jump out of the box after a week, the chickens didn’t do much of anything. Not even grow much. At about week four, they decided to double in size in the span of an afternoon. At least that is what it seemed to me. I figured like all birds, they need to be helped out of the nest, so one last time I brought them outside and tipped the box over and away they ran.

I figured the chickens would follow Turkey around and look to it as their protector but just the opposite happened. As I said, turkeys are monumentally stupid and my turkey must have been impressed with the very busy agenda the chickens had. He would follow them around as they darted about the yard, always running, always with some purpose only known to them. I thought about strapping a proximity detector on two chickens, multiplying the resulting vectors together, and posting the answer on the Internet as a perfect random number generator, but I didn’t want to intrude on their affairs. For all I knew they would start to run in regular patterns and then I’d look like a real jerk.

Soon, I got to thinking, “where the hell are my eggs?” I gave them the benefit of the doubt for about another month but at this point I was buying chicken feed in 50 lb. sacks. Fifty pounds! It was the high-protein Starter mix and it cost $9.00, or about $3.00 more than regular feed.

I started to get pissed off at my lazy chickens. I bought them “surrogate eggs” if you can believe it. Fake eggs that are supposed to stimulate laying wherever you put them. I figured “stimulate”, hell, I’ll just show them the real deal, so I chased them around the yard with a frozen chicken completely naked. The chicken, that is; not me.

I had heard that weather can influence egg laying so I used that as an excuse to mention my egg laying problem to the cute little know-it-all smart-ass behind the counter at the feed store. Because I was buying starter she asked how old my birds were and I told her about 10 weeks. She gave me that your-an-idiot look I was getting used to and told me they start laying at 20 weeks.

I was obsessed! Week 20 was hell and I’m sure my behavior didn’t help my nervous chickens at all. I had built nests of straw everywhere around my yard. It was like something out of a nightmare. I figured “one more nest, that’s what they need!” So, of course, it was in a box of rags that I found the first egg. It was small, misshapen, and had two yolks! That little lady continued to lay double yolkers for months, each one bigger and more perfect than the last.

I had never had a fresh, free-ranged egg before and all I can say is I’ll never buy store eggs again. The yolks of store eggs look sickly and yellow compared to the bright orange ones I was getting. How many eggs was I getting? Five or six a day. Rhode Island Reds are known as prolific layers. They lay brown eggs. Rock hens are another great laying breed and they lay white eggs. Do you know what a male Rock chicken is called? That’s right: a Rock cock.

Speaking of roosters, chickens don’t need one to lay eggs. That’s right, no roosters. If I don’t need one, I won’t get one.

Life is tenacious. If you have chickens there is a great chance you will end up with a rooster. For me, it happened while I was looking at a horse to buy. I drove up to a farmhouse not far away and when I got out of the truck the strangest looking bird came running up to me, stuck out its chest, and belted out a loud cock-a-doodle-do. That bird cracked me up and I said so to the man that eventually sold me the horse.

Here is what I think happened: my chickens somehow made me convey to that rooster that they were alone. In turn, the rooster conveyed to his owner that he needed to be given to me because when that man delivered my horse, out came the rooster from the trailer. He said “I know you liked this guy, so here he is.” To the best of my recollection, I never mentioned owning chickens to him, so just giving someone a rooster is a strange thing to do.

Never name your chickens. They come and go, and too many look too much alike, so when the man told me the name of the rooster was Rock-a-Doodle I laughed because you could not find a more apt name for this bird. It looked just like a punk rocker. Polish chickens have an outrageous mop of feathers on top of their heads. This one was a Polish variation called a Top Hat Special, and he was special all right.

Roosters are loud, funny, and aggressive. I could carry Rock-a-Doodle around like a football at night, but forget about doing that in the day. It seems I was sporting fun for him in the morning before feeding them all. Hell, I got to where I’d carry a trash lid with me to bash that little bastard in the head. The have short memories so I’d have to bash him quite often.

If he wasn’t attacking me, he was trying to nail one of the hens. You don’t know what sex drive is until you’ve seen a rooster. They say you should have one rooster for every ten or so hens and I’ll testify.

You know how in the cartoons roosters are always portrayed as crowing when the sun comes up? Bullshit! Don’t believe everything you see in cartoons. How about 3:00am? How about 3:00am, 3:01am, and 3:07am? How about whenever they want and often enough that you completely get used to it. My neighbors did too – eventually.

The neighbors minded less when I started giving them cartons of fresh eggs. The cartons are the problem now, since I don’t buy eggs. My neighbors are good about bringing back the empty ones and of course they linger around long enough for me to fill them up again. My original six birds, those lovely ladies, were giving me 5 or 6 eggs a day and that adds up fast. Rhonda suggested we plop a sign out at the end of the driveway announcing a dozen eggs for $1.00, but I told her I didn’t want a bunch of egg-eating freaks crawling all over my property for the sake of a buck. It’s tough enough watching out for the neighbors.

How many eggs am I getting now? Today? Let me first tell you about some more BS that is being foisted upon us. At the beginning of this I mentioned buying a heat lamp and accessories to grow chickens. They (it’s always ‘they’) also were pitching an incubator as required goods to successfully hatch your own birds. Again, a big hardy Bullshit! I have to work at NOT hatching chickens because all that is needed are some fertilized eggs and a chicken to sit on them. Things in great supply in my back yard.

The work to NOT hatch eggs involves finding them. Chickens are sneaky! They will start laying eggs in a well hidden place and once they have enough, they will start setting. Even if not hidden all that well, they lie perfectly still and, I believe, assume other shapes such as a can of paint.

The very inspiration for this story is because, for the second time now, the morning feed was enjoyed by eleven new chirping balls of fuzz. Eleven!

Besides the Reds, I have acquired the odd other chicken here and there, and I do mean odd. I don’t know what these chicks are going to look like when they grow. One of my Frizzle hens was the one setting but that doesn’t mean she’s the one who layed them. They are very communal in that way.

The one thing I haven’t done yet is cook up a chicken. Rhonda is against the idea on the grounds that they live on our property and therefore are part of the family. Me? I don’t have anything against the idea on principle, I mean it’s just like fishing, right?

Oddly enough, I always catch and release when fishing in the river behind my house.

Anybody want some chickens? Anybody want some eggs?

Austin TX and The Million Musician March

Last Saturday, we met on the state capital stairs to enjoy some music and a little walk around town.

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“In four short years he has turned our country from a prosperous nation at peace into a desperately indebted nation at war. But so what? He is the President of the United States, and you’re not. Love it or leave it.” -Hunter S Thompson on George W. Bush

Writing Challenges and Figuring Out the Scene Cards

Thinking that it would drop kick me back into noveling action, I thought that I would step into the Book in a Month challenge set forward by Victoria Lynn Schmidt.

So off I went and joined the Yahoo e-group connected to the book (VBIAMClub), which seems to have garnered quite a number of members. While the current challenge is running from 15 March to 15 April, there appear to be any number of different challenges going on simultaneously. Or at least a couple seem to be couple different challenges going on…or starting.

4,000 and counting; Why we count casualties

It’s happened.  The American death toll in Iraq has reached 4,000.

Across the country, antiwar activists will mark that grim milestone with vigils, marches, and other actions.

When similar events marked the 3,000th American death, on New Year’s Eve of 2006, the right wing accused us of “celebrating” the death toll.

It is anything but a celebration, of course.

We will mark the 4,000th death because it is an opportunity to remind the American people of the price we are paying for an unjustified war that has entered its sixth year.  Unfortunately, although they continue to say overwhelmingly that the war was a mistake and should be dended, Americans have become numbed to the casualties, which have long ago slipped from the front page.

The Associated Press reports:

Fewer people know how many U.S. troops have died in the war in Iraq, even as public attention to the conflict has gradually diminished, a poll showed Wednesday.

Only 28 percent correctly said that about 4,000 Americans have died in the war, according to a survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

That’s down from last August, when 54 percent gave the accurate casualty figure, which was about 3,500 dead at the time. In previous Pew surveys dating to 2004, about half have correctly given the rough figure for the approximate number of deaths at the time.

In the new poll, around a third said about 3,000 U.S. troops have died while about one in 10 said 2,000 deaths. Fewer overestimated the number of casualties: about a quarter put the figure close to 5,000.

The 4,000 figure, of course, is just the tip of the iceberg.  To many Americans, some deaths — those of Americans — count more than others.  And some don’t count at all.

The 4,000th coalition death was recorded last August, but went largely unreported. That includes deaths of troops from 20 US allies, most of which have small numbers there.

If you’re only concerned about American casualties, nearly 30,000 have been wounded. Many will never heal.  Their lives have been permanently destroyed — physically, emotionally, psychologically, or some combination of the three. They are brain-damaged, missing limbs and other body parts, scarred internally and externally. Those veterans, their families, our society, our country and its taxpayers will bear the costs of their injuries for the next 60 years or more, just as we continue to pay every day for Vietnam.  

Every day our troops remain there, it is guaranteed that more of them will be permanently damaged. If you have a strong stomach, a photo essay in the New England Journal of Medicine will give you a taste of what kind of casualties and injuries are being treated.  It’s not pretty.

How many Iraqis have been killed or wounded?  We don’t seem to have the foggiest idea.  Estimates range from 100,000 to more than a million, including military and civilian fatalities.

Another 4 million Iraqis have been driven from their homes, half having fled the country as refugees and the other have displaced within their own nation.

But none of those Iraqi numbers seem to count.  After all, the President says we’re there to do them a favor and bring them freedom — if they live to see it.

As we mark the 4,000th American death in Iraq, the war hawks will no doubt drag these numbers out again, revisiting the arguments from Death Number 3000, and remind us that there were 58,000 Americans killed in the Vietnam War, 36,000 in the Korean War, 405,000 in World War II and 116,000 in World War I.

So what’s the problem with 4,000?  Hardly worth mentioning, right?

That argument baffles me.

If you use use a false premise to launch an unjustified invasion, one death is too many.

Hundreds of thousands on both sides is inexcusable.  Some would say criminal.

 

4000

4000 of our brothers and sisters in uniform.

100,000 of our brother and sisters in Iraq.

Always remember.  

Apocalypse 2012!

or The Really Real Reason Why ’08 Is the Most Important Election Ever

I’ve been around this big orange block long enough to know that writing a conspiracy-theory diary ain’t a real good idea if you’re not hungry for donuts, but some things…well, they may be out on the edge of non-paranoid discourse, but don’t really fall under the category of “conspiracy.”  I’ve scoured the FAQ for any mention of “prophecy,” for example, and have found neither reference nor prohibition.  That makes me glad, because it’s to the arcane world of divination that I must now turn: it falls to me, it seems – your resident historioranter-cum-Cassandra – to alert our community to the most important hitherto-unmentioned aspect of the job facing whoever is elected in November.

The person we place in the White House this year will be the one sitting there, either as a lame duck or a president-re-elect, on December 21st, 2012.  This has special significance, since a great many prophecies seem to converge on that particular day – it’s been slated to be the End of the World by seers from Ancient Mexico to Renaissance France.

In short, the next President will be in office when life as we know it comes to an end.

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