Boo!

Watch it, there's a black cat crossing your path!



Note the Hallowe'eny socks. I was able to turn the camera around a bit to get this shot:



Happy 14th birthday, Datsa!

Blogosphere Blackface

Um, Billmon? I don't think it's an either/or. You can fight against racism in real life and decry it online as well, in the same way - as a lot of feminist comics readers have pointed out repeatedly - condemning sexism in various forms of entertainment doesn't mean you aren't also working against sexism in everyday life. My general rule is, if you Photoshop blackface or a burqa or whatever and people on "your side" protest, if your initial reaction to that protest is to be knee-jerk defensive about it instead of apologizing and/or explaining your reasoning, then you probably shouldn't be doing it. Update: MB has added to her original post addressing Billmon, and Mr. "Should I Use Blackface On My Blog?" himself, Gary/E. Bog Johnson, weighs in as well, as Sunrunner informs us in his comment attached to this very thread - both have now been added to my regular reading list...

Scary American Grammar

It's frightening when an otherwise erudite writer posts something like "Charles the II." It's either Charles II or Charles the Second, but I can't think of an instance where the latter would be written rather than verbal.

And it drives me batty when people refer to a knighted celebrity by their last name, like "Sir Geldof" or whatever. It's "Title [then] First Name," not "Title [then] Last Name."

I know Americans are more ignorant than much of the rest of the world, and I've been enough liberal blogs bemoan the "dumbing down" of this and that, so it really behooves us not to revel in this kind of easily-rectified error.

Silly Site o' the Day

Happy Hallowe'en, and happy 14th birthday to our cat Datsa! Via Will Pfeifer, cartoonist Jay Stephens has a blog devoted to Cute Creeps From Popular Culture, which definitely sounds cool and appropriate enough to be today's Silly Site.

Silly Site o' the Day

Starting physical therapy tomorrow on the ankle (both ankles, I hope, as I think they could both use strengthening), and got a thumbs-up from the orthopedist who basically agrees with everything I've been doing, including gradual weaning from the air cast. Nice to have my instincts confirmed by a professional. Boss in, so can't blog much. Can you believe Hallowe'en (which we celebrate as Datsa's birthday, he'll be 14 this year) is almost here? The uncharacteristically balmy weather the next few days really seems to indicate otherwise. I'm looking forward to organizing the all-ages comics on our bottom indoor steps for the few kids who actually find our house and open the front door downstairs. But I haven't made the "Hey kids, free comics" sign yet, nor have I yet carved my cyber-pumpkin (via Maru). Oh well, at least I organized my comics reading, and this week I hope to finally crack the cover on the sixth Harry Potter book...

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 10/22 thru 10/28/06

Hey, enjoy the "early" switch to standard time while it lasts (via Nicole)! It looks to be gorgeous outside today, but I still haven't decided if the continued wind gusts will keep me from my last real chance at a foliage '06 trip, which we've decided is (was?) going to be the Merritt Turnpike up to Trumbull, CT just for the heck of it. I think I want to at least make the attempt; I felt something kind of shift in my ankle when I was doing the dishes on Friday night, I had the air cast off all day yesterday as we didn't go out in the horrid weather, and the area's still sore but I'm putting full weight on both legs now so I want to try doing some out-of-the-house walking, cramps permitting. Robin's catching up on more sleep at present, having been up a bit in the night, so in the meantime I'm keeping up on my blog reading and Liberal Coalition blogaround:

• Happy belated blogiversaries to Bryant (four years) and Chris (three years)! Great to see so much longevity among the LC contingent.

• Bora was interviewed along with a bunch of other science bloggers.

• Charles2 reminds us how safe we still aren't under Republican rule.

• Echidne has more thoughts about false balance, or "equivalating" as Justin puts it (see my post from yesterday), and updates us on the French government's family subsidy policies.

• Jeff details the latest biblical battle in Bozeman, and Kenneth doesn't like people telling him they're praying for him as he considers it proselytizing. This brings to mind a continuing discussion I'm having with Robin, who believes that freedom of religion doesn't include freedom from religion, and therefore taking offense at someone's genuine desire to intercede with their god on your behalf is a form of free speech infringement. Of course I believe that "freedom of" does imply "freedom from," and admit I've often reacted quite rudely to strangers coming up to me on the street with a burning need to inform me that "Jesus loves you," and so far neither of us has managed to convince the other of our positions.

• John talks about what could be the oldest surviving human footprints in this hemisphere.

• Lots of great photo essays from LC members this week - I highly recommend Jude's pictorial of Clinton in Syracuse, Michael's views of Minneapolis, and NTodd's walk in the rain and particularly the celebration after Kayla's homecoming.

• Keith submits some suggestions for six-letter stories, but they sound more like headlines to me.

• Mustang Bobby live-blogged the Florida senate debate, and yawned afterward.

• Natalie passes along the sad news that Phil Lesh has prostate cancer.

• Scott has a confession - he actually loved an SUV, and was astounded by how fast he didn't realize he was going. This goes a long way toward explaining a lot of folks on the road nowadays; many of them probably have no idea how dangerously fast they're driving because they can't feel it in those gas-guzzling monsters.

• Scrutiny Hooligans pass along the announcement of a new Tolkein-authored publication.

• Steve B brings us an old wax cylinder recording of Walt Whitman, who had a very nice voice, reading one of his poems.

• Steve G examines the atmosphere around Cloud Cuckoo Land.

A few more recommended links from outside of the LC:

• Ken Jennings meets Dave Sim.

• Pam Noles couldn't believe it when an otherwise-hip LA audience turned on Eddie Izzard.

• Chicago dyke alerts us to the death of not only habeaus corpus but the Posse Comitatus Act - I had no idea the President now had the discretion to declare a “public emergency” any damn place in this country (and for any pretext) he feels like, and to station troops there take control of National Guard units without the consent or permission of any local authorities, in order to “suppress public disorder.” It's all in Section 1076, if you want to do a page search on the full text (also available as a PDF). Be afraid, be very afraid.

• More from Chris about Zeke. Hits those tear ducts every time.

Well, time to wake Robin and get that air cast on!

Silly Site o' the Day

My internal clock is a little screwed up, between the time change and That Time Of The Yadda Yadda, so I may as well be a little productive before returning to bed. As Bob Harris says, heed the wombat as it passes along a message worth remembering.

Just in Case...

...Blogger is still bloggered, as it was for awhile this morning, I'm using Firefox's Performacing add-on to write and save this link-heavy post:

• Justin would like, Colbert-style, to coin the term equivalating, to describe the habit the mainstream corporate media has of ascribing false equivalence to Republican crimes and Democratic misdeeds. Just as murder isn't the same as jaywalking even though they're both technically illegal, saying "a guy like Rush Limbaugh is every bit as bad as all those Democrats who went out to Las Vegas to kiss the ring of the Daily Kos" serves not only to needlessly inflate Markos' cult-of-personality but to downplay both Limbaugh's influence and his actual words of hatred (in this case, his misinformed tirade against Parkinson's sufferer Michael J. Fox because Fox did ads supporting Democrats this time even though he's supported Republicans in the past). Hilzoy has another good example, the pre-emptive strike that predicts "the left will likely unleash its garbage" even though (1) the "left", such as it is (and by "the left" the far-right actually means "the center" or possibly "liberals" or "Democrats" who are hardly leftists), can't even get a Dixie Chicks movie preview about censorship to run on NBC and CW; (2) Democrats' ads tend to attack opponents' political positions and actions rather than smearing their personal lives; and (3) there's no evidence that "garbage" will ever appear, it's just a made-up prediction! Because if you're looking at the world from a radical regressive viewpoint, you know you're sleazy so you naturally assume everyone else is. Billmon has more, in a lovely essay about the current state of the mainstream corporate media. I wish someone with more time and energy than me would start a clearinghouse site listing all the examples of equivalation the Republican-owned media and pundits have foisted upon us in the past half dozen years.

• I should also mention Justin has a nice review of Julia Sweeney's new show, which I'd love to have on CD.

• Kai mentioned how much he hated "yellowface" "chinky" music, which doesn't sound like any actual Chinese music he knows, so I asked him to provide examples of authentic Chinese music and he obliged. I think I've heard the first two before, and they're pretty much what springs to my mind when I think of Chinese music, so I'm glad I was right. He has another good post up about liberal hypocrisy when it comes to racism. Forgive me if I'm engaging in equivalation, but we have no moral high ground from which to criticize the "other side" when we can't even acknowledge our own shortcomings in this area. (And yes, in a way this is still about the all-white-blogger luncheon with Clinton in Harlem; if other folks can still discuss the feminism aspect of it vis a vis Amanda's burqa Photoshopping, I can still wonder what would have happened if someone had done a Photoshop blackfacing of the Firedoglake bloggers.)

• That said, the lefty blogosphere is pretty darn cool when they want to be, and they've generated much happiness for Mary Beth & family in their time of need.

• Part IV of Paul Henry's War of the Words mockumentary is out.

• Via Alan Sepinwall, TV writer Ken Levine imagines an Aaron Sorkin-written show about baseball.

• Lastly, Mo Rocca charts November Madness.

Off to turn the clocks back, which doubtless means Datsa will be waking us up at 4 AM instead of his usual 5 AM...

Silly Site o' the Day

So, um, yeah. This was the first World Series in years that I hadn't watched. Maybe part of it was knowing what kind of ads Fox might be running, and not wanting to deal with that in the election run-up. But most of it was having my heart broken a little bit in the AL Division Series when the Yanks lost, and a lot in the NL Championship Series when the Mets lost. Had neither team made it into the post-season perhaps I would have kept watching, but I couldn't bring myself to sit through it this year, particularly as I knew, given the two teams, I'd be rooting for the Tigers and I didn't want to risk strike three. Le sigh. It's one of those days that I can't even get The Factorizer (via Coturnix) to work, and Blogger apparently isn't letting me publish either. Maybe I'll just go back to bed after I finish blog reading, I have a ton of comics waiting for me...

Silly Site o' the Day

Yeah okay, all the cool kids are linking to it, so I may as well. Men With Cramps. I saw it on Eva Whitley's blog first.

Milestone Notes

Happy birthday to two great Dynamic Duos bloggers, Scott at World O' Crap and Tom at Backup Brain! As my Dynamic Duos section is alphabetical by blog name, it was kind of neat to see birthday announcements/wishes at the very beginning of the new-post feeds as well as at the very end. Oh, it's also Heidi's mom's birthday. Check out Suzanna Lasker's work here. Talent obviously runs in that family!

When Lives Collide

So I'm in the middle of Firesign chat and my old friend Jan just happens to call so we're chatting and catching up for about 15 minutes, then I realize one of the chatters' names is familiar and someone starts talking about Uncle Floyd and lo and behold, this chatter (Bob Caterino) used to be a Floyd cast member, a couple years before I started hanging with the cast. The threads of my life are interweaving again. It gets very confusing when that happens all at once.

Pets or Meat

Depends on which misygonistic culture you're talking about, ours or theirs. Either way, they still don't think of us as actual people.

Silly Site o' the Day

Best get this done whilst I can, Blogger has another hastily-scheduled outage in a few hours. I don't normally link to blogs on my regular reading lists as Silly Sites, but Melissa's posted the latest installment (apparently it's Episode 59) of Shakespeare's Sister Theater Presents: The Adventures of Dr. Zero and the Pink Petulance, and I haven't stopped snickering yet.

Kibbles and Bits

Some uplifting reading for this morning:

• Wil Wheaton pens a love letter to Neil Gaiman's Sandman.

• I sense a match made in heaven between proto-giraffes Caroline David and Dylan Jennings.

• Chris Clarke is back! with a message from Zeke to his admirers. (The poem is a parody of this.) Update: And this is must reading for any activist with pets, and without pets for that matter.

• Speaking of dogs, Sheri Zellinger has had a tough day.

• The Rude Pundit compares red staters to Amway suckers. I think the improtant thing to remember about this is that neither is stupid. My Californian brother and ex-sis-in-law bought into the Amway dream (I'm sure Steve recalls that nigh-interminable trip with them where they were blasting the tapes all the way from LA to Tijuana), and they weren't stupid. It always, always comes down to what Peter Stone wrote in 1776, "don't forget that most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor." That doesn't make them dumb, it just makes them human.

• Like Jessica, I also got a kick out of Marjane Satrapi's view of superhero comics. And via Heidi, I just found out Satrapi has a blog! And via Pam Noles, I found out Kyle Baker is blogging as well.

• Marie Javins has posted some foliage-from-the-Montrealer photos.

• I really want to go to the Jewish Museum's panel on Women Comic Artists that Nancy mentions on Pam's House Blend, as she and her spousal unit (and my husband's current editor) Joan will be there, as well as my "sparring partner" Trina Robbins, whom I just want to hug and hug whilst we remember Hilda Terry together. It's on a Thursday in November, though, which means either taking my car into the Upper East Side of Manhattan or taking public transit and getting back home (probably freezing) way later than I should with work the next day. Sometimes it sucks to live in an outer borough and no longer work in The City...

Speaking of which, back to the grind!

Silly Site o' the Day

Blogger's got a scheduled outage at around 5 PM Eastern today, but my posting seems to have diminished on weekdays it shouldn't affect this blog. And for those of you on Blogger who want to blog at that time but can't, there's always online games, like Defend Your Base (via Augie)...

Silly Site o' the Day

No, I haven't been on the Pen-Elayne chatroom today. I want to find out how I can get op status before I go back on, so I can ban and/or kick trolls, which inability tends to really ruin an IRC environment. But it's shaping up to be a pretty good week in my offline world:

(1) The foliage around lower Westchester County seems to be peaking just about now, making my commute really beautiful - alas, I can't take photos whilst driving, or even stopped at traffic lights when there are any cars around me as I don't want the flash to interfere with other drivers, but I'm hoping to capture some nice shots this coming weekend.

(2) My job work seems fairly under control, there's nothing major really outstanding and I'm keeping up with my boss and his family.

(3) My ankle is healing slowly, although I still can't go out of the house without the air cast; my follow-up appointment with the orthopedist is next Monday so we'll see how that goes. I think I should be okay to food-shop by myself this evening; the hardest part is loading up the car as that involves both standing in place (more or less) and lifting things. I cooked a full meat-and-two-veg meal last night, so I'm getting back into my regular food-rhythm.

(4) I'm catching up pretty well on the TV stuff we've DVR'ed, although I was disappointed with both the most recent Dr. Who (the thing about time travel is that you can go anywhere, even to visit lost loves or past companions, so the only explanation for why this highly competent Doctor doesn't or can't is a meta-one, that it's not logistically possible or financially feasible for the TV show - and as we see over and over again in comics, one usually gets in trouble when trying to explain away external-to-story, real-life considerations within the fictional realm of the story itself) and the most recent Studio 60 (Sorkin telegraphed at least two subplots fairly clunkily, if even I guessed out how they'd end). Oh, and

(5) I have a paid writing gig, about which more anon.

There, that's my own version (albeit a lot less funny) of Merlin’s Lists of Five Things (via Cory at BoingBoing).

About the Chatroom

I've had the window to the Pen-Elayne chatroom open all day but didn't realize I need to periodically type something or it won't refresh (at least on this computer), so I think I've missed Pen-Elayne commenter sngrfxz, in which case sorry sng! Something to know about the Pen-Elayne chatroom is that chat.creator works along old IRC principles, so a lot of the coding is the same (you put the forward-slash mark in front of words like "help" if you want to see the help menu, "leave" and "join Pen-Elayne" if you want to, you know, leave and join (by the way, the chatroom name is case-sensitive), stuff like that. And the coding for bold-facing and italics and other formatting buttons is similar to that on message boards. Now I have to remember all my old IRC and message board activity... I'm sure it's in my brain somewhere, these things never really leave us...

Silly Site o' the Day

A bit too much standing at Julia's gathering yesterday afternoon, methinks, followed by a half hour drive, two flights of steps, and opting to blog instead of elevate and ice the ankle, so it hurt a bit through the night and this morning. Of course, colder weather always aggravates recent injuries, so there's that as well. Boss and wife both in today at various times, so I'll have to be on my toes, so to speak. I have the Pen-Elayne chatroom open in another window, in case anyone wants to stop by, and I'm still soliciting suggestions on best day and time for a regular weekly online gathering. And because I've been so meta lately, and because I saw it on Steve's blog and he was there yesterday, I present the Autorantic Virtual Moonbat!

Rox-toberfest

Yeah, okay, but I don't pun very well after 10 PM and a few hours spent in the autumn chill (actually it was quite pleasant until the last five minutes or so) with my ankle aching amid the company of some fine NY-area bloggers, in the lovely Queens backyard of host Julia and her Beleaguered Husband, holding a gathering in honor of the visiting Roxanne Cooper. In attendance were many of the usual suspects and a few new faces - Uncle Proctrustes, Julia's friend Carla, me and Robin, Rox and her husband and friend from France, Mad Kane and Mark (late due to a little fender-bender, and yes, both are fine), Lindsay (whose pie tasted even better than it looks here), Barbara and daughter Erin, Lesley, Seth (who also brought a tremendous apple pie courtesy of Mrs. Talking Dog), Steve and friend, Scott (in long pants!), Alon (I think this is him) and Zuzu! Whew, hope I didn't miss anyone!

Given all the meta-talk I'd just done (and I was happy that at least one attendee thanked me for putting it all in one place so that they could keep up with things as they'd been a few days behind) I can't tell you what a thrill it was to meet and talk with Zuzu, whose writing I've admired for so long but who I hadn't even known was NYC-based. [And yes, she told me her real name and Lesley revealed her surname and I'll probably forget one or the other but I may just remember Zuzu's because I just found it so cool.] And we talked a lot about pseudonyms and Ann and other things going on in the blogosphere, and the good news is that Zuzu will be back eventually (probably in a few weeks) and the bad news is that Chris Clarke has shut his blog - which breaks my heart about as much as Zuzu's farewell announcement did - because some asshole actually threatened his poor old dog! Even going by one's real name won't help if some creep is so determined to get at you. I think the only solution is just to be happy you fly under most kooks' radar, like I do.

Carla had just busted her knee a few days earlier so we traded temp-gimp stories and advice, Mark had some advice for me as he'd had to recover and take lots of physical therapy when he'd sprained his left ankle awhile back (we promised to trade air-casts if we ever needed one for the other foot, as he has a lefty and me a rightie), Lesley and I commiserated that the Yanks didn't make it too far out of the playoffs and others were upset that the nearby Mets weren't in the Series either, Mad was her usual bubbly self and I was able to congratulate her on being "BoingBoinged" recently, and we all mazel-tov'ed Scott on his promotion (I believe he'll be blogging-for-pay here).

And yes, I took pictures. But as neither Julia nor Rox like to be photographed for bloggy purposes, and by the time most guests had arrived it was too dark to get good photos or I would have been in the way or whatever, only a few really came out okay:



Alon (standing), Carla and Lesley. To the left, the tent which Julia's Beleaguered Husband (shown in the background on the right, by the back door to the house) put up in case of rain, which it never did.



Lindsay (background left), Erin and MahaBarb.



And there were desserts. Indeed, everyone got their just desserts, which sugar rush helped me make it home from Queens to the Bronx (at legal speed, mind you) in a little over half an hour. Whereupon I removed the air cast (only to find the Velcro strips had partially come undone, which explains why the foot was giving me so many problems), uploaded the pictures from the camera, and proceeded to write this post. G'night everyone, and thanks again to Julia and all her (our) swell bloggy friends!

Update 10/23: Lesley's report on the event is here, and Rox thanks all attendees and offers a bit of advice.

Eight Amazing Nights Things

Here's my attempt at playing the game of "find[ing] or creat[ing] images of eight things I find amazing in picture form." Tagged by Donna, not going to tag anyone in return so rest easy. (Okay, I'll retroactively tag Kathy, since she's done hers.) Picture credits given where I could find them.


c. Neil Smith

English robins are very different from the American varieties. Ours signal the coming of spring; theirs herald wintertime and thus often adorn Christmas cards. There are lots of other differences between the two nations "separated by a common language," and I'm learning more about them all the time thanks to my amazing marriage to a very English Robin.



This is the train station in Lewes whence I first visited my future in-laws. I've loved England pretty much for as long as I can remember, it's a magical land to me. I've always been interested in traveling but haven't really had the money to do a lot of it. I quite enjoy traveling through England by train, and would like to do it someday without us toting so much luggage.


c. Cindy Royal

It's pretty amazing we even found each other in the first place. We met, as do so many nowadays, via the Internet. The progress of technology is dizzying; I only wish it were matched by human social progress.


c. Joe Tucciarone

Which it may very well be, someday. The human imagination is limitless, and all it takes to realize its amazing potential is for us to be a little kinder to each other day by day.


c. S. Wolin

And I think we'll make it. Humans are amazingly resilient creatures. We can face down all manner of adversity and come out the better for it.


c. NASA

Even the planet on which we live is pretty amazing. It's the only one we know of so far which supports our kind of life. Who knows how many more are out there? Even the concept of "out there," the idea of the vastness of space, enthralls me.



And our planet offers us so much amazing beauty, both fleeting and never-ending at the same time.


c. jleighb

And such an amazing variety of sustenance! Some of which I'm about to sample at a New York blogger gathering (although I don't think sushi will be on the menu), so it's time to go!

Milestone Notes

Happy fourth blogiversaries to both my "blog daughter" Laura Gjovaag and my "blog son" Johnny Bacardi! I'm a very proud blogmama...

More Brief Pluggery

• I wanted to thank Tony Viardo at Sourcebooks for being kind enough to send me a couple copies of The Out of Office Countdown 2007 GWB Calendar as well as a copy of Mark Green's book Losing Our Democracy, and for understanding that I'll probably never get a chance to read (much less review) the book, which is currently sitting next to a half dozen other unread review-copy books I've received over the last few years. There just aren't enough hours in my day any more to keep up with blog reading, comics reading AND book reading (I haven't even cracked the cover of the latest Harry Potter paperback... dang, I miss commuting into the city via public transit!). I'm taking the calendars with me to a blog gathering this afternoon, where I'm sure they will find two happy homes. They're well put together adn all, lots of malopropic "Bushisms" adorning the days, but I can't look at that guy's face for even a moment much less stare at it all month. And I think having a countdown like this is defeatist anyway, as it means we won't be trying to get him out of office by other means (such as impeaching him for his treasonous and illegal acts) prior to his stated expiration date.

• I also want to give a shout-out to my old INSIDE JOKE contributor Ken Burke on the publication of a book he co-authored, The Blue Moon Boys, about Elvis Presley's band.

I think that takes care of all outstanding obligations, but if you've sent me something lately and I haven't mentioned it, feel free to give me a bit of a nudge.

Red State Reviewed

Michael Shea made (and sent to many bloggers) a documentary called Red State, about his journey through America's heartland, the south, even up to Washington DC, to talk with and listen to people with political views different from his own. It was a pretty brave thing to do, as Michael chooses to make the film as much "all about him" (even to the point of showing how he feels he needs to change his appearance, so we get the whole shave-and-a-haircut montage, to even approach the red states) as about the people he meets, and shows himself as a fairly ineloquent interviewer so the conversations he has (both with the red state residents and his in-between musings to his camera operator Steve Canas) are awkward at best.

Robin and I found the pacing of the documentary maddeningly uneven. Canas gets some absolutely beautiful footage in, which really makes you appreciate the scope and depth of this country. If this is one of Shea's goals, mission more than accomplished. Dang, the USA is big and beautiful. But the film intersperses these languid picturesque panoramas with interviews of uneven length, then Shea detours into long and (to my mind) unnecessary coverage of Justice Sunday, which may illustrate a point about the religious leanings of many red staters but in no way constitutes speaking with them directly.

Throughout the film Shea does a good job of confessing his own inadequacy at dealing with the ideas his interview subjects present, his lack of open-mindedness, his inability to stop putting words in their mouths that they never uttered, and his constant bewilderment at the themes parroted over and over from Rovian rhetoric, all the code words about "family values" and "culture of life" that are never really defined or even, in the footage presented, questioned very much. The one time he asks someone to define "family values" he gets no answer at all, just more spin about how, since the '60s and '70s, people have come along to redefine things. One woman goes into a dizzying soliloquy comparing modern politics to the show Leave It to Beaver, the analogy becoming more and more torturous as perhaps somewhere within her she realizes she's making things up as she goes along and, indeed, is using as her basis of comparison a TV show that most Americans ought to acknowledge as fictional. The entire idea of family values is based on something that not only isn't traditional but never really existed except in fiction.

None of the people Shea interviews are stupid, but most have chosen beliefs which keep them blissfully ignorant. Not only do these beliefs help them dismiss historical and current reality (the CWA rep - to whom he lied when he told her their interview was over but they kept talking and being recorded which wasn't cool at all - insisting repeatedly that what she doesn't believe in, such as gay marriage or the well-documented horrors of pre-Rov v. Wade back-alley abortions, simply "doesn't exist") but the portions of the Bible that they and their pastors cherry-pick and harp upon constantly allow them to ignore any further learning that contradicts or challenges this doctrine, which more often than not isn't actual Christian belief (love thy neighbor, minister to the poor) but a perversion thereof (God says war is okay, God hates gay marriage).

And it all stems from fear, the Old Testament God (as opposed to love being the New Testament God - the God they supposedly favor over the OT one!). Their leaders have indoctrinated them into believing that their rights are being systematically taken from them, and pervert and cherry-pick examples of this as easily as they do Biblical passages. The rights they cite as being lost come down to "the right to have our religion dominate public life" and "the right to discriminate against whomever we want and be free from them discriminating against us." In other words, the right to be dominant over other human beings, also made in God's image. And this fear has ruled them for at least a generation before Rove even picked up on and magnified it. When someone's afraid, the fight-or-flight scenario comes into place, and many of these folks are too tired or too busy just surviving to have the energy to fight things they've been taught to believe since childhood, so they take flight even more deeply into a faith-based system which tells them it's okay to switch off their thinking caps, that everything they need to know about life can be found in the Bible, that God will provide. And actual politics, as Shea never quite seems to realize, is not front and center in their lives.

Even Shea admits it would be comforting to be so sure of your own belief system that you need never question it, just accept what your government and manipulative faith-perverting preachers tell you even if it defies logic, because it's easier. But this system, the result of their carefully-cultivated fear, scares him in return. Now he knows how they feel! And his reaction is to say "they need to be stopped" (what a surprise, the same reaction they have to their preacher- and government-induced fear!), but at the same time he knows he's met some very kind and loving individuals who would never actually personally harm him, so he has no idea where to go from here. Pretty much like the Democrats.

I don't know the solution either, but I know it needs to start with education, with repeating the message (as often as conservative preachers do against the Democrats) how the current crop of Republicans in power stand for perversion and corruption of lives, for killing and torture, how the founding fathers explicitly stated the US was not founded as a Christian nation and their reasons for this pluralism being grounded in the fear of one religion dominating others which caused the first settlers to flee Europe in the first place... anything that appeals to people's common sense and can take the place of the false gods presented by the Rovians.

And despite Shea's reluctance, we can't stop talking to them, and giving them examples of how we care about them and how the people they keep voting for do not. Which will take people far more possessed of a quick and easy tongue than Shea.

Cleaning Up

I've "finished the internet" (i.e., caught up on blog-reading) again, so I wanted to close a few open bookmarks before being AFK (Away From Keyboard) for awhile:

• Leigh Ann Wilson aka Flea takes a long and worthwhile-to-read look at Leni Riefenstahl's attitudes and work.

• Ann Bartow passes along a heads-up on a new documentary film about Dr. Emanuel Bronner. I have many fond memories of walking around in my younger days yelling out "Dilute, Dilute, OK!" And the soap's pretty good too.

• Turning to the books rather than the movies, Lance Mannion explains how so many people have misinterpreted the true emphasis and actual points of Tolkein's Lord of the Rings trilogy.

• Hey, PZ Myers has a chatroom! I want one too! So when do y'all want to get together and chat with me? If it takes off I'll put a regular weekly time and link on the sidebar.

• The Carnival of Feminists is up to its silver (25th) edition over at Natalie's blog. Thanks so much for starting and continuing to organize this, Natalie!

Lastly, Donna has passed on a "meme" to me. It's of course not actually a meme, but a blog-game. I have to figure out Eight Things I Find Amazing, in Picture Form. This one may take me awhile, so I'll go away and think on it a bit. Happy reading, folks.

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 10/15 thru 10/21/06

When we returned from NJ yesterday afternoon, I decided to try walking around the house without the brace or anything else wrapping my right foot (but with the walking stick) for the first time since spraining the ankle, and am rather pleased with the results. I'll still be wearing the brace to go out, particularly considering the two flights of stairs that separate our apartment from the ground (which I've gone back to descending by putting "bad foot, good foot" on each step in succession), but it's nice to have the foot unencumbered during the evening and night-time hours. Plus, our landlord has now turned the heat on, so we're pretty comfy. Time to see what other Liberal Coalition members have been up to this past week:

• Bora names his all-time favorite science shows, passes along a funny and somewhat gross article called The Ambien Cookbook, and cites a study showing a relationship between weight and how many hours of sleep children get, which makes little sense to me as all the drugs in anti-sleep agents tend to make people wiry and jittery and most wiry, jittery people I've known are skinny.

• Bryant tears apart a column by Bret Prelutsky about the "religious left." I don't get the phrase about the Gospel According to James Carville either. What's that about, sleeping with the enemy or something? I always thought the religious left consisted of folks who actually followed Jesus' teachings about ministering to the poor and such, rather than worshipping Mammon and calling him Jesus.

• Chris tells us a little more about himself.

• Echidne thanks Bob Herbert for introducing to mainstream discourse something else that bloggers have been pointing out all along, the relationship between school massacres and misogyny.

• John reports on the new crop of winter/holiday stamps.

• Speaking of snow, Jude has a pictorial of the freak Friday the 13th snowstorm that hit Buffalo.

• Kenneth answers his fan mail as only he can, and finds it as interesting as I do that the standards of evidence for conservatives are so much lower than those for liberals. I guess if you're making up the rules, you can keep moving the goalposts.

• Maru shakes her head at the hypocrisy of declaring October "National Domestic Violence Awareness Month" then headlining a fund-raiser for a Congressman accused of choking his mistress. Character counts!

• Moi decries a badly-done study on autism and TV.

• Mustang Bobby is probably preaching to the choir when he reminds us all that "even a cursory examination of the foundation of the laws of this country and of Western civilization teaches us that we have a system that is dedicated to justice, not revenge." Of course, "mercy" is a dirty word nowadays according to the religious right.

• Natalie wishes Bob Weir a happy birthday and fondly remembers CBGB's. I have no fond memories of that club at all, since when it was around I made it a point not to venture too far into what I considered a relatively unsafe part of the East Village (where I was working at the time), and I've never been a club-goer anyway.

• Steve G manages to pen a nice ode to the Mets without saying "Yankees suck" even once (I didn't think he had it in him!), reminds us that Diebold isn't the only way Republicans are trying to control the vote, and calls Madonna's non-orphaned black child adoption what it is.

• upyernoz presents some Arabic tongue twisters.

Well, it's mid-morning now, time to remove the air cast again and let my leg and foot breathe for awhile before going out this afternoon.

Silly Site o' the Day

As we're still in meta-land: I've been remiss in not mentioning Paul Henry's brilliant War of the Words Ken Burns-style docu-parody about right-wing pundits and bloggers. As I mentioned on Paul's blog, one of my biggest frustrations with the liberal blogosphere's obsession with their conservative "counterparts" is the in-jokey nature of the mockery, and what's great about Paul's work is that it's very understandable to those not in on the joke, and thus more accessible to people who don't necessarily follow every pseudo-celebrity anointed by the radical reactionaries currently in power.

Double Plus Good

My major mega meta post seems to have disappeared from site feed land, so I thought I'd post a link to it again, as well as inviting folks to look at the comments, which aren't that many (it's not like I have Feministe's readership!) but do contain a contribution from Ann Bartow, which isn't surprising considering Ann is one of our regular Pen-Elayne commenters.

Hottest Combination!

Honest. Look, see for yourself:



Would I kid? This is an actual existing restaurant on Route 22 in Joisey.



Of course they have a website. But alas, that wasn't our destination this afternoon. We were headed a little ways down the road to a local Charlie Brown's to see my brother Jay, sis-in-law Kara and parents for a belated celebration of Jay's birthday before Mom and Dad "snowbirded" out this evening from Newark to their wintertime abode in Las Vegas.



The foliage in NJ was kind of nice, but the above picture is one I took earlier in the week during my morning commute, as Rob doesn't take photos whilst we're driving (we were stuck in traffic when we passed Rio22) so we didn't get any good shots today. Next weekend we hope to drive the Merritt Parkway in CT, when things should just be peaking, so maybe that'll be the foliage trip of the year. I must say, though, the leaves this year don't seem nearly as spectacular as they were in '05...



Of course I had Robin take a shot of "the fembly." Have a good trip "back" to Vegas, Mom and Dad!

Plus, Plus, Plus

I should have mentioned I've been adding to my mega-post below, and will continue to do so, as I start catching up with my blog-reading. Just look for the bold-faced "Update" markings for the rest of the weekend.

Major Mega Meta Post

(As promised/threatened earlier this week. Warning, long post ahead.)

Maybe it's the weather turning cooler, or the fear that whatever Karl Rove has up his sleeve with his multimillion dollar war chest will still leave us a Republican-controlled Congress despite our best efforts and the inclination of the majority of citizens to vote Democratic, but in the last couple of weeks the blogosphere seems to have become quite introspective. So I thought I'd do a round-up of posts wherein people look up their own URLs:

• The big meta-controversy among political and feminist blogs involves my friend of long standing Barry Deutsch, aka Ampersand, selling his domain to a "search engine optimizing" company which, apparently used his traffic to help pornographers get higher search listings for their sites, and didn't inform his readers of the sale. Here's some background reading on this from Amp himself, his cobloggers Rachel and Nick, Zuzu at Feministe, Tom at the Comics Reporter, Fred at Stone Court, MB at Making Light, Hugo Schwyzer and Tekanji. My opinion on all of this is as follows:

First of all, I have always believed that blogs are not vehicles whereby one should expect to make money. Not just a profit, but any money. That's not what blogs are designed for. Blogs are what you make of them, but essentially they're software tools which make it easy for anybody to become a one-to-many writer with a potentially humongous readership. The idea of owning a domain for the purpose of blogging in the first place strikes me as rather silly when there are any number of servers that will host your blog for free so you never have to worry about losing money the way I used to when I self-published INSIDE JOKE and the hard-copy version of Four-Alarm Firesignal and countless apazines. [And sure, Blogger and Typepad go on the blink sometimes; so what? Dedicated and private servers go buggy too, as Barry's past woes, um, amply demonstrate. And does the world fall apart if we can't post for a few hours? Some people have no patience.] If you never spend any money for a domain to host your blog, not only do you not have to hold ridiculous fundraisers or ever ask your readers to pay for your hobby (if nobody's hired you to blog and you're doing it because you feel a calling or intrinsic need or just for the heck of it, it's not a profession, it's a hobby) but you don't have to worry about losing money necessitating the kind of sale Barry made, 'cause you're not outlaying the bucks in the first place.

Secondly, I had no idea about how the sale of Amptoons affected Alas, because I read it and hundreds of other blogs via Bloglines, by subscribing to their site feeds. Read a blog's site feed instead of clicking onto the blog itself and you may occasionally come across an annoying banner ad (and I wish the folks who instituted that would stop it) but you won't give a porn site the satisfaction of falsely inflating its numbers from your click-through. Why more busy people don't read all blogs via site feeds is beyond me.

And lastly, yes, I'm in the camp that says Barry has the right to do whatever commerce he wants to without asking anyone else's permission, and I have the right to make fun of the idea of blog commerce without expecting all those whining and well-to-do blog-beggars out there to agree with me. I just shake my head that there are so many people in real need in the world, so many worthy causes to support, so much political action to take that requires cash influx, that well-off political bloggers who beg readers to subsidize their voluntary writing don't choke on their words. Not that I have an opinion or anything.

• I do have a strong opinion about internicene disputes between two bloggers I like and respect, particularly to the point of one blogger quitting, at least temporarily. It saddens the heck out of me. Zuzu lays it out here and says goodbye here. I can't tell you how much I'm going to miss Zuzu's writing, which I adore, and I'm sorry she felt she needed to be pseudonymous in order to blog and comment (much of this controversy seems to have happened in comment sections, which I rarely peruse due to lack of time), but that's her choice, not mine and not Ann's (and I read Ann's work enough to note she seems to have no problem with many other pseudonymous bloggers, to whom she regularly links). [Updates: Ann responds in Zuzu's farewell thread, Atrios does an inappropriate impression of Keith Olbermann, and Fred Vincy requests that we set the record straight.] I've written about screen names and handles before, among other places here, here and here, and mentioned that I haven't gone pseudonymous since my 20's, when just about everyone knew that INSIDE JOKE contributors "Kip M. Ghesin" and "Kid Sieve" were actually me anyway. But, as with decisions about one's body, I believe that what one does with one's online identity should be a personal decision not subject to others' judgment. As the saying goes, if you don't like abortion, don't have one. If you don't like pseudonymity, don't be pseudonymous and if it bothers you that much don't read posts by pseudonymous folks. Yes, of course I wish more people would use real names rather than handles, particularly in chatrooms (when I learned about Firesign friends Lew Tebbetts' and Brian Converse's deaths, my immediate response was to try to figure out who they were because they only used handles in the chatroom - scroll to the bottom here - and to my mind that's no way to be remembered), and yes, I believe that, depending on the circumstances, credibility sometimes suffers when one chooses to hide behind a fake name. However, that's still their choice, not mine (and much of it is me being selfish because I'm better at remembering names than handles). I can mock the mask, I can evince skepticism if there's trolling involved, I can even argue against the very concept if I want, but in the end it's not really my business. Pseudonymous bloggers have probably already heard all the advice they can stand about "if you used your real name in the first place you'd own it and nobody would have the power to threaten you by revealing it" and, presumably for good reason, have rejected it. [Update: Atrios gives this as a reason: "The ability to participate in the public discourse is something which previously was available only to a select few, and is now open to everyone. Part of what allows that is the ability of people to not attach their name to everything they write. People who have job and income stability (say, tenured professors) take for granted that they can say just about anything in a public space (such as the internets) without fear of consequence." But to me that still translates too much like "People can take for granted that they don't need to stand behind their words." And it also comes very much from a position of, as Atrios' title implies, privilege.] In any case, just because something makes us personally uncomfortable doesn't give us the right to force others to mitigate that discomfort. Now, if only I could take my own advice re: my discomfort over public breastfeeding...

• Here's some more about "internet outing" from Piny at Feministe. True confession, I've met Belledame in person at an Alas gathering where she told us her real name, and naturally I've completely forgotten it since (but I have put her blog on my regular reading list)... Chris Clarke also believes that outing pseudonymous blogging in comments sucks, and begs for cooler heads to prevail. Hugo has this open thread query and this quick note. Scott shakes his head. And Fartles - I mean, Ilyka - I mean, whoever she is, adds her bits here and here and here. I think I'm a Fartles fan. Seriously, just read all of Ilyka's posts from the last week or so, she's really been on a roll.

• Chris also initiated a couple posts springing from the Amptoons situation, laying out his blog policy here and here, interspersed by Far-- uh, Ilyka's own policy. It basically comes down to, paraphrasing Leslie Gore, "it's my blog so I can schrei if I want to." Anyone can blog nowadays, so anyone can make up whatever rules they want for their blog and their readers either accept that at face value or read other blogs - it's not like there aren't millions out there. We're content producers, all of us - not public servants.

• Speaking of boobs as we were above, the Huffington Post shows why it's ahead of the curve by finally noticing the "Jessica's boobs" controversy. Not a word about the all-white-bloggers-in-Harlem one, which reflects badly on liberal bloggers (one of whom is a Huffington contributor) rather than conservative ones.

• Shifting meta-gears over to the comics feminist blogosphere, pseudonymous blogger The Video Store Girl suggests rethinking feminism in comics, modestly proposing a "Cassie Code" on how writers and artists should treat female characters. The ironic thing here to me is that much of the original Comics Code had to do with salacious "headlight" comics deemed inappropriate at the time, not because they were seen as demeaning to women in the age before second wave feminism, but because the primary readership back then was deemed to be mostly the younger Not Ready for Primetime Sex set. TVSG's point was that, since it's impossible (or at the least undesireable) to legislate this sort of thing, feminist comic readers need to speak through market forces and "vote with their wallets" as well as engaging in productive discussions with male artists and writers rather than ranting to the point of alienating them. As you can imagine, this didn't sit well with a few prime ranters, among them Karen Healey (who enumerates what she terms TVSG's "stupid arguments") and Melissa Krause (and do check out Melissa's response to me in the comments section as well). [Update: TVSG puts on her cavewoman hat to fire back this salvo.] I hate to sound passive/aggressive about this, but I believe everyone here has valid points. Approaching artists with anger and frustration, however justified you may feel this anger is, may not always be the best way to raise their consciousness about Depicting the Other. My personal preference is toward knowledgeable discussion and a give-and-take of ideas (I happen to like moderating convention panels about this sort of thing). Often when an artist can't come up with a reason for doing something in response to a polite query, that may cause him to rethink his approach. I don't think most artists and writers want to alienate their audience any more than a feminist expressing frustration about yet another way in which women are smacked down culturally is looking to alienate comic book creators. That said, I think market forces only work when they're accompanied by vocal elaboration of why and how you're actually "voting with the wallet." How's a company to know I've decided not to purchase a comic because I don't like how the artist or writer depicts female characters unless I actually say so as well (loudly and often if I feel I need to)?

• Elsewhere in the aforementioned comics feminist blogosphere, Lis Fortuner uses a comment of mine in response to a post by Stephen Dann as a springboard to wondering whether critics' social conscience is sometimes blinded by fannishness and/or creator loyalty, touts the power (and, to her, the point) of blogs to serve as a vehicle for us learning about each other. Speaking of which, Kevin Church is curious as to whether anything he writes really impacts others' reading habits. Ah, the old unanswerable. That way madness lies, Kevin!

• Lastly, if you're not burnt out yet by all this meta-discussion, you may want to participate in the winter issue of the ezine Reconstruction the “Theories/Practices of Blogging.” Thanks to Wayne for the heads-up.

Off to see my parents off before they snowbird to Vegas again. Ta all!

"Our country is centrally based upon the principle that we are willing to risk death in order to limit government power."

Glenn Greenwald hits another one out of the park.

Silly Site o' the Day

Time for a little Bandwidth Theater (via Frank Paynter)!

As If I Need Another Time-Waster

I have found my new video music television station. It reminds me of the way MTV used to be when it started, minus the VJs. In the space of an hour Robin and I watched this, this, this and this, among many others. Yes, I know I can get them all online, but only once I know that I want to see them again because I initially found out about them from watching TV.

Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)

Look out, it's the one-eyed cuteness of doom!



Or something like it...

Silly Site o' the Day

Well, the bad news is, the unfinished meta post still sits in my draft pile. The good news (which is also kind of bad news) is that, with the Mets' loss yesterday, the baseball season has now lost its luster for me and I won't be as preoccupied with TV watching in my free time, so I expect to catch up on my reading and writing. I still haven't cracked open my British children's paperback edition of the sixth Harry Potter book yet, and I've had it for two weeks! But blogginess comes first, and if I don't have too many interruptions on a day when my boss isn't due in (unlikely, I've just been given a ton of follow-up calls to make in a coworker's absence and it's been an hour since I began this and I've finished neither the calls nor the post), maybe I'll finally get to that meta post today. Or at least make some reading headway. Although I definitely won't have time for Destined for Destiny (via PZ Myers).

Silly Site o' the Day

The meta-post sits in my draft pile undone - I got about a paragraph into it then interruptions kept it that way the rest of the day. Maybe today I'll get to it. Until then, slow blogging continues. After all, there's only one of me:

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 0 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Thanks to Lauren for the tip that How Many Of Me was back, albeit with tons of pop-ups and ads...

Silly Site o' the Day

Lots of stuff to get to, including a major mega meta post that's been at least a week in coming, but with one thing and another (the ankle, the playoffs, my boss being back and a coworker being on vacation for two weeks meaning I'm taking up unexpected slack, and an Actual Paying Writing Gig to be Named Later) blogging hasn't been my priority. Thanks for understanding. Today is my "baby" brother's birthday, and in his honor I present the Random Management Statement Generator (via Gerard). After all, "we need to diversify strategic relationships!" I have no idea if Jay talks like that at the office, but he is a yuppie management type so he may very well. I know he doesn't talk like that around me, at any rate. Happy birthday, Jay!

Silly Site o' the Day

Only a silly site because it really, really made me smile. Via Mark Evanier, the winner of Stephen Colbert's Green Screen Challenge, Bonnie Rose, tells her story. My favorite bit was right at the beginning: "I really got discouraged when I realized the CG world is dominated by 22-year-old boys, and I’m a 40-year-old woman. “Hey boss, I look like one of your mom’s friends! Give me an internship!” " I think that's something the late Hilda Terry would have loved. Oh, and someone talk Bonnie Rose into blogging, please (or, if she already is, please send me the URL)!

RIP Hilda Terry

Just found out the sad news from Colleen's blog.

I adored Hilda, and was lucky enough to have known her for many of the final years of her life.



I rejoice in all the love she brought us, and that she's finally with her beloved Greg.

Here's a short bio which Hilda helped me put together when she spoke at FoL-New York's Women in Comics discussion series in 2002, where I believe the above photo was taken.

Silly Site o' the Day

Bandaged up the left ankle (as it's been taking all the strain from the right leg being out of commission), air-casted the right one, and zipped into work with nary a problem. Tomorrow I leave the walking stick at home for good, I think. Busy most of the morning filling in for absent coworker who left few instructions but is intermittently reachable via IM. Boss in but may be leaving soon. I'm actually looking forward to the playoff game tonight, now that the Mets have relocated their hitting mojo after a 2-day dry spell.



The Lightning Message Generator doesn't seem to upload correctly, maybe I saved it wrong. (It's supposed to say "Let's Go Mets" but I don't see any animation). It's via Gerard, of course.

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 10/8 thru 10/14/06

Starting to get back into the rhythm of things. I was hoping to have all blog-reading finished and another post or two up by day's end, but I took advantage of the air cast to walk around outside, unaided by crutch or stick), and do a teensy bit of grocery and pharmacy shopping (including getting a new compression bandage, this time for my left ankle which has taken so much strain since the right one was injured). So now I'm back, the Mets game has yet to begin, so let's see what's doing among my fellow Liberal Coalition members:

• Bora is amazed he's been so prolific (I'm amazed anyone has the time to read all that, much less write it!) and reposts his advice on shutting down a blog, which I guess applies to most people whose blogs actually have more traffic than mine.

• Bryant tries to patiently explain the difference between legislating morally and legislating morality, but I feel it probably falls upon deaf ears.

• Jeff wants to know, if there's such a war on the majority religion whose adherents run everything in this country, how can they get away with being so unregulated? He also covers a local debate in Bozeman.

• Maru has a tasty quote from Jon Stewart's interview at the New Yorker Festival (alas, not available online) and news of the firing of a Reuters reporter who wrote a book correcting Coulter inaccuracies.

• Michael was not amused by the snow earlier in the week.

• Norbizness has some blogging instructions for dummies, some appropriate Simpsons quotes for this administration, and some primo religious bitching.

• NTodd photoblogs autumn in Vermont.

• Steve G enjoyed his recent dinner with his co-blogger Jen, and looks forward to seeing the latest Republican nightmare play out in favor of people who aren't as insane.

• And upyernoz celebrates the most recent winner of the Nobel Prize for literature.

On to finishing the Group Blogs reading!

Silly Site o' the Day

Blog Juice Calculator via Wayne.

Too Short, and Too Precious

Life, that is. I just found out that another member of the Firesign chat family has passed away. We'll be gathering in the chatroom tonight at midnight Eastern time to raise a glass to the memory of Brian Converse, aka "klokwkdog," a gentle and witty soul who will be greatly missed.

And speaking of things Firesign...



Condolences to Phil Proctor and Melinda Peterson on the loss of Chester. He was a good kitty.

Silly Site o' the Day

Trying out my new "toys" today. Yesterday I wore my new bifocals for the first time (naturally nobody at work even noticed) - hate the line, love the ability to read again without having to take the glasses off. I might see if I can exchange them for progressive lenses. And today I'm trying out the air cast, which I didn't want to wear to work as it requires cloth between the cast and the leg or the plastic cushioning inside the cast gets all hot and uncomfortable. As I've got some old capri-style pants which I wear around the house and come right down below the ankle, I've donned those today for the tryout, and so far I like it. It doesn't really help the pain which lingers on the outside of the foot, which I believe is where the ankle twisted, but it holds the ankle and leg steady so I can actually walk on it unaided, stand for brief periods of time, etc. I've been going about the house straightening up a lot of stuff I've had to leave for a week and a half whilst I didn't have both arms free. That's almost all done, give and take a break or five with a very demanding Amy, after which I hope to catch up on blog reading, a bit of writing, and of course more baseball even though the Mets broke my heart a bit last night. On the other hand, I could sit here and play Hallowe'en Hangman all day, thanks to Kathy... oh, 'scuse me, Amy's meowing for attention again...

Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)

Who else would I feature on Friday the 13th?



Why, it's Datsa and his "pet" hedge-pig!

Silly Site o' the Day

Happy Paraskevidekatriaphobia Day! What better day to create your own terror warning (an oldie but still a goodie considering the Rule By Fear Radicals still in power), via Karen?

Maintenance Note

Rich Watson has moved his Glyphs blog over to PopCultureShock. Which is a bad thing for me because PCS doesn't do individual blog feeds, just a group feed, so now I have to wade through about 15 posts from people I don't know or care about to get to Rich's. Thanks to chan-zero in the comments I now have the feed...

Silly Site o' the Day

Not feeling that silly, as the ankle was once again worse in the morning. The air cast has arrived at home but I won't be there until this evening so I'm making do. Still stunned over the Cory Lidle plane crash at York and 72nd, but grateful that the casualty count was so low. Losing Lidle so soon after Buck O'Neil has certainly given the MLB playoff presenters enough to prattle on about ghoulishly, as if grief has become a collective experience of necessity. Which wouldn't be a bad thing only it's not actual grief, it's TV-gloss grief, the surface form without the underlying construction. I don't know how to feel about Lidle's death beyond feeling sympathy for his wife and kid (and the same for the relatives of the other person killed), the sympathy extended to anyone in a civilized and compassionate society. So it bothers me when my TV implies to me how I'm supposed to feel.

Between the news about Lidle and the Mets game postponed last night, and the new "50" comedies (30 Rock + 20 Good Years) being mediocre at best (I'd watch the former one again, just to see if it goes beyond "occasional smile" to "actual laugh" next time, but I'm staying far away from the latter, which was utterly unwatchable by about 7 minutes in), thank goodness for Stewart and Colbert. I heard Stewart was on Letterman last night, but we went to sleep right after Colbert, with the extremely amusing George Lucas segments. Which reminded me that I wanted to pass on this very funny PowerPoint presentation to which Kevin linked. And if you missed Colbert's "Cooking with Feminists" segment with Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem from Monday, here's part one and part two.

Silly Site o' the Day

News both encouraging and discouraging. On the minus side, I had to all but blow off a recruiter on the phone this morning because, between my ankle and my boss' return and a coworker taking his annual Aruba vacation for the next two weeks, I won't be able to leave the office for any interviews until November, when I hope to have a better idea of my boss' schedule and can try to work around it. On the plus side, while a particularly egregious twinge in the aforementioned ankle woke me up around 4:30 AM, overall I have far less trouble getting around today than I did yesterday, so this is my first day using no crutches at all, just the walking stick. By the time my air cast arrives I may not need it all that much any more!

As today is National Coming Out Day, I thought it the perfect time to link to the website of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Inc. (via Hanan), who keep doing the good work...

Silly Site o' the Day

It feels like I've back-slid a bit in the ankle-wellness department, as I was back to the crutches this morning, but Robin assures me that I really gave the foot a workout yesterday so this is bound to happen. I'm getting about the office using the walking stick, though (thank goodness it's portable and folds up!), and still taking one day at a time. I'm sure I'll be all better by election day. Speaking of which:



You can't put anything past the Election Campaign Button generator (via Gerard), it knows an October Surprise when it sees one! (Although the supposed NK nuke test doesn't appear to have succeeded as he'd hoped, because people are still talking about the Gross Old Pedophiles, aren't they?)

Progress

Putting weight on the foot, although that still hurts, and have graduated from crutches (which were causing me pain in other body parts, the last thing I need) to the walking stick. Toddling about a little jerkily, but at least that leaves me a free hand to carry stuff. One day at a time.

Ankle Update

Nothing broken! Just sprained, and recovering nicely. The orthopedic surgeon (an Englishman, yet!) recommended I keep doing what I've been doing, and he'll see me again in three weeks at which time he'll refer me for physical therapy. While it's still a bit wince-inducing, I have been able to put weight on the foot for the first time in five days, and the news of no breakage is even more encouraging. Oh, and good call, Andante, the doctor recommended the air brace too! Robin's already placed the online order. Now it's off to pick up our new eyeglasses; even though I'm still using the crutches I'm much better able to get around, and I think I might even try the walking stick at home this evening...

Silly Site o' the Day

Well, I made it down the two flights of stairs more easily than I thought, with Robin's help, and driving was okay except when I had to really press down on the brake. Since it's Columbus Day and the bank (our anchor tenant) is closed, I could park much closer to the building entrance than I usually do, and a coworker let me in and held open doors for me. But I came in to a nasty bit of "I told you that you should have gone to the doctor on Wednesday when it first happened!" (well yes, if I'd actually been thinking straight and didn't believe the ankle would go back into place in a day or so, I would have - as it is, I have an appointment with a local orthopedic place at 3 PM) and an email from my boss' wife about how unreliable I am (I mean, how dare I not be able to walk, after nine years of faithful service!). Same old same old. All this pain will have been worth it if last Wednesday's interview pans out. If not, six more bleak months of being belittled, verbally kicked and insulted. Speaking of which, here's an insult generator (via Gerard).

Lettuce Prey

More recalls on leafy green stuff. Oh, and possibly tainted beef as well (via Susie, who also found this cool article on iPod randomness). Should I be glad I haven't been able to go veggie shopping whilst nursing this bum ankle?

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 10/1 thru 10/7/06

This is my first try at using Firefox's editing software Performancing to type a blog post, so let's see if it works in doing my weekly roundup of Liberal Coalition posts:

• Chris gazes into his crystal ball.

• Echidne examines how more anti-obesity propaganda is also turned into anti-woman propaganda, examines how the majority of women on CBS' "free speech" segments are identified by their relations to men (mostly as "mothers") rather than by their own accomplishments, and wonders how the radical reactionaries continue to get away with demonizing Soros whilst ignoring Scaife.

• Kathy alerts us to Bush's latest "nyah nyah I'm the king" signing statement and reminds us what true Christianity is.

• Moi has more on the Amish school shooting.

• Mustang Bobby celebrates the Tigers victory.  Yesterday was a weird day for me baseball-wise, as I like both the Yankees and Mets (yes Gilliard, it is possible not to hate one NY team because you like another), so it was half "oh well, see you in '07" and half "woo-hoo, on to the next round!"  My prediction for the World Series is Mets vs. A's.  I don't think Detroit will withstand Oakland.

• Natalie remembers Gandhi.

• NTodd has pictures from a NYC-based blogger get-together.  I wasn't invited, but I can't move anyway as it is...

• Happy belated 44th, Scott!

• Steve G has two excellent original-content posts about the Foley scandal, here and here.

Okay, now to change this to "source editing" and save it just in case, then try to publish it...