| (no subject) |
[Oct. 9th, 2009|12:53 pm] |
Go Molly! You're such a diva!
One of Molly Crabapple's live-drawing sessions at the Slipper Room with the model Honey Manko.
By CAROL KINO
Published: October 2, 2009
ON a recent fall night in Manhattan, the artist Molly Crabapple convened a group of people with drawing pads for a meeting of Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School, a group she founded in 2005 that now has branches all over the world. A cross between old-fashioned life-drawing sessions and new-wave cabaret, it usually meets every other Saturday at the Slipper Room, a burlesque-themed bar on Orchard Street. Typically, about 50 artists, Web designers, cartoonists and hipsters — alerted by word of mouth or the Internet — pay $12 each to draw a downtown personality like the alternative model Raquel Reed or the performance artist Amber Ray.
But this session was slightly different, as Ms. Crabapple was holding it in Times Square, in pouring rain.
The model for the evening was the comedic burlesque star Little Brooklyn, who was wearing the costume for her pigeon fan-dance act: a feather-covered teddy, thigh-high pink stockings that ended in stiletto-heeled claws, and a glittering black beak. Behind her stood Ms. Crabapple and her co-M.C., the illustrator John Leavitt, holding umbrellas. At 7:30 p.m. sharp Ms. Crabapple cried “One-minute poses!” and Little Brooklyn began to vamp, striking Betty Boop-like attitudes — hand clasped to mouth in surprise, bending forward as if to hail a cab, lifting her feathered tail to reveal pink ruffled briefs. As passers-by stopped to stare and take pictures, Mr. Leavitt encouraged them to sing, applaud and coo. “It’s like Gene Kelly in an alternate dimension,” he cried.
After a few two- and five-minute poses, Ms. Crabapple called a halt to the soggy proceedings and repaired to a nearby bar to drink absinthe. “Standing on a public street and doing something cool — it feels so great,” she exulted. Within minutes she had posted a photo of Little Brooklyn on Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook.
Ms. Crabapple, 26, had been promising this event to her fans for months as a reward if 4,000 of them signed up to follow her on Twitter. (Because fall arrived before she had fully achieved that goal, she held it slightly early, at about 3,800.)
For she was perhaps the real star of the evening. A former artists’ and cheesecake model who has also done some burlesque dancing and a bit of fire eating, Ms. Crabapple is also known for chronicling the exploits of downtown nightlife personalities in an artistic style she describes as “saucy Victoriana.” Until recently she was the in-house artist for the Box, drawing performers and designing curtains and T-shirts for the vaudeville palace on Chrystie Street. With her long dark hair, artfully made-up eyes and demurely vixenish demeanor, she can suggest Morticia Addams, John Tenniel’s Alice in Wonderland or an anime caricature. And because she is never far from her iPhone or her MacBook, little of her life seems unshared.
In fact, some believe Ms. Crabapple’s talent is neither making art nor modeling nor fire eating nor Internet branding, but her ability to combine everything in one seamless persona. Joe Wos, who founded the ToonSeum, the cartoon museum in Pittsburgh, calls her “one of the most innovative young artists out there right now” but argues that her influence extends beyond drawing. “Dr. Sketchy’s itself is a work of performance art,” said Mr. Wos, who runs the Pittsburgh sessions of Dr. Sketchy’s. “Molly Crabapple is an art movement in and of herself.”
Or, as Ms. Crabapple said matter-of-factly, “What you get in life isn’t about how much you cultivate your talent; it’s about how you cultivate your name.”
Certainly the last year has been good to Ms. Crabapple in terms of name cultivation. July saw the publication of her first graphic novel, “Scarlett Takes Manhattan.” Created with Mr. Leavitt, who wrote the text, it recounts the fairly pornographic adventures of Scarlett O’Herring, a fictitious 1880s New York circus performer. Its colorful pictures, made with pen and ink and colored in Photoshop, exemplify Ms. Crabapple’s style. Curves and facial features are exaggerated, bodies tumble through space, and each scene is filled with impossible Rube Goldberg-like architecture.
Ms. Crabapple’s work now appears in an ever-growing number of exhibitions, including the group show “Son of Baby Tattooville,” through Nov. 21 at the Riverside Art Museum in California, and “SuperWOW!,” a one-night exhibition at Kenny Scharf’s Cosmic Cavern in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Friday. On Saturday and next Sunday, she herself will appear at the Pixel Show, a Brazilian design exposition in São Paulo, where she will give a talk, show her work and run a Dr. Sketchy’s session. (She gives talks on online branding, too.)
Another measure of Ms. Crabapple’s proliferating ubiquity is the mushrooming of Dr. Sketchy’s. Though she founded it with the illustrator A. V. Phibes, since quite early on she has run it herself with the help of Mr. Leavitt and an increasing number of assistants. This time last year it had about 50 branches, but its numbers recently exploded to 96 chapters in cities as far flung as Anchorage; Tokyo; Bogotá, Colombia; Helsinki, Finland; Singapore; Paris; and Wichita, Kan.
Although Ms. Crabapple stays in touch with the directors of all her chapters, dispensing advice and encouragement via e-mail messages, in exchange for a nominal start-up fee and monthly dues, she prefers to run her “D.I.Y. empire,” as she calls it, with a fairly light hand. “I’m not this tyrant who’s forcing everyone to wear hats with brightly colored logos,” she said. “We’re not a colonial organization.”
The concept of authority has long been anathema to Ms. Crabapple, even in the days when she went by her given name, Jennifer Caban. Growing up on Long Island, she “was a rebellious little thing,” she said. “I loved Kurt Cobain and was a bane to my teachers.” At 17 she graduated early from high school and left for Europe, fueled by thoughts of Anaïs Nin.
Upon reaching Paris she discovered the bookstore Shakespeare & Company and began working the cash register there in exchange for living upstairs with the backpackers and bohemian intellectuals who were passing through. It seemed like this magical paradise, she said, “like something out of Hemingway.” That’s where she began drawing seriously, in a boyfriend’s gift of a large leather-bound notebook, which she carried everywhere and filled with carefully crosshatched, Tenniel-like ink sketches of the people and places she saw in her travels, which eventually took her to Lisbon; Seville, Spain; Marrakech, Morocco; then back to Paris again. “Since I had just limitless time and no money, I would just sit all day drawing in this book.”
At 18, Ms. Crabapple, having studied Arabic at the New School and read a biography of the explorer Richard Francis Burton, spent the summer traveling and drawing in Turkey and Turkish Kurdistan. She was briefly jailed for sketching in a mosque on the Syrian border but also got to see the Ottoman-era Ishak Pasha Palace. “It looks like something Dr. Seuss would’ve drawn, with all those crazy minarets,” she said. Its phantasmagorical appearance now informs her style, too.
Between her travels, Ms. Crabapple was studying at the Fashion Institute of Technology, where she met Mr. Leavitt in a life-drawing class. Their collaborations included an amateurish burlesque act and a satirical anti-school publication. By the time they quit together in 2004, Ms. Crabapple was supporting herself as a model but growing fed up. “You were supposed to do it silently and just demonstrate tendons,” she said. “You weren’t supposed to have an opinion. I wanted to do a session that would celebrate the model.”
And that’s how Dr. Sketchy’s was born, a drawing session in which the model, not the artist, is the main event.
Partway through the first year, Ms. Crabapple began blogging about her new endeavor. To her surprise, she said, “People responded, saying things like, ‘I wish this happened in Utah.’ ” She posted a tutorial and soon had the beginnings of her empire, with nine branches as far afield as London and Melbourne, Australia.
As the numbers have grown, her internationalism has come in handy. Rather than urging her chapters to hire burlesque dancers, for instance, she suggests that they use “subcultural” models, she said. “Countries like Colombia don’t have burlesque, but every country has its own underground performance scene.”
And because so many of her chapters bring her out to give talks and run sessions, Ms. Crabapple still gets to experience foreign cultures. “When I was a little backpacker kid, I was always an outsider, trying to figure out how I could assimilate into the artistic circles of the cities I was in,” she said. “Now when I travel, I actually get to be a part of the creative community. That means a great deal to me.” |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Oct. 5th, 2009|03:31 am] |
|
Wow! It's been so long since I posted. How does anyone keep up with all of the social media these days? I can't do it, as my live journal shows. |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[May. 15th, 2009|02:12 am] |
If you have raised kids, especially boys, (or been one), and gone
through the pet syndrome, including toilet flush burials for dead
goldfish, the story below will have you laughing out LOUD!
Overview: I had to take my son's lizard to the vet.
Here's what happened:
Just after dinner one night, my son came up to tell me there was 'something wrong' with one of the two lizards he holds prisoner in his room.
'He's just lying there looking sick,' he told me. 'I'm serious, Dad. Can you help?'
I put my best lizard-healer expression on my face and followed him into his bedroom. One of the little lizards was indeed lying on his back, looking stressed. I immediately knew what to do.
'Honey,' I called, 'come look at the lizard!'
'Oh, my gosh!' my wife exclaimed. 'She's having babies.'
'What?' my son demanded. 'But their names are Bert and Ernie, Mom !'
I was equally outraged.
'Hey, how can that be? I thought we said we didn't want them to reproduce,' I said accusingly to my wife.
'Well, what do you want me to do, post a sign in their cage?' she inquired (I think she actually said this sarcastically!)
'No, but you were supposed to get two boys!' I reminded her, (in my most loving, calm, sweet voice, while gritting my teeth).
'Yeah, Bert and Ernie!' my son agreed.
'Well, it's just a little hard to tell on some guys, you know,' she informed me (Again with the sarcasm!).
By now the rest of the family had gathered to see what was going on. I shrugged, deciding to make the best of it.
'Kids, this is going to be a wondrous experience,' I announced. 'We're about to witness the miracle of birth.'
'Oh, gross!' they shrieked
'Well, isn't THAT just great? What are we going to do with a litter
of tiny little lizard babies?' my wife wanted to know.
We peered at the patient. After much struggling, what looked like a tiny
foot would appear briefly, vanishing a scant second later. 'We don't appear to be making much progress,' I noted.
'It's breech,' my wife whispered, horrified.
'Do something, Dad!' my son urged.
'Okay, okay.' Squeamishly, I reached in and grabbed the foot when it next appeared, giving it a gentle tug. It disappeared. I tried several more times with the same results.
'Should I call 911?' my eldest daughter wanted to know.
'Maybe they could talk us through the trauma.' (You see a pattern here with the females in my house?)
'Let's get Ernie to the vet,' I said grimly. We drove to the vet with my
son holding the cage in his lap.
'Breathe, Ernie, breathe,' he urged.
'I don't think lizards do Lamaze,' his mother noted to him. (Women can be so cruel to their own young. I mean what she does to me is one thing, but this boy is of her womb, for God's sake.).
The vet took Ernie back to the examining room and peered at the little animal through a magnifying glass..
'What do you think, Doc, a C-section?' I suggested scientifically.
'Oh, very interesting,' he murmured. 'Mr. and Mrs. Cameron, may I speak to you privately for a moment?'
I gulped, nodding for my son to step outside.
'Is Ernie going to be okay?' my wife asked.
'Oh, perfectly,' the vet assured us. 'This lizard is not in labor. In fact, that isn't EVER going to happen. Ernie is a boy. You see, Ernie is a young male. And occasionally, as they come into maturity, like most male species, they um . . um . . . masturbate. Just the way he did,
lying on his back.' He blushed, glancing at my wife.
We were silent, absorbing this.
'So, Ernie's just, just . . . excited,' my wife offered.
'Exactly,' the vet replied , relieved that we understood.
More silence. Then my vicious, cruel wife started to giggle. And giggle.
And then even laugh loudly.
'What's so funny?' I demanded, knowing, but not believing that the woman I married would commit the upcoming affront to my flawless manliness.
Tears were now running down her face. 'It's just that . . I'm picturing you pulling on its . .. . its. . .. teeny little ' She gasped for more air to bellow in laughter once more.
'That's enough,' I warned. We thanked the vet and hurriedly bundled the lizard and our son back into the car.. He was glad everything was going to be okay.
'I know Ernie's really thankful for what you did, Dad,' he told me
'Oh, you have NO idea,' my wife agreed, collapsing with laughter.
Two lizards: $140.
One cage: $50.
Trip to the vet: $30.
Memory of your husband pulling on a lizard's winkie: Priceless!
Moral of the story: Pay attention in biology class .
Lizards lay eggs! |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Mar. 25th, 2009|04:20 pm] |
I'll bet you this Airstream would look great if it were steampunked!
Here's one that was decked out in a western style:
 |
|
|
| Remembering Molly Ivins |
[Feb. 6th, 2009|06:55 pm] |
Through all of the Hoopla in the past several weeks - Looking for a job - Trying to get the van to pass emissions (it hasn't) and worrying about the world falling down around us, I forgot a very special person, who passed from this world on January 31, 2007. I don't have to agree with her, to recognize her wonderful contributions to our nation.
I hope you're having fun up there Molly!
This is how Molly asked to be remembered, so I hope she is watching. Let this be your monument my dear Molly Ivins.
"Every time someone down the line is irreverent about authority, I'll have my monument.
Every time some kid who was born a nigger, a kike, a wop, a Polack, a gook, a gimp, a fag, or just a plain maverick lifts up her head and dares anyone to stop her, I'll have my monument.
Every time they peaceably assemble to petition their government for redress of a grievance, I'll be there.
Whenever they worship as they please (or not at all), I'll be there.
Whenever they speak up and speak out and raise hell, I'll be there.
And every time some blue-bellied, full-blooded nincompoop who holds elected office is called to the floor for deciding to keep us safe by rewriting the Constitution, or by suspending due process and holding a citizen indefinitely without legal representation, I'll be there.
Now that is immortality.
I don't have any children, so I've decided to claim all the future freedom-fighters and hell-raisers as my kin. I figure freedom and justice beat having my name in marble any day. Besides, if there is another life after this one, think how much we'll get to laugh watching it all."
The Ballad of Molly Ivins by Ross Altman
|
|
|
| Critique of Libertarianism - Just because I couldn't resist |
[Feb. 1st, 2009|04:50 pm] |
Libertarianism in One Lesson
No, this isn't David Bergland's evangelistic text. This is an outsider's view of the precepts of libertarianism. I hope you can laugh at how close this is to real libertarianism!
Introduction
One of the most attractive features of libertarianism is that it is basically a very simple ideology. Maybe even simpler than Marxism, since you don't have to learn foreign words like "proletariat".
This brief outline will give you most of the tools you need to hit the ground running as a freshly indoctrinated libertarian ideologue. Go forth and proselytize!
# Philosophy
* In the beginning, man dwelt in a state of Nature, until the serpent Government tempted man into Initial Coercion.
* Government is the Great Satan. All Evil comes from Government, and all Good from the Market, according to the Ayatollah Rand.
* We must worship the Horatio Alger fantasy that the meritorious few will just happen to have the lucky breaks that make them rich. Libertarians happen to be the meritorious few by ideological correctness. The rest can go hang.
* Government cannot own things because only individuals can own things. Except for corporations, partnerships, joint ownership, marriage, and anything else we except but government.
* Parrot these arguments, and you too will be a singular, creative, reasoning individualist.
* Parents cannot choose a government for their children any more than they can choose language, residence, school, or religion.
* Taxation is theft because we have a right to squat in the US and benefit from defense, infrastructure, police, courts, etc. without obligation.
* Magic incantations can overturn society and bring about libertopia. Sovereign citizenry! The 16th Amendment is invalid! States rights!
* Objectivist/Neo-Tech Advantage #69i : The true measure of fully integrated honesty is whether the sucker has opened his wallet. Thus sayeth the Profit Wallace. Zonpower Rules Nerdspace!
* The great Zen riddle of libertarianism: minimal government is necessary and unnecessary. The answer is only to be found by individuals.
# Government
* Libertarians invented outrage over government waste, bureaucracy, injustice, etc. Nobody else thinks they are bad, knows they exist, or works to stop them.
* Enlightenment comes only through repetition of the sacred mantra "Government does not work" according to Guru Browne.
* Only government is force, no matter how many Indians were killed by settlers to acquire their property, no matter how many blacks were enslaved and sold by private companies, no matter how many heads of union members are broken by private police.
* Money that government touches spontaneously combusts, destroying the economy. Money retained by individuals grows the economy, even if literally burnt.
* Private education works, public education doesn't. The publicly educated masses that have grown the modern economies of the past 150 years are an illusion.
* Market failures, trusts, and oligopolies are lies spread by the evil economists serving the government as described in the "Protocols of the Elders of Statism".
* Central planning cannot work. Which is why all businesses internally are run like little markets, with no centralized leadership.
* Paternalism is the worst thing that can be inflicted upon people, as everyone knows that fathers are the most hated and reviled figures in the world.
* Government is like fire, a dangerous servant and a fearsome master. Therefore, we should avoid it entirely, as we do all forms of combustion.
# Regulation
* The FDA is solely responsible for any death or sickness where it might have prevented treatment by the latest unproven fad.
* Children, criminals, death cultists, and you all have the same inalienable right to own any weaponry: conventional, chemical, biological, or nuclear.
* All food, drugs, and medical treatments should be entirely unregulated: every industry should be able to kill 300,000 per year in the US like the tobacco industry.
* If you don't have a gun, you are not a libertarian. If you do have a gun, why don't you have even more powerful armament?
* Better to abolish all regulations, consider everything as property, and solve all controversy by civil lawsuit over damages. The US doesn't have enough lawyers, and people who can't afford to invest many thousands of dollars in lawsuits should shut up.
# Libertarian Party
* The Libertarian Party is well on its way to dominating the political landscape, judging from its power base of 100+ elected dogcatchers and other important officials after 25 years of effort.
* The "Party of Oxymoron": "Individualists unite!"
* Flip answers are more powerful than the best reasoned arguments, which is why so many libertarians are in important government positions.
* It's time the new pro-freedom libertarian platform was implemented; child labor, orphanages, sweatshops, poorhouses, company towns, monopolies, trusts, cartels, blacklists, private goons, slumlords, etc.
* Libertarianism "rules" Internet political debate the same way US Communism "ruled" pamphleteering.
* No compromise from the "Party of Principle". Justice, happiness, liberty, guns, and other good stuff come only from rigidly adhering to inflexible dogmas.
* Minimal government is whatever we say it is, and we don't agree.
* Government is "moving steadily in a libertarian direction" with every change libertarians approve of; no matter if it takes one step forward and two steps backwards.
* Yes, the symbol of the Libertarian Party is a Big Government Statue. It's not supposed to be funny or ironic!
# Political Debate Strategy
* Count only the benefits of libertarianism, count only the costs of government.
* Five of a factoid beats a full argument.
* All historical examples are tainted by statism, except when they favor libertarian claims.
* Spiritually baptize the deceased as libertarians because they cannot protest the anachronism: Locke, Smith, Paine, Jefferson, Spooner, etc.
* The most heavily armed libertarian has the biggest dick and thus the best argument.
* The best multi-party democratic republics should be equated to the worst dictatorships for the purposes of denouncing statism. It's only a matter of degree.
* Inviolate private property is the only true measure of freedom. Those without property have the freedom to try to acquire it. If they can't, let them find somebody else's property to complain on.
* Private ownership is the cure for all problems, despite the historical record of privately owned states such as Nazi Germany, Czarist and Stalinist Russia, and Maoist China.
* Require perfection as the only applicable standard to judge government: libertarianism, being imaginary, cannot be fairly judged to have flaws.
* Only libertarian economists' Nobel Prizes count: the other economists and Nobel Prize Committee are mistaken.
* Any exceptional case of private production proves that government ought not to be involved.
Copyright 2007 by Mike Huben ( mhuben@world.std.com ).
This document may be freely distributed for non-commercial purposes if it is reproduced in its textual entirety, with this notice intact. |
|
|
| The Truth About War, Israel and Occupation, in Simple Language. |
[Jan. 10th, 2009|09:40 pm] |
About the Israelis and the Gazans..How this all happened and why it will continue.
Before the Jewish people had their own country, it was said that they ran the governments, banks, and caused all the plagues, floods and general disasters.This was said in Germany, this was said in Russia, this was said in some measure all over the Ottoman Empire and this was even said about the Chinese Jewish community in Shanghai.
Then the holocaust happened and finally, the UN decided the Jewish people needed their own country. What happens when you go give Jewish people a nation? They start to be called Zionists now, instead of Jews, because that sounded antisemitic. These "Zionist" people wanted to go back to where they came from and build a nation where they wouldn't be attacked all the time. But, their enemies declared war immediately and then these Jewish Zionists started to have to develop a way to protect themselves.
It was very surprising that they survived the immediate wars, no one expected them too, least of all the people that approved the nation status at the UN. It was assumed they wouldn't make it. It was expected that the Arabs would just finish Hitler's work. They were living in tents and fighting with old French and Russian weapons, without electricity and running water for half the population. But, in spite of all of this, they went on to make a great nation, with democratic values and freedoms. This did not please the surrounding countries (how can you justify stoning, amputations and eye removal as punishment for woman who stray, men who steal a loaf of bread, or for anytong who does something the Emir or Pasha doesn't like if you have this great, rich, democratic neighbor setting such a bad example?)
There were also other problems....Namely, there were people already there, in this new Jewish nation. These people said they were Arabs, but, they are now Palestinians, and that is a fact so I'm not going to try to say they don't exist...That's ridiculous. These people wanted to stay on the land that had been given to these Jewish people. They didn't understand the concept of "deeds"...And who could blame them...Private property is pretty rare in lands where everything belongs to the Emir, Pasha or some absent landlord in Damascus.
In fact, private property may be a completely foolish idea! Has it really done that much good for anyone?
Well, all that aside, there were more wars. All because of these disputes over land and some perceived injury of pride done to the Arabs because some Jews beat them in a war.
Now, these Zionists are also called Israelis, and 1 out of 5 of them ARE Arabs and about 50% of them are first generation Jews from Arab nations....And many others are from Russia, where they were very unpopular in the not-to-distant past.
So, they're kinda stuck there in this nation in the middle east. They must survive so they figure out that if they make themselves indispensable to the USA, one of the superpowers, then this superpower might have a stake in seeing to it that they survive.
Smart thinking.
They called upon their relatives and friends in the US to help, and lo' and behold, they do.
The Arabs, including Palestinians turned to Russia and her allies to help them. Romanians trained the PLO in propaganda techniques and stir the pot for more war.
The Israelis and the Americans become friends, and the U.S. gives money and weapons to Israel, so they can fight a proxy war on behalf of the West with the Communists.
The wars don't stop though, no matter what they do....Because of three major factors. The OTHER superpower keeps funding the Arabs and giving them weapons, the Arab rulers want to use Israel as a reason for their people's misery and arms manufacturers must have wars or there will be no ongoing market for their products. What better group of people to get all stirred up than hot-headed middle easterners? Especially, since the other hot-headed people in South and Central America have decided they are tired of fighting and the five never-ending wars amongst the African regimes are only able to afford small arms?
So, in reality, there is no Israeli Occupied anything..
The Occupation is manufactured and brought to you by the likes of:
Bechtel
Du Pont
Dow
Haliburton
Monsanto
Novartis
Boeing
Those guys. You know them right?
Call them what you will, they change their names, they buy each other out, up and down, but ultimately have a vested interest in THEMSELVES alone, and what are they actually?
They aren't Jews, Zionists, Americans, Israelis, Arabs, Africans, or even PEOPLE!
They are called "Corporations".
This is probably what they told Obama on his initial "briefing"...the one that made his face age a few years and his hair turn a bit gray. They probably told him, "Guess what, now that you're president, we thought we should let you know, that you're not really in charge...In fact, no government is in charge anywhere anymore. We are in charge, if you forget it, there is always the Kennedy option"
That's the occupation we all ought to be opposing. |
|
|
| Learning to be Thankful |
[Nov. 28th, 2008|12:13 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  thankful | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Thankful ‘n’ Thoughtful- Sly & The Family Stone | ] |
BE THANKFUL
Be thankful that you don't already have everything you desire.
If you did, what would there be to look forward to?
Be thankful when you don't know something,
for it gives you the opportunity to learn.
Be thankful for the difficult times.
During those times you grow.
Be thankful for your limitations,
because they give you opportunities for improvement.
Be thankful for each new challenge,
because it will build your strength and character.
Be thankful for your mistakes.
They will teach you valuable lessons.
Be thankful when you're tired and weary,
because it means you've made a difference.
It's easy to be thankful for the good things.
A life of rich fulfillment comes to those who
are also thankful for the setbacks.
Gratitude can turn a negative into a positive.
Find a way to be thankful for your troubles,
and they can become your blessings. |
|
|
| As America Holds Its Collective Breathe |
[Nov. 3rd, 2008|05:00 pm] |
A little more than 24 hours from now, everyone around the country and indeed, the whole world, will be able to exhale. The question is, what's it going to be? Who raises you up? Who seeks to tear you down? Who unites? Who divides? Who calls you to your higher angels? I think you know my answer. I'm tired of the politics of fear.
|
|
|
| Christopher Hitchens Endorces Obama |
[Oct. 13th, 2008|08:14 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | A Reflecting Pool | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  thoughtful | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Hope --Jack Johnson | ] |
I really do admire Christopher Hitchens. He stuck to support for the Iraq war, and has many times refused to conform to anyone's ideology. This piece, written Sunday really shows his ability to reason, IMHO.
Vote for Obama
MCCAIN LACKS THE CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT TO BE PRESIDENT. AND PALIN IS SIMPLY A DISGRACE.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Oct. 13, 2008, at 10:44 AM ET
Barack Obama
I used to nod wisely when people said: "Let's discuss issues rather than personalities." It seemed so obvious that in politics an issue was an issue and a personality was a personality, and that the more one could separate the two, the more serious one was. After all, in a debate on serious issues, any mention of the opponent's personality would be ad hominem at best and at worst would stoop as low as ad feminam.
At my old English boarding school, we had a sporting saying that one should "tackle the ball and not the man." I carried on echoing this sort of unexamined nonsense for quite some time—in fact, until the New Hampshire primary of 1992, when it hit me very forcibly that the "personality" of one of the candidates was itself an "issue." In later years, I had little cause to revise my view that Bill Clinton's abysmal character was such as to be a "game changer" in itself, at least as important as his claim to be a "new Democrat." To summarize what little I learned from all this: A candidate may well change his or her position on, say, universal health care or Bosnia. But he or she cannot change the fact—if it happens to be a fact—that he or she is a pathological liar, or a dimwit, or a proud ignoramus. And even in the short run, this must and will tell.
On "the issues" in these closing weeks, there really isn't a very sharp or highly noticeable distinction to be made between the two nominees, and their "debates" have been cramped and boring affairs as a result. But the difference in character and temperament has become plainer by the day, and there is no decent way of avoiding the fact. Last week's so-called town-hall event showed Sen. John McCain to be someone suffering from an increasingly obvious and embarrassing deficit, both cognitive and physical. And the only public events that have so far featured his absurd choice of running mate have shown her to be a deceiving and unscrupulous woman utterly unversed in any of the needful political discourses but easily trained to utter preposterous lies and to appeal to the basest element of her audience. McCain occasionally remembers to stress matters like honor and to disown innuendoes and slanders, but this only makes him look both more senile and more cynical, since it cannot (can it?) be other than his wish and design that he has engaged a deputy who does the innuendoes and slanders for him.
I suppose it could be said, as Michael Gerson has alleged, that the Obama campaign's choice of the word erratic to describe McCain is also an insinuation. But really, it's only a euphemism. Anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear had to feel sorry for the old lion on his last outing and wish that he could be taken somewhere soothing and restful before the night was out. The train-wreck sentences, the whistlings in the pipes, the alarming and bewildered handhold phrases—"My friends"—to get him through the next 10 seconds. I haven't felt such pity for anyone since the late Adm. James Stockdale humiliated himself as Ross Perot's running mate. And I am sorry to have to say it, but Stockdale had also distinguished himself in America's most disastrous and shameful war, and it didn't qualify him then and it doesn't qualify McCain now.
The most insulting thing that a politician can do is to compel you to ask yourself: "What does he take me for?" Precisely this question is provoked by the selection of Gov. Sarah Palin. I wrote not long ago that it was not right to condescend to her just because of her provincial roots or her piety, let alone her slight flirtatiousness, but really her conduct since then has been a national disgrace. It turns out that none of her early claims to political courage was founded in fact, and it further turns out that some of the untested rumors about her—her vindictiveness in local quarrels, her bizarre religious and political affiliations—were very well-founded, indeed. Moreover, given the nasty and lowly task of stirring up the whack-job fringe of the party's right wing and of recycling patent falsehoods about Obama's position on Afghanistan, she has drawn upon the only talent that she apparently possesses.
It therefore seems to me that the Republican Party has invited not just defeat but discredit this year, and that both its nominees for the highest offices in the land should be decisively repudiated, along with any senators, congressmen, and governors who endorse them.
I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors, and on that "issue" I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity. Obama is greatly overrated in my opinion, but the Obama-Biden ticket is not a capitulationist one, even if it does accept the support of the surrender faction, and it does show some signs of being able and willing to profit from experience. With McCain, the "experience" is subject to sharply diminishing returns, as is the rest of him, and with Palin the very word itself is a sick joke. One only wishes that the election could be over now and a proper and dignified verdict rendered, so as to spare democracy and civility the degradation to which they look like being subjected in the remaining days of a low, dishonest campaign.
From Slate Magazine Online |
|
|
| Bailout Fails, World Ends |
[Oct. 2nd, 2008|02:00 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Must be Heaven | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | and pure | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Waiting on the World to Change | ] |
Bailout Fails, World Ends
After the House of Representatives rejected the bankers' bailout bill yesterday, the world ended, as had been predicted.
You reading this are now in the afterlife. Due to the potential shock from this realization, it is permitted for now that you imagine the world has not ended. But it has, and you are now in the afterlife.
Angel transition teams are backlogged in their duties. Normally there is a manageable stream of the departed, and the angels are immediately available to smooth the transition from the material to the spiritual worlds. However because of the sudden end of the world when the bailout bill failed, the angels are momentarily overwhelmed in their duties.
And so, it was decided the newly arrived can be allowed to temporarily maintain an illusion they still live in the material world.
It has further been decided Conspiracy Nation can tell you this, because people can just say, “I don't believe conspiracy theories,” if the truth is too much of a shock. But the savvy conspiracy theorists will of course know it is so, that the world has ended.
Eventually an angel transition team will visit you and slowly ease you into the truth of your present state. Please be patient. Unlike general understandings, these two angels per team will not appear as winged beings. They will appear as two friendly dogs, usually beagles. At first they will just sniff at you and wag their tails. Gradually, in an imperceptible manner, you will notice thought communications occurring between yourself and the two “dogs”.
Atheists will be permitted indefinitely to believe the world has not ended. This is so to not upset their preconceptions. In the course of “time” however, things will seem increasingly strange to these atheist departed ones. It is believed they can develop special frameworks to explain away oddities, given their muscular rational tendencies.
Each for now will eventually be given the afterlife of their preconceptions, except for atheists who have no afterlife preconceptions. After the two-dog angel transition team visits you, and eases you into the afterlife, the particular individual afterlife preconceptions will be temporarily granted. George W. Bush, already processed, perceives he now sits at the right hand of Jesus. In time, it will be revealed to Dubya Bush he sits not next to Jesus, but to “someone else.”
For the purposes of easing the transition, Conspiracy Nation is permitted to continue reports as if the world has not ended. Now follows earthbound conspiracy news, given for now to assist the illusion the world has not ended, until the two-dog angel teams can individually get to you.
George W. Bush will address the nation at 8:45 am EST regarding the aftermath of the failed bankers' bailout.
Asian stocks have plunged, though not in keeping with the end of the world scenario. The average drop is about 5 percent, less than yesterday's 7 percent drop of the Dow. The relative value of the dollar has not been affected, compared with yen, euro, etc.
Doom-and-gloom prognostications continue to be pounded out by the mainstream media, in reaction to the failure of the bankers' bailout legislation. A new bailout deal is reportedly being planned. Besides end-of-the-world, it is hard to see what else more dire predictions can be used to pressure the public, however.
On “the left”, activism against any bankers' bailout is surging, reports The Nation magazine. “Democracy turns out to be alive and well,” stated Chris Hayes after the bailout failed. Tomorrow, “Jobs With Justice” is calling for a national day of action against the strong-armed “appalling transfer of wealth upward.” More information can reportedly be found at http://www.bailoutmainstreet.com
Commenting on the bankers' bailout before it failed yesterday and the world ended, Michael Moore had stated, in part, “The biggest robbery in the history of this country is taking place as you read this. Though no guns are being used, 300 million hostages are being taken. Make no mistake about it: After stealing a half trillion dollars to line the pockets of their war-profiteering backers for the past five years, after lining the pockets of their fellow oilmen to the tune of over a hundred billion dollars in just the last two years, Bush and his cronies -- who must soon vacate the White House -- are looting the U.S. Treasury of every dollar they can grab. They are swiping as much of the silverware as they can on their way out the door.” (http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?id=235)
But of course, Moore's point is moot, since the world has now ended.
In an eerie evocation of yesterday morning's Conspiracy Nation report (“Reds Put Lipstick On Pig”, http://www.shout.net/~bigred/LipPig.html), Caroline Baum at Bloomberg later issued a startlingly similar assessment of the bankers' bailout, aka, Lipstick On A Pig. (“Paulson Plan Is Still a Pig, Even With Lipstick”, by Caroline Baum. Bloomberg, Sept. 29, 2008)
Besides blaming activists on “the left”, foaming-at-the-mouth mainstream media also blame the failure of the bankers' bailout on “the right”. Damian Reece at Britain's Telegraph newspaper summarizes, “America's Right is sick and tired of what it sees as the hypocrisy shown by the Bush administration and Wall Street leaders in this credit crisis.” The “left” and the “right” both agree the bankers' bailout sucks. Yet ironically, the two presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, support the bankers' bailout. This seems like a total disconnect between the will of the people and the will of the two main presidential candidates. So what kind of “choice” are we being given in the November elections? This seems mighty strange and could be an afterlife effect, now that the world has ended.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, along with Ben Bernanke, in earth life the boss of a Fannie Mae-type central bank, have been assigned the task of distributing doggy treats to the billions of persons now arrived in the afterlife. These doggy treats will help you make friends with the two-dog angel teams, when they eventually visit you. Until then, remain calm. It is “only a movie.” |
|
|
| Rosh Hashanah |
[Sep. 29th, 2008|10:13 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | In the Days of Awe | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | mellow | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Closer I am to Fine | ] |
Rosh Hoshanah Story:
It's kinda cool to be in a religion where you get to hold your maker accountable too....Of course, it doesn't matter if your maker is this anthro-morphic being in the sky, or if it's just the "great Hum" that George Carlin talked about (I sure hope George found his "HUUUMMM"). It matters that you practice the evolving discussion of the dynamic equilibrium of I and thou, or the Higher Self, lower self, yin-yang, or whatever else you conceive "IT" to be.
I love the story.
"A tailor in the old country chanced upon a great Chasidic Master. When the tailor mentioned that he was illiterate and couldn't read the prayer book, the great rebbe asked him what he does if he can't follow the prayers. "well, last year" said the tailor, "I spoke to God and said, "The sins for which I am expected to repent are minor ones and inconsequentional. I might have kept a little leftowever cloth, or been too busy to recite an afternoon prayer. But You God, Your sins are really grave. You have allowed children to become deathly ill, You have pitted brother against brother in battle, You have created a world where so many hunger for food and shelter. So, let's reach an agreement. If You pardon me, I'm ready to pardon You.'"
The rebbe looked at the tailor angrily and replied, "You not only are illiterate, you are foolish as well. You were too lenient with God last year. You should have insisted that God bring redemtion to the entire world." |
|
|
| One Lem Stanislaw of Mathematical Magic |
[Sep. 10th, 2008|01:05 am] |
LOVE AND TENSOR ALGEBRA
Come, let us hasten to a higher plane
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to n
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
Come, every frustum longs to be a cone
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.
In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.
I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
Thou'lt tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove,
And in our bound partition never part.
For what did Cauchy know, or Christoffel,
Or Fourier, or any Boole or Euler,
Wielding their compasses, their pens and rulers,
Of thy supernal sinusoidal spell?
Cancel me not - for what then shall remain?
Abscissas some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.
Ellipse of bliss, converge, O lips divine!
the product of four scalars it defines!
Cyberiad draws nigh, and the skew mind
Cuts capers like a happy haversine.
I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die,
Had he but known such a^2 cos 2 phi! |
|
|
| A different kind of.... |
[Aug. 21st, 2008|12:12 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | fantasy land | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | It's Raining Men? | ] |
How about a sexy guy pic for a change? Girls are just more photogenic I think. This guy's shirt is certainly NOT the sexy part, but the rest of him looks damn good!
 |
|
|
| For Those who don't think politics is a blood sport |
[Aug. 15th, 2008|10:29 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Just about out of here | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  annoyed | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | What have you done for me lately-Janet Jackson | ] |
This is supposed to be amusing okay.....just letting you know....don't want the hate mail because you can't take a joke, okay?
he George W Bush Presidential Library is now in the planning stages. The Library will include:
The Hurricane Katrina Room, which is still under construction.
The Alberto Gonzales Room, where you won't be able to remember anything.
The Texas Air National Guard Room, where you don't even have to show up.
The Walter Reed Hospital Room, where they don't let you in.
The Guantanamo Bay Room, where they don't let you out.
The Weapons of Mass Destruction Room, which no one has been able to find.
The National Debt Room which is huge and has no ceiling.
The 'Tax Cut' Room with entry only to the wealthy.
The 'Economy Room' which is in the toilet.
The Iraq War Room. After you complete your first tour, they make you to go back for a second, third, fourth, and sometimes fifth tour.
The Dick Cheney Room, in the famous undisclosed location, complete with shotgun gallery.
The Environmental Conservation Room, still empty.
The Supremes Gift Shop, where you can buy an election.
The Airport Men's Room, where you can meet some of your favorite Republican Senators.
The 'Decider Room' complete with dart board, magic 8-ball, Ouija board, dice, coins, and straws.
The museum will have an electron microscope to help you locate the President's accomplishments. |
|
|
| You Just Can't Get Away With Anything These Days! |
[Aug. 10th, 2008|10:16 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | I'm not tellin | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | amused | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Missionary Man | ] |
cloned puppies may have exposed 31-year mystery
By JENNIFER DOBNER (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
August 09, 2008 3:58 PM EDT
SALT LAKE CITY - A woman who made news around the world when she had five pups cloned from her beloved pit bull Booger looked very familiar to some who saw her picture: She may be the same woman who 31 years earlier was accused of abducting a Mormon missionary in England, handcuffing him to a bed and making him her sex slave.
A paper trail of court documents and jail booking information uncovered by The Associated Press suggests 57-year-old dog-lover Bernann McKinney is Joyce McKinney, who in 1977 faced charges of unlawful imprisonment in the missionary case. She jumped bail and was never brought to justice.
British tabloids first recognized the blonde woman's smiling face when she appeared in news photographs this past week with the five pit bull pups she paid South Korean scientists $53,000 to clone from her pet dog Booger who died two years ago.
There is indeed a striking resemblance between Bernann McKinney and Joyce McKinney. Arrest records and court documents for the two names over the years show other similarities: the same birth date and Social Security numbers, the same hometown of Newland, North Carolina, and Joyce McKinney's middle name is Bernann.
"It fits," said Utah filmmaker Trent Harris, who made a documentary about Joyce McKinney's case. He said photographs of McKinney and the dogs left him with no question about her identity.
"I said 'Oh my God, that's Joyce,'" he said.
Bernann McKinney has flatly denied any connections to Joyce McKinney and says she planned to take legal action against those who suggested otherwise.
"I'm filing a $10 million libel action and I don't think you want AP to be part of that," McKinney said before boarding a plane to return to the U.S.
While in South Korea, she told reporters she was a screenwriter and handed out business cards with a Hollywood, California, address. The AP found that address did not exist.
In a phone call later Friday to the AP, Bernann McKinney repeated she had nothing to do with the Mormon abduction story and only wanted to talk about the cloning of her dog.
"It's a story of courage, of a very brave service dog taking care of me. He passed away. I was so depressed. I had him cloned," she said.
The story of Joyce McKinney is the stuff of pulp fiction: a North Carolina-born beauty queen who moved west, won the title Miss Wyoming USA, converted to Mormonism and went on to college at Brigham Young University, where she became obsessed with a Mormon fellow student.
When that young Mormon took a missionary trip to England, authorities say McKinney hired a private detective so she could locate and follow him.
She and a male accomplice were accused of abducting the 21-year-old missionary as he went door to door, taking him to a rented 17th-century "honeymoon cottage" in Devon and chaining him spread-eagled to a bed with several pairs of mink-lined handcuffs.
There, investigators say, he was repeatedly forced to have sex with McKinney before he was able to escape and notify police.
In a 1977 court hearing mobbed by the British press, Joyce McKinney said she'd fallen head-over-heels in love with the Mormon man and acknowledged tracking him to England. "I loved him so much," she told a judge, "that I would ski naked down Mount Everest in the nude with a carnation up my nose if he asked me to."
But she denied a sexual assault, saying the young man was a willing partner.
"I have been played up as a very wicked and perverted woman," she told the court. "It's not true."
McKinney and her accomplice spent three months in a London jail before being released on bail.
Press reports at the time that said the pair then jumped bail, posing as deaf-mute actors in Ireland to board an Air Canada flight to Toronto and eventually a bus to Cleveland, where investigators lost their trail.
Joyce McKinney surfaced again in Utah in May 1984 and was arrested for allegedly stalking the workplace of the same Mormon man she was accused of imprisoning in England. News reports say that police found a length of rope and handcuffs in the trunk of McKinney's car, along with notebooks detailing the man's daily activities.
Set to stand trial for lying to police and harassment in 1986, McKinney again disappeared just before proceedings and the case was dismissed.
It now appears Joyce McKinney may have escaped justice in the long-ago British case also. London police told The AP they've consigned the case to the history books because of its age and won't seek McKinney's extradition.
The Associated Press obtained a copy of the 1984 Salt Lake County booking documents, which lists McKinney's full name, address, Social Security number and birth date. The AP compared the data to court and address records on file in North Carolina.
In both states, documents list McKinney's full name as Joyce Bernann McKinney and cite an Aug. 6, 1950, birth date, along with a hometown of Newland, North Carolina. A comparison of Social Security numbers on the documents show an exact match of the first five digits, the only numbers typically available in public records.
At the Avery County courthouse in McKinney's hometown of Newland in the western North Carolina mountains, a clerk said she instantly recognized the woman snuggling puppies as the Joyce Bernann McKinney who has a been a frequent defendant in court cases there.
"She is a person of note in our little community," said clerk Julia Henson.
Avery County Sheriff Kevin Frey said there are several charges on file against Joyce McKinney, including an active warrant seeking her arrest on a 2003 charge of communicating a threat against another woman.
Other charges include passing bad checks, an assault on a public officials and an 2004 animal cruelty charge alleging she failed to take proper care of a horse. That charge was dismissed.
James Stamey, the husband of the woman McKinney was charged with threatening, said McKinney left Newland about two years ago and no one had really seen or heard from her.
Until she showed up in the news about the cloned puppies.
"That's our Joy," Stamey said from his home in Newland.
Years ago, Stamey said, McKinney was a beautiful girl worthy of the Miss Wyoming USA crown.
"She's ugly as sin now," he said. "But, sure enough, that's her."
---
Associated Press writers Marlon Walker in Raleigh, North Carolina, Meera Selva in London, Solvej Schou in Los Angeles and AP researcher Jennifer Farrar contributed to this report. |
|
|
| Predator and Perdition, Parasite and Prey |
[Aug. 3rd, 2008|08:24 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Love's Deathbed | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | thoughtful | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Today was a good day | ] |
DEDICATED TO THE BLESSED MEMORY OF ALEXANDER SOLZHENITZYN (RIP)
TWO PERSPECTIVES:
"Standing there to be counted through the gate of an evening, back in camp after a whole day of buffeting wind, freezing cold and an empty belly, the zek longs for his ladleful of scalding hot watery evening soup as for rain in time of drought. He could knock it back in a single gulp. For the moment that ladleful means more to him than freedom, more than his whole past life, more than whatever life is left to him."
"Shukhov felt pleased with life as he went to sleep. A lot of good things had happened that day. He hadn't been thrown in the hole. The gang hadn't been dragged off to Sotsgorodok (Socialist Settlement). He'd swiped the extra gruel at dinnertime. The foreman had got a good rate for the job. He'd enjoyed working on the wall. He hadn't been caught with the blade at the searchpoint. He'd earned a bit from Tsezar that evening. And he'd bought his tobacco.
"One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich"
I was offered a really high paying job not too long ago. It was as a district manager for a company. This was a "payday loan" and "title loan" company. People who are in desperate trouble financially, go to these companies and take out loans with a car title as collateral. The interest rates are astronomical. The companies have the customers by the short and curlys because they know that people do not want to get their cars taken away. They also make a profit almost all the time because they rarely give more money to the borrower than they know they are going to collect in the first month or two in interest. They know that people will not be able to pay them back and get out of trouble. They know that all but the very rich are simply one major illness, one divorce, or one serious job loss away from ruin. I turned the job down on principle. I simply could not be such a pariah on society. I did not want to suck people dry.
When I worked in a bar in Ft. Lauderdale, near Port Everglades, there were Merchant Marines, senior citizens on social security, and young sailors from the navy that used to come into the bar. If they had a full wallet the bouncer used to let everyone know, and we were supposed to make sure that money was spent in the bar. I hated that job, and I got into so much trouble on many occasions because if a guy was very old, and/or very young I would always tell them to go to the bathroom and put their large bills in their shoe and NEVER let anyone that worked there know they had the money they had. I did not want to suck them dry of all they had, nor did I want anyone else to either.
I guess nice girls finish last. I have a small business. It was a lot better until around March when it just seemed to drop. The economy has finally taken its toll on people. People are finding themselves homeless or close to it. They are having their utilities disconnected, cars repossessed, and their houses are going into foreclosure. I see them cry as they walk into the payday loan store at the corner (are they on every corner now?), hoping to put off for one more week-- the inevitable. These are the same people who voted for Bob Barr and Newt Gingrich and Sonny Perdue and screamed at the homeless people "Get a Job you bum".
I know this, but even so, I still feel bad for them. Especially the kids, and the single moms. They will file into the welfare office and find out that they are surrounded by white people just like them, and a few black people and hispanics. They will look around for the "cadillac driving, gold jewelry wearing, welfare moms" that they have been taught to think of as those who get their "entitlement" there, and they will rarely find them. I'm sure it will be quite a surprise when they find out that the amount of money they are going to get is equal to what they spent on their dog grooming and fingernails in any given month. Now, they will have to survive on that amount all month, with no nails, and no groomer, and worse....no dog. They will get outraged eventually. The protests have already started. People who have NEVER gone to a protest in their lives are joining NACA.
I'm not sure how to feel about it. I could feel some sense of satisfaction. I could spit on them and yell "GET A JOB". Should I smile and act snarky because they chose to measure their lives by the toys they have and not by the quality of their lives and the time they had to make it count? I could do all the things i saw them do to others who were in a bad way. I can also choose to forgive them, and have mercy, and hold out a hand to help where ever I can, when ever I can.
That is why I did not take the Payday loan job. I don't think they could ever pay me enough to do evil to people who are not able to absorb it....the payday loan people, the sub-prime mortgage people, the big businesses, they will all be bailed out or bought out. The people who work for them may suffer, but the upper level will not. The government will bail them out just like they have Fannie and Freddy, and to do this they keep printing more and more money. This devalues the dollar. Who does that hurt? The average person that's who.
I cannot bear to see the tears in a woman's eyes as she leaves her home -- her dream -- in front of the neighbors --with the kids and with tears running down her face. I know that maybe I will be homeless (I will be reminded that I could have had a job). Maybe my kids will see that. Maybe we won't be able to eat. Yet, one thing I know, I will not participate in the destruction of the lives of average everyday people. I will not take that kind of job. I will not take their money in their distress. Nor will I resent what they have worked for, and I will not tell them how stupid they were to sign those mortgages and borrow that money. I'm sure they know that by now. I will simply try to help....even if it's just to listen. In Ivan Denisovich, no one condemn Shukhov's stealing more gruel, or getting past the guards with a secreted blade, and for similar reasons I don't really care if the Exxons of the world, or the Providians, or the IndyMacs, or Bear Stearns get a dime of their money from these people. I do care about regular people. I care about the shame in a mans face --the tears of a woman...and the babe in her arms...and the love in their hearts. |
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
| |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
raining_kisses's journal
can'ts stop laughing
creative
anxious
