Getting to Know You (and Like You - Maybe)?

This past Sunday's Meet the Press had Tom Friedman discussing the expansion of worldwide inter-connectedness. He pointed out that Facebook didn't exist for most people when he wrote his flat earth book seven years ago (I can never remember the title, even though he mentions it every time you see him).

I joined the social network a couple of years ago in an effort to put myself where people from the way-back-beyond past might find me. No one from my childhood has, but I've made a number of new friends.

(You can tell when you have a good selection of new friends on Facebook -  the old ones start poaching them, and vice versa. Therein lies the interconnected value of idea exchange.)

In the last year, Facebook has become important to me in the main because friends - those who are active contributors - will find something interesting and post it where I, and the rest of the world, can find it - and then it gets  passed on again and again and again.

I've seen breathtaking photographs, videos of gloriously silly things, nostalgic pictures and prose, alarming news and careful research compiled and shared by accomplished people who I would never otherwise know. And, of course, there is always the up-to-the-minute political insanity of our times.

And I haven't moved anything except hand and eye.

Thoroughly amazing, what?

But even with the availability of this rich fare of information, still the uninformed thrive; multiply, even. It's almost as if they are being nourished by snapping up the scraps of misinformation that spill off a banquet table that has room only for facts, and this detritus  becomes soiled and even covered with the spittle of the curs who inhabit the underside of everything, and chew with open-mouthed avarice.

And I wonder...is it different? Have people become dumber and dirtier since I was a girl, or is it that each aging generation is critical of the mores of the new one? Aren't there lyrics from the musical Flower Drum Song  that tell us that?

Is that all it is? Or is it something more sinister?

Yes, I think it is much, much more sinister. And, because of our inter-connectedness, it is going to travel faster and faster and faster.

It's going to be a bumpy ride.

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Smarter, Smaller and Secular

Wham! Bam! Thank you, m'am! An earthquake and a hurricane in the same week in Virginia. Phenomenal.

My aversion to Augusts is well-founded.  Nothing good ever happened in any August I recall.

The 5.9 earthquake and its subsequent aftershocks didn't do much here on my little patch of earth except get my adrenaline going; and, if the truth be known, neither did the hurricane. At least not in view of what it could have done. 

Bewilderingly, the much vaunted rage of Irene caused no loss of power.  We weren't totally unscathed since we lost a decoratively placed, 24-inch diameter tree that took down a 14-foot gate, nicked the corner of the roof and left a big mess. However, that big mess is - three days after the event - being cleaned up with dispatch by a man and a machine that chews up and spits out branches with  authority. 

What did people do before we had machines? 

With no fossil fueled mechanical power, there was nothing in past millennia  that could make our modern world go. Horsepower and manpower have been left in a ditch.

With the lack of the Internet, television, movies, rock stars, NASCAR, speedboats and jets in the ancient world, there was hardly a single time-wasting thing to do except burn witches, torture heretics, lynch whomever and make babies.

Although, the advent of all this labor-saving and entertainment-producing machinery doesn't seem to have hindered that latter pastime because the world appears to be crawling with humanity - all of whom claim to be out of work.

Maybe we need to set aside all our labor saving devices and support ourselves by the sweat of our brows.

Amend that. Only the Republicans with their high-finance puppet-masters and their theocratic fundamentalist overlords should be set to manually laborious work - when it's scarce and when it's abundant - and maybe this will conjure up a bracing jolt of self-awareness when it comes to their lack of interest in making the populace better educated, scientifically prepared for a productive future, and providing a safer place for all those children they would force us to have.

I'm pretty sure that with a smarter, smaller and secular population this country would be some kind of wonderful.    

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Brain Freeze

I see I've had a few visitors since I was last here. My apologies to anyone who may have stopped by to fuel up on a little home-brewed vitriol.


I loathe the month of August and cannot wrap myself around anything to love or to hate.


Oh, sure....I equally loathe the religious right; hypocrites; life-blood-draining, mind-rotting ideas; liars; political pimps; pissant officials and the Texas school board. And I love small and large animals, bees, lemon-meringue pie and English films.

But I'll have to wait until September to regale you with this hate-nourishing, love-spilling spew. August days are the horse latitudes for me


Stay cool and out of stagnant waters.

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The Idiocracy is at Your Door

My last child was born in 1968. I was a merry little homemaker then; oblivious to any untoward signs of national insanity.

Life was good. Religion was in the churches, and politics pretty much stayed in Washington, D.C., or in the local village and state government houses.

Except for the rotten residual of Viet Nam, the crazies who said Apollo 11 was a hoax and the singularly fascinating presidency of Richard Nixon, there was a normality about the times that seems eerily archaic. 

Little did I dream that was the beginning of the end of an entire era of rational thinking.

The late '60s and early '70s marked the beginning of a new form of life for America - the land of freedom of (and from) religion was exiting and those favoring a  Theocracy were (unbelievably!) gaining a foothold.

This is when televangelism reared its ugly heads - lotsa, lotsa heads: Jimmy Swaggart (the sexual deviant), Jim Bakker (another one), Pat Robertson and James Falwell, et al. 

The immoral Moral Majority took off on the wings of TV, the Charismatic Movement, unspeakable greed and the naivete of "just plain folks" (the heart of America) who believe anyone who can memorize and launch full throated homilies from the Christian Bible, often while weeping,  is to be believed about any aspect of life.

Especially when they tell you all you have to do is pray for the material things that every good Christian deserves and God, or Jesus, or the televangelist will provide them.....just send cash,  keep going to church and vote against anyone who wants to give your tax dollars to the undeserving poor.

And therein lies the genius of these forerunning foot soldiers of God: It's all in the voting. Who'd a thunk it?  Starting with school boards, community projects, village and state positions and ultimately the state houses, the U.S. House of Representatives, the Senate and, holy Nellie, the Presidency of the United States of America. God in his wisdom is running the country....right into the ground.

Back then I didn't pay much attention to the televangelists bleating for money and agitating for governmental representation. I figured every normal person was ignoring it. Maybe they were. But maybe we are now in a vast left wing minority of normality - and we ignore this at our peril.


Beware, normal people. The Apostolic Reformation has begun and it promises to take us to an Idiocracy the likes of which have not been seen since the Inquisition.

-30-

And For My Next Act....

I caught the tail end of an interview Piers Morgan conducted with Bob Woodruff - the ABC newsman critically injured in Iraq five or six years ago.

The subject appeared to be his perceived life-after-death experience. Unfortunately I  missed the Nightline program alluding to this phenomenon. 

I'm not going to offer any enlightenment on the discussion; only the part where Piers commented on Woodruff's belief that he had died and then saw his body from above. He said he felt he chose to come back from what looked like a nice, bright and safe place.

No argument from me. I believe this is entirely possible. What I have a quibble with was Piers' observation that this would flummox  atheists whom he maintains are at odds with any notion of life beyond death.


As an atheist, this assertion mystifies me. Even if one does not believe there is an old man with a white beard hanging out in the sky and decreeing who will "live" in heaven or hell, this does not mean that all atheists deny the possibility of life after death. Why does such a belief have to come with a side order of gods and demons?

I am in constant awe of life, the universe, nature....all the mysteries that dance in our heads. Never will I believe anything of life is really lost. We should know from our experience on Earth that all things live and die and recycle. It can be a messy process and create massive pain (as in the Texas-size mess of man-made crappy  plastic in the Pacific), but ultimately Nature finds a use for everything.

Even us.

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Gather Ye Values While Ye May

"Pepsi Cola hits the spot, 

12 full ounces, that's a lot,

Twice as much for a nickel, too,

Pepsi Cola is the drink for you."

Catchy jingle that played from the 1930s to 1950. I found it on You Tube. Can you believe a bottle of Pepsi cost 5 cents? Can you believe there was a time you could buy anything for 5 cents? 

I'm not sure if you can today. In fact, I don't think I remember the last time a saw a nickel. Dimes and quarters and pennies seem to make up the contents of my change  purse.

Having looked up the former price of the 12 oz. of  Pepsi I buy today and pay about 35 cents for in a 12-pack, I thought I would check out what gas cost the same year. Google says 18 cents a gallon!

Back when Pepsi was five cents for 12 ounces, a gallon (128 ounces) of gasoline cost a little more than three bottles of soda.

I filled up the gas tank today. Each  gallon cost $3.40.

I'm as horrified and a little scared as the rest of the world's non-millionaires are. But even when it was cheap, why did we ever think a gallon of colored water was worth more than a gallon of gasoline?

-30-

Verbal Tschotskes

I remember back to the first Bush presidency when the word "demagogue" came into vogue. A newsman was interviewing Barbara Bush and she was criticizing the demagogues. "What is a demagogue," asked the reporter. Babs looked non-plussed   and then, honestly, said, "Well, I don't know." Maybe, for effective communication,  we should go back to grunts. 

Kicking the can down the road
 Just running up the credit card
Holding a gun to our heads
Don't tax the job creators
Making cuts on the backs of the poor
Time to take our government back
Global warming alarmists
Short term political gain
Cut all the waste and fraud in the government programs
My way or the highway
The government is broken
Put God back in the schools
Gay bashing
Play the race card
From day one
24/7
I don't answer hypotheticals
Homosexuality is a lifestyle
The lame stream media
We have to get ourselves on a tax trajectory
Get the government out of our lives
The American people have spoken
The government is broken
Guns don't kill people, etc., etc.
Waiting for the other shoe to drop
Obamacare
Death panels
Pray away the gay
Pro abortion
Zero tolerance
Life begins at conception.
Think outside the box
Homeland security
Writing checks our grandchildren can't cash
Spending our children's inheritance
Fair and balanced
Not equivalent
Mission accomplished
What would Jesus do?
WTF and OMG

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