Now I’m in a bit of a bad mood, but I don’t think that is why I find this deeply amusing.

A little story: I was asked to catalog a small 1-room school house library so they could get back their accreditation from the state.
I knew that it was small enough that I could do it myself so I agreed without checking out the collection. When I got there, over their spring break, it was so appalling that I really had to laugh. Amongst other egregious errors, they had most science books cataloged as fiction (along with a copy of the Torah) but the Bible was in there as “non-fiction, history.” It was kind of nice putting things to rights but I know that once they had that bit of paper, it would all go back the way it was. Probably a good thing the kids didn’t learn much of anything for those years.

Thanks peardg for the link.

You’ve heard about the terrible trouble being had by Haitians because of the recent earthquake. You’ve probably heard about Pat Robertson’s analysis of the causes of said trouble.  If not, check out NPR’s reporting. If you need a shot to your irony-meter you could also watch the youtube clip below. If you don’t have an irony-meter, you might want to avoid the clip since it will just make you mad. If you watched it anyway, then there is a anti-toxin you can take. I suggest an immediate dose to prevent cerebral melt-down. Read this. It should set you back to rights.

Ed Brayton posts some funny stuff. He seems to have a fondness for helping us spot stupid behaviours, so of course Sarah Palin features regularly as do other currently outspoken members of the American Republican Party.

His recent post recounts the blasts the Repubs have leveled at Obama (and others) for criticizing the U.S. on non-U.S. soil. I’ve always thought that was funny.  What? They don’t know that the U.S. (insert here your favorite nasty incident from the U.S.’ not so pristine past and recent present)?

Apart from maybe Russia, I doubt there is any industrial country whose population knows less about the history of the world that that of the highly educated U.S. I mean maybe Sarkozy could come here and not mention the French Revolution! That might actually work to hide the dastardly deed from (at least) a (large) proportion of the U.S. citizenry (including some of its past and present presidential and congressional members, and other leaders like Governors). But I am afraid the approach probably won’t work in the rest of the industrialized world.  I suspect they already know.

One would have thought humility (you know —  that quality Jesus was supposed to have had) and honesty a pair of behaviors vaunted by a “Christian” nation. No? Oh.

So what then? The buffoonery of stepping in the elephant’s crap because you’re busy pretending she isn’t there? Oh.

How many times do you really want to clean the stuff off your shoes? Personally, I prefer the honest approach.  I don’t much like elephant crap.

It’s a hot humid late summer afternoon and I have had a bitch of a day. It’s my first day off in a series of six and to get here without work-guilt I put in a long three days at my desk from Sunday through Tuesday. I was tired last night after a 12-hour day but I also felt clean leaving work – everything is in a state where, if necessary, someone else can pick up a project and know what’s happening. Still it was a long three days and today I have paid the price.
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I was reading The Daily Beast earlier today. In it there is an article called “Summer of Hate: 25 signs trouble is brewing.”  It’s just what the title implies: it lists 25 events in the American world since June of this year that seem to point toward a (probably) immanent explosion of violence like, perhaps, the one we saw in 1968 (which the article briefly mentions). It’s a nice title, since it gets its power from mocking the 1967 Summer of Love.

I remember 1968.  I was 12 and had moved from the northeast of the US to Houston, Texas. When Martin Luther King was shot, I had been in town less than a year. I didn’t know how to comport myself in the place. I didn’t know it wasn’t OK to let my dark-skinned neighbor child (a Mexican foster kid staying with a white foster mommy) into my house, and that based on that transgression, my neighbors’ parents wouldn’t let them play with me.  I didn’t know that my voice (with its faint British accent) would arouse such suspicion.  I didn’t know that it was OK for the white teachers in my school to reduce the Mexican-American Spanish teacher to tears by refusing to allow her to sit in the teachers’ lounge.  I was pretty stupid really and because of that I was kicked out of the sixth grade. (It was my first, but not last, expulsion.) I probably deserved it; I was terminally insolent.  I have to admit, to them, I was probably a really nasty little brat.
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I watch Rachel Maddow, and recently I saw a clip called “Making Painful Decisions.” The clip below starts at 3 minutes 56 seconds and goes to the end.  Essentially it is a clip of the lawyer for Terry Schiavo’s husband speaking to the fear being drummed up against living wills by some Republicans as a way of trying to impede health care reform. Right near the end George Felos says “the only thing this bill does is say we will pay the doctor for the conversation. That’s it.”

He is, of course, refering to the conversation a dying person should have with their family and health care provider about what they want done for them and to them at the end of their lives. This conversation is what some Republicans are saying is a plot to kill the elderly. Bah. If its a plot at all, it as a plot to get people involved with their families, to talk to them, to open lines of communication, to speak to each other about the hard stuff.

The earlier segment of the clip shows that the principle opponents of the living will provision have a history of supporting exactly what they now oppose. I sure hope Mr. Felos is right when he suggests that the political downfall of some of those who used Mrs. Schiavo’s end to bring themselves political attention is something that will repeat itself with respect to some of these current conspiracy “theorists.”

It takes a mean spirited person to add to the pain and confusion that dying brings with it and that is what they are doing by trying to kill such a simple provision: help people speak to their doctors and families about what they want their death to be like.

I’ve been struggling all week. Made it to work every day but most days was late and so had to work late to keep up with the job. I took today as a vacation day because yesterday I just couldn’t force myself out of bed and into work before 10:00. I’m normally there by 07:30.

It’s not depression. Don’t feel sad. I feel exhausted. As if I am a battery that can’t recharge. Why that is…not sure. Could be age or the toll my poor habits have finally taken, or could be that introvert stuff. If I am alone for days, no people’s faces, no talk, just the sounds of trees and wind, the night stalkings of the unseen animals in the undergrowth, then I start to feel less traumatized, less like I am naked in a sand-blasting machine.

I have written elsewhere that I don’t much like people, albeit I am fascinated by the way we are and how we got to be this way. That’s true, I suppose, that I don’t like people. But on days like this, it is not my dislike that is at issue. People are simply hard to be around – wearing. My poor little introvert circuits just get overloaded.
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