Rove, Tech Nightmare ver. 2.1, birds & eggs, Paper Folding Conventions, Dirty Water Dogs, and So Long Bobby Barker...You Will Be Missed....

Ive spent days going round with tech visits from Dell and Cablevision, and talking here and there to Verizon Wireless, and I'm happy to report that the cable burned out on the pole, but I also managed to get a new motherboard, networking card, and processor from Dell...oh, and also a new Verizon card reader for the laptop. As I had predicted that the card holder was merely unplugged, but I guess I got the new one anyway just for good measure. The only problem left now is that the laptop keyboard is not working right, which may mean that the tech put it back wrong, or that its shot!
Considering that my little rogue lovebird, Daisy, likes to jump on it real quick when she thinks Im busy elsewhere, waddle forward in fast motion like some sorta cartoon, and grab the keys off really quickly, shouldnt be a problem... I do often have to snap them back in place....naw, Im thinking its more likely that the air cleaning and the reinstall did something to it....damn!!
I know that the tech stuff is of more interest to some of you than others, so Ill cut it out...except to say that I did fix the mail forwarding on some other site thats been a royal pain in my ass...and I finally embedded a player here, though I am sick in bed so dont have my clips of Jim Earl singing to Maron or Janeane and Sammy fighting in the commercial break...
So, Ive got one of my themes up for now and will figure the rest later....

Yeah, I got the evil kid germs from the evil kid...and even knowing the course of this thing doesnt make it any less depressing....plus that Ive been dealing with some business stuff and Will's last week of school, complete with 6 teacher gifts, 2 bus driver gifts, and 1 headmaster gift, which really needed to be nice and special because these people have been a godsend to me! It is absolutely the best school ever (and the most expensive, but then, thats considered a medical expense I guess.)
I've made it past the throat and am into the sinus, with the wrackign cough to come....and it fucks up father's day a bit, but thats not something that we play up around here much because Will's father is absent and asleep at the switch when it comes to things like holidays, birthdays...any days....
Ben's dad lives in Haiti and doesnt speak much English. Ben hates heat, humidity, and bugs, so is planning on maybe seeing him at some point really quickly and jumping back on a plane to the safety of a yankee east coast city!

All of the confusion of days of wandering through a Nyquil hangover haze and having to get stuff done has left me feelign like...whats happening out there?
And the resounding answer is that things are fucked as usual, but that Rove is looking like he is in big time trouble...We know he broke the law, and I dont know what the big deal is with investigating it. These guys have lied, impeded investigations, and stood in our way long enough; Lets get to it.
I dont feel sorry for Libby...I want him in jail for his full term. I'd also like to see Rove and quite a few of his buddies in jail as well.
The arrogance and the stupidity...the deaths and the sinking feeling of no end in sight...and the hopelessness of poor people in this country and in my very neighborhood who have no way out and cant feed themselves and get their medications, demands that the neocon agenda be stopped, and that the people who have caused so much misery and put us into this spiral down, pay in some way!
There will be a lot more misery to come too.
This surge has to be stopped. I cant imagine what it serves to wait till September when we know that it is not working. Isnt this a crime? Shouldnt Bush be examined by Psychiatrists or something?...because this is delusional thinking, and people are dying...and its summer in Baghdad...that means its freakin hot and sandy....
What more has to happen?
Isnt it bad enough that the social fallout from this is going to be catastrophic in that we, as a country, are not only unprepared for the PTSD in the soldiers, but unprepared for the mailaise that we are surely already deep into as a county, and which is sure to get worse as we begin the long withdrawal in defeat and all thats left is to look at eachother and ask why...? Jill linked today to this scary-interesting Shakesville piece on how screwed the reasoning is behind the upcoming (and current) war plan (s)...and how misled and mistaken we've been...and below that it goes on to on discuss how psychologically damaging a war with no reason is...I feel very damaged when Ive been lied to...and I also feel very betrayed by anyone who Ive ever known who went along with this nonsense out of laziness or a feeling of helplessness...
The despair is a bottomless pit.

I watched Bob Barker yell his last "come on down," last night, during a week when I was so out of it as to be mindlessly watching soap operas from my youth and...yeah...a game show or two.
Barker says that Rosie O'donnell should replace him and thats part of why I like him so much. Old Bob speaks his mind and, for all the hairspray and 50's sensibility, is a real passionate activist....Maybe he can go on to find his soapbox now....and though I know that the money is there for her to do just about anything, I think that Rosie has some important political work to do in the next year or two. We're fighting for our lives out here, and with AAR silenced in such a drastic and disgusting way, we need everyone we can get!
Look, I've never been a big Rosie fan in general, but when is the liberal elite gonna stop turning up their noses at her and realize that she bravely went onto daytime TV and during a timeslot where youre lucky if anyone even thinks, she told it like it is in no uncertain terms. Dont add me to her craft group just yet, but she has my thanks and congratulations on a job well done...its just too bad that Elizabeth the stupid-head Hasselhoff...er...beck...er...back...is still there spewing her garbage. She was one of the few "celebrities" that the Republicans could wrangle to speak at their NYC convention last time rund....and you know that they were desperate to have hired her!
I just think that its wrong to allow anyone to spew lies on TV...and what she is saying is partly just her own stupidity, but mostly the talking points....Where is our voice?...

Speaking of which, Ive been listening to some old Marc Maron Shows from last year and they hold up great...I wonder if that means that we are largely in the same place, or that the material is timeless...its wonderful material and I just MISS hearing him/them every day so badly!...I also miss Al, and Sam...I miss what it used to be: new, experimental, and hopeful...and I am disgusted by this Lionel character...can hardly listen to even the crackly bit of Randi here and there that comes in in the car sometimes.
But Im gonna probably just try to listen to the old shows over again and hope for better days. I was in the market yesterday and just laughing and laughing at my ipod input...its been a long time since I got to be that cracking up lady in the market...Im gloomy, doomy lately.
Maron is in San Diego this weekend and Providence, Rhode Island next weekend (a place where I really want to go and hang some time, but I'm gonna be all tied up in NYC....sorry Westin Hotel...sorry Heavenly bed...sorry to me, staying in a dorm room and perching at whole foods and starbucks in chelsea...)

So whats happening? Whats in store?
This coming Friday Ben and Will and I head down to NYC for the Origami USA convention at FIT in Chelsea. We will be staying at a dorm and I will be wandering and hovering round while they are folding and hanging out with their paper people.
Thousands of paper folders converge on the school for this 4 day fold fest, and they fold all night and day...really strange to me....but what they make is fantastic! I will definitley be posting alot of pictures of the exhibit and goings on...
Otherwise, Ive been back in touch with some musicians who I knew in another lifetime and touch base with from time to time..., and one of my very favorites, Homeboy Steve, is playing on Friday night in Manhattan with one of his many bands, The Dirty Water Dogs. Its very close to where we are staying. ...I also have tickets to go and meet John Edwards earlier on Friday evening, which will likely be a zoo, but if Im down there and the boys go to the Origami opening reception I might just wander away into the NY evening to see whats out there.
Its is also usually the weekend of the Gay Pride Parade, which is incredibly fun, and completely otherworldly when youve been hanging round with origami folders.

It seems like a long haul to be in a dorm, but the boys love it. I find it pretty sparse and lonely, but I usually get alot of work done...and thats what I need to do for sure!!..

In bird news, Rosie laid another egg last night and Im leaving her alone as much as possible. It will be 28 days from today if the thing is to hatch. She is a prolific layer, but Im worried about her physically. Once she is done laying this bunch, Im bringing her to the vet for a check up. She moves around the cage very strangely, and her flying is not good. It may be from the eggs and discomfort or she has had some injury since she came to me. I am not opposed to turning them into pets, but he is a little agressive. I want to see how they do over this and the next breeding season, and then figure it out.
Meantime, I am preparing parrotlet land for nestboxes. They are scrappy little dolls, those lil' parrotlets...and they are alot of parrot packed into a tiny little body.

Welcome to Shakesville....its not that I havent been reading you from time to time, its just that Ive been too busy to update the blogroll here...not that it matters much, but I like to give at least a reference to where Im stealing my ideas from...;-)

Endings and Beginnings...

David Chase says that he doesn't think about a Sopranos movie...much....but he never says never...
hmmmm.....

While some viewers groused about the untidy ending, some of Chase's peers were cheering his decision not to tie his saga up neatly. Damon Lindelof, one of the creators of "Lost," told the Times that, like many people, he thought his cable had gone out when the screen clicked to black and he checked his Tivo to make sure it was still running. "I've seen every episode of the series. I thought the ending was letter-perfect," he said.

"My heart started beating. It had been racing throughout the last scene. Afterward I went to bed and lay next to my wife, awake, thinking about it for the next two hours. And I just thought it was great. It did everything well that 'Godfather III' did not do well."

And only America's Got Talent got better ratings. Thats a record breaking feat for a pay cable show....hmmmmm

I spent alot of yesterday driving around and thinking about the Sopranos ending, or non-ending, depending on how you felt about it. And I suppose that I was less invested in the show than I had been in earlier years, so it didn't really bother me all that much...but I was thinking of what I consider to be THE best ending of any show ever, which was the Six Feet Under finale ending....
Well, of course, my much more organized and sane, mental twin Jill had already posted the clip
Since I've watched it a couple of more times and I'm still thinking about it I thought it was worthwhile to post it here again to make sure that everyone gets to see it...and also to be a copy-kitten because Jill beat me to the punch, as usual!...Meow!

"You cant take a picture of this, its already gone..."




Bird News:





Rosie the conure had a big egg problem with a big egg that she was having trouble laying. I put her in my new cooler brooder and kept her warm...put mineral oil in the proper place, and kept her quiet...and this morning, she had laid the egg!
Yay Rosie!! I didn't want to have to go to the vet today and have it extracted! What a trooper....

See Ya in Hell Jerry!! Is it Safe to Eat Yet? More Baby Birds....

This is my boyfriend, Henry. He lives at the bird store as their pet...Indeed, spring brings out the romance in a young guy's heart, and Henry has decided that I am sweet. I know its a ruse so that he can snap me in two with that big beak of his, as he has tried before...but, he has drawn me into his trap with his head turned down for neck scratches and all that purring, upchucking of food, and holding his huge taloned hand up for me to pick him up (ha!...yeah right!)...
I am such a sucker for all that sweet talk...


























At last God has worked his way through the virtual Netflix backup of what his "servants" have been up to down here, and upon viewing the hijinx of his servant Jerry, he has immediately removed him from this planet in the hopes of giving us some shot at healing this country's horribly damaged psyche. Oh, some out there will blame the gays and some will blame the druggies, but this is clearly a case of karma coming back around...Good riddance Jerry...I will not shed one tear for you and your filthy mind that would take every nice thing about the Christian sensibility and wring it of any humanity, turn it upside down, and spew it out as some sort of bastardized truth, to an under educated and scared flock who deserve better than the likes of you as a teacher and spiritual leader! What an absolutely ugly person...rotten from the inside out!

Seeing the likes of Rudy Guilliani and John McCain eulogize Falwell makes me just want to post this again:



I'm so tired of liars....power hungry, money grubbing, self righteous, jerks, who would sell out any basic American value in their climb to some imagined pinnacle of power or wealth. And I really hope, for Jerry especially, that there is an afterlife and a God there that is sitting in judgment of people like him...and I hope that he is sweating out the hearing of his life.(..Be sure to save Rudy and Johnny Mac a seat Jer...they'll be joining you.)

Its been a week of playing catch up for me, and the overflow of the water table in this part of the world has caused an incredible tree pollen season (not to mention the mosquitoes,) so Ive been in a daze from that, or the medicine for that, while watching the idyllic spring appear magically as the world greens up and the little frogs go into overdrive in deafening song every night.
Will and Ben have been hanging out, skipping rocks at the pond, catch and releasing peepers, and making s'mores at the fire pit. Its a very different childhood than I had, and its so nice as to almost feel uncomfortable to me...constantly looking up for the shadow of the other shoe...dropping...
















Among other things, I've been continuing on the Chinese plastics trail, and trying to figure out if its safe yet to feed the animals, much less myself and the kids....The conclusion does not look too good.
See, I've got this view of the situation at this point where, by the time we have enslaved the Chinese and upset their cultural curve in order to turn them into worker bees for our light (aka plastics, etc...) industries...and also as we build everything to break, out of plastic that is getting weaker and cheaper every year, to ensure that we will have to replace the plastics overflowing our lives over and over...the natural next step is the infusion of plastics into our food and bodies which will then, when combined with the myriad other chemicals that have infused our world, sicken and even kill us. I'm sure that somewhere soon the music from Children of Men will swell and Clive Owen will burst into the room babbling something about infertility caused by.....

Now, I know that the FDA says not to worry our pretty little heads about all of this, but melamine has caused tumors in mice and rats and sickened and killed dogs and cats. There are NO studies being presented that show that this stuff, even in small doses, is safe for humans. So I would prefer to avoid it as a primary additive in say, imported Chinese products that might be used by the local Chinese restaurant, or secondarily in meats that have been fed with feed using Chinese wheat, rice, or whatever protein. It seems to be in everything; fish food, possibly vitamins made in china, the list goes on...and definitely looking at dog treats such as dried pig ears and rawhide that are made in China, there is going to be a great, huge chance that melamine is going to be present. As I've said before, without so much as a class action threat, Menu Foods is paying vet bills for pets sickened by the melamine contained in their now recalled foods....when has any of us ever, ever seen a big corporation like that just pay up of their own accord?...so quietly, so quickly...? It indicates to me that this thing runs alot deeper than they want any investigation to get.
But the bigger question is not just about melamine, but the whole damned food chain and the clear fact that deregulation has not worked, large corporations cannot be trusted to police themselves, and that the savings due to outsourcing which surely in a different world would have been applied to heightened security in the face of increased imports have been funneled into the bank accounts of the CEO's and top management types. How much money does any one person or family need at the expense of the health and safety of others around the world?
So, secure in the knowledge that the CEO's of Hills and Menu etc... have provided for the next 5 generations of their families, can we now spend a little money on the feed that the protein components are built on?...what a crock of shit this whole story is!
So, yeah, I expect that its in human foods, along with all sorts of assorted toxins.
And the predictable thing about all of this is that upon further testing, other problems were found, like salmonella in some dried chicken treats...
Hows that deregulation and globalization working now? Who is benefiting and who is getting hurt? Follow the money....

So, on the trail for dog foods that are made with American fed, humanely treated protein sources, also known as animals. The pet food store manager that Ive known for quite a few years told me that the companies are all scrambling as to what to say and how to handle what information they have or dont have, as the case may be. And Ive been writing to different pet food companies and reading lots of web pages, only to get mere partial answers, which indicates to me that the companies themselves might not know the full story on the protein sources anyway.
What I've found is that Paul Newman's, Newman's Own Brand is made of organic ingredients and purely American fed and humanely treated animals. It says this on their web site and the pet food store manager knew this right away. There is also a more fancy brand called Canidae that is also along those lines.

I tried to get information on any number of other foods and the replies I got were very spotty and vague, such as this from Timberwolf:

They (sic) chicken is of human grade, raised in the U.S., though we can not officially call it that since we do not pay additional for the USDA stamp of approval. The Bison is American free range. The Venison and Lamb is from New Zealand and is hormone and antibiotic free.

But I had asked them what the animals were fed. Any subcontracting farmer can cut corners by buying Chinese feed or Chinese protein. I wrote them back, but the reply above took a week, so I'm not hopeful. Anyway....I'm sure this is boring to non-pet people, but we all have to look at this as a much bigger problem that stretches into the human food chain.













This is a little finch that my friend Sheryl found in her parking garage. It seems that some kids had been smoking down there and were messing with some active nests, and then these 2 eggs with full term chicks appeared next to Sheryl's car, with no nests nearby. The one little egg baby was dead, but this little guy was wriggling round and opening its little mouth looking for food. This, even though it was stone cold. I took it, wrapped it up and put it in a little container and rushed it to the bird store where Todd put it in the incubator so at least it would warm up a bit. I was so sure that it was going to die, but last I heard it was being carted around with the other very young babies and being fed....I keep thinking that its probably gonna die...but at least if it does it will have a full tummy and be warm when it does.
Thats my spring miracle.
As of today I haven't had any luck with my Conure eggs hatching, but Im only on day 25 of egg # 2, so Ive got 4 other possibilities in there, and would be happy to get even one live one....oh well, its early and there are more clutches in the future....

The Rapture of the Bees...Is Maureen Dowd Necessary?...

Sorry to disappoint any fundamentalists out there, but its about as likely that God has raptured the bees to heaven to pollinate his heavenly crops as it is that hes gonna be rapturing you anytime soon! The NY Times Science Times this week had another piece on the mysterious and alarming disappearance of whole colonies of bees, called "colony collapse disorder." As their name implies, the most likely reasonable and scientific explanations are fungus, virus, or pesticides. But the snippet about the theories that abound on the internet and that bee rapture is one of them, are just great....As Marc Maron says in his current live show (appearing tonight and for the next few nights in LA with Janeane Garafolo and Henry Rollins...its a great show...check it out if you're out west!,) how fun a day will the rapture be for those of us who are unbelievers?...How great to see those "good" rapturous Christians go shooting off into the air like fireworks!
I had read somewhere, on some blog which I cant remember (but if anyone knows please let me know so I can give credit,) that also, of course we get their stuff. They wont need it in heaven anyway where they will have halos wings and apparently ...bees! They can also take the mosquitoes, mayflies, and houseflies too...oh, and the huge wasp that is stuck in the bathroom light upstairs...ok?...are we not all God's creatures?

In all seriousness, we have to get to the bottom of this bee thing or we are going to be looking at a huge and quick change in the foods available on this planet. Earth day always does this to me...Its the day before my birthday and I remember that even when I was a little kid that my Mom would take me to fairs in Brooklyn where we would buy ladybug and praying mantis eggs to put in the garden (not our garden, but Mom kept a line of pots and bulbs planted along the fence and constantly threw things like lady bug eggs onto the cocktail parties going on over there...don't even ask about the eggs hatching in the house because she forgot they were on the windowsill over the kitchen sink!....) I grew up with this strong feeling instilled in me of the earth as a fragile thing that was, back then, in danger...Ah, the 70's, when we were so innocent. The worst thing was the gas lines or that Jimmy Carter's rescue plans went bad...
I always get more environmental around my birthday, what with the spring coming and the growing urgency of what is going on, between what we have learned from Al Gore's movie and the press that problems like this bee problem are getting.

In much, much less serious matters, Maureen Dowd has weighed in this week twice on non-issues that are probably not worth the 0's and 1's used here to transmit this into the internet tubes. And no, I'm not going to waste anyone's time by posting them because they are...um...as vapid as she has been since her little vacation, and probably alot before that too...not even snarkily clever or cute...just stupid. You can always do a Google search for where they're posted if you haven't got Times Select, but if I were a paid Times Select reader (rather than a NY Times hard copy subscriber who gets Select in the package,) I would think twice about what I'm paying for. Dowd is quickly making herself irrelevant as she consistently focuses on what she, herself, in some previous incarnation, might point out to be be the silly girly pink story.
There are so many important stories being reported and/or not reported at all, and I cant believe that Edward's hair bills and Michelle Obama's chiding her husband are the most important things that she is thinking about. I guess that its a good sign that I'm not hanging on to her solely because she has been one of the few semi-reasonable voices in the press during the desperate times over the past 6+ years. Its a good sign that so many reporters have found their voices out there and that Americans are opening up to the truth and that its being reported more regularly.
So, do we need Dowd? In my mind, she is unimportant to the current discourse, and unless she finds something that grabs her attention that isn't about sitcom marital squabbles or a candidates hair, I'm not interested.
This is the thing: It serves a certain portion of our society to keep the majority in the dark about how the monied minority lives. In a capitalist society any of us can become rich enough to go to a salon that is going to charge more or less for a haircut, as long as it doesn't hurt or inconvenience anyone else. If that person spends $400 on a haircut and never gives to charity or has an attitude that the resources are god given rather than the product of hard work and the luck of the system, then maybe we can talk about it a bit and what it means in the bigger picture to be driving a Hummer with a Bush-Cheney sticker on it.
If the poor of this country are going to be caught up in how much a haircut costs, or that Al Franken got 2 million dollars from Air America, or any of these little facts that are presented in a vacuum, as if people aren't spending billions of dollars on every little thing that you or I can get cheaper with a coupon (not to mention the war, which has no real purpose, and has served to funnel more money into the pockets of those same rich folks, and I'd like to see the production bills on that spin machine!,) then they are not focusing on the real issues. The majority of this country is supposed to be surprised that things in New York City cost what they do, and rather than ask why those people are getting a tax cut, go out and buy a lottery ticket and hope against hope that they will be the one in 10 million who can join those ranks. To focus on what you cold buy with that $400 is not the point, but its what people like Dowd seem to want you to look at. Its almost like Michelle Malkin sneering "Dont you just wonder sometimes if maybe he didn't shoot himself in the leg just to garner sympathy?"....I say, what is it that I am not looking at because I'm being told to look over there at that shiny thing!?


John Edwards is rich; get used to it. Unlike the Bushies though, he has made his money by representing cases that, if you get past the "ambulance chaser" label, were actually class actions having to do with big business knowingly cutting corners and hurting people like you and me. Those people were also compensated in as large a sense as their lawyer was. He is not a guy who has stood outside of hospitals looking for someone who just got in a fender bender ( I've known some of those and they are not John Edwards...at least they are not spending any time running the Southern Poverty Law Center or the like.) If a lawyer who takes a large class action case does so for a portion of the proceeds, and the award is huge, (as they are usually set by the jury, which is also supposedly a sampling of people just like you or me,) then why would anyone in this capitalist society deny him the fruits of that labor? Isnt it a double standard to pin that label on Edwards before looking at his record in these things? Does he really belong in the same catagory as 1-800-LAW-YERS? And isn't our anger at lawyers in this society misdirected anyway? Who hasnt sat across from a lawyer and looked at the clock counting the hundreds of dollars slippign away? Who hasnt shot the shit on the telephone with their lawyer only to see that the shit shooting time is included in the bill? It seems to me that that there are bad ones and good ones. Maybe they are overpaid in some areas, and maybe the structure of some of these all or nothing class actions is wrong...but, I think that we might not see many of those cases if the class cant be empowered by a lawyer who is willing to risk his or her time in an all or none gamble...and surely, large corporations like tobacco compaanies have not been lining up historically to release information on the detrimental and deadly dangers of their products.

So then, as a public person, in a society that is almost completely based on looks, he is criticized for having a stylist and for getting a haircut....? Dowd thinks that Edwards should go to the barber on Capital Hill, just like her dad did when it cost 25 cents to get a haircut...huh? Is that what she does before making public appearances? The guy is and was running for President of the United States....and if this is such an issue, I think that its time for us to demand the stylist bills from all of the candidates. If Edwards is going to be vilified for his cuteness, then I think we need to see all of the evidence...because, I would expect that the bills for all the rest of them are probably just as high. The difference is who holds up an entire airport by blocking a runway while waiting for a haircut, and who only spends time at spas and does nothing charitable in the world? Or, more to the point, at Dick and Lynn Cheney's totally solar powered compound in Wyoming, does the salon just come to them in a dark sedan? I expect that we are paying for it no matter if its called the Pink Sparkle Diamond Girl's Club or Joe's Head polishing and Bullet removal Service I just don't think that you can compare the life of a John Edwards, running from place to place and making public appearances, to ...me or you. And the truth is that the stylists who style TV and print are different in that they know about how color looks on screen and how to correct what would be a deathly white look under certain lights. They are also union workers in many cases and I don't know how reasonable it is to use a local barber to prepare for television appearances or if you wouldnt end up crossing a picket line at a film studio somewhere, depending on what the preparation was for. In the YouTube world, I would consider that a pretty reasonable cost. If he went to a local salon with a stupid name for highlights because he was reading washed out on camera, or his campaign wants to position him as sun washed, what is it to Dowd? Hell, 50 or 60 years ago when Dowd was a little girl, times were different in Washington...but, I would venture to say that she is part of the machine that stands poised to tear a John Edwards down for a bad haircut or unmatched foundation, so he is doing the right thing in making sure that he stays blow dried and streaked, and it is a campaign cost, just as surely as the clothes that he wears for appearances are.
I'd be interested in knowing how many consultants and stylists were paid to reconfigure Hillary's frumpiness or Rudy's hair (that must have taken an army!)...I could go on, buts lets not....
I'm not gonna link to it, so again, you'll have to go find it, but today Dowd insults her readers by questioning the relationship between Barak and Michelle Obama and if it plays well that she jokes around with him about the god on the campaign trail vs. the man at home who cant pick up after himself.
If Hillary can knowingly wink at her audience about what its like to live with a philandering egotistical man...any man...then so can Michelle. Dowd feigns concern that it might come off as too motherly and as if Barak is a young child answering to his mommy...did she actually say the word emasculating? She then goes on to say that if Michelle knows so much about how Barak should act then why didnt she know about X,Y, or Z business mistakes in the past?...huh? Is that it Maureen? Is that all you've got?




Michelle and Barak Obama might be according to Dowd, the George and Weezy Jefferson of this campaign, and though I am not supporting him for #1 I find him interesting for the future, (and of course I will support whoever the Dems ultimately come out with,)is it not sort of degrading to choose the jeffersons over the Cosbys? W
hat is Dowd exactly saying here? That young black people, or just any black people regardless of age, have to be careful not to present themselves as real people with real dialogue besides that hip hop rap or extremely silly Dyn-o-mite! image that we are supposed to have of them. If Dowd's advice is to try to not be who you are, then I would probably suggest running quickly in the other direction. It seems to me that most candidates who have tried to reshape their image or change their message as part of who they are, have failed.
Its been my feeling for years that if any of these Dems were to actually drop the artifice and just say what they think without the consultants hanging all over them, that maybe they would end their careers in one way it might begin it in another. Like Howard Dean lost everything, though it was arguably ended for him by whoever decided to turn down the crowd and release the track of just his howling voice, he was hardly ever not himself and he spoke truth to power. Most of these politicians would prefer to get into office, sacrificing some of their beliefs, however possible, in order to make a bigger change. But, many of them find that once you've begun to change things up in what you really believe in, it a slippery slope. I would prefer to see some of these people go down in a blazing glory, and have gotten something into the record for future generations, than to have pandered to the powers, cultural and otherwise, in order to shape an image that is really just part of so many sheep...
So, stop wasting my time, and your space in the NY Times, which is a pretty big platform, talking about bullshit. I understand, as Mom says, that Dowd has been out for some vacation, and it does sound like she is phoning it in while writing a book or whatever it is that these people do in their spare time. But, there are so many things going on right now, that it seems pretty damned counterproductive to tell the whole country what you probably should just be telling your friends over lunch.



2-3 eggs in the nest box so far, people....We are now 8 days into the cycle for egg #1, and if they're fertile, 23-25 days in I might hear a little peep peep. I have been ordered by my friends in the bird world to NOT look in the box...they told me quite dramatically, that the eggs would DIE a horrible death if I looked (and they know me well enough to know that that is probably the only thing that would stop me from hanging round the box making little birdy sounds to try to get the Mom out so I can peek!)....This is not easy for me....So I have to confess to shining a little flashlight into the hole on the nestbox to some pretty angry and squinting little eyes ruffling up and trying to adjust so that I CAN'T SEE!!!

And one more

thing: Ive got a great tool of the day, week, year for any of you who use eBay. This is a machine that gives you common typos for the names of things...which is how you find the best stuff on eBay. Sellers who make typos tend ot get lower prices because the search engines are not smart like...say, google, which will suggest different spellings.
Check this out: TypoSnipe

All is fair in love and eBay!

GUESS WHO LAID AN EGG????

Rosie!!! She laid Egg # 1 today!!!!! Ben has been feeding her and guarding her for almost a week in the nest, driving me crazy waiting out here...they are both sitting in the nest all of the time. Its a perfect little white thing, and I shouldn't look at all anymore until I hear little peeps in 24 days!
I should expect one each day or every other day now until they've laid, hopefully 4 or 5! Im so excited!...Just hope that they all have babies inside...at some point its up to mother nature! My birthday is coming up and THIS is what I wanted!! Thanks guys!...How many am I gonna get??