It's the Little Things in Life

I'm happy today, but not because anything really great has happened. Today, it's all about the little things.

The workers on my street are busily making homes for my future neighbors, and today they are farther up the street from my house, which means they're quieter. In return, I'm trying not to think too much about their legal status as immigrants.

I remembered to buy greeting cards AND send them, which is remarkable for me.

Warren Jeffs, the Big Bad Polygamist, is in custody-- not that I care, but the little bit of happy here is that I will never again have to listen to Anderson Cooper drone on and on about him! Especially in that Voice, dripping with emotion, which I totally bought during Katrina, but when it was applied to Jeffs, I realized how hollow it was.

Tim Grieve over at Salon's War Room posted this today:

CQ Politics has just moved the November outlook for the district once represented by Tom DeLay from "no clear favorite" to "leans Democratic."

Ah yes, I have no complaints today...

Well, you know that's not true. On the topic of little things, we don't know who killed JonBenet after all. I know, we're all supposed to be ashamed at the way we've been fascinated by her like there wasn't anything else going on in the world. But I am fascinated! I had always thought that we would never find out whodunit, that it would go the way of Bob Crane, Kennedy, and the Black Dahlia. Those stories have always fascinated me because of their unsolved nature (I am so psyched for this upcoming Black Dahlia movie!) I was aghast at the idea that we had actually caught JonBenet's killer-- no so much for justice, I admit, but just for knowing... And while I'm glad that they didn't go ahead and prosecute an innocent (and clearly bonkers) man, I'm a little grimmer today that the mystery remains on my list of Things To Ask God When I Die.

There are many real and important things to worry about, but I'm banishing those thoughts and instead worrying about how I'm going to fit all these new shows* on my TiVo. Because sometimes, there is Katrina, and sometimes, it's just August.

* :)
:(
(In order to get to the Salon links above, you will probably have to watch a short commercial, sorry!)

Stranger than Fiction

Did you see that thing about Bush reading Camus' The Stranger on his vacation? Can you believe he admitted that? How dumb are his handlers?

For those of you not familiar, Camus' existentialist masterwork is about, as Jon Stewart so eloquently put it the other night, "a Westerner who kills an Arab on a beach for no reason and dies with no remorse." I love this book. It's an intense look at the inside of an existentialist's mind-- not just asking, "What is the point for all of us?" but more specifically, "If you've ever wondered how some people can just kill and not care, here's a peek at that kind of mind." Or at least, that's how I felt reading it. His description of shooting the stranger because the sun is glaring in his eyes is chilling. And for the perfect soundtrack, the Cure's first single, "Killing an Arab", is based on the book.

Apparently, especially for the Cure, there was some backlash because it was an Arab man that dies, but to me the significance was that he was a stranger, an immigrant, and instead of welcoming or being kind to someone far from home, Meursault kills him. It's the opposite of the Good Samaritan story. The vast cross-cultural aspect, a European and an Arab, makes for a more stark contrast (as opposed to a Frenchman and a Spaniard, for example). But I digress.

Why would they think that telling the world that he read The Stranger improves Bush's image? Was Karl Rove hit on the head? Or was it meant to make him look like some crazy maverick? Maybe they don't want the Bad Guys to see him as a lame duck so they are making him into Kim Jong Il, "He's craaaazy, so watch out! He kills Arabs and then for fun, he reads books about killing Arabs! He's one bad mother--" "watch your mouth!" "just talkin' 'bout W..."

When will these insane people give us back our country?

Where your tax $$$ go...

I saw this sentence in a Salon article (which was actually about something else entirely, so no point in linking to it) that made me want to-- I don't know, something drastic that would somehow miraculously make these politicians fund school lunch programs and after school programs and yank this crap off the table:

The Silver Ring Thing, or SRT -- a Christian outreach organization that, with the help of more than $1 million in government money from the federal faith-based initiatives program, threw concerts[*] and gave silver rings to youths who vowed chastity and/or abstinence until marriage.

*concerts with highly paid pop stars like Christina Aguilera, which is what the article was about

Still think that faith-based initiatives are a good way to spend tax-payer dollars? Because personally I think this proves that the "faith" is a blind faith that ridiculous ideas like this would work on kids. At least with reality-based initiatives, they have been scientifically developed.

And this brings me to a post on Broadsheet, Salon's women's blog. Apparently, after 1 school year of their abstinence-only sex ed program in Canton, Ohio, 65 girls out of 490 got pregnant, so they are cancelling the program and re-introducing safe-sex teachings.

Too much faith, not enough reality.

LMP in Packing Hell

Just a reminder for those of you looking for new posts, we're closing on the new house this week and moving, plus my son just had his second birthday, so I've got my hands full and haven't had time to write. This war would be hard to write about anyway, and frankly, I don't care as much about the whole Joe Lieberman thing as I probably should as a card-carrying Democrat.

Actually I'm not one, but I did go to Hillary Clinton's web site and signed up to be a Hill's Angel, and got a wallet card, for which my mother would certainly decry I was going to hell.

I used to work in political fundraising, as you know, and all that stuff is so silly. They just wanted my email address. There was a great Dave Barry piece back in the 1980s about how his wife accidentally got on some list and the Republicans sent her a whole packet of crap, including a 1-800 line to "The US Senate" (what line is that?) and a lapel pin "that symbolized her special relationship with the President". I wish I could remember the whole thing, my favorite part was, "Since that time I had a possum trapped in my garage, I can't think of a time that I needed a special emergency number to the US Senate."

People often ask me if I would vote for Hillary. I can't think of anyone I'd like to vote for more, other than Barack Obama. I think she's really great, and I think she's done a great job as Senator.

The problem is, there are a lot of people who hate her on a weird visceral level, whether because they hated her as First Lady/Clinton's wife, or because they hated Bill and that's enough to hate her. I personally don't get it, but you know, there are still lots of people who "want to have a beer with" Bush and personally, I would run screaming in the other direction, after having stopped to spit on him. No, in this dry heat, I wouldn't spare the spit.

My parents fall into this category. For numerous reasons, these two centrists moved right over the years. There's a great saying, I don't know by whom, that if you're not a liberal when you're young you're hard-hearted, but if you're not a conservative when you're older you're an idiot. But I digress. These two great people moved right, and Mom even got to the point where she was really crowing about it, in those heady days of 1994 and the Contract with America.

Now, after all the hell this administration has put us through, they have had enough and are starting to swing back to the left again. I don't know how far they would really swing, (my parents as swingers, sorry, that makes me laugh!) but they are certainly as ready to give the Left a shot as I was to give the Right a shot.

However, they still hate Hillary right down to their toes, as far as I can tell, and would never vote for her even if the other ticket was Cheney/Rumsfeld. And if I can't get these two votes, so ripe for picking, to go to Clinton, then she'll never make it to the White House.

Like I told my mom, I can't vote for her because you won't vote for her.

Well, I'll leave you with that as I go back to packing. Remember, there might not be any more new posts until after we're settled in next week. Till then, watch the skies!