Long ago and far away, when animals could talk (and a pleasure it is to start a diary that way), there were tiger stories and lemur stories and coyote stories; really good stories; and of course we keep telling those stories. But when we paved and burned and ate the places tiger and lemur and coyote lived, no one saw them anymore, or not as much, and so fewer of their stories were remembered; indeed their story became all about the sentiment of loss. “It is sad about the tigers” people say; and so they should; but this is a shade before, right at the twilight of wild things.
August 2008 archive
Aug 03 2008
The Weapon of Young Gods #30: The Bait and The Switch
I check out of the emergency room early Monday morning, just short of forty-eight hours after blundering into the savage beating that had blown my weekend apart in a frenzy of shame. So much had happened between then and now, but so little of it had penetrated my battered body or wretched state of mind, and simply trying to process everything is now taking up most of my mental power as I limp through the hospital’s massive, hectic waiting room. It’s full of other people’s pain and boredom, but I’ve had too much of both of those things in the past two days to bother with any empathy. I shuffle past the automatic doors toward a bath of impossibly bright sunshine, and the low hum of surrounding commotion inside gives way to the more diluted static outside.
I put some distance between me and the entrance, slumping on a bench fifty feet from the doors. It’s a little warm and my bandages begin to itch as I sweat through them, but I just add that to the massive catalogue of small annoyances that I’ll have to endure before the wounds heal. I resist a temptation to rip the fresh gauze off my face, and am just beginning to sink beneath the haze of muffled aches and pains when an old Datsun pickup suddenly lurches into the loading zone in front of me and rumbles to a halt. The passenger door swings open and a tired, exasperated female voice says “You’re up and out earlier than I thought. Come on Derek, get in. I’ll take you home.” Lisa lifts her eyebrows expectantly, patting the seat with her thin hands, probably hoping that I will yet again be too much of a sucker to not take the bait.
Aug 03 2008
gotta write
Doesn’t happen often anymore, but there have always been times when “things” start to overflow, when life just gets too full, when the psychic levees and dikes that I’ve built and maintained over 50-odd (some, very odd) years simply aren’t going to hold. Y’all welcomed me here….so you asked for it.
Aug 03 2008
Is Barack Obama an Alternative for U.S. Workers?
Original article by Shane Jones via Socialist Appeal.
After years of Bush’s open-ended war on working people at home and abroad, many on the “left” are desperate for an alternative. For many, that alternative is Barack Obama, a Democratic Senator from Illinois. Obama, who is very careful with his words and actions, has done a good job so far of portraying himself as a “sensible progressive”. However, far from being a “progressive” alternative, Obama is at his core a typical representative of the bosses’ political parties. Despite presenting himself as a candidate of “change”, Obama is a defender of capitalism and imperialism, and hence of exploitation and oppression. On all fundamentals, he is far closer to Bush than he is to being a genuine alternative for working people.
Aug 03 2008
Pony Party: Pictures
It is hot and I am lazy beyond belief. I took these pictures one morning while walking the dog in one of the upscale older neighborhoods in Memphis.
Oh. And somebody tell Rusty I was all set to hop on a plane and visit him until I did further investigation of the weather this week in ND and found out it is almost as hot and humid as in my part of the world. It is/was 86 in Bismarck.
Aug 03 2008
“The Investigation”
I was reading Cassiodorus’s Through the Looking Glass on Abrupt Climate Change, which is quite a good read, and realized that this was the third time this week that I’d seen that same quote he uses from Humpty Dumpty.
The other two citations, which I have no idea where they are, were both in the context of the Obama/Mcbush mashup this past week. The English language has been sorely abused these last eight years, by politicians and the traditional media, and I expect things will only get worse as the campaign season runs on.
Some years ago I used that same quote from Lewis Carroll as an epigraph to a short story. I’d like to share “The Investigation” with you now, so…
Hop in a barrel and follow me over the fa-a-a-a-alls……
Aug 03 2008
If you’re going through hell, keep going……
……but stop by here for a drink along the way. Bar’s open. But check your weapons at the door, your permit’s no good in here.
(“This little one isn’t worth the effort. Come, let me get you something……”
“……No blasters! NO BLASTERS!!!!!”)
Kalidasa:
Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the
Verities and Realities of your Existence.
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And To-morrow is only a Vision;
But To-day well lived makes
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!
Smile, or I’ll put an ice cube down the back of your shirt….or down the front if ye be a fetching lass with a nice rack. 🙂
And join me below the fold.
Aug 02 2008
Weekend News Digest
Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread
| From Yahoo News Top Stories |
1 Mine hits bus with Afghan wedding party; 10 die
By NOOR KHAN, Associated Press Writer
10 minutes ago
| KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – A road mine blasted a bus carrying a wedding party in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, killing 10 civilians, a police official said.
Provincial police chief Matiullah Khan blamed Taliban militants for planting the explosive in Spin Boldak district of the southern Kandahar province. Khan said the bride and groom were among the dead, but an AP Television News cameraman later interviewed the relatives of a wounded, unconscious man who was said to be the groom. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the accounts late Saturday. |
Aug 02 2008
MassHealth,the nightmare continues…
(crossposted from t3h GOS)
When my family moved to Fall River Massachusetts in October we thought we were really into something. The health care laws requiring everyone to have coverage seemed like a dream come true. Our son would have his ADHD medications,I would have the medications necessary to maintain my medical conditions…hell we would be all set. Ha! Boy were we wrong. More below the fold…
Aug 02 2008
All They’ve Got is Black
The (legitimate) knock on Obama throughout the primaries, and to a lesser extent now, is some variation on the theme that he is ‘vague.’ Bland. That there is no there there. That he tries to be all things to all people……
And now we can see why.
What policies and positions can the newest iteration of the most vicious political attack machine in modern political history attack Obama on? Especially now that Maliki has endorsed his Iraq position, stealing the only real issue McCain had?
For ANY candidate to go up against the smears, swiftboating and dog-whistles of the Republicans dirty, dirty politics of personal attack would have been tough. Whoever ran was either going to have to attack (like Edwards tried to do) or ‘go bland,’ as Obama has done, and try to neutralize the Republican slime machine by not giving it anything solid to swing at.
Obama’s strategy of aggressive blandness, while still being able to outline (instead of explicitly delineating) his barely left of center policies leaves them with virtually nothing meaningful to attack him on.
Aug 02 2008
Rape in the Military:
No commentary need be added, the below speaks for itself, and more can be found if interested.
Congress Charges Cover-Up
Aug 02 2008
God’s Mosquito
Ponder God’s Mosquito
Teaching Moment
Sucks blood for a living
But why leave an itch
Leading to its condemnation and
Ultimate Demise?