i Know It Ends In Y

I swear my brains fell out when Cheetah was born.
I can't remember anything to save my life anymore. I never know what day of the week it is. (I forgot it was my birthday last month. That has *never* happened before.)
I nearly forgot our anniversary.
I forgot NaBloPoMo.
It's bugging me to because I used to be the one who knew all that little stuff - Tarzan doesn't remember the little things - and now we're in trouble because neither of us knows what's what.

This is me hoping its not forever.

You Know...Prison

Apparently there is a hunger strike going on in one of the state maximum security prisons. It's been All. Over. The. News. lately and my question is: why should I get worked up over a hunger strike in a prison?
If the prison guards and/or administrators were starving the inmates as a form of torture, sure, then I could find some compassion.
But when guys who care so little about society's rules that they end up in Pelican Bay decide to exercise the only choice they should have left to make - to eat or not eat - why does it become national news and why does it divide the nation?
These individuals all CHOSE to flout the law, CHOSE to commit a crime - and a really serious one to end up in Pelican Bay - CHOSE to do it multiple times in some cases, and then CHOSE to stop eating.
I say, have at it.
Why does this guy:

"Beasley is serving a life sentence for murder. Once behind bars, he joined a violent white power prison gang. And that's when officials sent him to Pelican Bay"

Deserve my sympathy and support?
Sure, solitary confinement is not pleasant and I'm sure there are things the guy could be doing that would make him feel better. Next time, DON'T KILL SOMEONE! and then when you get to prison, DON'T JOIN A GANG! Especially a VIOLENT WHITE POWER PRISON GANG!
It's not rocket science people.
Not an easy call for the prison authorities to make. Lock the guy up; be called cruel and inhumane. Protesters, media coverage, extra audits and inspections.
Let him out with others; guards, inmates and innocents on the street die.
Nice options.
My two cents are these. We have some of the nicest prisons in the world. Offer these complainers a choice; same sentence in either place.
Stay here in America's maximum security facility or prison in North Korea.

This is me and they're not doing well with captivity.

Because 13 Years Isn't Enough

Is anyone else in their car so much that they hear the same segment on NPR more than once in a day? There are days when I hear every edition of Marketplace and they're identical...
In my desire to hear the funny, quirky things, I hear other things repeatedly. And I have noticed that NPR certainly likes to beat the inflammatory topic drum.
Here's my (next) question for you: how do you feel about Pre-Kindergarten being required and why?
All I know is that my parents worked hard when I was growing up, one or both of them, multiple jobs, etc., and yet all nine of us learned to read and count before we went to school. What's the push for pre-K? When do children get to be children?

This is me, looking for another perspective.

Bang Bang

The thing about compromise is this; neither side gets EVERYthing that they want and both have to give up things that are vitally important but less so than the things they get to keep.
It's not a great system but it's better than a completely dictatorial, might-makes-right plan.
And that's where the country is with gun control these days. (Or pretty much any hot topic that is flying in the media.)
The far end of one side wants any person to have any number of any type of gun, no questions asked.
The far end of the other side thinks we should have a big pot, melt all the guns down and then we all smoke a peace pipe because all the world's problems will be solved.
Obviously, neither point of view is correct.
Especially when it comes to legislation on the topic. Yes, yes, all people should be self regulating and responsible but they aren't and there have to be rules.
Just not stupid ones.
So enters the compromise part.
Some guns should be allowed - the one side just needs to deal with that - but there does need to be regulation - and the other side needs to deal with that.
What is wrong with a background check?
They make people wait to get Harley Davidson motorcycles.
It takes nine months for a kid.
I see not the problem with waiting a bit to get a gun.

This is me and I wish people were more logical.

Connection Made

I am sure I learned this at some point in my education but I didn't put it all together until this evening on my way home from work. I was listening to the radio - NPR as usual now - and someone was talking about Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, slavery, the Civil War, normal stuff and the guest mentioned that there were two ways to go with slavery. If it was to survive in America, slavery had to expand. Otherwise it would die out and as a Republican, Lincoln did not want any more slaves in the union. So he signed the paper to free them all. It amused me to think of how mixed up the political landscape is; back in the day it was the Democrats who wanted to expand slavery and make more money.
What's that song, "the times, they are a changing?"

This is me and the irony made me smile.

Not So Lucky

Well, I've lived through both 11:00s of the day and it seems the world isn't ending.
So it looks like I have to clean and do the laundry this weekend after all.
Crap-ola. I hope when it does come for real, it's before I break out the vacuum and the foaming cleanser.

This is me and there are miles to go before I sleep.

Lock The Doors

All I can say, if tomorrow is the end of the world, is thank goodness.
I could use the rest.
I am so tired.
Not the sleepy-didn't-get-enough-shut-eye-last-night kind of tired, but the turn-off-the-phone-don't-go-out-please-leave-me-alone kind of tired.
This has been a tough year and a really hard month and I will be glad to see it all end. If the world ends too, well it's been nice while it lasted.
I'm going to take a nap.

This is me. Wiped. Out.

Harsh Reality

What to say on days like this? It is a crying shame that some people feel their only recourse is a gun.
Turned on others or themselves.
Sad that lives can be shattered by a stranger's bad mood.
All we can do is hug those we love and try to be nicer to everyone around us.
Maybe a smile or a handshake would have helped, maybe not. At least we would have tried.

This is me and what to say?

Fuzzy Fingernails

Initially I was super creeped out, and after reading, the whole rest of the blurb seemed made up so that there would be a place for these:

But after I looked closer they're kind of cool the second time around.

This is me and I would have spent time doing this rather than my projects when I was in school.

The Real Problem

While I appreciate that a large portion of the country cares very much about how to handle the undocumented immigrant population in the ways of health care, education, employment and all that - and I appreciate the focus on deporting those that are breaking the law in a violent way as opposed to just hopping the border fence - and I know there are a zillion things for the lawyers and congressmen and President to be doing in the capitol, *I* feel I would be less bitter about the whole thing if the method of applying for legal residence didn't take SO. AMAZINGLY. LONG.
*I* feel that if those who were applying for residence the way the country recommends were at the top of the list, rather than bumping those who have just shown up - and in a lot of cases don't want to even learn the language - then the country would not be so angry about "illegal aliens."
If it takes 6-8 months to apply and be granted legitimacy through this Dream Act thing and 6 YEARS the "proper" way, why the heck not do it illegally?
I ask you.
(Can I also mention this is completely a bipartisan complaint. No party has ever proved able to speed up the application process for persons following the rules.)

This is me and *I* think it would work better.

Endeavour

This will no doubt reveal our living location - if you didn't already know where the Jungle actually is - but Tarzan thinks it's worth it:

The space shuttle Endeavour travelled through town today on it's way to the museum up the street and we went to view the maneuver:

I was interested but no one I saw today had the attitude of Tarzan. He was like a kid, he was so excited:

He lectured on the street corner, a la Aristotle, as we were waiting for the shuttle to trundle on down. (This thing was not fast, in any sense of the word.) Tarzan talked about the thrusters versus the engines, the tiles, the nose, the advent of the name, the size, the weight, the journeys, the history, and to anyone who would listen. There were a lot of people to hear him:

As "luck" would have it, the Academic Decathlon theme for this year is the space race, so we offered to take the team with us to see it, though only one was willing to go out in public with his teachers:

I did not catch the fever until the shuttle actually started rolling by. The left wing went right over our heads and it was as totally awesome as it sounds like it would be:

This is me and it was really cool.

NPR

Tarzan has made a few comments over the years about my lack of knowledge regarding current events. I can't say that he's wrong entirely, but the news makes me so mad most of the time, and if it's really good stuff it shows up on The Daily Show. But the last time he borrowed my car he left the station on NPR; it was a decent piece so I left it and then he and I chatted about it at dinner that night and that snowballed so now I listen to NPR all the time. I am more informed for sure and find I can talk to other people about current events and sound quasi-intelligent. It hasn't made me any less mad though.
Two discussions in the last few days in particular make me want to bite someone.

• The first bit I heard on the way home one day was about how some Silicon Valley employees are wearing hoodies in a show of solidarity after the whole debacle in the news about the kid who got shot by the Neighborhood Watch guy. It's terrible that the kid is dead and that the guy has to live with a death of a teenager but I don't know that it was racially motivated. If I see a person in a hoodie, shading the face, in the dark, slouching down the street, I'm gonna be more inclined to think it's a thug - no matter the color of their skin - than if I see a kid on the sidewalk, in the daylight, with a designer brand, pressed hoodie on, no matter the color of their skin. Situation and circumstance plays a part in these incidents as well. Location, location, location.


• The second piece has to do with a cover of Time magazine about attached parenting. Despite the hideous picture - which I didn't see until just now - my first concern after listening to the guest describe what the group is all about was "just how is that different from what my parents did?" If, as they spokesperson kept saying, their emphasis is on connection between parent and child, talking to the kid, touching, cuddling, eating with and spending time with young ones, I still don't know how that is different from what my own mother and father did. Why do we need a whole new label and 'movement' about it? And the NPR host kept trying to get the guest to specify how her group was different than 'regular' parenting and she couldn't, or wouldn't. The only differences I see are the extreme cases; the nursing until the child goes to kindergarten, or the one caller who still co-sleeps with her son and he's 9. It broke up her marriage because the husband didn't want to share his wife with his son. Other than the weird stuff, it sounds like Parenting 101. Why the big to-do about it?

This is me, better informed but not happy about it.

I'd Be More Excited To Vote

It's a telling sign of the state of affairs when George Clooney is mentioned more times than President Obama in the ads for the political fundraiser that's going on tonight. It's at Geroge's house, true, but it's Obama's campaign they're meeting to finance.

This is me and I'd vote for George. Prettiest president EVER.

USC vs Utah (Revisited)

Well, that was odd.

Apparently there isn't a rule, or at least not an official rule, about Unsportsmanlike Conduct when the clock winds down. They explained it in a few papers this morning but I still don't get it.

Though I AM amused that some of the casinos in Vegas had to pay out to both sides because first we didn't beat the point spread and then we did. That has to irk the "house."

This is me and we still won...I think.

Newsweek Revisited

I have tried very hard to recreate my masterpiece of a response to Newsweek's article of a few weeks ago. It is not to be, so I will list only the salient points.
Dear Newsweek,
Regarding the LDS church,

WE ARE NOT POLYGAMISTS!! That practice went out years ago - shortly after it was instituted in fact. And that was one hundred and twenty-one years ago. Just because some weirdo with six wives claims to be of our faith, does not mean he actually is. It's like being barefoot. If you're wearing shoes it doesn't matter how much you claim to be barefoot, you just aren't.

Stop associating our church with that musical. Yes, it is named after one of our sacred books of scripture but we didn't sanction the thing and from all accounts, it gleefully mocks the faith and it's people. And how does any of that deserve a full page spread in an article about Mormons when NONE of the people in the picture are members of the church?

Lastly, the church is often the first organization to respond to a disaster, anywhere in the world and we most certainly do help any and all people in need. We do not restrict our help and assistance to only members of the faith.

This is me, not yours truly,
Jane

This Would Have Been Lengthy

I wrote an excellent - if I do say so myself - thoughtful, well-composed, balanced post in response to Newsweek's article this week The Mormon Moment. It was long and complex and really one of my best works.
Then Blogger ate it. And I can't get it back.
And now I am annoyed at Blogger and upset at Newsweek which is not a good place.

This is me, apologizing for deficiencies in the machinery.

Are They Kidding?

Who, I ask you, WHO makes a movie like Bad Teacher, right now, in this political climate?
WHO?!
What with the whole thing in Wisconsin between the teachers, the administration and the state and then here Tarzan was issued a pink slip in March, apparently there isn't enough money to keep funding the libraries so just let the kids check out the books to themselves - and back in again, HA! - and even though some of these librarians have 20+ years with the school district let's kick them out because they aren't 'relevant' because they haven't been in a classroom and for kicks let's have them removed to a smelly, leaky, basement somewhere so they can beg for their jobs from some lawyer who's making $500 an hour to mock them and say high school is easy. Then, when the humiliation is over the state realizes they have "miscalculated" the expected income for next year and maybe they won't fire them all after all.
Into this hoo-hah let's release a movie about a sub-par teacher who - in the trailer's own words here - is "a foul-mouthed, junior high teacher who, after being dumped by her sugar daddy, begins to woo a colleague -- a move that pits her against a well-loved teacher."

This is me and Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Batman?

Via Email

This explanation of America's Economic Problem is from one of the many, many, MANY emails I get every day from my adorable mother-in-law. It's not really political. Not really news. But absolutely hilarious:

"This financial crisis is forcing state and local agencies to make some tough decisions. If things continue for much longer, there's a real risk that we may have to lay off Jose."

This is me laughing out loud. For real.

A Flair For The Dramatic

Ahhh Tarzan.
Great teacher/librarian though he may be, it's possible he missed his calling in life as a news anchor, a tabloid writer, a politician, you know...someone with a flair for the dramatic.
He's been passing it around in phone calls and then with the post yesterday that we have a "secret project" in an undisclosed location and all manner of other mysterious phrases.
And the rumors are flying.
Let me relieve the pressure that is weighing on your minds.
We are not moving, we are not pregnant - though apparently everyone else is - Congratulations to PhatFiddle, Liezel, QC, SBB, M2 and PIT! - that is a lot of babies for this year - we are not splitting up, we are not adopting, we are not remodeling the house, we are not even trading in our cars for new ones, we shared our trip information already, we don't have any new animals.
We will be filing our taxes early this year if that's of interest to anyone.

This is me and it's just not as exciting as Tarzan makes it sound.

Hearty, Tomatoey Congratulations to Phatfiddle and Liezel!!!!!

I was on my way home from our secret headquarters where Jane is currently busily working on our secret project and I was pleasantly surprised to receive a text from Mama Bear (aka Gamma Gamma) announcing to the world via text message that my brother's darling bride had just launched upon a new career in the pasta sauce industry!!! I knew the Liezel was very talented on grow side but apparently her talents on the production side of the equation merit recognition from no less than the world renowned Prego company!! I've always been a Ragu man myself but am willing to switch brands to support family. This is definitely an exciting development and we look forward to ongoing developments regarding this news in the coming months. We now return you to your regular blogger who has been sequestered for an unstated period of time, at an undisclosed location following unconfirmed reports of the aforementioned secret project.