I’m dedicating this post to the Right Reverend Mike Shuckabee. Today, after his ridiculous presidential candidacy is long over, he showed his True Colors. Speaking to an NRA gathering of some kind, he heard some noise offstage, and said it was Barack Obama ducking for cover because someone pointed a gun at him. Shame on you, you who falsely claim to be a Christian minister. You are just another racist jerk, another George Corley Wallace. The sooner you are off the national stage, and the sooner the press stops paying any attention to you, the better off the country and the human race will be. AMF–I hope.

However, Mr. Shuckabee wasn’t the only noteworty neanderthal in the news today, although my thoughts here focus on a general breed of person as opposed to one with a name. That would be the “opposed to gay marriage” type. The gist of the news is that since the California Supreme Court (primarily a Republican court) declared that it is unconstitutional to discriminate against gay people in terms of the right to marry, those “opposed to gay marriage” are gonna ask that the ruling be stayed so they can get a referendum on the ballot to change the California Constitution so that it bans gay marriage. This leaves me shaking my head.

I picture someone, an average “slob like one of us,” a job, a family, bills to pay, kids to educate, retirement to plan for, lawn to maintain, etc. This guy, this gal, is weary, but every day keeps on keepin’ on to do the right thing. To live up to his/her responsibilities. Somehow, this citizen finds the energy to worry about, fret about, the relationships between others he doesn’t know from Adam or Eve. Those relationships affect this citizen, well, as best I can determine, in no way whatsoever. Nothing about gay marriage causes his/her salary to shrink, causes any marriage they happen to be in to be less valuable, causes drought, famine, pestilence, or the housing crisis. Yet, somehow, this slob loses sleep. It is just ridiculous. Go play catch with your kid, or masturbate, or something important will you? Is there no “live and let live” in your pathetic philosophy?

On a lighter note, not to make a pun, in my earlier post today I wondered, idly, what the sun screen manufacturers are going to do if people stop being scared of the sunshine. Well, I was watching the NBC evening news tonight, and I found out. For the first time in as long as I can remember, no less than two companies making sunscreen products bought and paid for advertising time on this show. Usually, almost all the ads are for prescription medications (and their side effects). These grease purveyors are about to lose billions of dollars, and rightfully so. Oh, they’ll still make money, and I’ll still buy, as usual, a modest amount of their stuff. The sun is not our enemy. It never has been. If there is a god, it is the sun. Vitamin D, boys and girls, get it while its hot!

Some rental kayaks at Ft. DeSoto State Park, Florida.

1. The “Chief Astronomer” of the Vatican has announced that it is okay for the pious to think there may be life on other worlds. This is so completely strange I don’t know where to start. This is the same Catholic Church which persecuted Galileo, and only hundreds of years later allowed as how the Earth maybe does orbit around the sun, and maybe Galileo wasn’t such a “heretic” after all. Now, they think they are scientists! Chief Astrologer, more like it. This Catholic Church persists in the conceit that its adherents only think what they are told is okay to think! I can just imagine some pious Catholic who has been wrestling with his/her conscience, tossing and turning at night, unable to take communion in good faith because of entertaining the thought of alien life. Maybe pouring the heart out at Confession. What a relief! Back in the good graces of the Pope.

2. Apparently it has become politically okay to acknowledge that Vitamin D is important, and that the best way to get it is, mirable dictu, from the sun! (See my previous blog rant about this subject). This vitamin, in addition to its other virtues, may be of service in preventing breast cancer. How’s that for “awareness?” The risk of getting deadly malignant melanoma from the sun is, still, complete speculation. No science to support it. In fact, of all the dangerous cancers to worry about, malignant melanoma is way down the list. There is no evidence I’ve been able to find that the sun will kill you! It is now recommended that us humans get regular sun exposure without sunscreen. WTF are the sun-grease manufacturers going to do to counter this! Oh, apparently only a minimal amount of the Vitamin D in one’s body gets there via diet or supplements.

3. The worlds’ wildlife is croaking at an alarming rate, and it is our fault. Biodiversity is on the wane. Maybe better get in that Escalade and drive out to some wild place to observe some creature, maybe a squirrel or something, in its natural habitat before it is too late. Don’t worry. Be Happy.

4. Prez. Bush compares his ridiculous, inhuman, nitwit financially-ruinous war in Iraq to WWII. How does this guy find his way from the Presidential Bedroom to the Oval Office every day? I’d like to hear what Tom Brokaw (The Greatest Generation) has to say about this. Whoops! Almost forgot, modern journalists don’t say anything about anything, might lose “access.” Hey, when things go south, Mr. or Ms. Politician, invoke one of them magic words. “Communist” is out, but how about “appeasement?” Let’s not have dialogue with those we despise, let’s shed the blood of a few hundred thousand of them, thousands of our own, and go into horrendous debt instead.

5. Some of you may see a guy named “Zeno” commenting on my blog. He’s my nephew.

A yellow rose, enhanced a bit. Might be a nice shot for flower Friday, if I ignore the fact that it is only Thursday!

I know I rant often, and always negatively, about religion. Someone made a comment recently which leads me to explain my views just a bit.

I do not single out any religion for my negative views. I lump them all into the same anti-intellectual basket. Does that mean nobody gets any comfort from their religious “faith?” Not necessarily, but I think it would be impossible to quantify anyone’s emotional boost from a set of religious tenets. A perhaps more important question is: do some individuals behave better towards their fellow man due to their religious beliefs? If not, then, in my book, their religious beliefs are little more than a way of dividing an already ridiculously divided human race into yet another exclusionary sub-tribe. Do I think anyone inclined to be mean to me decides not to be based on some religious tenet? No, not really. I’m pretty much an “imp of satan” (well, really, I mean “secular humanist,” that whipping boy of the godly) when it comes to that. People act how they choose to act because of some internal motivations, flaws, genetic code, bad childhoods, whatever. You are who you are, you do what you do.

Do I hold people’s religious views against them? No. I hope they don’t hold it against me (probably a forlorn hope) that I don’t believe what they say they believe. Do I have my quirks? Sure. Are mine any “better” than anyone else’s? Not that I know of.

Over the many thousands of years of human history, there has been not one shred of credible evidence for anything “metaphysial.” (See my post about that if you want to, a few days old now). (It occurs to me that in that post I forgot to mention Sasquatch, Yeti, the Skunk Ape, the Loch Ness monster, and chupacabra). There has been a lot of evidence that “religion” causes war, torture, murder, etc., etc., or at least provides a handy excuse for it. If given a choice, and I have been, I’ll opt for fact and reason over superstition and hatred.

So, I certainly don’t expect this particular disquisition will smooth anything over with anyone. I don’t set out to offend anyone, and, if I do, well, I hope they see my right to express myself as superior to their choice/inclination to condemn me for having views different from theirs.

Texas Canyon, Arizona.

1. Yesterday I forgot to add “boogie man” to the list.

2. Today I read a news article indicating that an Albert Einstein letter is to be auctioned in which he refers to belief in god as “childish, as in childish superstition.” There had previously been some confusion about his views on religion.

2.5 (Gotta sneak this in) I was listening to the radio, and the discussion was about religion. A woman sent in a voice message wherein she said she was a great admirer of Mahatma Gandhi. She was a Christian, and knew Mr. Gandhi was a Hindu, so she asked her pastor if he, Gandhi, was going to “roast in hell.” Her minister said “yes.” Gotta love dem Christians, yes sir.

3. I heard some speculation on a radio news show as to whether the USA would be providing aid to Chinese earthquake victims. What? The United States has borrowed a lot of money from China (i.e. China purchased US bonds), hundreds of billions of dollars. Are we supposed to spend that borrowed money in China now? If China can afford to buy all those bonds, why in the world would they need help from us? I’m lost.

4. As for Burma, the fascist junta there is apparently taking all the goodies and handing out crap to the people. What aid does get through, they re-mark the packaging so it will look like it came from them. Heil you MFs.

5. I also forgot the tooth fairy, easter bunny, and santa claus yesterday.

6. My nephew Zeno Kidd Gamble (there’s a card shark or gunslinger’s name!) and his wife had a little girl. Her name is Lily Kidd Gamble. Apparently the baby was born the day I posted the water lily photo. Congrats to them.

7. Gary Dourdan (CSI) is charged with felony drug possession. Dennis Farina (Lawn Order) is charged with trying to take a handgun on a plane. Some rapper gal called “Remy Ma” is sentenced to 8 years for putting a couple of .45 slugs into a woman’s abdomen, coulda got 25 but says she’ll appeal the sentence (I don’t blame her, after all, other criminal celebrities get away with their depredations, why shouldn’t she?). This is the kicker, she was gonna marry her boyfriend, a fellow rapper who goes by the name “Papoose,” at Riker’s Island, but the cops put the kibosh on that when he showed up with a handcuff key.

Ah, to be a stupid celebrity.

8. I heard some West Virginians interviewed today on the subject of Hilary and Barack. Scary they let those people vote.

9. The crazy Texas “Baptist pastor,” the right reverend Hatin’ Hagee, who supports McSame apparently apologized for saying shitty stuff about folks in other religions, particularly Catholics. Does he know that Wright guy in Chicaga?

10. I’m re-reading the book You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation by Deborah Tannen, Ph.D. This is motivated by my current ruminations about communications between people.

Roots. Along the dark and mysterious Ocklawaha River.

The more I listen to people converse, and television talking heads blather, the more I notice how much meaning has been sucked out of what people say. There are the general empty words and phrases, such as, “totally,” “I was like . . .,” “ya know,” and so forth. But it’s all too easy to pick on people speaking the vulgate (I know, what I really mean is “colloquial English”). My mind, of course, runs deeper. There is so much empty talk, so many empty words, I cannot discuss them all in one post, so I’m going to narrow my focus. Today, I’m going to discuss things falling under the general rubric

Metaphysical.

I’m not going to attempt a complete list of words in this category which, not to put too fine a point on it, mean nothing at all (at least in the sense they refer to things the purported existence of which is, at best, fanciful, and, at worst, idiotic).

1.— The word “metaphysical” itself. It refers to things not subject to empirical verification. Things not, as scientific statements of fact are, real features of fact, but, at best, expressions of attitudes about which rational argument is impossible. [definition paraphrased from Webster's Third New International Dictionary]

2. (through however many pop into my head before my fingers get tired)—ghost, angel, genie, pooka horse, leprechaun, fairy, devil, demon, djin, spirit, shade, ectoplasm, elf, sprite, nixie, god, satan, zombie, loa, banshee, deity, specter, wraith, UFO, alien, goblin, gnome, witch, wizard, necromancer, mage, thaumaturge, medium, psychic, vampire, werewolf, seer, warlock, mermaid, giant, poltergeist, haunt, ghoul, astrology, tarot, tea leaves, divination, undead, troll, kobold, root-woman, conjurer, incubus, succubus, unicorn, dragon, nosferatu, . . . . ah, hell, (hell? heaven? purgatory?) you get the idea.

One could say something clever here like “so fucking what?” Well, my point is, if I have one, that so much of language is intended not to communicate, but to not communicate. Much of what is uttered is specifically intended to convey nothing at all, to obfuscate, to decieve, to gild the lily, etc., etc. Not to put to fine a point on it, to lie.

My brain is probably addled from days of laying rock out in the hot sun (today, we got a little relief from the heat and humidity and actually have the windows open). It’s not just the sun, it’s the crouching, crawling, weeding, smoothing, spreading Preen, spreading weed barrier, pouring out the rocks, and shoving them into place by hand. I got a law degree for this?! Well, actually, I’d rather be doing this.

Jann Arden.

Saw this commercial art outside Home Depot. Who woulda thought a manure advert could be so cute?

I was listening to XMPR yesterday, an interview with a lawyer who has been representing people who work for tips in class action suits. She apparently worked on the case where Starbucks (Charbucks) was forcing their baristas to share their tips with the store managers. Seems they wanted to pay their managers out of the earnings of the worker bees rather than out of the corporate coffers. An immense judgment was entered against Starbucks in favor of the baristas.

The lawyer also was/is involved in tipping class action litigation against American Airlines (one of the most poorly operated large businesses in the world). Apparently American saw all that money being handed to skycaps at the curb and decided they wanted it. So, AA started charging $2 a bag for curb check-in (but not counter check-in), none of that money went to the skycaps, and, of course, the public didn’t really know their generosity was wasted. Well, AA lost that litigation, and had to pay money back to the skycaps. So, AA being the benevolent employer that it is, they decreed (maybe just at Boston Logan) that the skycaps could not accept tips. A retaliatory no-tipping policy. That is now in litigation. Some other litigation involving tipping was also discussed.

Well, here’s my point. Every day (and probably every night) some bean-counters are thinking about what little bits of money are going to regular folks and perhaps–horrors!–staying with those regular folks. These vampiric-number-crunchers have only one assignment from Count Dracula (Vlad the Impaler, maybe): separate money from the “little people,” or, better yet, keep them from getting it in the first place. These folks live with the deep-seated fear that the peasants are doing better than mere subsistence, or that the very word “subsistence” has come to include such luxuries as regular meals and warm clothing, etc. When these worms find ways to fleece the peons in order to enrich the nobility (the corporations), they get bonuses, promotions, and a TV in their cubicle showing what they’d see out the window if they had a window.

Recently I ranted about David Rockefeller giving $100,000,000 to Harvard (instead of perhaps actually giving away his unneeded money for real charity). Last night on the NBC evening news they were praising some zillionaire who has invested many millions of dollars bringing foreign students to study in American colleges. Well, I guess this nouveau riche arriviste thinks if he acts like a Rockefeller, maybe he, too, can go to openings at the Met or some such thing. Don’t worry, Richie Rich, there are no hungry people in this country, no people lacking the basics such as housing and medical care. Bring some guy from Kazahkstan to study something at Colby College of some other school with a cute name. The world will be a better place. Right.

So, that’s today’s load of shit. Don’t forget the Black Kow.

A water lily.

Hot today. We’re talking hot. Ninety plus.

I took this shot while at Cape Cod a couple weeks ago. I assume this oak will be leafed out when I see it next.

Had a day off from rock patrol yesterday. Cleaned Honey’s store (well, the floor), and otherwise was a complete slug. I had mild aches from our yard work, and a day off helped. Still, tempus fugit and we need to get the project done by about May 20th. Seems daunting, but as the man said “you can only eat an elephant one bite at a time.” Query: how do you keep the elephant meat from spoiling while you are eating it (it won’t fit in the freezer!)?

Heard an interesting interview with Sen. Harry Reed on XMPR yesterday. He related that the town where he was born in Nevada had 13 brothels and no churches (so he’s well qualified for high public office)! As I write this, I’m thinking of Parliament of Whores by P.J. O’Rourke. Opens thusly:

“What is this oozing behemoth, this fibrous tumor, this monster of power and expense hatched from the simple human desire for civic order? How did an allegedly free people spawn a vast, rampant cuttlefish of dominion with its tentacles in every orifice of the body politic?”

I guess this better fall into the “don’t get me started” category of daily thoughts.

So maybe 100,000 Burmese perished due to the recent typhoon. The fascists running the country don’t know whether to shit or go blind when it comes to auslanders bringing in aid. Hitler would have liked these folks, ditto Uncle Joe, Pol Pot, and Sauron. The sad thing is that we are left, even if they graciously consent to keeping their own remaining people alive, with a Hobson’s choice. By helping the distressed we strengthen the power of the evil gunslingers who have stolen the country and changed its name. Screw them. It’s Burma. What the destruction of the “rice bowl” of Burma is going to do to already soaring world food prices I shudder to think.

Okay, back to the rocks.

Forest recovering from fire. Ocala National Forest.

1. Last night on the NBC Nightly News there was a story about high gas prices (yawn), and a bit about airlines actually slowing down their planes to save gas. Do you think there was one single solitary word about driving one’s car slower to save gas? Of course not. People don’t want to do anything about the issue of fuel and fuel prices, they want someone to adjust the universe so they can continue to drive that Escalade as fast as they want to and as cheaply as they want to. Solutions without sacrifice (as though slowing down is a “sacrifice” in any ultimate sense), that’s what we want. We’ll elect the candidate who promises that (knowing full well they cannot deliver, meaning we, the electorate know that).

2. Last night one of the local TV stations (the CBS affiliate) began a series it had been heavily touting: How To Get Into Heaven. One of the teaser ads said “If you are not a believer now, you may be after this show.” So, on the first night they interviewed a Muslim Shaman and a Catholic Houngan. Muslim sayeth that you must believe in god, and when you die god will weigh up the totality of our life to see if you get into heaven, and said that heaven is not restricted to Muslims (he didn’t mention the crap about martyrdom and instant admittance to heaven with the virgins, etc.). Catholic sayeth that you must be baptized and take communion to get into heaven, not much mention of being a good person generally, and no opinion offered up as to others than Catholics making the grade. We are promised a Jewish view tonight, and one other I forget.

All This Stuff Is During The 11:00PM News Show! The Freaking News! Oh, they haven’t mentioned slowing down to conserve fuel either.

3. I read on the Web (the “Weave”) that some groups are having impromptu prayer sessions at gas stations to beseech the almighty for reduced fuel prices. I am not making this up! They seem to think “greed” is behind the prices. Cheap gasoline is now apparently a god-given right, and they seem to feel that, although their deity is omniscient, gasoline prices have temporarily slipped his mind, because, being omnipotent and all, he could easily correct the situation. Christians, you gotta love ‘em.

4. Today I read on the Weave that about 10,000,000 children die every year in the world due to lack of access to medical care. [NOTE: Ever notice that everything that happens in the world apparently happens in round numbers? Proof there is a god, no doubt.] I did not read about any prayer sessions on that subject.

5. Roger Clemens apparently had a long-term platonic relationship with some country singer I’ve never heard of, starting when she was 15, and which, if I read the story correctly, overlapped a period in his life when he was married. It was platonic, for sure, because “Honest Rog” says so. Maybe, if we are very lucky, there will soon come a time when we no longer have to hear about this creep. Maybe I’ll start a prayer group.

6. Big Trouble in Burma. Yes, that’s right, I said “Burma.” Just because some evil fascists took over the country and announced that its name would now be “Myanmar” (which translates, I believe, as “We got the guns, so screw you peasants”) doesn’t make the name change worthy of note. BBC still calls it Burma, as does, I believe, our own administration. I suppose the Evil Thugs in charge over there will reluctantly give in and “accept” foreign aid.

7. Did you know that the “mission statement” of NASA at one time included language about studying and protecting the Earth? During the Bush administration, this was quietly taken out. All the “explore the universe” bullshit was left in.

8. I don’t understand “mission statements.” Is there anybody involved with any organization who doesn’t know what the hell the organization does (I mean besides the government?). Lessee, I work at GM, it is a complete mystery to me that “we” make and sell cars, and hope to make a profit. I work at a hospital, I am shocked to learn one day that our job is to take in sick people and help them get better, and make a profit.

“Mission Statements” are, in my lexicon, in the same category as efforts at “Awareness.” Remember the “End World Hunger” awareness campaign? Never put a single bite in the mouth of any human being. That’s okay though. It was about “Awareness.”

9. So, I’m always harping and carping. What about some real solutions, Mr. Twoblueday, or whatever your real name is? Okay, the federal government should re-institute the 55 mph speed limit.

10. My Honey and I continue to put rock/gravel in the planter beds. It’s hot. The bags weigh about 35 lbs. each. They cost about $2.98 each. They, the rocks, are cheaper if purchased in bulk and not in bags, but what you get is a huge pile of them at the curb. Do you know how hard it is to shovel and wheelbarrow rocks? We are saving thousands of dollars in labor cost, maybe millions, doing this ourselves. We weed as we go, and put down a plastic weed barrier under the rocks. We have changed the plantings somewhat. We added two decorative larger rocks, and placed a little statue we had in a hidden spot out where it can be seen. We hope to be done by the time we head to Cape Cod (where I can get to gardening in earnest!).