Quote of the Day

Anyone who has lived paycheck to paycheck, without a social or personal safety net on which to fall back, knows that when you don't have money to spare, you don't save money. And thus the opposite is true: People with money to spare are the people who save money that they don't need to spend.

- Melissa McEwan

Read the whole thing. This is what I try to tell people who ask me why I'm unable to accumulate more savings than I currently have.

The Dickens You Say

"Man," said the Ghost, "if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. Oh God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!"

...

"This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!" cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. "Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse! And bide the end!"

Yes, I just finished rereading the Dickens original. As ever, lots of stuff both timely and timeless, mostly care of the Ghost of Christmas Present. Still far too many people out there using ignorance for their factious purposes, and pronouncing too much life among the 47%...

Things We Said Today

Robin: You know, our marriage is like a never-ending improv routine.
Me: Isn't everybody's?
Robin: Yes, but most of them don't seem to know it, they keep waiting for a script.

Do You Know Women Have No Sense of Humor?

"No, but if you hum a few bars..."

Unicycle bars, that is. I guess it takes balls to laugh at a guy on a unicycle.

"The idea that unicycling is intrinsically funny does not explain the findings," said Professor Shuster. The simplest explanation, he says, is the effect of male hormones such as testosterone.

You absolutely cannot make this up.

Robin's comment: the professor's entire findings appear to be based on men being more likely to snigger and point out the wanker on the unicycle.

Update: Amanda believes it's a wry hoax. I hope she's right.

Quote of the Day

In the end, people grow old, are romanticized, sentimentalized, their histories shaped by caring and sympathetic hands. This is an inevitability I have learned to live with. What stops me from being a complete on-fire ass-kicker bitch-from-hell in this industry is the tacit understanding of this inevitability.

For there are not just the idealized heroes on the page but from behind-the-scenes. Going to SDCC, this of course is obvious.

And what I have done, if anything, is take the usual "loser" in that history, the "negative factor" in the equation, the ignored, the silenced, the never-was, the footnote, the Red Shirt, hapless Spartan #56, the 1930's starlet who gave and gave and gave head and got nothing but this lousy T-shirt, who was told that the air quality was safe, who was told to stay in the building and wait for help to come, who had their belongings dumped in the damned-dumpy-dump-dumpster that was specially called in just to clean out that very office, who had to go along with the n-word jokes because he didn't want to seem "angry," who had to go along with the homo jokes because he didn't want to seem "radical," who had to go along with the boob jokes because she didn't want to seem "bitchy," those whose silence was the biggest asset they had -- what I have done is offer an option, an outlet, a methodology, a mouthpiece, an example.

But actually, I haven't done a goddamn thing. The Internet did it.

The Internet gives you the opportunity to have your own histories and versions sit alongside those oh-so-very-carefully crafted narratives of those who Matter. You might use the Internet and pretend you matter, pretend so very hard, until your realize that the field is level, the rules have changed, and it is YOU who matters, matters to you and yours and your clan.

YOU MATTER. Your story matters -- the story of your life, and the stories you dream up every day, drifting up from your unconscious like spirals of smoke.

- Valerie D'Orazio, Comic Book Howl: The San Diego Syndrome

Absolut Despots

...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government... when a long train of abuses and usurpations... evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security...

Happy Independence Day to my fellow Americans. Don't forget to slip 1776 into your DVD player if you have it. I hope I don't need to tell you whence the above quote originates (hint: no, it's not Keith Olbermann). As an American citizen I'm feeling a bit reduced, myself. Are we going to do our duty soon?

My Independence Day ComicMix column is up. It's my contribution to the Blog Against Theocracy blogswarm. I don't know if I succeeded in expressing my belief in belief itself exactly in the way I wanted to, but hey, who do you think I am, Thomas Jefferson or something? My ComicMix colleague Glenn has excerpted parts of the Declaration that are scarily relevant today, but what I'm really looking for that I haven't been able to find in the liberal political blogosphere (with which I've finally caught up except for the intimidating Group Blogs category) is an actual updating listing the crimes against American ideals perpetrated by the current (Boy) King George and the people who pull his strings. Does anyone know of such an update? Please respond in the comments. Update: Athenae at First Draft comes close, quoting sections of the original with links to current abuses.

Back after the Yankees game (or during if it sucks overly)...

Quote of the Day

"No blogging on the stairs! You'll hurt yourself!"

- Said by an Apple Store employee to CNET's Caroline McCarthy

Quote of the Day

One of the great advances of our civilization is the recognition that the line between good and evil is not between one group and another group; the line between good and evil lies inside every human being.

Ladies and gentlemen, this has been today's edition of What Digby Said. Hey, I'm nothing if not a bandwagon-jumper. (Am I the only one reading Digby far more attentively now that I know what she looks like?)

Quote of the Day

"We can’t focus our irritation at the lack of diversity in the media, since that’s a negative target, so instead we focus our anger on a single product for being what it is and not something else. Which is the first step down the road to aesthetic stalinism, because once you focus on this book or that movie for being what it is and not being the book or movie that you want, you are in essence arguing against the existence of the book or movie that’s come into your sites." - Amanda Marcotte, who totally encapsulates a lot of what's wrong with the "entitlement mentality" of much fandom. Oh, and I'm not exempting myself, I often fall into this trap as well.

An Atheist Responds to a Boob

Before I go, I'd like to urge folks to read the entire entry from "mapantsula," a professor at Virginia Tech and an atheist, in response to some nonsense from Dinesh D'Souza. Some excerpts:

I know that brutal death can come unannounced into any life, but that we should aspire to look at our approaching death with equanimity, with a sense that it completes a well-walked trail, that it is a privilege to have our stories run through to their proper end. I don’t need to live forever to live once and to live completely. It is precisely because I don’t believe there is an afterlife that I am so horrified by the stabbing and slashing and tattering of so many lives around me this week, the despoliation and ruination of the only thing each of us will ever have.

We atheists do not believe in gods, or angels, or demons, or souls that endure, or a meeting place after all is said and done where more can be said and done and the point of it all revealed. We don’t believe in the possibility of redemption after our lives, but the necessity of compassion in our lives. We believe in people, in their joys and pains, in their good ideas and their wit and wisdom. We believe in human rights and dignity, and we know what it is for those to be trampled on by brutes and vandals. We may believe that the universe is pitilessly indifferent but we know that friends and strangers alike most certainly are not. We despise atrocity, not because a god tells us that it is wrong, but because if not massacre then nothing could be wrong.

I am to be found on the drillfield with a candle in my hand. "Amazing Grace" is a beautiful song, and I can sing it for its beauty and its peacefulness. I don’t believe in any god, but I do believe in those people who have struggled through pain and found beauty and peace in their religion. I am not at odds with them any more than I am at odds with Americans when we sing the "Star-Spangled Banner" just because I am not American. I can sing "Lean on Me" and chant for the Hokies in just the same way and for just the same reason...

We think the pain is complete and absolute. We know it is.

We think that nothing can heal these hearts, that time can only take the sharpness off the agony, that only in time can beauty be wholeheartedly seen again or laughter felt deep inside.

We insist there is no sense or meaning to be made of this massacre. There was only sense and meaning to be created within the lives of each person gunned down. That is why we are horrified by it. That is precisely why it is so horrific.

We don't believe these people have died for anything: God's plan, as a beacon to the rest of us, to be a vivid memento mori for all. We just believe they have died, brutally and without mercy. We refuse to lie to grieving mothers out of some patronising sense that a pleasant myth is more respectful than a terrible truth.

Those of us with the slightest shred of decency do not tell widows to deal with it, to get over it. That the world can be callous is no reason to be so myself. I know that no family could ever get over this loss, that no family should ever be expected to get over this loss -- either by themselves, by religious rhetoricians bearing false platitudes, or by inane political pundits -- but that not getting over the loss does not preclude some other kind of happiness, some other source of joy, at some other time. Not now, not in this moment, not when they have moved on, but only when it comes to them one day, like light dawning slowly.

We know the world is cold, and that only people can make it warmer.

My only qualm with it is that this person has chosen to remain anonymous; while I certainly understand why, it tends to undercut his or her credibility a bit.

"Butt-Slammed by the San Diego Chicken"

I missed the Food Network Awards last night, but after reading Anthony Bourdain's scathing and hilarious review of same I'm pretty sure I didn't miss all that much at all.

In Case You Wanted to Weep for Civilization

And I quote, "(Watch bleeding victim on floor, suspect at gunpoint: Video)" I'll bet the relatives are extremely grateful for CNN's attentiveness to every gruesome detail.

Why Watching March of the Penguins at Home is So Much Fun

"...but more than that, this is a story of love..." - Morgan Freeman's narration

"...hot, hot penguin love." - Robin

Quote of the Day

The concept of wanton violence as a heroic duty, especially for "instructive" purposes, has been with us a long time, and appears alive and well today -- on both sides of the violence. The rabid American right is now waging war on its mirror image but is incapable of recognizing it.

- David Neiwert, Behind the Mask

"I've Never Blown A Giraffe"

And that was the exact point at which Robin and I decided to stop watching the Food Network's Sugar Showdown challenge program for the evening, as we knew nothing could top that quote. Like, ever.

Best Headline of the Day

Doogie Gay, But Not Canadian

Crapping Rainbows in Your Brain

Oh, Gary's pure evil, he is. I'm glad I added him to my reading list.

"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.

The Cure for What Ails You

Posting in short bursts today, to match my cold-or-allergy-affected attention span. That's how I'm dealing with these stuffy-head days, I make sure the windows are down when I drive home from work so I stay alert, then I do little organizational things, one at a time, to take my mind off the fact that I can't concentrate enough to read much or catch up on doing the finances. Last night I emptied a few trash cans, organized my occasion card/blank card/postcard files, emailed my mom, and watched the Yanks win and the Mets lose. TV, I can still multitask. So when I heard that Pat Buchanan was to be Jon Stewart's guest last night, I made alternate plans. While Buchanan was pontificating (Robin confirmed that he was indeed still a "loopy bastard") I went to my computer to watch the video of Keith Olbermann's special comment, which I'd forgotten to watch live because, well, I can't think straight when my head's all stuffed up. Via Bryan, here's the link to both the transcript and video; well worth your time. The page (which also links to more of Olbermann's recent gems) doesn't mention it, nor do any of the many bloggers who've rightfully praised his words so far, but he ended the comment by echoing Murrow's "Good night, and good luck" again, which I hope becomes a habit because, as far as I'm concerned, he's Murrow's current successor.