Bus Sign

Not Voting is a vote for DeVos

Sigh.

Busy

It's supposed to be warmer in the early part of the day, so I'm going to try to get my bulbs in the ground. And clean the backyard. And put up Halloween decorations. And finish all the laundry. And ...

Cobain suicide?

Read this, omitting the last few lines (which are obviously done by another hand), and tell me if it sounds like a suicide note, or a "farewell to his fans" message?


It may be that I'm tired, but reading through that site has me half-believing that his wife did him in.

To Watch or Not to Watch

Last night (around midnight) I told my husband that if Leyland played Verlander tonight, I was going to bed early.

I could handle a Tiger's loss in Detroit. But to watch it in in St Louis? I don't have the strength.

Marriage is Unnatural

Marriage is a very unnatural act. Black men have realized this fact far ahead of their white counterparts ("Black teens have bleak view of marriage," Oct 19). Marriage is a bad business deal for most men. If you have financial resources, female companionship will always be at your disposal.




This is a letter to the editor that appeared in my paper yesterday.

Perhaps I'm Confused

But, I thought the concept of a "paid vacation" meant you didn't actually GO to work during that time?

Must Not Kill Children

And it's only Monday. It's gonna bee a looong week.

To My Pro-choice readers

I'm ok to be on the side of those who picket abortion clinics This gal is one of yours. Don't want her? Tough. She practiced a unique form of late-term abortion; a procedure supported by the pro-choice advocacy groups.

Despite the fact that the baby was to be delivered that very day, Tammy Skinner, none-the-less, shot it while it was still in her stomach.

Repeat after me; Keep your laws, out of my womb. The slippery slope slides one way; the direction in which no matter how disgusting, such an act is not a crime.

Look how far we've come, Baby!

Have I ruined anyone's dinner?

The New Face of Oppression

I've got something to say about this:

Rose Rock, the mother of comedian Chris Rock, claims she was racially discriminated against when she was seated but ignored for a half hour at a Cracker Barrel restaurant along the South Carolina coast.

But, first I'm going to go punch a hole in a wall.

Listen, Rose, there is a term for what happened to you at Cracker Barrel. It's called bad service. And if you think that only black people - oh excuse me - people of color experience this phenomena, you'd be wrong. My husband and I walked into a low-brow chain restaurant five days ago, only to be ignored at the door for about ten minutes. After we were seated, another 15 minutes went by before anyone took our order. I suppose, perhaps, the restaurant was run by anti-white black panthers, but I doubt it. The joint was disorganized, and -let's face it -certain chain restaurants don't draw exactly from the top of the food chain of restaurant servers and management. They don't pay enough.

But, please Rose go on with your sad tale.

He never called over the waitresses and asked, `Why did these people sit here for a half hour without service?'"she said."The only thing he said was we could have a free meal and neither of us wanted to eat."

You see, he didn't have to. It's not a manager's job to berate employees before the customers. Maybe he didn't bring a server over, because it wasn't a server's fault. Perhaps it was an extremely inexperienced hostess? You know how common it is for a poorly run restaurant, with bad or new hostesses, to sit people without assigning a server to the table? What did you want, Rose the manager to drag over some 17 year-old girl, who goofed, to apologize for 200 years of oppression?

When bad service happens to white people, it's called what it is. When it happens to black people (however slight), it's racism.

Let me give you some unasked for advice, Rose, next time you face the oppression of bad service, walk out.

Update: Gays at Cracker Barrel:

Look, while in the business, I would say about 50% of the male servers were gay. Traditionally this was always the case (although I think it's not as prevalent as it used to be.) Now, if a male employee were to be fired, chances are great (dare I say there is a 50% chance) that he is gay. People are rarely pleased when they are fired, and would usually prefer to find an excuse. I sucked as a server? NO, that can't be it (I mean, after all, how often does bad service occur?)

Word on the Street

The word is that I am in trouble because I viewed my TiVo'd season premier of Battlestar Galactica. I had promised my brother I would wait for him to come over, and we would watch it together.

Well, I've got a great excuse; I just couldn't wait any longer. Plus, the Tiger games were lurking, and I had to get it in on an off-night. AND, Jeff Harrell wrote a really long post about it, and I wanted to read it. And there is really NOTHING scheduled (worth watching) on Monday nights.

So there you have it. I basically had no choice. It was beyond my control.

Man, these intertubes can get a gal in trouble.

Go Here

Link in title, go check out the picture.

Please

Some one explain to me why I had children?

Weekend Report

First, I must address how happy I am for (commenter, Ace Regular) Mesablue, who was at that Tiger Game. Bastard. Now that I got that off my chest;

HOW ABOUT THOSE TIGERS?! I know, no one wanted, or thought that the Tigers would make it to the Word series. And, when they got rid of the Yankees, the BS on other blogs was how grateful the Mets fans were to the Tigers for getting ride of the Yankees, and now there would be a "Mets/A's" game in the World Series.

Well, how's that working out? They took our games out of prime time, because we were the B-listers.

But, you know, I'm not bitter.

Go TIGERS!

Top of the fourth. Detroit is up 2-0. Yip yip yip.

Update1: Kenny Rogers is having another hot day. All the more amazing since it is so freakiin freezing.

Crackheads and Guns

My mom had her home broken into yesterday. The assessment of the police, and the guy that came to install a new door for mom, was that it was probably the work of a crack-head.

Now, this event can lead me to have rants about the following topics: drugs, addicts, inner city decay, police inefficiency, racial apologists, Jesse Jackson, tougher criminal sentencing, forced sterilization, parental responsibility, morality in to day's society, welfare reform, racial profiling, gangster/rap culture, common decency, social norms, and educational reform.

Oh, and I want a gun.

On the plus side, the guy stole her broken DVD player. Sucker.

Thanks For Nothing

Pretty much everyone knows I home school. And, just about everyone who knows that, knows that I hate teaching children how to read. Detest it to the very fiber of my being. Personally, I love to read. I remember learning how to read; I was in first grade, and I distinctly remember the joy of knowing that I could read stories to MYSELF! I also remember that my readers were of the "Dick and Jane" genre, but that relates not at all to my post. I'm just rambling, basically.

Anyway, back to how much I hate teaching my children how to read. Not one of them has been an quick learner. Let me amend that, none of my children have been "early" learners. Basically, the process involves me trying every method I can find, bashing my head against the wall while they struggle and resist, and then one day I notice they're reading the sub-titles of the French film I'm watching. This has happened three times in my home so far. Yet, with number 4 (and 5 still to go), I gnash my teeth, worry, struggle, and continue to knock my head against the wall. The knowledge that some day they WILL read does nothing to pacify my angst.

So, today, in search of yet another method, I (mistakenly) checked out the forum boards where I bought my curriculum (Sonlight.) I was looking for stuff like this :

HELP! My (almost) 7 y/o is struggling to learn to read and I'm at my wits end. I've tried a variety of methods and nothing seems to be working. Can someone advise me?

To which, I was hoping to see something along the lines of this:

REST assured. There is nothing to worry about. Many 7 y/o children are still struggling with reading. I can recommend many games and books to help you ...

After the ellipses , of course, there would be a ton of helpful suggestions. Unfortunately, that is not what I found. I don't want to copy from a private forum, but basically, no joke, what I found resembled this:

My 5 y/o tested at fourth grade reading level, and I'm having trouble finding a program that is challenging enough for her.

And:

My oldest is 5 1/2. She is reading at a fourth grade level, and has the word recognitions skills of a 12th grader.

I'm going to go bang my head against the wall.

FRAK

I fell behind on BSG webisodes and now I cannot find them on the SciFi site. The only one I can find is episode ten. I wonder/hope it is just a gliche, because apparently there was some plot development. I had assumed they were going to be more in the vein of teasers.

I watched the season premier last night- enjoyed it very much- and refuse to make annoying parallels with the WOT/Iraq, etc. Jeff Harrell has a good post and discussion regarding THAT, and I agree with what was said over there. No need to put it over here. Oh, well perhaps just this :

If you want to all rorschach on it, you can find similarities between “Battlestar Galactica” and pretty much anything. That’s because it’s a show that takes great inspiration from events and situations both historical and contemporaneous. You think you see parallels between the fictional occupation of New Caprica and the post-war situation in Iraq? Great, congratulations. But there are also parallels between the TV show and the occupation of France by the Nazis, the occupation of the West Bank by Israel, the occupation of big chunks of Europe by the Soviets … hell, you can find common threads in the Roman occupation of Britain and the Persian occupation of India under Alexander the Great.

For the record, I think there were a few points in the episode where the writers were trying to get their digs in (calling the good guys "insurgents", for example) , but overall, thematically, the argument cannot be made that the show is a teaching moment for the foibles Bush administration. Assuming, of course, the person has over an 8th grade education.

Does this happen in your 'hood?

I live in a perfectly nice neighborhood. Nice gardens, manicured lawns. Nice, even sidewalks.

It is that last part which makes the mystery of why teens, in my neighborhood, INSIST on walking in the streets. Right down the middle.

Now, I would understand if it were the winter, and the sidewalks were unshoveled and icy. Or, as is in some bad areas of Detroit, the sidewalks were heavily littered with debris (left, I might add, by pedestrians and litter bugs.)

I would say it's a ghetto thing, but not all the kids doing it are from a ghetto. And, to make you understand how irritated I get by this, the other day it wasn't a group of teens, but ONE teen with three little kids walking smack dab down the middle of my street.

Honestly, I'm interested in the psychology behind this.

Not On My Dime

Michelle Malkin has a vlog on last week's brewhaha at Columbia. It was disgusting, and she sums it up pretty well.

Juicing/fitness

Ok, George, I just drank a cup of juiced apples and carrots (I received a nice juicer when I was first married.) What recipes have you got? I don't suppose I can drink that every day (I used to buy apple/carrot juice.)

For the record, I have lost few pounds since I really started running regularly - I'm on my third week, and am running 4 miles, followed by a day of either walking or thirty minutes on the nordic track. I don't want to run every day, because my knees need to be babied. I've also hit the Bowflex, although I do need to hit it harder.

So, how long until I fit into E's jean size?

Today's run; A review

Not so great. My body prefers to run after dinner, but my schedule prefers a morning workout.

Anyway, four miles, the last two in drenching rain, complete with thunder and lightening. I bet I was running with five pounds of water weight added on.

My kids were waiting for me with a towel when I got home.

Running music update

Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie" was pretty good. I put together a "running" playlist, and tried it out for the first time last night. Four miles of glory, it was.

And, Kel, I even put a Madonna song on the list; "Ray of Light".

Another reason I don't watch Oprah

Isn't Oprah trying to convince us she's not a lesbian? Because the list of "sexiest" men in her magazine does little to convince me that she's actually, you know, attracted to men. Well, anyway, here is the list of "sexiest" men:

1. Cory A. Booker--liberal Newark Mayor and Yale lawyer.
2. Larry Page and Sergey Brin--Google founders.
3. David Gregory
4. Albert Pujols--St. Louis Cardinals First Baseman (he should sue Oprah for listing him among these geeks; very uncool)
5. Barack Obama
6. James Nachtway--photographer of the African AIDS crisis
7. Markos Moulitsas Zuniga
8. Robert Egger--founded D.C. Central Soup Kitchen
9. Dr. Drew Pinsky--hosts sex radio show, used to host MTV sex show
10. Jeffrey D. Sachs
11. Larry Norton--Breast cancer researcher
12. Johann Olav Koss--Olympic gold medalist who uses sports as tool for kids in third world
13. Michael Arad--Architect designing politically correct Ground Zero Memorial with artsy fartsy pools and waterfalls and "living park" devoid of noting what really happened there
14. Fareed Zakaria
15. Alton Brown--Food Network chef
16. Patrick J. Fitzgerald

Well, I'm all hot an bothered now, aren't you?

Content Lag

But, you know, you get what you pay for here.

This week, I will blog while I am not doing one of the following:

Mulching the yard.
Planting bulbs and a few fall flowers.
Caulking the tub.
Running.
Home schooling.
Over-seeding the backyard.
Ferrying my children to/from soccer games/practices.
Preparing and/or teaching my fourth grade catechist class.
Washing windows.
Cleaning the house.

There you have it. Don't expect too much, and you will NOT be disappointed.