And, in the end......

the love you take........

is equal to the love..........


you make.

Say Goodnight, Gracy..........

I now call to order the committee for the arrangement of nouns and verbs in pleasing and non-stressful order. Today we shall take a vote as to wether or not we wish to continue this cruel practice of subjecting the English language to this constant re-arrangement of concepts and ideas, as if there was even the most remote chance that any one of us would agree as to which i should be dotted as opposed to which t would be crossed. I believe the last straw was broken when two of our esteemed authors simultaneously spawned an idea and disappeared into our community broom closet in order to study it further. This, we cannot allow to happen again, lest order wrest some sanity from chaos and all is arranged in neat little rows that any idiot could navigate around without stubbing their toes. *

So, please cast your votes in comments as to what we shall do with all this. Those in favor of discontinuing this blog, please indicate by typing very slowly, dotting each i and crossing each t extremely carefully, that you wish to discontinue this blog, even if you have already discontinued believing this place actually ever existed in the first place or not. We are not responsible for alternate perceptions.

Those in favor of continuing this blog please indicate, in triplicate, on several multi-colored 3 X 5 (that's three by five) cards that you personally wish to take over the governance of this blog, and that you shall subject yourself to whatever consequences might arise from practicing governance without a license, unless, of course, you wish to submit an application for a license from whatever place would dare issue licenses of this type, considering the present day political climate and which way the wind blows in Omaha this time of year. Do NOT, under any circumstances, forget to cross a t, unless you meant it to be an l, in which case it will be confused with a 1, which is easy to do when you are not paying attention.

Being of sound mind and body, I also include a third alternative, which is to remove yourself from this blog so that the end effect would bring about it's demise due to an extreme lack of anyone standing around and doing things in the vicinity of this great work of literary art. If you wish to remain with the blog, please don't tell anybody. Especially on a tuesday.

I would have included a fourth alternative, but the third seems to have included it, so I won't, unless you want me to.

It's been fun. We shall remain on the air until the end of the month, at which time I shall delete this experiment and put it out of it's misery.

Unless, of course, a hue or a cry arises, in which case the blog might carry on under new management, may whatever God or Goddess or Spaghetti monster you believe in have mercy on your soul, should you have one, not that's there's anything wrong with that.

Thank you all for your great contributions.

















*A literal translation of this paragraph is available for $19.95 from the Library of Congress, providing, of course, that you can get the Bush Administration to act on your Freedom of Information Request, filed in triplicate, and sent to the Department of Agriculture, which normally would have nothing whatsoever to do with this process, and doesn't. But it might. Purely by accident. Ya never know.

Allowances

I'm rather rabid about protecting my "rights", while at the same time recognizing that none of us are truly born with any real right to anything. What we actually enjoy, at least in this country, are "allowances". We are allowed by those in power to presume that we can say what we want, do what we want, think what we want, all within a framework of manageable chaos which we call democracy. You need only observe the machinations of the Bush Administration or the Putin Regime to understand that this freedom we take so much for granted is a tenuous concept at best. The right people in the right place will dictate just how free any one of us are to live our lives as we see fit.

I also happened to notice, while I was growing up and learning all about rights and how few of us really understand what they are, that with rights come responsibilities which few of us are aware of or are too lazy to embrace. So, I think I have the right to think and say anything I damn well please, but I also have a responsibility to exercise that right in such a way as not to harm someone either deliberately or by negligence. I WILL fail in this endeavor, but I WILL cling to the defense that I am at least trying. Most people, of course, are not going to concern themselves to much by how "getting theirs'" is going to effect those around them, because a "free" society also tends to be a very self-centered society. You might argue this point, but while you are dragging out your big guns, let me give you THIS broadside. You would think that social evolution would deal with problems as they arise and solve them, rather than create them. Really? Then tell me why, before Ronald Reagan came along, no one used the word "homeless" very much? Tell me why, then, are the mentally ill gunning down people in wholesale numbers instead of being managed by a mental health system that SURELY should have a clue by now as to how to deal with these people, who, incidentally, are simply you and me just one emotional upheaval away? Tell me why, in the name of free enterprise, we seem to have forgotten the idea of national interest, such as keeping OUR citizens employed and off the streets rather than shipping their livelihoods overseas so that third world nations can aspire to be just like us? (Third world nations, I might point out, that hate our guts, and sadly, have every right to.)

We are afraid of each other. So damn intent are we to protect our "rights", we see to it that every citizen has the right to arm themselves, even if we end up arming the very people we are arming ourselves against. It seems we would much rather shoot someone needing our help then to simply help them, unless of course, they have the good grace to shoot themselves once their rampages are out of the way. Then we bath in the media circus that always follows, following the pointing fingers, then going back to our self-centered lives and trying not to think about the next massacre that will surely happen, because, after all, we are no longer our brother's keeper, are we?

I WILL practice my rights as I see fit, as long as the police state allows me to. My practice of rights does not happen to include owning a pristine, green lawn devoid of all life other than one genetically engineered species of grass. It does not include contaminating my water table with herbicides and pesticides and all those other poisons we can pour on a yard. It doesn't include seeing to it that my neighbors are worshipping the right God, or bringing the righteous weight of moral society down upon their sinful heads if they aren't. It doesn't include living my life as though my being at the top of the food chain really means I'm a superior species that needs no regard for his fellow creatures. It does mean that I will keep jacking my jaws, pointing out the obvious, and maybe not-so-obvious, until my turn comes up and I get to die just like everybody else.

Or is that a responsibility?

You tell me.

Yom HaShoah יום השואה

יום השואה April 15th is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.

(click to enlarge)

Learn more at these links.

Orthodox Union

The Jerusalem Post

From Oy to Vey

Oy Bay!

Uncle Leo’s Medals

So It Goes.

If your ever.

Check out these and feel the pain.

http://firmlyrooted.blogspot.com/search/label/papa%27s%20little%20girl


http://whitesnake45.blogspot.com/2007/04/ghost-of-rose.html


About time we all stood up and said something!

The Mortgage Rollercoaster

This video of a roller coaster ride was constructed using data from American housing prices over the last 117 years. The graph used to plot the video can be found at Speculative Bubble. This is scary.

Simply Left Behind has a three-part (so far) series about the scary trends in the economy, especially housing prices and mortgage defaults. I hope your eyes don't glaze over too much with this economic talk.

Why You Should Care About Subprime Loans.

Moron the Housing Crisis.

The Smart Money.

Personally, I am in a good position to survive this scenario. My house is paid for. I should sell it, bank the money, rent for a couple of years (if I ever get an income), then buy a better house after the crash. But most Americans are in a much worse spot, in over their heads in debt, with no job security. Well, I have no job security because I have no job! But thats a lot easier to ride out with no mortgage.