Finding Fun Where I Can

 Does anyone besides me recall a time when it was a rarity to find an error in a book or a newspaper? It just didn't happen.....much.


Nowadays, - even with magical spell checking abilities -  it seems to happen all the time. Either those who deal in words are getting careless, or they are less well-educated or there is just so much more verbiage floating around, not only on paper but sent into the ether, that it overwhelms human capacity to handle with care.


I usually enjoy finding some of the errors - such as those found in directions for a product that is supplied by a manufacturer in China or Japan.


Small and gentle amusements, these. But amusing nonetheless.


Today I found a bonus in a review published in the Daily Beast discussing Frank Schaeffer's new book - Sex, Mom and God.

While the title of it indicates it may tell me much more than I want to know about his father, sex and fundamentalist crazies, I did so enjoy reading what some truly clueless person typed, and even more fun was imagining the perplexity of that person in trying to figure out what it was that was being said, and interpreting it according to his or her fund of information. Herewith is the paragraph.

“Who was Mom as she might have been if part of her brain had not been crippled by her missionary parents’ indoctrination of her, just as the bones of the feet of little girls in China were once deformed by food-finding?” he wonders.


Thank you Daily Beast proofreaders. I am so pleased you didn't find that before I did.

Hell, forget proofreaders; how about a fact checker?

-30- 

The 'Rime' of the Political Pundit

Do pundits ever apologize for proffering predictions that don't pan out?

I don't think so. Or at least I don't recall any. Not surprising, considering that knowledgeable sounding  opinions falleth like rain from the sky...and runneth into the sewers where most of them belong.

These political nabobs should have to wear their pronouncements around their necks for several days after their guesses have not materialized as the punishment provided in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner .

I am hoping so much criticism of Obama will light a fire under complacent voters. I would like to think that all the negativity coming from Progressives is intended to worry the lazy liberals and blot out the apathy of the sometimes-voter. We need all the bodies warmed up, armed and ready. Armed with good information, that is.

There is no one in the current lineup that worries me. Well, that's a lie....they all are worrisome in that they are all either God driven or ego driven or just plain wrong-headed. What gives me pause is that I never believed  Georgie Porgie stood a chance, and even though he didn't win, he got enough idiots to vote for him that the GOP godfathers could use the supremely unsupreme Supremes to  pull his fat from the fire.

However, what I've seen of Huntsman is concerning. He looks good, he sounds good and he is a new flavor. He could be trouble. I hope the media are committed to searching for truth, not looking to fall in love.

Thank goodness Keith will be back by Monday....this Monday, Current TV. And he will have David Shuster, a bulldog reporter who has similar integrity and great energy.

And away we go......................

-30-

23 Sons And She Named them All Dave (Seuss)

The most adamant and the most frightening and offensively determined Right-to-Lifer at the GOP debate in New Hampshire last night was Michelle Bachmann, who established her bona fides with dispatch.

She told the cheering audience that in addition to giving birth to five children, she fostered 23 others. In case you  missed it the first time, she said it at least once, maybe twice, again. She obviously considers it a badge of honor. And I guess it is if you consider most of us normal women are lucky if we live through the raising of our own. Yes,sir, she deserves props...for something. Maybe a very big house and nerves of steel.


In my view, there wouldn't be much of a  need for anyone to take in 23 foster children if unfortunate women, who have been blessed with little but a fertile womb, were allowed dominion over their bodies. 

Google provides the information that she sheltered as many as four teenagers at one time. What altruism. I've had two in the house at one time and could barely live through the noise and the laundry.


Of course, since she didn't adopt these children there was a bonus to giving them houseroom. Minnesota pays foster parents about $25 a day per teen, plus a clothing allowance. 


Close to $1,000 a week would be a very welcome addition to any household. But surely she refused to accept payment since keeping alive all eggs that have encountered a sperm, and cutting money from  federal and state budgets represent her almost manically stated raison d'etre.

Primal Instincts Stink

I don't like to admit it but I suppose there are some L(l)iberals who have hate issues about anyone or anything that is different. (All mine are with Conservatives and religious Fundamentalists and, therefore, completely justified!)

Those wayward few of us may not have shed all the prejudices left over from earlier, narrower-minded generations that pitted themselves against the unknown and "foreign" because these represented potential danger.

But even these throwbacks don't evidence the soul-searing hatred that seems to emanate primarily from C(c)onservative flavors.

An acquaintance, whose mother and father were old country Irish, recently displayed a photograph of his 1960s wedding. His lovely wife has a slightly "different" aspect - meaning she does not look classically Irish. Shortly after the ceremony he recalled that his mother asked the bride's mother, who looks very much like her, "What nationality are you people, anyway?"

I can visualize the expression on her face as she asked this excessively offensive question because I am now both a resident of a southern state and an avid consumer of political news.  I see this expression often on:

• The elderly woman who has run a local greasy spoon here in Scottsville,  Virginia since before segregation ended and she still resents having to serve "coloreds."

• Bloviating politicians who represent southern and "Heartland" districts, particularly rural areas. (The name given to those Midwestern States that are so entrenched in insular and parochial values always amuses me. It seems such an oxymoron.) 

• Pillars of society in all the U.S. Gulf States who discuss the "problem" of immigrants in a manner reserved for discussions of roaches and maggots.

• Texas schoolboard officials who have taken on the responsibility to see that all U.S. public school textbooks hew the Christian line.

• Ministers who profess to be Christian but  who want to kill Muslims and burn the Koran.

I suppose when you consider mankind is only a  million years out of caves, the atavistic responses (that identify anyone different as dangerous) are bound to linger. Maybe in another million years it will be bred out of us.

Or maybe not.

Bearding the Gorgon

Piers Morgan interviewed Ann Coulter last night.

Maybe I am going to be one of his fans.

The interview was irritating, as are all encounters with that woman and her weird affectations - i.e.:

*  Naked shoulders, designed to be sexy but which she hunches up like a consumptive.

*  The long blond hair that she tosses and runs her hands through in what I suppose is meant to be a sensual fashion but puts me in mind of a haystack in a stiff wind.

*  Her peripatetic tongue which seems to fork through those fine white teeth like that of an asp or adder - whichever carries the more toxic venom.

Last night, her Adam's Apple took a back seat to the  false eyelashes that were not quite correctly in place as they batted over her left eye at a precarious angle.

I know she loves driving  liberal thinkers insane with her lunatic attacks which she delivers with such forceful certitude that those with a functioning brain are rocked back on their heels just by the force of her gall.

A real charmer. 

Somehow, Piers was able to parry her  babble with a kind of equanimity I think she found unsettling.

Beyond that, he threw her a curve by inquiring into her personal life and in so doing revealed that this harridan is embarrassed by her condition....whatever that might be. That she is 50? That she is unmarried but was engaged three times? That she sleeps until noon?

It was a satisfying interview, Piers. It was almost like watching a boy scout pouring water on a witch.

Is Nowhere Safe From the Purveyors of Piety?

It could almost make you believe synchronicity is a law instead of a theory. You put something into the ether and, by golly, there is a manifestation!

Just when I blog that I resent people pushing their religious and moral points of view at me, two bible thumpers appear on my doorstep - with bibles in hand, and wearing lady-like-length dresses and shoes with two-inch heels.

It's hard to believe since I live in real country. No houses within sight or sound. They had to drive a half mile from the road to my gate, and then another half mile from my gate to my house. And it is 95 degrees in the shade today, with near 100 percent humidity. Is that a kind of self-flagellation?

What would possess anyone to do that?

I am sure my anti-religion fervor is at least as strong as their fundamentalist fervor, but not in my wildest nightmare could I see myself traveling to their doorsteps to tell them that religion is the root of all evil and ask them why they don't read about all the miracles of nature instead of those cruel and violent fairy tales they are addicted to.

What they need is a subscription to National Geographic or tune into the Science Guy.

But would I be rude enough to drive up to their houses and tell them that?
 Certainly not.

-30-

At My Age, Pushback's Become a Way of Life

Just as I was reveling in the pleasures provided by the quick and open minds of Mark Morford,  Bill Maher and Keith Olbermann this morning, an acquaintance provided me with a cold shower of reality. i.e. there are more closed minds out there than even a quick and open mind can count.

What arrived in my mailbox was a link to a web site called NewsBusters.

This product of published parochial views claims it is in the business of "Exposing and Combating Liberal Media Bias."

Do Conservatives not know the meaning of "liberal?"

* broad: showing or characterized by broad-mindedness; "a broad political stance"; "generous and broad sympathies";  "tolerant of his opponent's opinions"

That should preclude "bias" by definition. Where can you find bias in an open mind?

This liberal entertains a view, opinion or bit of intelligence and, being thoughtful and reasonably intelligent herself, examines it and either adopts it or discards it.

This liberal is one who is tolerant of all people - except the willfully ignorant and those who seek to ram their views down her throat.

Then I, like most liberals, tend to get a mite testy.