Friday attention

So, this is a PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT:

If anyone persists in calling me to blather on pointlessly about their job, boyfriend, daughter, manicurist, ex-boyfriend, would-be boyfriend, politics or other troubles, please expect the following:

First, telephone contact will be short and unrewarding.
Second, I will stop answering your phone calls.
Third, I will stop RETURNING your phone calls.

How do you know if you're a culprit, and that your telephonic contact is about to be or is being controlled? Here are a few clues:

a.) if you hear me say "I have to go now" and you suddenly rush in to ask me how I have been doing - this is a sign that you've not engaged me in the conversation at all.
b.) if you can feel me physically shove my way into your monologue to tell you that I have to get off the phone - like I have to cut you off and raise my voice to wedge my way in
c.) if I tell you something about a new gig, a new job, a new boyfriend, a new house, or that I've moved to Anchorage three weeks ago, and you say "I didn't know anything about that."
d.) if you hear my voice mail message A LOT
e.) if I start a telephone conversation by telling you that there's a time limit, which will be strictly observed.

Now, we return to our regularly scheduled program.

Ruby's back in the shop. This time, with a busted driver's seat frame - both sides failed. They are going to attempt to weld it back together, and then check to see if the seat mechanism continues to work. If not, then they're going to look for a replacement seat. This one's going to hurt.

Chuck's on his way over, and we're going to a.) pick up a check, b.) have dinner, c.) he swears he's going to fix this computer so it works. Finally.

Tomorrow, I've called off a meeting, and I think I'm going to see if I can get some work done OUTSIDE - Jackie's been digging up the planters next the patio, the garage door remains busted, and there are two light fixtures that need to be installed. The patio needs to be hosed/scrubbed down, as does the driveway. I need to find someplace to recycle paint. And, I have about a week's worth of computer work to catch up on. Since I haven't been able to do ANY.

Rain-E Thursday

Another unproductive day, mostly thanks to my desktop computer, which is barely working at all. I can operate, at most, two software programs at a time, and nothing that sucks up a lot of memory.

Went to drop Ruby off to have her seat back fixed; I had made an appointment to have the work done more than a week and a half ago. Got there, and .. they won't take the car. They won't even discuss it until next week. I left. Came home, it had started raining, and the seatback had fallen into the back seat again.

Bitter, party of one.

Came home to the desktop freezing up. And freezing up. And San Jac being twits, as per the usual. They have extended the deadling for enrollment of the class that starts .. Monday .. until tomorrow. They tell the students fifteen different things, including that they don't know who the chosen instructor is .. and then, ask me if I'll cut my hourly rate to hold the class.

I spent hours trying to get the computer to work. Hours. Until nearly four o'clock. By that time, I was ready to scream.

I don't know how to catch up. Very frustrating.

Dinner with Chuck cancelled due to a blond moment, coupled with a younger, cuter Latin man being available.

Screaming is yet possible. I'm dizzy - I think my blood sugar is way out of whack.

More hump day that feels like Monday

Teaching my class - they're working on their in-class exercises.

Got all excited about the new VW Rabbit, until Bri in Hotlanta shot it out of the trees. Using an Uzi. And a ballistic missile. Now, I'm back to the ...

Hell, I don't know.

I talked over the A. Hitler thing with Donna today, and got more insight. It's very cool. Another article to write.

So, I figured it out - Hump Day that feels like Monday

Had ten people yesterday (well, more than ten actually, but we got to ten and leveled off there as people came and went) Some of us hung in the pool, the rest cowered under the patio cover, Bram broke the garage door, hired some poor little guy from Home Depot's parking lot to paint his bedroom, and we watched a bunch of the Star Trek marathon. Fernando made sandwiches, queso and rum cakes, and a good time was had by all. No massive intoxication, no embarassing amorousness, and I had the kitchen clean and was in bed by 10:30. Well, I could have been.

So, I was reflecting on the Hitler dream this morning, especially the part about going through the airport to my (truly gorgeous .. oh, my) FW 200 with all of the people getting it ready to travel. I started to see that in that scenario, I was only focused on BIG picture issues. I wasn't concerned about the NOTAMS, or the tire pressure, or the catering load-in, or the departure clearances, or whether the airport fees had been paid .. I was only absolutely certain that all of those things had been done - certain to the point that I didn't think about them.

From a SOM perspective, in that mindset, everything that I was focused on INCLUDED having the airplane's needs (and therefore, my needs) attended to. I was comparing my own past focus with this perspective, and .. I've been focusing on the blades of grass.

The adage we're pulling in here is - can't see the forest for the trees. (I keep finding that these old adages have so much value and validity, kind of amazing.)

This isn't to say that you should (or I should) abandon attention to the small stuff. It's just that FOCUSING on the small stuff prevents one from focusing on the BIG stuff.

This morning, after my contemplation, I picked (back) up "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," having already read "The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler," and "Berlin Diaries." And, the very next sub-chapter I came to was the discussion of Adolf Hitler and his income before he became Chancellor. It seems that ol' AH gave very little thought to his support, and income stream. He just knew it would be there.

All of this provides me with fodder for further consideration.

Okay, it's time to get cracking on a few more things -

Last one, I swear - another Focke-Wulf Condor 

The Focke Wulfe 200 at New York after the first non-stop flight from Berlin to New York 

The Focke Wulfe Condor 200 

A Birthday Present for America

From Daily Kos

By DarkSyde on osama

Here's a birthday present for ya America, courtesy of the White House I'm sure:

Link--WASHINGTON, July 3 -- The Central Intelligence Agency has closed a unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, intelligence officials confirmed Monday. [...] The decision is a milestone for the agency, which formed the unit before Osama bin Laden became a household name and bolstered its ranks after the Sept. 11 attacks, when President Bush pledged to bring Mr. bin Laden to justice "dead or alive."

Yes, OBL, the guy President Bush said we were going to 'smoke out' 'dead or alive' is no longer deemed a threat--or at least not enough of a threat to actually you know, pursue vigorously from within the CIA. After all, the President is 'truly not that concerned about him,' even though bin Laden and his pal Aymen killed 3000 Americans and are threatening in every new Al Qaeda video production to kill some more.

What the fuck kind of President is George Bush anyway?


So, those of you who still support this administration - how does this action square with your certainty that they're protecting us from terrorism?

July 4th, bizarre dream edition

So, this morning, I was dreaming that I was Adolf Hitler, and it was the late 1930s. I was in New York for a meeting with some political figures. The room was lavish, and everyone was saying blah, blah, blah. I came to realize that they were telling me "this is the line you cannot cross," or "this is as much as we can give you," but that these were just words. I could do anything I conceived. I left, and went to the airport, to board my Focke-Wolfe 200 (the first four engine long distance airplane) It was there at the New York airport, polished to shine like a mirror, with fresh black and yellow trim paint. Crew people were buzzing around the aircraft, readying it for departure.

And then I had to climb the wooden stairs to the ship (these being dreams, they don't occur in a linear fashion.) The stairs were long and steep, and in the middle was a wooden structure that one had to slide undebrneath, part of a military training regimen.

There was a young military man coming down the stairs, and he limbo-ed under the structure, but I walked up and around on the outside. Then, I was talking to some guy who worked for me who hadn't completed some task he was to have done. I told him he had to cut his ear off in pennance. He did. That was gross.

Still thinking about the meanings of this dream.. it's interesting.

Monday, Monday ver. 822.01

Well, it's all stinky up in here today. Barbara is painting Bram's bedroom, and it turns out that she started by using OIL based wall paint (we scrounged through the garage for supplies.) So, the cucarachas are all dying swiftly, and my brain cells are failing by the thousands.

Have been opening a client's huge stack o'mail. Yurg. Have to get this all organized now. Have more things set up for this week.

So, I'm having a fag float tomorrow. This fag float was to have been brought to you by other members of my fag float team, who were so happy about the memorial day experience that they said they wanted to "chip in and do up the 4th of July." Now, they've decided that they are "just going to show up."

Thanks. Why again is it that they keep calling me bitter? Oh, yeah, because people don't follow through with what they say they'll do. Yurg.

Cleaned out the garage today. Hooo baby. Got the trash can FULL of stuff. Swept things down, moved things out, cleaned things up, it looks like a garage instead of a foreclosure in progress.

Later on

The house still smells. It smells as if I've soaked a bunch of charcoal in the living room; the lighter fluid smell is so heavy. Did I mention that the garage is nice and clean?

Sunday - a pie bake-off

Rosita gave me some blueberries today, and I decided it was finally time to make up a pie with the cherry pie filling that came to live with me some nine years ago. Was it the kind of pie filling that can survive nine years?

It's good stuff!! The pie. With the nine year old cherry filling. Bram loved it. He's SUCH a great guy. This is turning out EXACTLY like I was wanting - with a room mate that's responsible, fun, great to be around, good company, and a participant in developing the house at a concept.

Barney's getting more feeble by the day. I put his collar on, and a few hours later, it's lying on the ground. He gets up unsteadily, and is deaf as a post.

Declare our Independance

Source Article

On the Fourth, Read the Declaration of Impeachment
By David Swanson
AfterDowningStreet.org

Sunday 02 July 2006

Veterans for Peace has drafted a Declaration of Impeachment using nothing but excerpts from the Declaration of Independence (plus a few words in parentheses). It reads as follows, and should be read at picnics and protests on the Fourth of July:

"... whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

... all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations ... design(s) to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

... The history of the present King (George)... is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny ... To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

* He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

* He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

* He has ... deprive(ed) us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury ... transport(ed) us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

* He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us ...

* He is at this time transporting large Armies ... to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

* He has constrained our fellow Citizens ... to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

A (President) whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

We, therefore ... do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People ... solemnly publish and declare, That these ... Free and Independent (People) ... are Absolved from all Allegiance to the (Bush Administration), and that all political connection between them and (this Administration), is and ought to be totally dissolved ... And for the support of this Declaration ... we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

Note that the colonists didn't just write these words. They also fought and died for them.

Supporting our troops and working to ensure that they not have died in vain are notions that no longer apply to the soldiers who died in the fields around my house in Virginia. The statute of limitations has expired, and the 4,435 who died to rid America of a King George are now in fact required - as a matter of patriotic duty - to have died in vain.

In vain their deaths to free us of a unitary executive.

In vain their deaths to establish freedom of assembly.

In vain their deaths to separate church and state.

In vain their deaths to create freedom of speech.

In vain their deaths in the cause of freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.

In vain their blood spilled in rivers to establish the right to freedom from cruel and unusual punishment.

In vain their ultimate sacrifices to create a representative democracy based on checks and balances.

In vain the heartache of their families suffered in the name of an end to empire.

All in vain, all unsupported. Welcome to the world of free speech zones, detention without charge, no access to a court of law, no prohibition on torture. Welcome to the end of the veto and the birth of the signing statement. Welcome to an executive branch that neither obeys Congress nor so much as informs Congress of its actions. Welcome to wars of aggression for a theocratic plutocracy. Welcome back, King George.

King George is opposed by almost all Americans who identify themselves as democrats or Democrats. Only 9 percent of Democrats approve of his "handling the situation with Iraq," according to a CBS poll. The so-called Republican Party, on the other hand, is split. 71 percent of Republicans approve of the king's war, a number that is steadily declining. So, I have to say it annoys me a teeny little bit when the military industrial media complex calls the Democratic Party split and makes that alleged split the focus of reporting.

What they mean is that a little band of plutocratic leeches living in the swamps of the District of Columbia displays different tendencies from the citizenry. Within this inbred sect, Republicans are almost united and Democrats quite split on the question of whether to slaughter more Iraqis indefinitely. All the Republicans are for it, and half the Democrats are for it too. But half the Democrats have come over to the side of the American public to receive the scorn of the pundits and preachers of Objectivity.

What nobody is making note of, though, is that the anti-war Democrats in Congress can balance the scorn that the media bestows on them with the implicit gratitude of the soldiers of the War for Independence, the war in which we were opposing, not creating, a foreign occupation.

I fully expect, one day soon, to wake up to this headline: "Dems split on torturing grandmothers," followed by words to this effect: "Republicans forced a deeply divided and uncertain Democratic Party onto the defensive this week, bringing to a vote their long-planned GT bill. The Grandmother Torture Act of 2006 provides the President with the freedom he needs in handling the rising threat from seniors engaged in terrorist activities, said several Republican leaders. The defeat is expected to hurt the Democrats in November, Diebold executives reported.

Of course, on the question of building permanent military bases in Iraq, it is the Dems in Congress who are united and the Republicans in Congress who are very much split. But that story is not a story, so it doesn't really matter who's split or not split or anything else. Nor is historic justice being served the way it should. Every member of Congress working to create permanent bases in Iraq for unwanted and illegal foreign troops should have two dozen reenactors of the American Revolution occupy their office and live off their campaign funds while endlessly reciting the Declaration of Impeachment.

Happy Fourth!

David Swanson is creator of MeetWithCindy.org, co-founder of the AfterDowningStreet.org coalition, a writer and activist, and the Washington Director of Democrats.com. He is a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, and serves on the Executive Council of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, TNG-CWA. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including Press Secretary for Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign, Media Coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association, and three years as Communications Coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Swanson obtained a Master's degree in philosophy from the University of Virginia in 1997. His website is www.davidswanson.org.