I was trying to get in the storm frenzy mood. Really, I was. My plan was to take pictures of the same view from my front porch every hour to document the conditions.

It drizzled. It rained. It drizzled. It rained. High tide came and the storm drain backed up a little. I braved the raging drizzle and light breeze (maybe it was the eye passing) to wander out to look at the creek. It was high tide. Whoo-hoo.

zzzzzz....huh? Oh yeah, I was reporting on The Storm.

I can say that here in West Ashley: it rained some.

I know that much of this is due to the Katrina effect. Any person in any organization from all levels of government down to utilities are afraid that if anything goes wrong with anyones life at any time during The Storm, they will be blamed.

But Oh! My! Gawd! I saw one local reporter standing, bare headed, no umbrella, out in...in...in....RAIN...to report the conditions. Next time there is a run of the mill thunderstorm, are we going to see him standing out there, bravely clutching his microphone, risking his very LIFE for us? Or was he auditioning for a job at The Weather Channel, perhaps dreaming that some day, when he is a grown up meteorologist, he could be the next Jim Cantore?

But it was, I guess, a great practice run for if a real hurricane happens to wander by. Never mind that we'll all be without power at such a time.

I'm just glad we all survived The Storm of the Year (so far).


Thor sez: Is it over yet?
Loki sez: Huh? Is it supper time?
Photo by Jason Zwiker

While out in the wilds of the marsh yesterday (doing my E-prep by moving the lawn chairs off the edge of the creek), I walked through a spider's web. Which is a fairly common thing back there in wild creature land. I brushed myself off and went about my business.

This morning, I have a painless, purple spot on my inner forearm with two little spider fang marks barely visible. I'm hoping my arm isn't going to rot off.

Probably not.

I'm trying to decide what to do with myself today. I've taken my RNC exam, I've finished all the work books for the continuing education thing we do every three years. I've done all the laundry. I can't garden today. I can't go shopping.

Should I amuse myself by making fun of the news reports on THE STORM? (It could be a hurricane, really it could, if all we weather reporters wish hard enough and report from enough beaches and clap our hands and say "I believe", it could happen!)

Ah, let's be honest. I'll lounge on the couch, eat chocolate chip cookies and read Harry Potter in between bursts of kitten picture taking.

I declare this do-nothing day!



Thor sez: A toothbrushing a day, keeps the hurricanes away!

Editors note: That is Thor's personal toothbrush, thank you very much. I'm not that crazy or gross.

How to tease the inner lapsed Catholic school boy child:



Tell your mom he took this picture.

I feel like I should re-post Hurricanes for Yankees. People need to calm down. Some of us have Hugo related post-traumatic stress disorder and we don't need the newbies freaking out all over the place because it might be a little windy and rainy later on this week. Plus I really don't want to be put in lock-down at the hospital and have to sleep on some nasty ass disgusting floor somewhere.

In addition, I have to take Sutu the Amazing Shrinking Cat to the vet this morning. His weight seems to have stablized around 7 pounds (he was 10 pounds), but I'm afraid he's going to go Karen Carpenter on me at any moment. I want to retest his thyroid functions. Every other test we've done is normal. I don't think he is faking. He acts like we are starving him to death and I'm down to giving him lactose-free baby formula to try to get some extra calories in him because he hates everything else I've offered.

And I have still have to finish three books for my continuing education thing at work, which is a separate deal than the certification test I had to take. And I have laundry to do. And the back room rug looks like we shaved a cat on it.

So I suppose the moral is I need to get off my behind today.



Loki sez: How do you think I would look with a moustache?

Little known fact: I was born in Germany. Technically, I was born in the U.S.A. because I came into the world inside a military hospital on an American Air Force Base. But in the wider view, I was born in Germany.

Bremerhaven to be exact.

We lived there until I was six and I have exactly three memories of Germany that I know weren't implanted or created through listening to stories of those days.

One. We went to tour some castle, don't know which. I was about four or five, so it had to be near Nurenberg, where my younger brother was born. I remember seeing the castle from a road above as we approached. I remember my father marching me up to the castle wall. I remember looking up, up, up at it and thinking it was the biggest thing I'd ever seen in my life.


The Littlest Tour Guide

Two. I remember wanting to ride a pony. No recollection of the events preceeding said pony ride, but I clearly remember strong hands under my arms, lifting me up to put me on the pony and being very frightened. It seemed like I was a million miles off the ground.


I found this photo in a box my mom had and laughed until I about wet myself over the drama of my memory and this, viewed with adult eyes.

Three. My two olders brothers and I being somewhere we weren't supposed to be and the street lights coming on (BIG TIME violation - you were supposed to be in the yard BEFORE the street lights came on). As we were running for home, my brothers told me that the bats were coming out because it was getting dark and they would swoop in and grab my hair and bite me and I'd turn into a bat too. I probably ran a minute mile that evening.

But I don't have a picture of it. Would have been great, I'm sure.

Different is not wrong

Photo by Jason Zwiker

Thor and Mick Jagger: Can't we all just get along?

Is it possible to have Seasonal Affective Disorder in August?

If it were late January/early February, I'd know why I feel so listless and mopey and grumpy and grouchy. I'd know why television commercials were making me cry. I'd know why I was being destructive in my relationships. I'd know why I spent a day re-reading Harry Potter instead of any one of a dozen things that I really should have been doing.

But it's August.

Perhaps it's the heat, the fact that I've kept myself cooped up in the air-conditioning, behind my 99%UV ray blocking filmed windows.

Perhaps I should go sun myself like a lizard.

Oh, wait. The Deluge, Part Two.

Perhaps I should eat chocolate. Dark chocolate.

Perhaps I should get off my fat behind and go work out. Which I know from years of SAD is the quickest way to a cure for me. Ironic that my most persistant symptom is complete lack of energy.

Oy! Off to the Gazelle for me.


Loki sez: Yoga works for me!

I am back to the agent search today, assembling packages as instructed. Five pages,ten pages, fifteen, a chapter, brief biography, publishing history, synopsis brief, synopsis long, why I wrote it, what current authors do I most fit in with, what would be my target audience, where on the bookstore shelf will I be placed?

Here's a weird fact: I don't write in chapters. Never have, don't know if I can. My first training novel (which will never see the light of day, it is so atrocious), I wrote, re-wrote, then chopped it up in to chapters. My currently being pimped out project is in three pieces: prologue, part one and part two.

I am incapable of chapters. They stifle me, they stifle the flow, the narrative, they make me feel as if I am writing in connect the dots format. Several people I know say they can't NOT write without chapters to give them some boundaries, to keep them from wandering aimlessly.

I've been to several writing conferences where I see the frustration of aspiring writers. They want answers, facts, formulas. One lady asked how many metaphors she should use per chapter. (This is why I could never teach because I would have told her a minimum of ten per chapter with all metaphors within the novel adding up to one great metaphor by the end.)

I don't think you can teach how to write. You can help sharpen skills, point out errors, but I think there has to be some innate gift or talent there to begin with.

My son is a musician. He began when he was about four, playing Christmas carols by ear on a cheap child's keyboard. He'd never been taught about music. He just figured it out. Later, he had lessons through being in middle and high school bands, but mostly he just "knew" how to make the guitar or the bass make the sounds he heard in his head. His original stuff is awesome (and I don't say that as a mom, this has been confirmed by outside sources).

My brother loves music. He bought a guitar as an adult and practiced diligently for years and became a very good player. But he plays by rote, he plays by chord-chord-chord-strum. It sounds right, but there is some element missing.

That missing element is the unknown. In all art, whether visual, music, writing, there is that something that if you don't have it, you can't get it.

Or maybe I'm just rationalizing because I have a deep seated inferiority complex about not having been formally educated in Literature. Nope, no English Lit graduate here, no MFA. Just trying to convince myself that it doesn't matter.

Or maybe I'm sitting here spinning bullshit so I don't have to get to work on these packages.

Most likely.



Loki sez: I know I'm fat, but can you do this?

I've been considering Hillary Clinton recently. She has been in the news quite a bit as she "considers" 2008.

I kind of like her. I don't know. The press tells us that we either have to love her or hate her, but I'm not on either side of that fence. Maybe because I'm contrary and any time the media, whether the press or entertainment tells me I must do or not do something, I tend to do the opposite. Which explains why I never saw an original airing of a Seinfeld show.

But Hillary. Oh, how America shows it's hypocrisy with her. We (I speak of women in America) claim women's rights, we claim we want strong, independent (financially and otherwise), smart, involved women. We've complained bitterly about the blank-eyed, non-opinion having Stepford-first-wives of the past.

Then along comes Hillary and most women hate her. With a passion that I haven't seen since the high school cool kid's table wars.

Why?

Why do we hate what we've said we wanted all along?

Some men I know say they hate her because of her blatant politicking. Changing her position depending on which way the wind is blowing. Well, isn't that what politicians do? Make it seem like they are on your side, whatever it may be, so you will vote for them? Isn't that just politics? Or is it because she does it better than most male politicians that galls them?

And Bill. Poor Bill and his zipper problems. Well, how is that Hillary's defect? Oh yeah, she should have kicked the bum to the curb. D-I-V-O-R-C-E-D his ass. Except then, she wouldn't have been displaying any Christian forgiveness, any devotion and dedication to the core American value unit: the family. If she'd divoced him, most people would be saying she didn't respect the vows she made.

Besides, again. What did she do wrong in this? I could probably with very little trouble name off several male politicians who lit their candles in different candelabras and everyone just shrugs. Shame on Bill. Not Hillary. Once again, attack the woman, not the man. She should have been a better wife, I guess, is the mentality.

America. We love. We hate. We don't know what we want. We just know we don't want anyone else to have it either.

What will I do if Hillary runs? I don't know. Part of me, that feminist liberal democrat part says to vote for her regardless simply because it is time to actually begin to trust and have faith in the leadership of women, not just pay lip service to it as an ideal. But the Connecticutt Yankee gene in me says we'll just have to wait and see what the world looks like in 2008.

And the real American in me says I will keep an open mind and give her a chance. To hear what she has to say before making an opinion based on things that have nothing to do with her politics. Or maybe that's the liberal in me.


Thor sez: What's wrong with cat hair on a pillow? YOU put it up here, obviously you MEANT for me to claim it as my own personal throne. Now go away, you bore me.

Damn you, Disney!

The other night at work, a co-worker asked me if I knew what a lemming was. I said it was some rodent-type creature that was known to commit mass suicide by following the leader of the “pack” off cliffs.

She didn’t quite believe me and went where all people of good sense go: Google.
And she was right not to believe me.

I was partially right. Lemmings are rodent-like creatures.

But I was wrong about the suicide thing.

Seems that was an evil cruel hoax perpetuated upon the public by none other than Re-Writing-History-One-Crappy-Kid-Movie-At-A-Time Disney!

Yes. Disney. That bastion of wholesome family entertainment actually MURDERED poor innocent lemmings in a sleazy attempt at drama and slander….uh..libel…uh, whatever it is when you LIE about poor innocent creatures to make them look stupid when you are actually actively murdering them!

Don’t believe me? Take a gander here. Poor things were imported to an unfamiliar habitat, spun around on wheels and flung over cliffs. All so Disney could get a dramatic shot.

They should have to pay restitution! They should be forced to issue a public apology to all lemmings of the world and to the public in general for the slur on the reputation of lemmings that they, Disney, purposely and maliciously created.

They should have to build and maintain lemming habitats, sponsor lemming education programs and probably even set up scholarships for the youth that they, Disney, indoctrinated with this negative image.

Well. Maybe not all that. But they were evil.

I hate them more now.

May Snow White get syphilis.

And now, a message from your sponsor

It's been a stressful week. Tests and insomnia and viruses (virusi?), oh my. Took my RN certification exam in low risk neonatal after only two days of real studying and a bout of insomnia that had me testing with only two hours of sleep. Perhaps sabotaging myself? I don't know. I don't really care. The test means nothing but that my employer can say that x amount of nurses are certified. No extra money for me, no nothing except the dinero I have to fork out now for continuing education credits to maintain my status.

I know, I should be thrilled to learn just for the sake of learning. I am. Really. When I'm not so tired.

But now that I'm not driving myself insane and not saving every spare brain cell I have for remembering that thermoregulation in an infant is fueled by non-shivering thermogenesis, mainly glycogen from liver stores and brown fat, I will try to be a tad more stimulating and interesting than cat pictures.

Later. After my nap.


Thor sez: No more studying. Adore me! Now!

Thor vs The Maelstrom

I am Thor, God of Thunder!


Fear my wrath!


The West Ashley Water Cats in their un-natural environment:

Peg asks, "Where do you write?"

Here is where I write, a messy, booky, sunny room:



And speaking of writing, yesterday I was thinking about words. Sally Field was chatting away on my television set, like every woman's ideal best friend, telling me about how she had lunch with a girl friend and her friend "had to set aside time every week to take her osteoporosis medicine."

Gasp! Really? Once a week? The poor thing. How could she even begin to manage?

But once my sarcastic streak finished asking Sally what the hell her friend would do if she were diabetic - how could she ever manage the horrors of a DAILY routine, I was reminded of a snippet of a speech I saw last week - on CSPAN or something - I know I'm terrible at remembering who/what/when/where. The man giving the speech was a linguist and he used as an example a radio advertisement he'd heard proclaiming that company X had been "proudly serving the greater Los Angeles area for almost half a decade."

Words. Phrases. Sentences. You have to appreciate the skill it takes to string them together properly. I know I turn various shades of green while reading almost anything. I used to aspire to "writing pretty". But I've come to know that while I should always push myself to do the best I can, I am not a pretty writer. My writing will tell you the facts and will sometimes lay the flesh open to the bone and expose what lies beneath, but it ain't pretty.

I've been in critique groups where I've heard people tell writers that they 'should' or 'shouldn't' with their writing. "There should be more detail." "There is too much detail, get to the meat."

I think they are wrong. You write in your voice. That's where the good stuff is. Once you start writing for some outside critic or some standard that you read about in Writers Digest, you might as well give it up.

Playing With Jason's Camera, Part three

The Cat Nip War or The War of Paradoxical Effects
(or Procrastination as an Art Form)


Yummy home grown cat nip. Yum!


Mine!


Mom said to share!


Now you're gonna get it!


Biff!


Baff!


I still love you.


But it is MY cat nip.

Is it Tuesday already?

I thought about blogging about the cry baby Whiney McWhiners out in Rockville with their $58,000 plus 'median' incomes who (boo-hoo) don't want any developers coming in and ruining their 'paradise."

Well don't we all, people. The yankees are coming, they got money and they are going to ruin the south all over again. (And by this, I mean the period of "reconstruction" that followed the WBTS, not the war itself, thank you very much. You may now return to my rant.)

Bah and humbug.

I have a major test to take on Friday. Certification for any nurses out there. I think I should spend the rest of the week really and actually studying.

Like I used to back in school. Outlines. Notes. Crying. Screaming. Anti-depressants.

Nursing school...ah memories.


Thor sez: Oh the drama! Can I sleep over with some-one until this test is over?

Why I think Loki has an eating disorder

I am Loki-Cat!
Here is my belly and it is fat!
Da-da-da-da-da-da..
(To the tune of Iron Man by Black Sabbath)

Kudos to the British authorities for uncovering the plot to blow up airplanes.

This is the kind of work that will win the "war on terror".

Not invasions of countries. Not bogging our troops down.

This is what has pissed me off about how the present administration has handled this "war".

We are not fighting a country. We are fighting (at best) a loosely organized group of militants with no real central authority. They aren't getting together for terrorist conventions. They operate in the dark and scurry like the roaches they are when the light is turned on their activities.

Instead of sinking all this money (and the pure waste of life and limb) in Iraq, we should be increasing our intelligence capabilities on the ground in the suspect countries (Not waiting until they start contacting American citizens to do their dirty work for them). We should be infiltrating their network to such a degree that the little groups are afraid to talk to each other, not able to trust each other.

And we need to stop appeasing Bush's hand-holding buddies in Saudi by actually catching Bin Laden and cutting off the money train he supplies.

I heard yesterday some pundits saying that this proves how the "liberals" were wrong about wanting to serve cookies and tea to the terrorists. I don't know what liberals they've been listening to (well, actually I do, they seek out the most outrageous and singular opinion they can find, then label it what "liberals" think. And to be fair, the "liberals" do the same to the "right").

Every liberal I know has only disagreed with the method this administration has used to fight this war.

You don't kill roaches by turning on the lights and making noise. You sneak up on them in the dark and poison them in their nests.

And another thing. Airport security needs to be at the highest levels all the time. Shut up you whiney asses who don't want to wait in line. Too bad. That is the way it is. The mention of a "plot" should never, ever disrupt airline travel like it did yesterday and has in the past. Security should be such that it doesn't matter that someone said that they were planning to blow up a plane.

That is part of the terrorists victory: just mention a plot and cause delay and perhaps millions of dollars in extra security costs.

It shouldn't matter what they say, every airport should be secure to the highest degree possible every single day of the year.

I'll bet the five million plus we are spending in Iraq every month would cover a lot of these expenses.

Every time there is a delay, every time the liberal and conservative press is leading off this story with airport delays and showing long lines, the terrorists win.


Sutu the Amazing Shrinking Cat sez: Is it lunchtime yet?

Playing with Jason's New Camera, Part Two

Seriously self indulgent cat pictures, part two
(or, I'm too tired to think this morning)



This is Thor's "thing". He sits, staring up a wall. Then caterwaults until a human appears.


He then lunges up the wall. Human is supposed to grab his hind end and lift, allowing Thor to pretend he has climbed to the ceiling.


But this day, his human did not properly perform her tasks, so he retired to the cat couch to reflect upon this failing.


The ever-so-careful "I'm not looking at you" pose.


"Do you MIND? Really! I'm MAD at you! Don't you get it? Stop taking my picture!"

Recently, I listened to a person talk about why gay people should not be able to get “married”. (Enter civil unions is more precisely what it is we do, but I’ve learned not to try to clarify a bigot’s vocabulary)

As is my habit when confronted with opinions that differ from mine, I sincerely and politely asked this person’s reasoning behind the opinion. (Really, sometimes you learn something and sometimes you teach something by being interested in the how and why people come to their opinions.)

Someday, I hope to ask this question and hear something interesting. But not this time, I got the same old, “It’s bad for families.”

How, specifically, is it bad for families?

This is what I was told: “I believe homosexuality is a sin and I’ve taught my children that also. If the state allows homosexuals to marry, then it is undermining what I am trying to teach my children.”

Wait. I’m still biting my tongue bloody over it.

Okay. My brain isn’t about to explode anymore.

See, when I was raising my child, I never felt that the state had to back up my moral teachings in order for them to be valid. In fact, there are several laws that I believe are immoral and yet you didn’t find me at the statehouse door, demanding that they be changed in order to back up my parental authority.

When I taught my son what “I” believed on a particular subject and why, I also told him what they believed and why, and what those people believed and why. I told him what I knew of the history of an issue.

Why? Because I wanted him to think for himself, to look at every side of any issue and compare it to his internal moral compass and then come to his own decision to what his beliefs on the issue might be.

Because I am not afraid. I’m not afraid that my child might think or believe differently than me. I’m not afraid that he will choose his own religious following, or choose no religious following. I’m not afraid of him being different from me.

I would be very afraid, however, if he justified hatred in a religion's name.



Thor sez: Love your neighbor means everyone, not just the people like you.

Playing With Jason's New Camera

Warning: Seriously self-indulgent cat photos ahead

Look into my eyezzz. You will play with me now!


Ah. Little red and white polka dot ball.


You must die!


Now I have you!


Now to meet your fate!


Drown evil red and white polka dot ball!



(Editors note: The last picture was not taken with Jason's Kewl Kamera, but with my old crappy camera. It was added for dramatic effect.)

Work. Study. Sleep. Repeat.

I'm so boring I can't even stand myself.

I have taken the time to fall in love with this little guy.

But I fear Jason thinks I am insane.

Perhaps.


Feline Feeding Frenzy

I don't want to bitch. Not on a Friday when I'm digging in to the deepest corners of my psyche to scrape up some positive energy.

But. I'm getting really sick of reading and hearing people talking about the minimum wage increase (or shall I say the "proposed" increase?).

The most frequent talking-stupid-out-yer-ass-comment is along the lines of: if people don't bother to get education/skills then they don't deserve a raise.

Please. Really. Please. This is the stupidest thing I have ever heard in my life. Not because I'm a bleeding heart liberal who thinks that every person on the planet deserves something for nothing.

But because I understand that if everyone in America received a college education or a technical education that would boost them in to the middle class pay scale, our economy would collapse.

How many of you college grads out there would go pick up garbage, roof houses, clean hotel rooms, valet park cars, wash dishes in restaurants or any one of thousands of like jobs?

None.

We need a pool of minimum wage workers. Why do you think that year after year after year passes with no improvement in our public schools? We NEED the drop outs, the ones who barely managed to graduate.

It ain't pretty, but it is the truth. There is a vast working class that is just as important in keeping America running as all those people who sit in air conditioned offices and type on computers all day.

Instead of blaming them for where they are, we can at least acknowledge the vital part they play in our economy and give them a modest increase that barely lifts them above poverty level.

Jason gave me a copy of Seed magazine this morning and told me there was a Noam Chomsky article in it that I would like.

I haven't gotten to it yet. I'm sure it is going to get me all riled up and frankly, it's too hot to be riled.

Instead, I spent much of the morning grocery shopping and putting window film on the windows in the bedroom. I was supposed to do all the windows on the front of the house but changed my mind.

So, after several hours of cussing all the really bad cuss words I know, interspersed with singing along with the Allman Brothers, the windows are done.

And I ain't doing no more.

I bought a redonkulously expensive teeny tiny pack of raspberries.

I'm going to go play Southern Belle and recline on the settee and eat them. All. In one sitting.

Snuggly Springtime Kittens:

I got home this afternoon after taking my mom for her thora-something to evaluate her leaky mitral valve (looks better on this test than regular ultrasound, stress test, antibiotics before dental work and watch).

Thor was sitting on the bed, yowling at the curtains which, for Thor, is pretty routine behavior. So I told him that he could not climb the curtains.

A moment later, Loki was sitting on the bed, chest to the head board, staring straight up at the curtains. Okay, Loki staring is a reason for invesitgation. And yes, there it was: a wasp. Crawling along the curtains, extremely lost.

I said, "No, Loki, no. That's the owie bug."

Loki, being the genius that he is, ran for it. He got stung by a wasp when he was a wee little fellow of about five months of age. He has never forgotten. He still will not even stay in the back room if the back door where the unfortunate incident occurred is open.

Thor, being the, uh, 'special' kitty he is, decided this was just a fun new toy. He took half the bedspread with him when I dragged him out of the room.

Being the native child that I am, I am never without a handy-dandy giant economy sized can of flying bug killer. I covered the bed, gave him a quick shot to get him going, then once he was on a more easily cleaned surface than my curtain or bedspread, sprayed him until he was dead. (see, this is where guys make their mistakes, they think one spritz is enough, women know you must continue to spray until the legs stop moving)

Loki is grateful, Thor is pissed and Sutu the Amazing Shrinking Cat is mad because I delayed an already late lunch to tend to this problem.


Thor sez: "I never get to have any fun."

Henry Brown E-mail

Some time back, I wrote an email message to my (well, to the rich, white, male, heterosexual members of the 1st District's) representative, the lovely Henry Brown.

My email was on the subject of potential oil drilling off the coast of South Carolina and how I thought that would have vast risks to our eco-system and our tourist dollars (imagine the snootie-tooties at the Sanctuary at Kiawah having to wipe black tar off their lily white tootsies after a stroll on the beach).

I also told Mr. Brown that the answer to America's dependence on foreign oil was not to continue to use the same old oil, but to fund research to find RENEWABLE sources of fuel so that eventually we wouldn't need nary a drop from foreign countries and perhaps said countries might even begin to look to the U.S. for their energy needs.

Well, yesterday I received a very nice letter from Mr. Brown reminding me of how our dependence on foreign countries for oil puts the U.S. in a "vunerable position". He lapses in to the same short-sighted, to hell with the future, I'll be dead by then mentality that the ONLY way to protect America is to drill for our own oil.

Mr. Brown? Can you say 'temporary solution'? Big words, I know, but I believe you can do it.

Then, to reassure me that South Carolina's coastlines will be safe, he explains to me that the H.R. 4761 bill, the Domestic Energy Production through Offshore Exploration and Equitable Treatment of State Holdings Act will "allow states to opt out participating in the offshore exploration, but for those that choose to do so, they can explore within 125 miles of the coastline."

Well, THAT certainly reassures me. Because if Florida or Georgia decide to allow offshore drilling, oh excuse me, EXPLORATION, then all that oil will just stay right down there. Any spilled oil or by-products of drilling will understand that S.C. has opted out and it won't get in the Gulf Stream to come up here and pollute our ocean and beaches and rivers. No, we've opted out, so we'll be safe.

And I just love this part: "Currently many progressive countries such as Canada, Sweden, Norway and Australia are drilling off their coasts for natural gas and they are doing it in a manner which is clean efficient and safe."

Oh, toss the liberal a bone to chew on. Those tree-huggers are so stupid that if you tell them that drilling for NATURAL GAS is clean, they will just think that drilling for CRUDE OIL is clean and safe too. Oh, and use the word "progressive", liberals love that word. It makes them all tingly and warm inside.

No where in this letter did Mr. Brown address the idea of funding research to find, once again, RENEWABLE sources of energy. So, once again, American is not dependent on anyone at any time for any source of energy. So that perhaps, we will be the leader in energy production.

But I suppose he wants to be re-elected and people like me don't get him elected. Oil companies get him elected. And with Big Oil raking in profits of $1,000 a second, I guess they can buy anyone they want, smear anyone they want, destroy or make careers, all in their best interests. Their control over the Middle East oil production is wobbling out of control, so they need to find another place to rake in money, local people and environments be damned.

Second cup of coffee.
Subject change.

Note for Yankees: It is now August, the only month in which it is appropriate to complain about the weather. But, as always, no comment should begin with the phrase: "Well, back home". If it were better back home, please go there and stop bothering me. Thank you very much.

I feel guilty about all the Thor pictures, so here is a random kitten picture:




Thor and Loki at about three months of age