Archive for 2009

Well, there hasn’t been any new snow since the first snowfall, and it’s been either “warm” (one day it got up into the high 50s — today it’s in the high 40’s) and rainy or if cold it’s been dry. Here and there I still see some lumps of snow on the ground that haven’t melted yet. But it’s supposed to snow I think on Monday night or Tuesday — it keeps changing. Anyway, that’s my snow report.

It may be a problem if it snows Monday night, because I have to drive to Waynesboro the next day. They do salt the roads here somewhat, but I’m a bit nervous about driving in snow and ice. I have done it a little around town, because the grocery store isn’t in what I consider walking distance (not in this weather anyway). And the reason that I have to drive to Waynesboro is… I got a job! Alas, it’s another temporary position, for a few weeks, but it’s going to be more hours than the previous one, and it will be in an office (of a small business) this time. I waited for almost two weeks to find out if I got it or not, and I didn’t want to say anything about it because I was afraid I’d jinx it or something. Anyway, that will bring me much-needed income for at least a little while. On the other hand, I probably won’t get my first paycheck for two or even three weeks, so any little present you want to drop in my Paypal account (moved over to the sidebar for your convenience) will be more than welcome. Thank god the friend I’m staying with hasn’t gotten sick of me yet…

I’ve had some complaints — well, not complaints exactly, maybe reminders — that some of you people actually like it when I do catblogging and put up pictures of my cat and so on. Well I’d love to put up pictures of my cat in the snow, but we took her outside, put her in it, and she immediately headed for the space underneath the back porch stairs. So I ended up retrieving her and taking her back inside, and she let me know for the rest of the day that she was not fooled: she figured out that weird white stuff was actually frozen water. I’m lucky she didn’t poop on my futon. So, no pictures of Xena in the snow. Yet. (I have plans… dastardly plans! Bwaha.) I don’t really have any recent photos of her either that are any good; I haven’t been doing much picture taking lately. Also, every time she gets in a cute position and I go for my camera, she gets up and follows me! I think she knows.

It’s that time o’ the month again, which means I have no inclination to do anything, including think. Also, the internet connection here has been spotty lately — for weeks now it’s just been dropping, and one of us will have to get up and turn the modem off and on. I don’t know if it’s a bad modem or something with the dsl, but my friend’s going to call his company and try to get something done. But it cuts into blogging impulse. I could write up a post and save it on the hard drive if need be, but usually by the time I get around waiting for the connection to restart I’m too irritated to do anything.

Also, I’ve been working more on my novels. Yes, plural — I got an idea for Novel No. 2, which I’ve been trying to sort out. I’m thinking of moving the novel chapter I’ve written off the site and just not having anything up for a while, until I at least have a first draft done of that one; I’m too erratic to do a regular serial type novel. But I’ve been writing a lot more than I used to, which is good. I’ve set up a writing site using Drupal, which is sort of wonky software but it’s workable, and doesn’t have as many bells and whistles as Wordpress to wait to load. If you want to see my sad, halting and uncertain progression on my novels feel free to visit, but I warn you: don’t expect polished works, I’m just trying to get stuff out of my head and into the world.

I’ve changed the theme for the Christmas holiday, because I’m feeling Christmassy, sort of. I had to play around with this theme, which is pretty crappy, so I may change it out for something else, or just go back to my previous theme. Who knows! That’s how I keep life exciting around here. It’s craaaazy!

There’s no point in saying anything to this:

The Obama administration is warning Congress that if it doesn’t move to regulate greenhouse gases, the Environmental Protection Agency will take a “command-and-control” role over the process in a way that could hurt business.

The warning, from a top White House economic official who spoke Tuesday on condition of anonymity, came on the eve of EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s address to the international conference on climate change in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Jackson, however, tried to strike a tone of cooperation in her address Wednesday, explaining that the EPA’s new powers to regulate greenhouse gases will be used to complement legislation pending in Congress, not replace it.

“This is not an ‘either-or’ moment. It’s a ‘both-and’ moment,” she said.

But while administration officials have long said they prefer Congress take action on climate change, the economic official who spoke with reporters Tuesday night made clear that the EPA will not wait and is prepared to act on its own.

And it won’t be pretty.

“If you don’t pass this legislation, then … the EPA is going to have to regulate in this area,” the official said. “And it is not going to be able to regulate on a market-based way, so it’s going to have to regulate in a command-and-control way, which will probably generate even more uncertainty.”

“Uncertainty.” That’s a nice way of saying “fascist takeover.” I would say “Thanks, Obama voters, for voting us into a totalitarian dictatorship!” but I don’t think any Obama voters read my site, and even if they did, I’ll bet the reply of most of them would be along the lines of the comment from “T” on Kate’s site:

Way to go Obama! Hopefully he stands firm in this. The only way to address climate change is through forced measures that have polluters comply or be hit hard in the pocket book. Like it or not people cap and trade and carbon taxes will be a reality.

And on that note… I was listening to the radio in the car earlier today and Neil Young’s “Rockin’ In The Free World” came on. I usually don’t get nostalgic for the 90s (the “Duh” Decade) but some memories did surface. One of them was prompted by the verse in the song that said something about the “ozone layer” and how everyone was going around saying “we’d be better off dead” and that reminded me that the 90s was also another decade of Hope and Change — this time because we’d voted in the Man From Hope (Arkansas, that is), Bill Clinton. Remember how pissy everyone was in the 90s? Every time I opened the paper or a magazine or turned on the tv there would be something about how rude and angry people were. The biggest hit on tv was a science fiction series about a government conspiracy to let aliens harvest humans and eventually take over the world. Liberals who were still reeling in shock over the Reagan presidency had transferred their hate to the hapless Bush père, and despite his losing out to Clinton they couldn’t let go, so we had to endure a lot of songs (like “Rockin’ In The Free World”) that mocked many of Bush’s admittedly goofy pronouncements (“points of light,” “read my lips”; The Sisters of Mercy even released an album called “Vision Thing”). As for that ozone layer — hey, remember that? It was going to vanish because of spray deodorant and we were all going to be dead of radiation poisoning before the end of the century. Whatever happened to our Ozonic Doom?

(Okay, I guess I did comment on it after all. Whatever. Like I said before, Obama & Co. have broken my brain.)

At some point in his rambling, Jewish-identity-searching, outlaw-poet-being career, Alan Kaufman must have received quite a smack in the head, perhaps from a bowling ball. I can’t explain this bizarre, monomaniacal rant (warning — link goes to the hideous Huffingtonpost site) about Kindle, Google books, and how all the technology we use was invented by the Nazis which makes us complicit in the Holocaust, any other way. I mean, you have to really be fucked in the head to believe that putting books on electronic media is just like burning them the way the Nazis did. Yeah, it was totally unfair that I was able to find a free copy of the Restoration play “The Rehearsal” on Google Books instead of spending money I don’t have to order a dead-tree version, if one is even available for laymen like me when my professor friend, who has multiple volumes of nearly every play written in the Western Hemisphere before the 18th century, doesn’t own a copy.

His responses to commenters are all “I’m rubber you’re glue when you throw Godwin’s law at me it bounces off and sticks to you” (because some people took offense for some reason at the Kindle eBook reader being compared to a concentration camp) and “go to this website and read the comments of a bunch of people who agreed with me.” And like all those with inflated senses of their own superior compassion he ignores the comment of a disabled person who demolishes his argument that indie bookstores are the only wall between civilization and the barbarians by pointing out that their cute, eccentric spaces are difficult to impossible to negotiate if you have to use, say, a walker. But I’m not surprised; compassionate liberals who love all of mankind live on such a rarefied plane so they can’t hear the complaints of the victims of their whimsical policies.

(Via tbridge.)

Oh good lord, I keep forgetting that the FCC wants us all to conform to its new rules. I mean, I just innocently surfed on over to Office Supply Geek and started to read this post and this is what I read:

In my recent order from JetPens I bought myself (yes, bought myself, I’m talking to you FTC with your new rules)

Aarrggh! So does this mean any time I talk about something I bought I’ll have to say I bought it or get arrested and thrown in jail for reviewing without a license? I’m so glad that all the wars and hunger and poverty and disease and stuff has been eradicated at last so our government could turn its attention to trivia like some blogger talking about a pen OMG he might have been paid by the pen company to write about it!!eleven!! I need to consult Dante to see if there is a special section of hell for relentless, anal-retentive, pettifogging people like the ones who thought this was a problem that needed a RULE to be put into law. Now excuse me, I have to go search through all my posts to see if I talked about anything I bought to make sure I say that I bought it.

Oh wait. I’ve been too poor to buy anything except from thrift stores lately. I don’t have to worry. Phew! Then again, I might have bought something that has lead in it and a child might walk past me… Hey! How did my photo get put up there in the “America’s Most Wanted” list?

You may have noticed a dearth of serious blogging here lately, though I did briefly rise to the surface to say something about the bizarre booklist the Obamalamadingdongs are planning to push on the nation’s kids. But mostly I’ve been fooling around on my Tumblr, and every time I see something about the current doings in DC — say, oh, something like the head of the EPA dismissing the Climategate emails with a disdainful sniff, because as far as she is concerned the science is settled and we will be going back to the nice, clean 12th century thank you, which leaves me with nothing but the hope that I survive the coming plagues and famines long enough to see her and her compatriots’ dismay as they realize that the civilization they destroyed is where they live too… Anyway, as I was saying, whenever I read something like that, a haze of exhaustion overtakes my mind, and I find myself thinking of anything else — bubblegum, navel lint, television shows — than the state of the world and what to do about it. When I see what these people are getting up to on the taxpayer dime as if the United States of America is their own private Disney World I can’t even think up any clever ripostes anymore. My last nerve has been breached. I’m plumb wore out. It’s official: Obama has broken my brain.

So I hope you enjoy a lot of babble about snow, my cat, housework, um — stories I’m trying to write (I’m trying at least to keep track of all the plots I’m coming up with; I’ve got another scifi percolating as well as the current one), and Doctor Who silliness over at the Tumblr thing. (Oh yeah, and I’m having a fundraiser, so, erm, you know.)

(Via the Anchoress, from Twitter.)

Okay, folks, Christmastime is looming like a big looming thing, and I still have no job! So I’m having a little Christmas fundraiser, to pay for those small, unavoidable expenses I do have such as cat food, this site, cat food, food for me, gas for the car (so I can drive to job interviews), cat food, car insurance (so I can keep my driver’s license so I can drive to job interviews), coffee, cat food (I really don’t want to be eaten by my cat). I’m a cheap date, and every little bit helps! The link to Paypal is at the bottom of the single page for every post, or you can click on “Coffee Fund” in the navigation header. Uh oh, here comes the cat, gotta go…

First, to get it out of the way — 34 f**king spam comments in my Akismet queue? You’ve got to be kidding me. And it wasn’t even the usual stupid “thank you for your site!” spams I get in old posts, but the other type of spam, which is gibberish. I don’t understand the purpose of that kind of spam. Is it actually some secret alien language and they are using comment threads on Earth’s internet to hide their plans to conquer us all? Well I wish they’d hurry up and conquer us already, then. I’m ready to serve my new alien overlords — the reptilian ones that currently run the planet aren’t doing the greatest job.

And on to the snow! It was mostly sunny today and a bit warmer, but so much snow fell here that most of it is still unmelted. Everything looks like someone dumped a giant box of powdered sugar on everything. I don’t know why I didn’t crave vanilla ice cream all day, or a can of white icing, but it probably has something to do with the fact that I don’t have much of a sweet tooth.

Also: new snow is so fluffy and soft! And cold and ultimately wet. But still, I had to stifle the urge today to run out and bury my face in the snow covering the back yard of this house. Yesterday I had to go out (walking) a couple of times, and as it was snowing all day I felt like I was walking through the aftermath of a pillow fight. Flakes would fly in my face and it was like getting hit by little cold feathers that melted right away. Today my friend had to go into Charlottesville so I went along. Snow was thick in the valley, and on this side of the mountains, until we got to a spot along the interstate where it seemed hardly any snow fell, so there was still green grass. In Charlottesville itself there was snow, but somewhat less, or maybe it had melted faster. But in Staunton we got tons of snow, or so it seems to me, the snow-neophyte.

One thing I didn’t understand, though: I didn’t see any kids out playing in the snow, not all day. I saw one snowman, and he had half-melted and was falling over. If I’d been a kid (or if I hadn’t had to do anything today) I’d have been outside playing in the snow. Maybe I just didn’t pass through any kid-heavy neighborhoods today. But I expected to see kids outside playing. Is that just my inexperience talking? Is playing in the snow not done anymore?

It is snowing! Real snow! Everything looks like it’s covered in powdered sugar. Later I shall go out into it, and touch snow for the first time in my life.

Pictures upcoming.

Update: I promised you pictures. Here they are:

Snow, bitches!

My car: nooooooo.... help... meee....

And the snow fell all day. These pictures were taken in the morning, so imagine the piles of snow on my car even higher and deeper. And it wasn’t that cold (it’s been about 34 degrees F all day) so the snow was that fluffy, squeaky stuff that stuck together real well, so I had some fun making snowballs and tossing them about. I took more pictures of the houses across the street, but didn’t want my camera to get all wet, so I didn’t take that many. I have to learn to walk in snow: I was afraid I’d fall down in some places (it was sort of slippery, but mostly it just moved a bit under my feet which made me feel unsteady), and ice formed on my shoes and I had a time getting it off so I wouldn’t slip on the wooden floor of the porch or the stairs. So, that was my first snow! I couldn’t ask for a better one.

Get a load* of what Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar” (WITF is that anyway?) apparently is promoting as proper reading material for kids grades 7-12. (Warning — the post at the link contains material that is not safe for work or brains.) Let me just say here and now that I used to read my parents’ erotica paperbacks (by such authors as Anne Rampling) when I was around fourteen or fifteen, but I did it the right way — by sneaking around and doing it on the sly. I would have died if they’d handed me, say, Exit To Eden when I was twelve, much less have found Erica Jong on my junior high English class reading list. Though it would have made book reports, which kids in Florida had to do for every single goddamn class including home ec and PE, a whole lot more interesting to do…

Anyway, this list is not only disgusting, but badly written — I’ve read better gay porn on Doctor/Master slash fic sites. (Warning: not safe for work, probably, or brains, definitely.) Not only is the new Progressive, Enlightened, Tolerant Administration of Hope and Change trying to corrupt the morals of the nation’s youth, it’s attempting to ruin any literary ability our children might have. Whatever your opinion about porn, gay or otherwise, I think we can all agree on the need to promote good writing.

I’m hoping it’s some kind of joke, myself.

(Via Ace of Spades.)

*No pun intended. Really.