The silence here for the past week is the result of a holiday vacation to visit a distant state. I took a lot of photographs, some of which I’ll be sharing here over the next few weeks. This one doesn’t really fit with all the others, but seemed too good not to share.
Posted at 11:47 PM
Link to this entry || 4 comments
I found nothing to disagree with this posting about Evil Doings for Dummies. 25 years ago, when my parents bought the house I’m living in, the living room and dining room had this awful dingy stained white flocked wallpaper on the walls. My parents, understandably, didn’t want to keep it. And that’s when we discovered that the former owners of the house didn’t bother to size the walls before gluing that fugly wallpaper. My Dad, being no dummy, gave me the job of patching and sanding the walls. Masks apparently hadn’t been invented yet back then, so I didn’t wear one. I sneezed white for three days after sanding down those two rooms. And yes, the former owners of the house, the ones who put up that wallpaper, hold a special place in my personal list of those destined for punishment in the afterlife.
There is one wall left in this house, which I now own with my wife, that has wallpaper orignally installed by those owners. And knowing what I know, I’ve found another solution.
Paneling.
Damned if I’m going through that again. Once we get the floor refinished in that room, the ugliest wallpaper in the world is going to disappear behind paneling. Hopefully no future owner of this house will ever discover it and get trapped into the evil that is wallpaper glued to unsized drywall. (Found via Ben Hammersley’s Dangerous Precedent.)
Posted at 9:33 PM
Link to this entry || 4 comments
Somebody seems to have gone off their meds, and is making sense for it. (Warning, there’s some pretty strong fucking langauge there....)
Posted at 9:14 PM
Link to this entry || 4 comments
She gave herself to Jesus
She gave it all to Him
I can’t take it anymore
Life is too damn grim
She tore it all to pieces
Swept it in a pile
Lit it with a kitchen match
Praying all the while
Grim, Ass Ponys
(Funny how context can change the meaning of words.... You can download the entire concert this came from on archive.org.)
Posted at 8:10 AM
Link to this entry
I think we’ve discovered who George Bush is declaring war on next. Clearly it’s not safe to live in a blue state. Is this guy going to revisit every single war this country has ever fought?
Posted at 3:20 PM
Link to this entry
I for one welcome our new Canadian overlords.
Posted at 7:40 PM
Link to this entry || 7 comments
I saw David Gergen on PBS last night expressing concern that a huge portion of the electorate will now be completely alienated from America. I thought that was spot on. I don’t recognize this America. Bruce Springsteen said something at one of Kerry’s rallies the other day about how the America we hold in our heart is waiting for us. Well, the America I hold in my heart is still waiting, because it lost yesterday. And the America that won is one I simply don’t understand. Not as America, anyway. Maybe as Iran or Argentina.
Part of me thinks the only solution is to split America in half. Give the God-fearing parts of the country to Redistan, and those of us in the reality-based community can live in Bluetopia. Redistan can develop their economy based on the impending arrival of the Rapture, and Bluetopia can return to the values of tolerance and understanding that define what I thought America was supposed to stand for. The irony, of course, being that this would mark the failure of both tolerance and understanding toward the people who won this election.
So be it. "Values"-based voters worry about the immorality of men kissing men. People like me worry about the immorality of letting the less fortunate among us fall through the cracks, about the immorality of the continued existence (and over the last four years, the growth) of poverty in the wealthiest nation on Earth.
George Lakoff, in his book Moral Politics, talks about the difference between conservatives and progressives being best defined in terms of two models, the "strict father" model and the "nurturant parent" model. He does an excellent job of describing how people who subscribe to these two models are talking past each other, almost in different languages. Their ruling philosophies are based on two entirely different interpretations of morality. Honestly, I found the book utterly fascinating and extremely depressing when I read it a few months ago.
With the strict father having taken the nurturant parent out back of the house for a good horse-whipping, maybe it’s time for the abused spouse to seek a divorce. Because I don’t recognize this household, this America, any more. I don’t know that the America I hold in my heart exists any more, but if it does, it may take tearing America apart to preserve it.
Posted at 12:29 AM
Link to this entry || 9 comments
This site is copyright © 2002-2024, Ralph Brand
