I've given in to vanity. I visited an electrologist with quiet_dignitea and got my chin whiskers zapped.

Or maybe this was giving in to sloth, since I was already plucking the damn things. I just have to go one or two more times, and they'll be gone, and I won't have to worry about them any more.

*It's a mnemonic for the seven deadly sins: wrath, avarice, gluttony, envy, sloth, pride, lust.

I'm not sure if I've ever really said anything about this, but Little Cat Z has learning disabilities. Her communication skills are not quite what they should be. A couple years ago, I despaired of her ever getting fully potty trained, or being able to hold real conversations.

Then we sent her to the Early Childhood Education class in our district, and we've just been amazed at her progress.

Now she's in kindergarten (only a year later than she should have been), and her class is putting on a play on Wednesday. Today, I had her read to me (!!) her part, a couple of times, and then I took the paper away and asked her to do it again. She needed a little prompting at first, but she had it memorized after a couple of tries. w00t!

I wish we had sent her to ECE a year earlier. Maybe she could have gone into kindergarten when she was five, instead of six. We didn't realize they had such a thing, out here in our tiny, rural district. But, we won't be making that mistake with little Cindy Lou Who (formerly the Lorax, formerly Sweet Baby F, who turns two next week), who seems to be heading down the same path.

Maurice Sendak (5/8/12) and Donald "Duck" Dunn (5/13/12).

. . . that one of the local radio stations played a "Flashback Friday" song while I was driving to the grocery store this afternoon, and it was the Phil Collins cover of "You Can't Hurry Love."

I have presents for last Monkey Day for my sisters-in-law, brother-in-law, niece, and nephew, and birthday presents for one of the SILs and for the BIL that really need to get wrapped and mailed. I was not actually finished making them all until March, but that still means they've been sitting around for about two months.

I have GM stuff to take care of for Cougar Ridge. It's somewhat confrontational stuff, and I do not feel up to confrontation. Tonight is a fragile night for me. Thankfully, I have chocolate ice cream, because I have to take care of it ASAP.

I also have things to do related to my mom's estate. I don't want to do any of it, but my siblings are already complaining that I am not handling things properly. One thing I need to do is probably write a letter to all of them and apologize for being so slow and let them know where I am with things. I really wish my mom had not chosen me. I was thinking earlier tonight, in fact, that I hate her for doing this to me. Which thought instantly made me feel like shit, of course.

Like I said, fragile, not up to confrontation. Possible PPD. Definite PMS. So I should probably head over to the FBI BBQ on the QT before I get stuck on KP.

And I think I just found another freaking little mole on my back. They're too obvious to be more alien implants. Unless I'm getting the inept trainee implanters, which would be just my luck.

That's how one political historian describes Obama's supposed support of gay marriage today. That sounds pretty accurate to me.

I also like this bit from the same article:

Presidents determined to push the nation forward on great social questions give rousing addresses from their bully pulpits. Franklin Roosevelt laid out four freedoms — freedom of speech and worship, and freedom from want and fear — as American ideals worth fighting for in Europe and ensuring for suffering people at home. Lyndon Johnson declared that "we shall overcome" must become the conviction of all conscientious Americans, not only civil rights marchers.

But for Barack Obama on Wednesday, it was different. Instead of proposing, he concurred. Instead of advocating, he acknowledged. Instead of saying, "We must," he was saying, in effect, "We already are."

As I read that, it means that Obama doesn't actually have to do anything. He can sit back and say it's all okay with him . . . and then if things don't work out, he can say that it isn't his fault.

I haven't seen anything anywhere about Obama doing anything to repeal DOMA. He says the matter should be left with the states. Which means that he's not doing anything about federal recognition of gay marriage. Which means he's really not doing anything.

Which doesn't surprise me one bit.

When Gingrich was still in the running for the Republican candidate, there was some hope for the country. If Newt had been elected, he would hopefully have been so excruciatingly bad that the country would be shaken up enough to start electing people who don't talk out of both sides of their mouths.

And I'm not talking about the ill-fated revamping of Betty and Veronica.

The group One Million Moms, part of the American Family Association, is trying to get Toys 'R Us to remove Life with Archie #16 from their shelves, because it depicts gay marriage in a positive, non-threatening light. Of course, according to that blog post I linked there, they're out of luck, since the issue sold out.

I'm not really a big Archie fan, but maybe I should be.

I really like the response from the team at Gutters.

(Crossposted from sosoclever knits!)

Maybe not completely, but I know I haven't been posting or commenting much. I've just not been feeling very talkative. And recently I've had more reason.

My mom died on October 16. It was sudden and unexpected. She was 82, so it's not like I expected her to be around for a long time yet, but I still hoped she would be. I'm mostly okay, for now.

Now that I've told you, be prepared for me to complain about being executrix and trustee.

Okay, you know I'm not really into the whole Fat Acceptance thing, right?

Oh, well, now you do.

Anyway, you don't have to be to appreciate Shallana's recent post. I wish I'd been there to cheer her on!

That's me.

I feel like I should read some knitting 'blogs. Any suggestions?

I just saw a banner ad for the ONTD LiveJournal community. Because they need more people to join so they can overload their new server and wreak havoc amongst those of us with our own lives again.






Aren't you glad I'm posting again?

Just putting my neck out to say that no one automatically deserves respect. It isn't an unalienable right. Everyone deserves to be treated with common decency — until they prove themselves unworthy of it — but that is not the same thing as respect. At least, not in my book.

Um, our president?

He had a big birthday bash at The Aragon Ballroom yesterday.  Wonder how much that cost.  Nice way to show compassion for the thousands and thousands of un- and under-employed people in the country right now.

quiet_dignitea has been saying for years that if she ever sees single cans of Red Bull for less than $2 each, she's going to buy one and find out what's so special about them. She and I were out shopping on Tuesday. We stopped at the grocery store, and they had them on sale for $1.89, or something like that. So she bought one. She read the ingredients and nutritional information to me, and I asked if taurine is the stuff in pet food that's supposed to give them a shiny coat.

I am reading Spook Country, by William Gibson. That night, I got to this passage, starting on page 71:

She'd tried distracting herself with sips of room-temperature Red Bull from a previously unopened can she'd excavated from the table clutter, but it had only made her bug-eyed with caffeine, or perhaps with taurine, the drink's other famous ingredient, extracted supposedly from the testicles of bulls. Bulls generally looked more placid than she now felt, or perhaps those were cows. She didn't know cattle.

Then quiet_dignitea was reading El Goonish Shive (written by someone who went to the same high school I did), and in the commentary for Tuesday's strip, he talks about the research he did for drawing the Taurcanis Draco, which is a dragon that looks kind of like a bulldog. Did you know that bulldogs are so named because they were bred to fight bulls?

Then, we watched The Cheap Detective that night. Lou Peckinpaugh goes to meet Jasper Blubber at his hotel bar. The name of the bar? Saint John the Divine.

At the top of page 90 of Spook Country, the first line of Chapter 18, Eleggua's Window, which I had read not long before starting the movie: "Tia Juana sent him walking, crosstown along 110th, to Amsterdam and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the better to consult Eleggua."

How many of the people who are calling for the castration of the eighteen suspects (in other words, people who have not yet even been tried in court) in the gang rape of that eleven year old in Texas also applauded the Illinois legislature and governor for abolishing the death penalty in our great state earlier this week.

Brian Dugan is no longer going to die for the rape and murder of Jeanine Nicarico (or for the other women and girls he raped and killed — he didn't actually receive the death penalty for them, I just like to think of it as justice served for all of them, since he can only die once anyway). His sentence has been commuted to life in prison, instead.

And I think that's all I can say on the subject, or I'll veer off into a rant on how hypocritical it is to insist that men should be responsible for everything they do, but a woman can, with her eyes wide open, do every single thing wrong and if she gets raped, she'll get a crowd of other women telling her that she did nothing wrong, because she should be able to get drunk at a frat party, strip naked, and run off to a bedroom with a guy or five she doesn't know and be perfectly safe, never mind that we should all know that should and would are not the same words. Saying, "She was asking for it," does not necessarily mean that what she really wanted was to be raped. It can also mean that she stupidly put herself into a situation where it could happen. When my five year old daughter repeatedly yells "No!" at me, she is not actually asking to be spanked, but I'll tell you what, she's asking for it.

The Rapture will be on May 21, 2011.

Of course, Harold Camping predicted it would happen on September 6, 1994, too. It didn't happen, you might have noticed (at least, not in this reality). That time, he bought back his books if people complained to him (not much help if they were also people who sold all their worldly possessions in preparation). I wonder if he'll do it again. Assuming he's wrong. Maybe he isn't, but I doubt it.

My dad used to listen to Family Radio. He never bought into the Rapture prediction, but he still listened. I remember hearing Camping tell someone who called in that as long as they had accepted Christ as their personal savior, they could murder someone (I think the specific question might have been about the caller's wife, but it could have been just a general question) and not have to worry about forgiveness, because they were already forgiven. In other words, get yourself saved, and you can do anything you want with impunity. As Emo Phillips has made perfectly clear, "Neo-Calvinist" is an insulting epithet, but if the shoe fits . . .

I had to call my mom as soon as I read that article. I knew she'd get a laugh out of it, too.

Normally, I vote based on issues. I don't toe any party line. Today I did something I don't really like. I voted against my incumbent Representative, Bill Foster-D and the Democratic Party's candidate for Senate, Alexei Giannoulias. I dislike both of them so much, I'm not too concerned about what their Republican opponents are like. I just want to get Foster out of office, and make sure Giannoulias doesn't get into federal office.

I also voted for the incumbent Secretary of State and Attorney General, both Democrats, because I think they've been doing a good job the last . . . eight years they've been in office? Maybe it's twelve.

I voted for the Libertarian candidate for Governor, in part to try to help the Libertarians get the percentage they need to not have to do the petitions next time. He seems like a less-government Libertarian, rather than a more-corporations Libertarian (one of the issues listed on his website is the legalization of marijuana), so I don't feel bad about voting for him. He just didn't inspire me. But he's better than the Democrat or Republican, I think, and more in line with me ideologically than Rich Whitney, the Green Party candidate (for whom I voted four years ago).

I also voted for the Libertarian candidates for State Comptroller and State Treasurer. They both seemed like they'd be good.

I, as is common with me, didn't know enough about anything more local, so I didn't vote for anything else.

So, a U.S. District Judge has ruled that the DADT policy must not be enforced any longer. It will be interesting to see how the White House responds.

The Justice Department is considering whether to appeal the court ruling. . . . If the government does appeal, that would put the Obama administration in the position of continuing to defend a law it opposes.

Um, no. No. It would put the Obama administration in the position of continuing to defend a law it claims to oppose.

The Obama administration will probably claim that they have a responsibility to defend current laws. However, they are in no way required to do that.

Those last two links are courtesy of quiet_dignitea, from this post about the Obama administration's defense of the Defense of Marriage Act, another law that Obama claims to oppose.