Neo-Hippie Ramblings - I'm a Non-Conformist Just Like All My Friends: November 2005

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Odds and ends with a high school theme

Must be the fact that we went to visit family this past weekend, but I have a bunch of stuff floating around in my head and a lot of it's tied to high school in one way or another. That was half a lifetime ago now. Ouch.

Classmates.com
: Made the mistake of signing up for the basic account, out of curiousity. Now the bastards won't leave me the hell alone - they're sending me spam out the pooper. But one old friend who I actually would like to talk to sent me an e-mail through their internal infernal system, and I can't read the damned thing unless I sign up for a 'gold' account. That really, truly sucks. Not sure if I'm gonna pony up the cash or just try to track him down outside of their site. Grr.


Not Quite Scheherazade: Found out that someone I knew back in high school writes Not Quite Scheherazade, which I'd run across a while back, and really liked, without realizing that the author was an old acquaintance. Kudos, A.S., on a great blog.


Alcohol: I've never been a confessionalist, as the few of you who read this regularly will know. But someone very close to me has let a drinking habit slip way out of control and it's quite alarming. Not sure what happened, or exactly when, but somehow having a few too many on 'special occasions' has apparently turned into a situation where every day is a 'special occasion'. Not good.


Being Clark Kent: Apparently all these years in front of a keyboard have finally paid off. Typing was the only class I ever got a 'D' in during high school. I truly sucked -- something like 13-14 wpm at top speed. I realized today at work that I was typing amazingly fast (for me) -- probably over 60-70 wpm -- while not even looking at the monitor, and not making any mistakes. Woo-hoo!

Monday, November 21, 2005

Head scratcher

Cheney's flexible guy. You can't see it in this picture but he's actually doing a split.



The McCain anti-torture amendment is "unnecessary and duplicative," but the CIA needs to be exempt or the President will veto it. Riiiiiiight.

Because the Abu Ghirab investigation clearly got to the root of the problem of POW abuse and nothing like that could ever happen again.

Monday, November 14, 2005

FDA's Morning-After Pill Decision Probed

Don't remember for sure if I posted a rant about this when I first read about it. Either way, there's one coming right now...

Apparently, when it comes to the issue of reproductive rights, nothing less than total fucking domination and the absolute legislation of morality will suffice. Sieg Heil to the Rabid Reactionary Right!

I mean really, what degree of asshatted, howling-abyss psychosis does it take to combine the premise that abortion is an abhorrent thing with an all out war on every attempt to provide sex education and contraception?

Jesus. Fucking. Christ. It defies all description.

It's not about helping women. It's not about being 'pro-life'. It's not even about sex, really. At the most fundamental level, it's about the need to inflict one's own view of the world on everyone else at any cost.

I'd love to live in a world where nobody wanted or needed an abortion. A world without incest or rape. A world where couples weren't ever having sex unless they were emotionally and physically ready, and weren't having kids until they were all of that, plus financially ready as well. But I live in this world, the real one, and I understand intellectually why abortion needs to be an option, even though the thought of it makes my heart ache and my skin crawl.

I'd love to see fewer abortions -- I'd love to see zero. Not by making them illegal, but by making better alternatives available, practical and affordable.

News flash: Pretending that you're going to somehow spread the Gospel to the entire fucking human race and magically turn the entire fucking world into clones of Ward and June Cleaver is not one of those alternatives.
  • Supporting adoptive charities is kind and noble one.

  • Supporting the availability of reliable, affordable contraception is a socially and fiscally responsible one.

  • Supporting factual sex education in the education system, combined with the availability of resources to help parents hold a meaningful, open dialogue about sex and sexuality with their children - within the framework of their personal religious and moral beliefs - is perhaps the best one of all.
And if that doesn't fit into your need to tell other people what to do, then do us all a favor and shut the fuck up.

Friday, November 11, 2005

A Quiet Moment to Reflect


Ever stop to think about how the rest of the world must see us?

Holy Trap, It's a Stooldriver!

Our two-year-old, E., learned a few entertaining words recently. She can't pronounce 'screwdriver' quite right, so it comes out as 'stooldriver'.

She picked up 'holy crap' from one of her older cousins, but says it as 'holy trap'. We're not doing anything to correct that one. ;)

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Don't Let the Door Hit Ya in the Ass on the Way Out

From AmericaBlog:

"Intelligent Design" proponents SLAUGHTERED in PA election
by John in DC - 11/09/2005 01:51:00 AM

Ok, this my friends is what a real mandate looks like. The GOP and their religious right cronies got slaughtered in Tuesday's elections. Other than Texas, which was to be expected, they lost, big time everywhere (CA is still being counted at this hour).

Basically, the local voters in the Pennsylvania anti-evolution controversy threw out EVERY SINGLE ONE of the wacko Republican anti-evolution wingnuts who were sitting on the school board. ALL OF THEM, GONE.

Now that's a mandate.

(Hat tip to Atrios.)

Technorati tags:
AmericaBlog, 2005 pennsylvania election, intelligent design, mandate

Saturday, November 05, 2005

US Using Napalm in Iraq

From Project Censored:
Reviewed by Cole Ryan and David Abbott

The U.S. has been secretly using napalm in Iraq despite a 1980 international ban on the use of incendiary weapons by the United Nations. The US never signed the UN protocol banning incendiary weapons and uses semantic deception to cover up the use of napalm by calling the weapons firebombs or Mk-77s.

http://electroniciraq.net/news/1928.shtml
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0617-01.htm
http://aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/news_service/middle_east_full_story.asp?service_id=5875
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,,1518692,00.html

Technorati Tags

Iraq War
Napalm
Crimes Against Humanity
Firebombs
MK-77s

Cross-posted to Bring It On.

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

A greater opportunity to get myself into trouble

...as my wife so kindly puts it. ;)

As of yesterday, I am a contributing member of Bring It On - the group blog that I've been addicted to for months now. Woo-hoo!

I'll spare you the embarassing Miersesque gush, but suffice it to say that I've been walking around with a shit-eating grin on my face since I found out.

Like-minded liberals, heated political discussions, daily Dubya abuse, a handful of pet trolls and more page hits in a day than I get by myself in months. What's not to love?