a little love for the non-existent audience

A happy 2006 for those of us in the radical atheist/pro-choice/anti-torture/pro-skeptic/anti-abuse of power field (decided to edit it down to a few, rather than more). May life grant the light of understanding to those in the dark. And let the ignorant ones try to find their way to a better, more comprehending place.


As if they can. *heh*

Words to live by...

Fuck christmas, by the same person who gave us fuck the south.

Personally, my husband and I plan to spend the 25th eating good food, enjoying our house and singing carols to Cthulhu.

Yeah.

Living in Texas feels quite weird. Sometimes I like it. Sometimes I don't.

But at least there's a lot out there to read to help me survive the trauma of idiocy running rampant all around.

*Heh*

online protester, that's me:

american edit mashup

dean gray tuesday

24 hours of civil disobedience with over 200 protesters linking to the album.

i also included two other mashup albums just to make it easier on those who want to hear a diversified mashup voice.

you may see my link in the group, you may not. they're doing a random mix each time the page loads to give everybody's servers a break.

go and take a listen. it's pretty damned awesome. at least in my ears it is.

You put up a manger, he puts up a hanged santa...

Blindfolded Santa Hanging From Noose At Home Upsets Neighborhood

A large blindfolded Santa hanging from a noose from a high tree in a man's yard has angered homeowners in a Florida neighborhood, according to a Local 6 News report.

***

This should probably not entertain me as much as it does. But it does entertain me. Somebody tried to bring "lynching" into the mix as though this should offend for reasons other than "oh! the children!"

But it's his right to put this up ... just like it's a church's right to set up a manger ... or what have you. Christ on a cross, Santa on the end of a rope...

bill, you ignorant slut...

here's where you sign up to tell o'reilly (as in fox's chief ho and typical right-wing slut/hypocrite and not the uber-geek publishing firm) that you wish to be added to his list of evil left-wing liberal bloggers. yay for killing x-mas. when the pest control person wished me merry christmas i promptly took the clipboard out of his hands and smashed him into the cement in front of my house before dragging him out to the truck and forcing him to ingest his chemical load.

just kidding about that ... i accepted, responded and wished him a happy new year as well. i couldn't care less, but how else can i keep my socialist cred? HA!

now i barely write in this, but this idea (which i saw on first draft) makes great sense. and it's fun too.

which reminds me. taking part in dean gray tuesday.

doing photography which makes me feel odd in a weird sort of way. how to explain that i'm a non-nra gun person? i detest the nra, but appreciate guns? so i did a shoot for a pro-gun calendar yesterday that's more james bond than bikini babe with rifle.

bwahahaha!

i love hp lovecraft. i really do.

also i love the reality community i consider myself a part of. sometimes the surrealist community even.

so this made me very happy:

It's too damned hot here. I want to go to hell!

The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days." Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition 7 x 7 (49) times as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or 50 times in all.

The light we receive from the Moon is one 1/10,000 of the light we receive from the Sun, so we can ignore that.

The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses 50 times as much heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute temperature of the earth (-300ºK), gives H as 798ºK (525ºC).

The exact temperature of Hell cannot be computed. However, Revelation 21:8 says "But the fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." A lake of molten brimstone [sulphur] means that its temperature must be at or below its boiling point, 444.6ºC.

We have, then, that Heaven, at 525ºC is hotter than Hell at 445ºC.

[From the blog Jesus' General via http://cabbageskings.blogspot.com/ - this was too good a post to just not share]

Disenfranchised...and we're not even in Florida. Or Black:

we got purged from the voting rolls. fucking disenfranchised.

we pay our taxes. we've lived in texas for over a year and a half. i can't comprehend how this happened.

we voted the first year we moved here. last year there was only three things on the ballot that we could vote for and nothing we researched was on that ballot!

i don't know if you've ever had your vote stolen but this year, tonight, i'm crying and i feel like somebody punched me in the stomach.

you want to talk about democracy? representation? THIS IS NOT IT! this is thievery and stealing.

when shawn and i made our decision four years ago that we should move to new zealand we should have stuck by that instead of getting sidetracked.

so we're putting the house on the market (shawn's already talked to our realtor) and we're out of here as soon as we can get a good price and the money and paperwork together to go.

we won't have a vote there either, but at least we'll have a valid reason for it -- instead of this thievery.

Petition signing...

a note i added to the new harry reid petition:

Most people understand that we have issues with refinaries and the like, however with record profits, you should work with the American people to get through this time instead of ignoring their need. If you call yourself an American, than work with US. Don't use and abuse your fellow citizens.

places to help, things to view:

we already posted that we have space available to both http://www.hurricanehousing.com AND http://www.shareyourhome.org to see if we can find people to open our doors to. no responses yet, but god only knows what and when we'll find a match through the case workers. we signed up for both yesterday.

seeing trolls attacking texans makes me angry. i wonder if this means i've become texan? i mean we've only lived here a year and a half and we came within a split second decision from moving to nola instead of purchasing this house, but i think that buying the house has made a huge difference in my outlook. meeting all the people coming here to give me price quotes on things we need to have done and so many stories ... i know we have no money and a hell of a lot of debt, but if we can help people (a person?) have a stable safe place for a few weeks, we'll offer it.

and i don't think it's just because i'm some wishy-washy socialist with warped morals that comes from a long history of living in "blue" states. i think it's some human's nature to care and want to help others with less.

** for viewing and hearing **

Nagin speaks his fury (an .mp3)

from the rude pundit: mr bill foresees the future

Poverty rates rise for fourth straight year:

Overall, the nation's poverty rate rose to 12.7 percent of the population last year. Of the 37 million living below the poverty level, close to a third were children.

that really says it all.

my husband and i just purchased our first house. my fibromyalgia has made for a rough move in many ways. but we have much to feel thankful for in the midst of all the depression and desolation in the world around us. and i think we both really know it.

*snark*/
(oh my! an atheist has morals AND can see her place in the world? this can not be!)
/*snark*

fuck this racist, homophobic noise!

...at my sister's party last friday we spoke of how we're moving to manor, pronounced "may-nor" and got into a fairly funny discussion about the way texans pronounce things.

see, they have a street here in austin titled "guadalupe" but they pronounce it "guadaloop" and laugh at you if you try to say it with a mexican accent on the e at the end. there's another street similarly mispronounced. so when we said, sure, but you know texas was part of mexico until we, ummmm, STOLE IT, some cut-up said, yeah, but we won so they have to say it the way WE want them to now.

and that my friends just about sums it up.

trust me, i love the weather, we're making some decent friends finally (very few, but some) and i feel quite happy to buy a house and pronounce the damn town maynor. but some of the racist and close-minded hits have come a little too close to home and it perturbs me.

as a white girl with a german jewish heritage (oh, another joke at the party, somebody said to me "you don't meet many of your types, and my sister and i said at the exact same time "that's because we killed all of us" or something to that effect. we cracked up ... the other few people kind of got that shocked and sorta glazed look on their faces) i don't have a lot to complain about with regard to racism against me. doesn't really happen. can't.

but that doesn't mean i can't hate it when i see it and want to fucking spit. acid. in faces.

you know i know a lot of people of color and a smattering of native americans and they do not want to fucking live in the ghetto or reservation or whatever. they don't deserve pity and they don't deserve white fucking people telling them that they should be happy making minimum wage working at a bk or what have you. a smattering turn to drug selling and use and ghettos become born. they become dangerous because if you can't protect yourself you're fucked. and then some whites end up there due to bad decisions (same as the blacks but generally more stupid since they usually have more fucking choice about these things) they start to get their racism really ingrained in them.

and they think they can say, "well i live here and see this all the time so i can say shit about such-and-such a race."

well fuck you. no you can't. you get stolen from your country and turned into slaves. you get segregated against and spit on and hung from a tree because of the color of your skin. then try to find jobs when all the schools in your area don't have the funding because they don't have the money the better off generally white districts have (because you know, segregation meant you had to live on either this or that side of the track). then see if you don't say fuck this and start shooting up drugs that make you feel like maybe you can cope with it. and you find out you can make more money dealing than you can doing fucking bk.

this explains why we decided against new orleans. i want a multi-cultural group of friends. i want to feel like that shit doesn't matter when we're all hanging out. and there it's very segregated and here it's somewhat. perhaps i should freaking just move back to sf. we probably will when we can afford it.

because this racist, homophobic country has got me down and at least there i can pretend it's not like that.

Hate crimes 'rise after UK bombs'

you know what?

this IS part of what the terrorists want.

fivefold rise in two weeks in attacks on muslims in the uk.

keep it up. muslim leaders are starting to warn of a backlash to the media inspired lash out at people of one certain faith and color.

a great ad for ...

true majority.

good flash, good break-down of where our money goes, good break-down of our "opponent's" money toward their equivalents of the pentagon, not so fantastic sound.

liked it. a lot.

on white bread vs brown bread:

the bombers/terrorists = british nationals.

three from west yorkshire.

my hubby said, "you saw this one!" and well, yes i did.

something stank the same way it stank in oklahoma city.

alleged web sites alleging responsibility means diddly-squat.

and, oh, btw: lots more dead in iraq. but we don't care about that, do we?




hypocrites.

c'mon, please?

skippy needs a million hits!

i admit i don't read skippy nearly as much as i should ... i find myself more charmed with hullabaloo, jesus' general, the rude pundit, james wolcott, and the like. when i want a quick update on the day i go to atrios, and when i want a girl's eye view i hit dc media girl. but i want in on this action, even if nearly too late and so here the fact i have nobody reading my damn barely updated pages can turn and bite me in the ass.

ha!

can we please just stop the ride NOW?

what's wrong with this picture?

Bali, Istanbul, Madrid and Casablanca have all borne the same hallmarks - multiple bombings indiscriminately targeting civilians in heavily populated areas.

The 2002 attack on night clubs in Bali, claiming 202 lives, was blamed on a Indonesian extremist group Jemaah Islamiah, which is allegedly linked to al-Qaeda.

In November 2003, Istanbul was hit by two co-ordinated attacks in 10 days, the first against synagogues and the second targeting UK interests.

Western Europe was struck in March 2004 with the train bombings in Madrid that left 191 dead.

There have also been multiple attacks in Saudi Arabia, Kenya, and Morocco causing extensive casualties and disruption. Pakistan, Yemen and other Indonesian targets have also been hit.

It has for some time been almost a commonplace to say that Britain was "due" an al-Qaeda strike like that on Madrid. Britain's unflinching support for the Bush administration's foreign policies, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, make it an obvious target for al-Qaeda.

gee, could it be the fact that we have NO reason to know al qaeda did these attacks other than a random web site that could have connnections and says it does? how about the fact that several of those places hit in the above bbc site article have mainly islamic populations?

this assuming attacks were done by middle eastern men with heavy beards has gotten out of control. as out of control as the bombings themselves.

i have friends there. i have friends in london who had friends end up in the hospital. i have a very close and beloved friend who has not let me know he's okay yet (and knowing him it might take a day or two from me to hear from him if he's okay). and i have a ton of acquintances who i see when i go visit who i have no way of knowing if they're okay. i guess i'll have to wait to see the death list when it comes out

watch the yellophants play...

image from serephin on daily kos.

idea from jesus' general.

how many like this, i wonder?

from postsecret.blogspot.com ...

some links on organic news and other things to look at...

how many we need to blow up the world, and how many we have in an excellent sound/visual combination: http://truemajorityaction.org/bensbbs/

a new scent for trust: http://www.organicconsumers.org/corp/trust.cfm

the toxic toll of rigidity: http://www.newstarget.com/007701.html

truly organic vitamins, finally: http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=86928

our response to the stem cell issue...

"every sperm is sacred" from monty python's the meaning of live should become the progressive's battle cry of mockery.

of course the whole movie has some damn good lessons on what we should respond to them with. them being the religious right-wing fascist brand. yes, i include the neocons.

about to head off to bed. but watching monty python just made me think about how mockery and sarcasm (and satire) can work wonders for showing the other side for just how stupid they act.

killing children through neglect of our own infrastructure, not to mention the murder of innocents in other countries.

no links. search for yourself. as usual.

plus de choses changent, plus ils restent la même chose:

DURHAM -- Three large crosses were burned in separate incidents across Durham Wednesday night, the first time in recent memory that one of the South's most notorious symbols of racial hatred has been seen in the city.

Yellow fliers with Ku Klux Klan sayings were found at one of the cross burnings.

now this bothers me. a lot. but not as much as the last line in this graph hidden way near the bottom of the article:

Gutknecht noted that on May 9, members of Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., picketed outside St. Luke's, among other churches, as part of a protest against the performance of "The Laramie Project" at Durham School of the Arts. The play is about the murder of a gay man, and the Westboro protesters carried anti-gay signs with slogans including "God Hates Fags" and "Thank God for 9/11."

"thank god for 9/11???" did the queer-hating fascists on the right discover some new conspiracy that i have yet to hear from?

does it matter? no.

the weather here in texas has started to really heat up. almost time for me to go swimming in the community pool.

it bothers me, this whole bullshit right against left thing. i have so little in common with either "side" that it bothers me that my choice for the past election was between a yale man (skull & bones) only a little older from another yale man (skull & bones). one did fight and come back and work as a senator whilst the other played business tycoon and failed time and time again (unless you consider his failing helped some people make a LOT of money).

i want real choices. not made up ones. not media picked choices. i want (god-dammit) old-time election type situations where more than two people actually went for the "prize" of presidency. where the second place person becomes the vice-president so that policy moves more on a less partisan party divide.

*ugh*

i try not to think too much about the things going on in the world. the news about the beating to death of prisoners or the creating of a false sacrificial goat with newsweek telling a two-year old story and still getting it's throat cut. how about the downing street memo that it appears nobody in the msm reported on? or the alleged removal of galloway's testimony from the senate's site?

not bothering to link to any of these travesties because anybody who reads this (as if anybody does) will find that they can locate these on the web easily enough. research on your own. a good lesson for today for everybody i think.

fucking hell. just learn to read and research. it helps make all of this seem just like mere "farts in a jacuzzi." so to speak.

enough lying...

so focus on the family (aka beat the family black and blue) gets abc to show their true colors.

abc did not turn down the diversity ad the united church of christ wanted to place due to a no-religious ad policy. they turned it down because of a no-diversity in the church policy!

i signed the damn petition to try and get nbc and cbs to start showing some respect. now we just have to wait for abc to get nailed by some heavy duty backlash.

please?

not hst, no. not hst.

he meant the world to me and i wanted to some day impress him with my writing or my music or something. and instead he shoots his head off.

it does not seem like anything i would expect of him. not having read his writing of the past 40 years. so why?

i barely write in this because it all seems so worthless. the hacks just keep getting more virulent.

but hst? no, he should not show me this path to get away...