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Home Again, Home Again

Good campout. The weather yesterday and last night was perfect, the only problem was that I forgot a pad to sleep on. Back's a little achy, but I'm hoping some puppy-dog eyes and some well-timed whining will get me a backrub tonight.

Drew had a blast, and he graduated from Bear to Webelos last night. He seemed pretty chuffed about it.

More later, once I get some aloe on my nice, new Red Neck.
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 10:13:00 AM

 
Off We Go

Drew and I are headed out for a Cub Scout campout. It started last night, but Melissa and I decided the severe thunderstorms forecast for last night ruled out tent camping.

Should be interesting, to say the least.
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:14:00 AM

 
What'd I Tell You? Hold Them Wallets TIGHT, Folks!

Bill Frist (R-Headuphisass) has proposed that American taxpayers get a special $100 rebate check to in some way make up for the high cost of gas at the pump, a cost inflated by the Chimperor's saber-rattling over Iran, his utterly failed illegal invasion of Iraq and, of course, the BILLIONS of dollars in Republican giveaways to the petroleum industry.

"Our plan would give taxpayers a hundred dollar gas tax holiday rebate check to help ease the pain that they're feeling at the pump," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist announced Thursday.

Well WHOOP-DE-FUCKIN'-DOOOOOOO! A WHOLE HUNDRED DOLLARS???!!!! OMFG!!!11!!!!

Of course, even that puny a level of "assistance" to the American taxpayers comes with a bigger price - the same bill proposes to open the ANWR to drilling.

"A lot of these other things we're talking about today, supply, like ANWR, have had Democrats oppose them in the past, when gas was $1.25, $1.50. Gas is now $3," said John Thune, R-South Dakota. "I would expect that there would be a lot more bipartisan support for proposals that would increase supply in this country."

"We have been trying for years to do something about supply without their help. I hope now that we'll have their help," he added.

Yeah, right. Thanks a lot, asshole. You'd've done better not to budget so much less for alternative energy research, and to maybe NOT have voted for the shitstorm in the Middle East that's jacking up the oil prices right now. You'd've done better voting against the tax breaks for the top 1% of income brackets and putting just ONE TENTH of that money into funding public transportation and voting for higher fuel efficiency standards in cars, or eliminating the special tax breaks for small-dicked businessmen to buy H2s and Ford Extinction SUVs or whatever they're called.

Too fucking little, too fucking late.

As outlined by Frist and other GOP senators, the energy package would give taxpayers a $100 rebate, repeal tax incentives for oil companies and allow the Federal Trade Commission to prosecute retailers unlawfully inflating the price of gasoline.

The measure would also give the Transportation Department authority to issue fuel efficiency standards for passenger vehicles, expand tax incentives for the use of hybrid vehicles and push for more research into alternative fuels and expansion of existing oil refineries.

And how much of that, I wonder, will mysteriously get "lost" in committee, or disappear between the bill's passage and its arrival on President Limpdick's desk? It's happened before, after all - I don't expect this to be any different.

And at the end of the summer, when that $100 is long-gone and we're paying $3.50 per gallon and wondering what the hell we're going to do when gas passes $4 per gallon, how many members of the GOP will still be collecting their fat campaign contributions from Exxon, Shell and BP? Someone's gonna get fat on this, and it's not gonna be us. Mark my words.
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:45:00 AM

 
WWJD?

It's the little things that make me proud I'm an American.

Ava Lowery, a 15-year-old Alabama native, is one of them. She's produced a series of antiwar flash animations, which are all archived at her site, Peace Takes Courage. They're simple yet powerful, stirring indictments of our government's policy of preemptive war, the war in Iraq and George W. Bush.

The most moving is "WWJD". It's nothing more than a child singing "Yes, Jesus Loves Me" over a series of photographs of wounded Iraqi children. Its message is in no way radical - unless you consider the notion that Jesus might have an equal love for all children to be somehow wrong. Still, as The Progressive lets us know, that is a little too "out there" for some self-professed Christians:

“It’s people like you who need to fucking die and get raped while your corpse rots in the sun,” said one e-mail Lowery shared with me. “Fuck you, I would jack off on your parents if I could. If you don’t like the team, get out of the park. That means take ur small dick and get the fuck off of my homeland you faggot chocolate gulper.”

“You are a TRAITOR to your country and should be executed for treason,” another one said. “All you do is bitch about the US. If you hate it so much, why don’t you GET THE FUCK OUT.”

“Why don’t you go masterbate [sic] to a pic of Sheehan and fuck off,” said a third.

“Are you a muslem [sic] terrorist?” asked another.

Let's set aside the ideal of Christians as kind, merciful paragons. It's a noble ideal, but it's one that is sadly lacking in general practice. That's not to say I don't know some good folks - I do (Hi, Mom! Hi, Pop! Hi, Melissa!) - but ideals are not people. Let's look at the things these people are saying - to a fifteen year old girl.

What kind of person tells a fifteen year old girl she needs to "fucking die and get raped"? What kind of person declares that a teenage girl should be "executed for treason" merely because she disagrees with the notion of unlimited War Without End? It's not a sane person, that's for sure. It's not a mature person, by any stretch of the imagination. It's not someone that's secure in his position in society or in the stories he tells himself about his masculinity. It's a low down shame that there are people like that.

Ava Lowery, you're Good Folks. Keep up the good work.
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:59:00 AM

 
Governor Assbag Must've Flunked Math

Otherwise, he wouldn't think that cutting $6,000,000,000 in property taxes statewide and replacing it with $3,500,000,000 in business taxes makes sense.

Educational funding in Texas is in bad shape, and Governor Assbag's plan does about as much good as flapping your arms does when your plane is going down. Sure, some districts have the money for good schools, but a lot of districts don't. Depending primarily upon local property taxes to fund schools means that districts with low property values do much, much worse than those with high property values. That's common sense - if houses in the Snobbytown Independent School District average $400,000 in value, that's about $6,000 per house per year. Down the road, the same number of houses in Bedroom Community ISD average $150,000 - that's $2,250 per house. Out in the Rurual ISD, houses average closer to $50,000 - $750 per house. As it stands now, local property taxes provide the lion's share of funding for school districts. Those districts with high property values get more money, which means they can pay their teachers more, build more and better equipped schools and offer more extras - more intensive music and art programs, better physical education, gifted/talented classes and special education classes. Poorer districts are often barely able to pay their teachers above the poverty line and cannot afford much more than baseline maintenance.

This sets up a vast gulf between wealthier districts and poorer districts, a form of small-scale economic apartheid.

Cutting $2.5 billion from the state's education budget doesn't help anyone except the fatcats. For most Texans, the reduction in property taxes won't amount to much - the tax bill on a $150,000 house would drop from $2250 per year to $1995 - a savings of $255. Those lucky enough to be able to afford a $400,000 house would get a cut of $680 dollars per year - and Michael Dell, whose $16 million plus house costs him around $250,000 in property taxes, would save over $30,000 per year.

The proposed hike in the franchise tax would raise $3.5 billion in new revenue, nowhere near enough to match the $6 billion being cut out of the budget. Perry proposes using $2 billion out of the state's "Rainy Day Fund" to cover the deficit, but that still leaves us $500 million short.

I don't know that there's a way to tinker with our tax structure to fix our educational funding system here in Texas - I think more drastic measure are required, ones that will ensure more equity in funding across the board.

I know one thing, though - it's a bad time to be a student in Texas.
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:40:00 AM

 
Bush's Four-Point Plan

Aw, hell. Looks like the Chimperor done come up with a little plan!

A four-point plan! w00t! Let's see what it is!

1. To make sure that consumers and taxpayers are treated fairly
2. To promote greater fuel efficiency
3. To boost U.S. gasoline supply
4. To invest aggressively in gasoline alternatives.

And...

Is that it? Fuck, that's not a plan. That's a goddamn wish list. That's a campaign platform. That's more fucking dog-and-pony tricks to keep the marks occipied while the cannons roll 'em.

Keep your hands on your wallets, folks. It's only gonna get worse.
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:09:00 AM

 
Tolerate My Intolerance!

I'm not the first to discuss this, not by a long shot, but a student at Georgia Tech has filed a lawsuit demanding that rules protecting GLBT students from harassment be struck down. Why? They infringe upon her religious freedom to harass gays.

No, seriously!

Those damn tolerance rules mean that she can't accuse homosexuals of being pedophiles, tell them they're going to hell, or even spread the stereotype that gay men make FABULOUS hairdressers.

It's a cruel, cruel world when chipper little pie-faced bigots like Ruth Malhotra aren't allowed to come right out and make life miserable for an oppressed minority.

Of course, the Religious Reich are on to our clever little ruse, as shown in an article in the LA Times about this case:

Christian activist Gregory S. Baylor responds to such criticism angrily. He says he supports policies that protect people from discrimination based on race and gender. But he draws a distinction that infuriates gay rights activists when he argues that sexual orientation is different — a lifestyle choice, not an inborn trait.

By equating homosexuality with race, Baylor said, tolerance policies put conservative evangelicals in the same category as racists. He predicts the government will one day revoke the tax-exempt status of churches that preach homosexuality is sinful or that refuse to hire gays and lesbians.

"Think how marginalized racists are," said Baylor, who directs the Christian Legal Society's Center for Law and Religious Freedom. "If we don't address this now, it will only get worse." [emphasis mine - ACL]

Yes, we can't have that now, can we? I mean, how dare those Godless Liberals equate homophobia with racism!

Personally, though, I think I could support this lawsuit. If the Fundamentalists insist that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice, couldn't you say the same thing in spades about religious faith? I mean, that's all about choosing to obey the bible, us humans all being fallen souls and all. A fondness for the caresses of a member of the same sex is not a "lifestyle choice" - it's ingrained, it's something that cannot be changed. Opening your heart to Jesus Christ as your own personal savior is a choice.

So if it's legal to persecute gays and lesbians for their "choices", it ought to be legal to persecute Christians for their deviant lifestyle choices. They want a "War On Christians" (and it seems they do, they whinge about it so goddamn much), I say we give it to 'em. Let them spend some time living in fear, afraid to be seen together and terrified that someone find out about their little secret.

Let them worry about being beaten and left hanging on a barbed wire fence. Let them live in the closet and have to deny their true selves. Let them be subjected to catcalls and assaults. Let them suffer the agony of being rejected by their families for their "lifestyle choices".

Maybe they'd be a little more sympathetic of the sufferings of others then. Somehow, though, I doubt it. Sympathy requires some degree of feeling for one's fellow human beings, and I'm beginning to think that fundies are by and large a bunch of sociopaths, devoid of any real feeling for anything other than themselves.
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:51:00 AM

 
Sunday!

Decluttered some, heading out for Fun In The Sun_TM!

Last night I made a spinach fritatta with eggs, spinach and green onions from the CSA farm. It was delicious, and the kids ate every bite - all the while proclaiming their deep and abiding hatred of spinach and all things spinach-related.

Melissa and I just smiled smugly.

The restructuring is helping some, I think. Keeping at it. Bit by bit.
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 1:56:00 PM

 
Weekend

Things to do:

1. Clean kitchen and living room
   
2. De-clutter my room and the LR
   
3. Make menu for next week to use fresh greens, onions, greenhouse cucumbers and garlic from the CSA farm < /gloat >
   
4. Family DVD night

I'm trying to restructure some parts of my life. Sun Tzu said in The Art of War:

With regard to precipitous heights, if you are beforehand with your adversary, you should occupy the raised and sunny spots, and there wait for him to come up.

Right now, I'm moving to the raised and sunny spots and changing the frame of reference. Rather than wait for the meds to kick in, I intend to keep my life and my brain active, which seems to help me wrestle off some of the depression.
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 2:15:00 PM

 
Just A Couple Of Things

Thanks to everyone that responded, both in the comments and via email/im yesterday. Means a lot to hear from all of you. I'm gonna make it, just got to make it through this rough spot.

Don't worry, though. I'm not thinking suicidal thoughts. Seriously, I'm not. Except for a very brief period many years ago, it's not an idea that's held any appeal for me.

Again, thanks for the kind words and thoughts. I'm doing OK. Not great, but not terrible either. I'm OK.
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 7:51:00 AM

 
And Some Good News, Too!

Adrienne Martini, one of several writers I know and envy for their talent, has her latest column out: Welcome To The Suck. Another good one, of course.

She's got a book coming out this summer, too - Hillbilly Gothic. If you do not all IMMEDIATELY pre-order copies, I shall be very, very cross with you.
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:51:00 AM

 
Downswings

Sunspots, the seasons, the tides - many different things are cyclic to some degree or another. Even within their own patterns, there is always variation. The Earth's orbit wobbles ever so slightly, one sunspot cycle might be stronger or weaker than the one before it.

I know I'm oversimplifying here, but bear with me. I'm going somewhere.

In our own lives, we can identify cycles as well.

Right now, I'm being reminded of one of the primary cycles of my life like it was a sledgehammer to my temple.

Depression.

I've been on and off meds while dealing with it in my life, and every time, I ignore common sense and stop taking the medications when I feel good. I can get more, better writing done when I'm not on the meds, I think. I'm more energetic, more exciting. I might be, but there's a price for that.

Sooner or later, the ride's got to end. It doesn't matter how fast I'm going or how much fun I'm having, sooner or later the tracks end and there's a sickening plunge down into the Abyss.

The Welbutrin helps - it's like brakes on the car, which means I can stop before the edge, but it also means I don't get the thrilling loop-de-loops and the moments where I'm off the tracks entirely, flying through the air solely on momentum.

Can you understand how unwilling I am to give that up? Those are the moments when I feel like I can do anything - like I'm Nick Charles, Jack the Giant-killer, Scaramouche and Captain America all rolled up into one.

I feel attractive, confident and capable. And you know what? I am - confidence leads to success, success leads to more confidence and the cycle continues.

At the back of my mind, though, there's always that voice. Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal. I know the Abyss is somewhere up ahead. If I get back on the meds, I can slow the ride down, stop before the fall.

Slowing down, though - that's the last thing I need, I tell myself. If I stop now, the whole thing collapses. This time - maybe, just maybe, this time I'll have built up enough momentum to fly right across the Abyss. Hubris is the human condition.

But I'm trying to slow it down this time, trying to stop before I fall in. I started back on the Welbutrin yesterday, I'm trying to change some bad-for-me patterns of behavior, I'm working to de-stress my life at home. Which means I'll be working a lot less on the fiction (though not giving it up entirely - the thrill of getting some good words down is a nice little boost) while I do some restructuring. I'm going to be questioning myself a lot more, maybe pulling back at weird times and reaching out at others.

Bear with me, OK?

Just roll with it, as best you can. If I seem disconnected or distant, don't think I'm mad at you. If I get a little snippy, it's OK to tell me to chill out.

I'll get through this, I always do. I'm getting a better hand on my overall situation. I'm understanding the cycles of my life, and while I can't break them completely, I can nudge them bit by bit to a better path.
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:21:00 AM

 
WTF? Is he on CRACK?

John Snow thinks there is no income gap.

All he [Snow] said was the ''aspirational compensation system works pretty well. People will get paid on how valuable they are to the enterprise."

All we are left with is our aspirations in a game where the average share of the American dream is being spoiled. The Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy, the two liberal think tanks that annually chart the gap between CEOs and workers, currently list the gap at 431-to-1, or $11.8 million to $27,460. That compares with a gap of 107-to-1 in 1990. If salaries of the average worker had kept up with that of a CEO, he or she would be making $110,136. Had the minimum wage risen at the same pace as CEO compensation, it would stand today at $23.01. The federal minimum wage of $5.15 has not risen since 1997.

In 1980, the gap was only 42-to-1. Where the spoils go are quite clear. According to 2005 federal data from the Congressional Budget Office, the share of America's income that went to the highest 20 percent of households increased from 45.5 percent in 1979 to 52.2 percent in 2003. The remaining 80 percent of American households all saw their share of the nation's income drop.

The higher you go in that top 20 percent, the more the rise in their share of the income. The top 1 percent of Americans saw their share of America's income zoom from 9.3 percent in the last quarter century to 14.3 percent. The top 10 percent saw their share go from 30.5 percent to 37.2 percent.

That's fucking insane, that any human being actually thinks that this is a fair distribution.

It's bullshit - CEO compensation is nowhere near sane or fair or reasonable. A ratio of 431-to-1 is as bad as the excesses of the Robber Barons, it's setting up a new serfdom.
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 11:06:00 AM

 
My Heart Cannot Take The Shock...

The shock of finding out that one of my idols is not happy.

Thanks to Anne for that little heartbreak.
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:26:00 PM

 
New Kid on the Blog

Empires Fall, by YouthAgainstBush. Go over, check it out.

"I'm just someone who's sick of Shitcakes and his Merry Bunch."

Heh. My kind of guy.
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 7:09:00 AM

 
Is It Just Me?

Or are any of you having trouble sleeping thinking about the casual talk in DC about war with Iran?

I just have no faith that the gang of incompetents in power is actually trying to avoid war, and the nutjob running Iran right now seems to have a bigger jones for a fight than anyone involved.

The big worry for me is tangled up with my concerns that we might launch a preemptive nuclear strike. What scares me more is that a lot of my fellow citizens would applaud it - they'd forget the misgivings they have about Iraq and the economy and go apeshit with joy over the use of nuclear weapons against a nation with which we are not at war.

We've spent the last 60 years trying like hell to keep the nuclear genie, if not in the bottle, at least on a leash. I feel now like I did during the Reagan Administration - like somewhere, somehow, some idiot is going to launch a nuclear weapon and that when it happens, all hell is going to break loose.
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 11:35:00 AM

 
Attention, Population of Portugal!

While I appreciate all of the google hits, this blog has nothing to do with Francisco Adam.

Atenção, população de Portugal!

Quando eu apreciar todas as batidas do google, este blog não tem nada fazer com Francisco Adam.
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:29:00 PM

 
Easter Morning Carnage

The kids are up, they have torn through their Easter baskets and are now hopped up on chocolate and sugar.

Which means it's time for my annual visit to a church.

Later today, homemade chocolate pie!
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 7:33:00 AM

 
Fresh Produce!

Melissa and I signed up with a local participant in the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), and today is our first pickup!

Fresh organic vegetables and fruit, farm-fresh eggs, honey, jam, pickles and pesto.

::does Happy Dance::

Mmmmmmmmm.
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:12:00 AM

 
Day Off!

No school today, so Drew and Fran are staying home. Since leaving them home alone with a book of matches and some lawn darts is not allowed (THANKS, BIG GUBMINT, FOR SCREWING WITH MY RIGHT TO RAISE MY FAMILY MY WAY), I'm taking a day off.

We've planned all kinds of fun stuff to do, though, like ROOMCLEANAPALOOZA and THE LAUNDRY GAME and even, if they're really good, EXTREME DOG-WASHING.

Now, who wants to come over and play Uber-Balance, the thrilling game of personal accounting?
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:53:00 AM

 
New Store Stuff

Sooner or later, I'm gonna come up with some good stuff for my cafepress store. Until then, you're stuck with what I've got there now.

Like, for instance, this:


posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:05:00 AM

 
Daylight Saving Time: It's A Scam

As usual, Daylight Saving Time is kicking my ass. Almost 2 weeks later and my sleep schedule still hasn't caught up. The kids are still draggy in the morning and wired at night.

But I've been thinking.

Some people have great ideas maybe once or twice in their life, and then they discover electricity or fire or outer space or something. I mean the kind of brilliant ideas that change the whole world. Some people never have them at all. I get them two or three times a week. - Neil Gaiman, The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish

What's the deal with DST, anyway? Oh, sure, THEY tell you it's all about "making better use of daylight" and "saving electricity", or possibly even "reducing traffic accidents". Balderdash.

First off, I want to know what they do with the hour of my life they steal in the spring. How do they preserve it, and do they catalogue all the hours? How do I know that when October rolls around I'm going to get MY hour back? I want a receipt, and I want to see some documentation of how they make sure I'm getting my hour and not some complete loser's hour.

While we're at it, I want the interest they get from banking my hour - why should they get the benefit of my hour without my permission? At current interest rates (ranging from 2.75% to 4.8% annually right now), they get anywhere from 0.825 to 1.44 minutes from that hour. That's not much, until you remember that in the United States alone, there's approximately 295,734,134 people. If they get .825 minutes from every man, woman and child in the US, that's 243,980,660.55 minutes - about 464.19 YEARS. If, on the other hand, they get the higher interest rates (and they would, I think, get that - banks always give sweetheart deals to big depositors), we're talking 425,857,152.96 minutes (810.23 years!).

That doesn't take into account the people that die between April and the end of October, though - those hours, I am sure, they get to keep free and clear.

And that's not even considering that they might be engaging in some kind of shady deal whereby they actually shave a few seconds off your hour, so you're only getting back, say, 59.99 minutes instead of the whole hour. Just one hundredth of a minute from eveyone in America gets them 5.62 extra years.

What are they doing with all that time they steal from us? I figure they keep all the Bastard People alive. You ever wonder why Henry Kissinger is still oozing along? Why, despite clear evidence of being massively overdrawn on Karma, Rush Limbaugh hasn't keeled over from an oxycontin-induced heart attack in mid-rant about welfare queens? It's obvious, when you think it over - YOUR time is keeping them - and others - alive.

The way I see it, those bastards owe me 79.074584516512598045064113295349 minutes (that's all the stolen time for the last 37 years, at 1% simple interest per annum - I'll cut them that much slack). Going forward, they can either pay me the interest directly, or they can stop taking my goddamn hour every year. I'm sick of it, and it's about time I got my time back.
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:10:00 AM

 
Domestic Disturbance: Where Irises Grow

Melissa hits another one out of the park with her latest column.
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 7:26:00 AM

 
It's Review Time!

And while I normally don't talk much about work, I felt it was important to be honest with you, my dear readers, about what, exactly, I do as well as why I need more money.

While I still can't tell you about my day-to-day job, I can tell you what I do on the side. I prepared a short PowerPoint presentation for my manager, but I have also put the individual slides online for your edification:













posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:39:00 AM

 
Worried? You Should Be.

Seymour Hersh, the man that broke the wall of silence over My Lai and Abu Ghraib, reveals in the latest issue of The New Yorker that the Bush Administration is planning for the use of nuclear weapons against Iran's nuclear facilities. In the history of stupid ideas, that's right up there with "Fighting Russians in the Winter" and "Sticking Your Dick In A Garbage Disposal" -things that any motherfucker with the slightest iota of common sense could tell you won't help, and will most likely make things much, much worse.

A nuclear strike against Iran will turn every nation in the world against us - the use of atomic bombs against Japan was questionable, and that was an effort to end a war against a militaristic, genocidal nation that had engaged in a 5-year war of aggression.

Jesus, couldn't someone just mail them some garbage disposals and tell 'em Muslims are afraid of people that stick their dicks in 'em?
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 5:36:00 PM

 
Experiments In Local Cuisine

Last week, Melissa and I went to Pharaoh, a local Mediterranean restaurant, to celebrate our anniversary. That was some good food - I had chicken with artichoke hearts that was so good, I wanted to marry the chef. For dessert there was some of the best baklava EVAR.

That inspired me, though, to make sure I hunted down some more local yumminess. Tonight, it's Saccone's Pizza, which bills itself as "Austin's only true authentic Jersey pizza shop". I'm willing to concede that, while Yankees can't fry chicken or cook BBQ to save their lives, they do some good pizza.

I'm looking forward to it - I so rarely use my mutant power for Finding Good Dining Establishments these days, it's good to let it work its magic.

[edit] I have tried their pizza, and it is GOOOOOD.
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 6:02:00 PM

 
Kalypso's New Orleans

A ten-year-old girl has produced a 12-minute video that details both the good times of Mardi Gras in New Orleans and the devastation still remaining untouched there. I saw this on Your Right Hand Thief, and Oyster had it right: Want a new Hero? Consider adding ten-year old New Orleanian Kalypso to your personal pantheon.

Hang in there, New Orleans. Chin up, Louisiana. Not all of us have forgotten you. And if any of you know Kalypso, tell her she done good.
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 11:35:00 PM

 
If My Children Get Sold To The Gypsies, It's Not My Fault

Little nippers did it to themselves.

Our kids love mud. They squeeze it in their fists, pound it, roll in it, sculpt it and, eventually, throw it. When I was young, my brothers and I did the same thing - up to my high school years, as there was a creek on the farm, and there's nothing more fun than making mud dams in a creek.

I digress, though.

Today was a crazy morning. Melissa's a little under the weather - not enough to have to miss work, but enough to make it difficult for her to sleep, which makes her mornings that much less fun. Last night, I forgot to make sure the alarm was set, so I woke up late and had to run out the door in a hurry, without making sure everything was good to go for the kids. Some time after I left, Drew opened the back door and he and Alec ran out into the yard. Not a problem on normal days, but the kids got sent to bed early last night for making a huge mud puddle in the backyard and covering themselves with mud. So I got a call from Melissa, already tired and now uber-stressed, informing me that the kids had covered themselves with mud.

::sighs heavily::

Children.
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:13:00 AM

 
It's All About The Children, Innit?

For some bizarre reason, the Department of Homeland Security is the one running "Operation Predator". I'd think the FBI would be a better bet, but I use Earth Logic, which puts me rather at odds with the assclowns in the Bush Administration.

Today, I was poking around and discovered that Frank Figueroa, the former head of Operation Predator, has been charged with exposing himself to a teenage girl. That's the second DHS official that's been discovered to be attracted to underage girls. From a local paper, here's the basic details:

The files do contain a statement from Rachel Wright, the 16-year-old who reported the incident. Although The Tampa Tribune has a policy against publishing the names of victims in sex cases, Wright and her mother, Cleme Consalvo, have chosen to go public.

In her statement, the girl said Figueroa pulled up a leg of his shorts, exposed himself and masturbated for about 10 minutes. "I glanced once because he seemed very strange, and I caught a look of his penis," she said. "I was shocked, so I sat and thought of what I should do."

What a sleazebag.

When an Orlando mall security officer responded to a complaint about a man exposing himself to a girl in the food court, the suspect hurried out of the mall and ran through the parking lot.

...

According to mall security reports, after Figueroa fled the scene, two more security officers approached him in the parking lot and asked why he was running. He said he was trying to find his car. Officer Kevin Williams offered to help him find the car, but he said Figueroa first needed to talk to security about an incident in the food court.

"Mr. Figueroa then pulled out his government ID and stated to me that he didn't do anything in the food court," Williams' report states. Figueroa walked toward his car, and Williams followed, radioing to security Sgt. Robert Francisco.

As Francisco approached the car, Figueroa pulled down the passenger-side sun visor in his government car, revealing red and blue strobe lights. Francisco told Figueroa that Orlando police were on the way and asked him to wait.

Figueroa gave Francisco his office phone number and told him he needed to get back to Tampa for a conference. If Orlando police had any questions, Figueroa said, they could call him at work.

Francisco radioed dispatch and then told Figueroa that Orlando police wanted him detained and taken to the security office. "Special Agent Figueroa gave an exasperated look but then asked if we could drive there."

posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:51:00 AM

 
Cool New Fossil!

The New York Times pretty much gets it right in their recent article about a new fossil fish.

In two reports today in the journal Nature, a team of scientists led by Neil H. Shubin of the University of Chicago say they have uncovered several well-preserved skeletons of the fossil fish in sediments of former streambeds in the Canadian Arctic, 600 miles from the North Pole.

The skeletons have the fins, scales and other attributes of a giant fish, four to nine feet long. But on closer examination, the scientists found telling anatomical traits of a transitional creature, a fish that is still a fish but has changes that anticipate the emergence of land animals — and is thus a predecessor of amphibians, reptiles and dinosaurs, mammals and eventually humans.

In the fishes' forward fins, the scientists found evidence of limbs in the making. There are the beginnings of digits, proto-wrists, elbows and shoulders. The fish also had a flat skull resembling a crocodile's, a neck, ribs and other parts that were similar to four-legged land animals known as tetrapods.

That's the fascinating stuff, the really cool bits. It's mostly a fish, but almost something else. On the second page of the article, though, we run into the reactions from the Whackaloon Club:

One creationist site on the Web (emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs /evid1.htm) declares that "there are no transitional forms," adding: "For example, not a single fossil with part fins, part feet has been found. And this is true between every major plant and animal kind."

That's been a major contention of the creationists for decades, and every time paleontologists produce a new fossil showing evidence of a transition, the creationist nutjobs refine their "gaps".

Dr. Novacek responded: "We've got Archaeopteryx, an early whale that lived on land, and now this animal showing the transition from fish to tetrapod. What more do we need from the fossil record to show that the creationists are flatly wrong?"

Statement by a Real Scientist (that is, someone that does not have his head firmly inserted in his rectum). Followed by....

Duane T. Gish, a retired official of the Institute for Creation Research in San Diego, said, "This alleged transitional fish will have to be evaluated carefully." But he added that he still found evolution "questionable because paleontologists have yet to discover any transitional fossils between complex invertebrates and fish, and this destroys the whole evolutionary story."

...a Whackaloon changing the parameters.

Really, it's almost pointless to try and explain simple things like this to the creationists. The real mystery and wonder and beauty of the world and our history in it are lost on them - they're like those tourists that wander around Paris loudly wondering where you gotta go to get a cheeseburger in this rotten town, and why's all the art got naked people in it anyhow?
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 7:20:00 AM

 
GOP Ethics! In!! Action!!!

Part of an ever-growing series.

While it's nice surfing the crest of good feelings from Tom DeLay's resignation, the fact is that there's still a lot of GOP and right-wing scumbags out there.

And here's a few little tidbits to stoke the fires of rage for you:

1. DHS Press Secretary arrested for trying to score jailbait online.

   Authorities arrested Doyle on Tuesday at his Silver Spring, Md., home as he was online with the "girl." The undercover detective had called Doyle at work and said she got a Web camera, as he had asked her to do, and wanted to test it out, said Carrie Rodgers, Polk County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman.
   
   "He said he would get on the computer when he got home from work so we knew he would be on," Rodgers said. "When (police) went to his door, he was on the computer in the middle of a conversation with the girl."
   
   Doyle found the teenager's profile online and began having sexually explicit conversations with her on the Internet on March 14, the sheriff's office said in a statement.
   
   He sent her pornographic movie clips, as well as non-sexual photos of himself, officials said. One of the photos, released by the sheriff's office, shows Doyle in what appears to be DHS headquarters. He is wearing a Homeland Security pin on his lapel and a lanyard that says "
   TSA."

   Now, we don't know for sure if Brian J. Doyle is a member of the GOP, but given the GOP's lock on hiring in DC, I wouldn't be surprised. A retraction will follow if I'm wrong, as always.



2. What do you call an African-American woman that claims she was raped by an all-white lacrosse team that hurled racial epithets at her? If you're Rush Limbaugh, there's only one word that fits: "Ho".

   LIMBAUGH: They're -- they're busy. They're busy. The Reverend Jackson is in New Orleans. He's leading a big march there tomorrow. The march is -- what is it called? The -- the march for the right to return a protected vote and reconstruction. He's trying to -- they got problems down in New Orleans. They don't have voter base, and Sharpton's working on a New Orleans deal, too. He's trying to figure out how he can get involved in the deal down there at Duke where the lacrosse team --
   
   CALLER 1: Yeah.
   
   LIMBAUGH: -- uh, supposedly, you know, raped, some, uh, hos.

   Rush got called on that almost immediately, and what did he offer in the way of apology? "I regret that you heard me say it." There's some moral character for you. His mother must be so proud!



3. Last, but certainly not least, the son of the President of the Arizona Senate (Ken Bennett - R) and another young man have been accused of sexually assaulting 18 11-to-14 year old boys at a leadership camp last summer. Don't worry, though - as a felony conviction for sexual assault would totally ruin the plans of Clifton Bennett to go overseas on mission work for the Church of Latter-Day Saints, authorities have agreed to accept a plea deal: they'll drop all but one assault charge and urge that Bennett serve little or no jail time. Now, it was just some frat-boy hazing type stuff, not really bad or anything:

   The younger Bennett confessed to police that he and Wheeler sodomized the 11- to 14-year-old boys with broomsticks and flashlights in at least 40 incidents, court documents show.
   
   ...
   
   Prosecutor James Landis told a judge at last week's hearing that the "broomsticking" was a hazing ritual and a punishment, not sexual assault.
   
   ...
   
   The 18 boys were chosen to attend the weeklong student government leadership skills camp in Prescott because they were among the state's top student leaders.
   
   Records show the defendants were assigned to stay in their cabin and announced that campers who broke rules would get a "brooming" soon after the boys arrived. A police report of the incidents wasn't made until six months later, when one of the boys told a school official.

   Isn't that something? What parent wouldn't jump at the chance to get their child sexually assaulted at summer camp by the son of the one of the most powerful Republicans in the state?

So when the Religious Reich starts in with their canards about how the Democrats stand for all kinds of moral degeneracy, make sure you remind them of the stories above. Even with stupid as thick as they've got, something ought to get through to their tiny little brains
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 9:42:00 AM

 
Series Interruptus

Melissa and I have been enjoying the hell out of Jeeves and Wooster - we've been getting the DVDs through Netflix, and Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry are a perfect combination. We're halfway through the second season, and we've hit a snag - the second and third tracks on the second disc of the set are scrambled. I've cleaned the DVDs, we purchased a new DVD player when our old one died last week, and I'm on the fourth replacement DVD from Netflix - I'm pretty sure that soon they'll just start resending the ones that already don't play.

It's driving me crazy, because I've been jonesing for a J&W fix for over a week now, and if I don't get it soon, I'll completely lose it.

Some of you, no doubt, will be tempted to say, "Well, why not give the rest of Season 2 a miss and go straight on to Season 3! That way, you won't have to wait any longer!"

To them, I merely arch one eyebrow and intone, in the most solemn and sonorous tones, "Indeed, sir?"
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 11:47:00 AM

 
Ding-dong, The Witch Is Dead!

It's a good news, bad news situation.


Good news: Tom DeLay won't seek reelection.

Bad news: DeLay is the poster boy for the GOP's criminal reign in Congress - and with him gone, the GOP-led Congress can pretend that they've fixed their problems.

But right now, I'm gonna just enjoy the fact that the Bugfucker is getting out of politics. Which means the penalties for punching him in his goddamn face will be a lot less if I happen to run into him in a dark alley somewhere.

Now, if the Jail Fairy will just hear my plea and throw his sorry ass in the Federal Pen...
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 10:07:00 PM

 
George Will: Blithering Idiot Or Fucking Liar?

Let Cooler Heads Prevail: The Media Heat Up Over Global Warming.

In fact, the Earth is always experiencing either warming or cooling. But suppose the scientists and their journalistic conduits, who today say they were so spectacularly wrong so recently, are now correct. Suppose the Earth is warming and suppose the warming is caused by human activity. Are we sure there will be proportionate benefits from whatever climate change can be purchased at the cost of slowing economic growth and spending trillions? Are we sure the consequences of climate change -- remember, a thick sheet of ice once covered the Midwest -- must be bad? Or has the science-journalism complex decided that debate about these questions, too, is "over"?

Whaaaaaa? You might ask the residents of the Seychelles what they think of George Will's brilliant analysis. If they're too busy trying to get out of the way of the rising waters, you could always go to Micronesia or Tuvalu or Bangladesh and ask the millions of people watching rising sea levels eat away at their front lawns if they think global warming is a good thing. Go ask some Inuit if melting Arctic icepacks are a good thing or a bad thing.

People that are able to tell their asses from hot rocks have no difficulty understanding that climate data collection and analysis has improved over the last several decades, and that all of the data we are seeing indicates that things are going to get hotter, faster - and soon. Mosquitos that carry malaria and dengue fever are spreading northward, polar bears are losing habitat, glaciers all over the world are getting smaller, and some pencil-necked twit thinks Global Warming might turn out to be a good thing? A recent article in Scientific American pointed out that the increase in CO₂ is making the oceans more acidic, which in turn eats away at the shells of plankton that are at the center of several food webs. How is that helpful?

The mind boggles.

I'm reminded of a hilarious exchange from the first season of "King of the Hill":

HANK: How is cutting down on pollution a government plot, Dale?
DALE: Open up your eyes, man. They're trying to control global warming. Get it? "Global?"
HANK: So what?
DALE: That's code for U.N. commissars telling Americans what the temperature's going to be in our outdoors. I say let the world warm up, let's see what Boutros Boutros Ghali Ghali has to say about that. We'll grow oranges in Alaska!
HANK: Dale, you giblet-head, we live in Texas! It's already 110 in the summer, and if it gets one degree hotter, I'm going to kick your ass!

George Will should stick to what he knows. No, not politics - he's been disastrously wrong on that waaaay too often. Economics are right out, too, as the numerous spankings he's received from Krugman, DeLong and others attest. Baseball? Nope. Olbermann's much more entertaining and informative about that noble sport. I don't know what, exactly, George Will does know, but he's got to be good at something. Maybe he could volunteer to help report on the good news in Iraq?
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 7:42:00 AM

 
Sums It Up For Me...

Douglas Adams understood:

In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn't cope with, and that terrible listlessness which starts to set in at about 2.55, when you know that you've had all the baths you can usefully have that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the papers you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o'clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.

posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 2:27:00 PM

 
April 1st

The best idea I could come up with for today was to announce that Melissa was pregnant, but it's kind of weak.

So there will not, in fact, be an April Fool's joke on this blog today. Surprise!
posted by Adam C. Lipscomb at 8:27:00 AM