a bit of my morning reading list today

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10781.shtml

I am very pro-Palestine.
I shun the faulty logic equating this with anti-semitism, as any rational mind would.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/blogs/bizfeed/172290/fcc_to_take_a_stand_on_net_neutrality.html

Thank you, Mr. President, for taking steps to keep another campaign promise. Thank you.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/sep/18/children-philosophy-childless

Backed my way into a thusfar childless life, and no, it doesn't suck. It might even be keeping us from going further into debt. *rolls eyes*

This is probably rebutting more disgusting Christian propaganda (gotta get more white people to pump out the babies, dontchaknow?) and the anti-women's rights agenda masquerading as pro-lifers today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/18/opinion/18brooks.html?_r=2&em

Hey, I don't really agree with him. But he makes his point without pandering to the lowest common denominator, as so many right-wingers are doing lately.

I've been around the world. Not even close to all of it, but enough to know that YES, racism and bigotry come in as many sundry forms as colors in the rainbow.

You see black people saying that cannabis is okay for white people to smoke, but not for black people because it makes them crazy? I've heard that in Africa with my own ears in this millenia.

You hear white-on-white racism in Australia, aimed at those who associate with Aborigines, derogatorily referring to them as "derros" and un-subtle class stratification in the neighborhoods outside Perth? I have witnessed it myself firsthand.

I honestly believe there may very well be racism burbling just under the surface of a highly unstable gun-toting sliver of these teabaggers.

I take umbrage, am personally insulted down to my marrow by their rhetoric, their guns, their anger and their fear.

And I stand up proudly and say that if they take aim at Our President, they are aiming at me,
if they try to tear him down, they are going to have to go through me...

seethe / breathe / seethe

I've been having a little schoolyard scuffle with my conservative cousins. Naturally I'm defending the President, who hasn't had time to do anything worthy of the scorn the last administration deserved.

I can't get my head around it completely. It's like the right-wingers have been paying close scrutinous attention to how exasperated the left has been for the last 8 years. And now they're twisting up the most deservedly-inflammatory rhetoric aimed at Bu$h - but aiming instead at Obama.

Obama hasn't done anything remotely deserving of such bigoted racist sour grapes. But that doesn't stop the right, the fox limbaugh medved hannity beck noise patrol, from starting out their criticisms of Obama as loud or even louder than the left shouted when Bu$h was at his worst.

And will someone please shove a big black dick down Michelle Malkin's throat already?

awghost as the summer lamp is burning

I finally put up a timely post at my music blog. Included a link to a freely-available live recording shared off-site.

Now the inner pessimist is waiting till my wp blog disappears b/c of the link, completely indifferent to the content around it.

My new books still haven't showed up from amazon, dangit. Altho I am inchworming along in the paperback I'm reading now...it's frustrating to go to the mailbox and find it empty.

I've developed a poor person's game. I go to amazon (or half or addall or wherever) and find the cheapest book I actually want to read, and then find another cheap-as-I-can book that I want from the same seller, to split the postage up and make it a little less like a bite in the ass.

Things is tight, dollars is scarce. It's like thrift-store shopping online. And I love thrifting...

I've found that most of the thrift stores in any given town have web affiliates or equivalents that unload remainders and old library books for cents on the dollar. Usually by hustling them at amazon or half.

So don't bite the big box bookstores and their obscene cover prices unless you can't help it. Find more to read at the library, the library sale rack, trading sites like paperbackswap or bookmooch, garage sales, thrift shops, and whatever's necessary to make your money go further.

another day's mental sandbox

There comes a time when in the course of daily events, I decide that whatever words I can shove together at the end of a pitchfork get thrust forward as the subject line so that I can start the damn post.

One can only blog so often with a clear and precise intent. Sometimes, despite the fact that it's near impossible to erase something from the internet, we just need to skribble, even in digital.

When we moved here, a couple of boxes I couldn't bring myself to part with, burn, shred, or leave behind stored with the in-laws, contain the sum total of what I've written, etched, scrawled, or otherwise achieved in the realm of words during this lifetime.

Otherwise I exist mainly as thimblefuls of diatribe here or there...myspace, facebook, no longer myopera, *sigh*, here at blogger and over at wordpress. I post sometimes at livejournal, but haven't been overly central to them for my braindumps in a while.

Whether or not the Goddess, the Lady and the Lord, wanted us to have crotchfruit/children in this world, I find that somewhere between 25-35 I'm assessing my life, its meaning, purpose, and whatever will be left of it once I'm unable or unwilling to continue in this body and soul.

I've read about such mid-life assessment coinciding with assuming the responsibility of a baby into our lives. And of course the artists, writers, musicians I pay attention to are unfettered in the ways of fertility. Even superfly gay-or-just-bi? icon Ani DiFranco succumbed to the urge and positively *lights up* when talking about her baby girl.

An old friend, someone I was nearly involved with back in the emotional-trainwreck portion of my post-teenaged years, asked if my wife and I had kids yet. I had to answer 'no' despite considerable thought both ways...

I used to read the heart-rending statements of couples in fertility treatments, desperate for a baby, and wonder what was wrong with adopting fer chrissakes? Now it would appear at least that life has proven to me that there can be a deep emotional quality to these questions in our lives.

I bet I sound detached, blurry, and repetitive. Thus that last word in the subject/title line.

Still getting my AM coffee down...Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Amy Goodman in the bullpen, waiting to inform, entertain, and explain all the muck that's fit to read aloud. Wife successfully at work for the day...short list of job apps to drop not growing fast enough.

Groceries yesterday, plenty of bagels for the toasting, a few basic options for lunch, I might take out the trash and recycling later, after the morning sun burns the haze off and I can see the mountains in the distance again.

Remarked upon dropping her off today "it never fails to amaze me that the mountains disappear at night." Oh, Salinas...its like a microcosm of three seasons in every day. Brisk but not cold at night, hazy - almost foggy, dewy early mornings, sunny midday, warm afternoons, cool evenings.

Despite brotherman telling me that Minnesota is once again doing its best Jamaica impression this August, and that his central A/C has been running around the clock, I know that in another six weeks there, they have the distinct possibility - if not actual probability, of actually accumulating snow.

While I know the Gods have infinitely odd senses of humor, I'm pretty confident it's not gonna snow where I am this time through the season's cycle...