Snorts

Thanks to Terry Frazier's good eye, for the list on Security from which the following wondrous facts were drawn:

More people are killed every year by pigs than by sharks, which shows you how good we are at evaluating risk.

(Now reread the post title. Think “Jaws.” I crack myself up.)

Did you ever wonder why tweezers were confiscated at security checkpoints, but matches and cigarette lighters—actual combustible materials—were not? ... If the tweezers lobby had more power, I'm sure they would have been allowed on board as well.

This one ought to be filed under Follow The Money, that long and endless blog that flows, past and future, through all of human history ... Except, have you noticed, those who really do, the real experts at keeping their eye on the bottom line, or the profit margin, or their own wizened little black hearts of self-interest ... And yes, the viciousness of pure, unadulterated self-interest does have this curious anatomical effect; when they open them up, the Dick Cheneys of this life, for the autopsy, there's this little dried up fig-like object, where something vibrant, full and beating used to be. Is, in normal human people. The blood has gone elsewhere, perhaps toward their pocket, or a bit further south than that. It's very sad, and of course they die of it, there's only so far you can take this imitation-person thing. I read where there may be soul-transplants, someday in the future. Modern medicine is a marvel, but I do believe this is an example of wishful thinking on the part of those who have so lost their faith (with which we assume all children are born) that buying and selling, accumulating, keeping can almost ... it must seem so close ... so nearly within reach ...

Insecurity

“By providing more generous benefits for low-income retirees, we'll make good on this commitment: If you work hard and pay into Social Security your entire life, you will not retire into poverty.”
–George W. Bush

“Social Security is not a poverty program, it is a retirement system people have worked hard for, paid into and have earned.”
–Rep. Sander M. Levin, D-Michigan

Well, either it is or it isn't.

Which must be one of the stupidest observations I've ever made.


link: NYT

This Is Not My Beautiful House

Senate majority leader Bill Frist participated in a weekend telecast organized by conservative Christian groups to smear Democrats as enemies of ‘people of faith.’ Besides listening to Senator Frist's videotaped speech, viewers heard a speaker call the Supreme Court a despotic oligarchy. Meanwhile, the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, has threatened the judiciary ...

link: NYT

Jesse! My Man!

“It was painful to talk with the students,” the Rev. Jesse Jackson said after meeting with students and parents. “They feel there are targets on their back because they are black, because they are involved in interracial dating relationships.”

However, university president Gregory Waybright stressed Friday there was no mention of interracial dating in the letters.

Jesse: Loved the pix on Yahoo news. The lit-from-below thing? Really works.

Goodbye To All That

“Mostly, the Rude Pundit doesn't give a shit what you have to say.”"

My sentiments, exactly. Why? Because it is a hard freakin' job to unpack all these thoughts in any semblance of reason, of order. You know what the web is? One big tangled snare of thoughts. Most of them boring, yes, but that's because nobody thought them, they just sort of—laid them, like a chicken lays an egg. Oh sure, the hen is proud, damn proud. Keeping chickens is an education. Keeping any sort of animals in numbers is a farkin' education, as is observing the behavior of your fellow keeper.

The worst damn thing you can do is say what you think. Especially if you are A: a woman, B: smart, and C: given to marrying stupid men. Men with lots of money who the very last thing they want to do is pay any to you. Who, if they find this blog and figure out who I am, will drag it into court along with the rest of their little kit full of Reasons I Am A Bitch. And should therefore proceed at a whole lesser standard of living? Well, that just goes without saying. Should in the very least suffer some sort of direct punishment, not from God, mind you, but from Little God.

Ah, wot the hell. Is there a woman alive who hasn't watched some guy pull rank, and over her. I'm not saying anyone gets a pass, but you've got to be in a special position—weaker, smaller, sicker, poorer, littler or otherwise dependent upon—to know the the pissant will-to-power that is testosterone gone bad. Like turned milk. It's curdled, in his head, so bad he doesn't know it. If you call knowing, admitting into reality. What did I do? I went about my business. As a woman. An artist, a writer. What did he do?

Why, we know now. To keep our eye on the dollar. We learned the hard way: follow the money. This is the answer to every question that makes no sense, that is contrary to life, that fills the headlines. That built the house of Tom De Lay, that hid the evidence of Condoleezza Rice, that threw the flowers of Donald Rumsfeld, that waved the flag of Swift Boat vets, that ... you know what? I don't think I can take it anymore.

This is the house that lies built.

Ecrans Transparents

Those French. They cannot do one simple thing without style, without mood. Even geek. See the slide show. Such hopelessly beautiful light.

The Formerly Hot, v.1

Yes my drafts are interesting. In fact I cannot think of a better, more native use for blogging than following a writer through her thinking–writing process. Let me put that a tad more honestly: a writer trying manfully (womanfully? no way) to follow her thinking, as, one foot out the door, it barely stops to wave bye.

I have not yet accepted that I will not live long enough to do justice to a piffle of these thoughts. Of all that I could do, were I as great as they, as that which would like to think through me, were I not such a weak and easily distracted instrument. Oh go find another fucking human, then, if you're so fed up with me. Ha. Stuck with this manifestation, aren't you.

You know, it's not so much that we disappoint ourselves or each other, that's not the real cloud we live under, not the real stinking-shit aspect of time, that rat-bastard.

It's that life works against us. Life and time. We disappoint that which would be. The great ineffable. Call it what you will, let me know when you live up to it, 'k? I don't think so. My, what kindness we would show other human beings, what boundless room for empathy, were we all delivered, en masse, of our potential.

The blessing, the curse, of being human. It's a fucker, alright. I, for one, haven't even accepted that I was born in a body, which a good three-quarters of the time feels so lousy that I am sick to death of these constant reminders that it's sojourn on the planet is going to be so over.


I think that's enough for today. I know it is for me. You don't think I knew what I was going to write, do you? Hell, no. This shit'll turn round and bite you on the ass. Meaning will. It's like letting the leash out on a slightly feral dog: you do it for the excitement, but keep an eye on that puppy. That's all. I'm not saying, don't go. I'm saying, like sex, it's the only way to go. Being a part of what is still, in truth, wild.

I'm just saying, Give some thought to—nah, fuck preparation. Just, keep the bandaids handy. The tourniquet.

From The Trenches: Terry Schiavo

From kiro5hn :

“I think it is an interesting fact about fascist societies that the public should feel entitled to enforce their sentimental opinions on matters that are none of their fucking business, yet this very same public is content to let government decide in secret public matters like, oh I don't know, the decision to go to war? I'm just saying.”

And from the news:

Once the room was cleared, Felos called Schiavo's passing a ‘calm, peaceful and gentle death.’ Her parents' spiritual adviser, the Rev. Frank Pavone, his eyes moist and red, called it ‘a killing.’

George Felos is a hospice volunteer.

I'm just saying.