I don't pretend to be a political wonk. I can't pull specifics about when senate bills were enacted, or which senators introduced them, out of my ass at a moment's notice. I can't tell you what, exactly, Herbert Hoover did, or didn't do, that makes his name synonymous with "lousy president," although I do know that comparing a politician to Hoover is not a compliment. But I am opinionated and I can write a fairly cohesive blog post ... soooooo ... since politics is taking up a lot of my time and attention these days (and, what the hell, everyone else is blogging about it whether they're qualified or not) ...


I read yet another comment on yet another political blog today that said:

Obama still gets a pass no matter what he has hidden in his past, nor what he says and does today. The hatchet men are out in full force against Sen. Clinton. I am becoming firmly convinced that all these so-called Liberals, are neocons in disguise. They are rooting for Obama, because they know in the upcoming debates, even McCain will make mince meat out of him. Good bye my once wonderful country.

A pass??

What other candidate has had such a thorough geneology vetting, or had every DNA strand dissected under the media microscope? When did you last read a news article speculating about why Hillary Clinton's elderly and infirm relatives aren't stumping for her or whether she has distant relatives in other countries? Has anyone questioned the legitimacy of McCain's parents' marriage or interviewed the girl he dated in high school (assuming she's still alive and coherent)?

Hell's bells, I know more about Barack Obama's family tree than I do my own. I know how his grandparents on both sides felt about the inter-racial marriage of their children. I know who his second or third cousin once or twiced removed is, and what his politics are from halfway around the globe. I know every school he ever attended, who his high school friends were, what freakin' brand of cigarettes he used to smoke and what flavor ice cream he bought Michelle on their first date. The man barely knew his father, but I know all the sordid details even he didn't know about Barack Sr.'s drinking problem and domestic abuse issues. I don't know that shit about Clinton or McCain, nor do I want or need to. If it has any relevance at all, it's that it took a lot of self-discipline for him not to end up just one more fucked up victim of his childhood, boozing away his identity crisis and taking out his abandonment and anger management issues on his wife and kids. He ought to win the presidency by virtue of his ability to rise above his circumstances if nothing else.

And, by the way, when did Hawaii's legitimacy as a state of this union become questionable?

Numerous actions and admissions by the U.S. government since 1893 indicate that Hawaii is not a lawful territory or state of the U.S. and that Hawaii is actually a foreign country under hostile occupation by the U.S. Therefore, the claim that Hawaii is a state of the U.S. is fraudulent.

I'm beginning to think that before they can vote (or leave their homes unattended) natural-born citizens ought to have to take the same basic civics test naturalized citizens take. Here's another specious explanation of Obama's non-citizenship, culled from that soiree of sophistry we call, ironically, the Women Who Enjoy Thinking forum on AOL. The circuitous reasoning here is really pretty heady stuff. All buckled in? Okay, here goes:

Sen. Obama's biological father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., was a native of Kenya and returned to his own country (via Harvard) after Barack Jr. was born in Hawaii. Barack Hussein Obama Sr., a Muslim and member of the Luo tribe with political aspirations in Kenya, was not a citizen of the United States and was not a descendant of American slaves, as some people seem to believe. So one can't say that Barack Hussein Obama Sr. was an African-American or even a Kenyan-American. He was 100% Kenyan, plain and simple, and abandoned his half-American son when he went home to the wife and family he already had in Kenya.

Sen. Obama's biological mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was the descendant of an old American family. She was the only child of Stanley and Madelyn (Payne) Dunham. I read somewhere that Madelyn Dunham, Barack's white grandmother whom he dissed in his speech, was vice president of a bank and financed his education. Apparently, Barack Obama Jr. had no white siblings. His half-siblings are Kenyan and Indonesian, born to Muslim fathers.

It's not clear whether Barack's biological father and mother were ever actually married and then divorced, even though some articles refer to them that way. Two genealogists who did Obama family trees gave no date or reference to marriage / divorce records, which professional genealogists would normally do; and I saw Barack himself quoted as saying something to the effect that he was reluctant to look into it too carefully because of what he might find.

Barack's mother thereafter married a Muslim man from Indonesia, Lolo Soetoro, and moved there with him, where she had a baby, Barack's younger half-white sister. Barack attended Muslim school in Indonesia as "Barry" Soetoro, but it's not clear whether his mother's husband adopted him. At any rate, she sent him back to Hawaii to be raised by his grandparents, and I read that he took the name Barack Hussein Obama Jr. sometime after returning to Hawaii.

Barack Hussein Obama Jr. claims U.S. citizenship by virtue of being born in Hawaii (although there are those who dispute that claim). I read that he also has Kenyan
citizenship under a Constitution adopted in 1963 and that he has never renounced
his Kenyan citizenship.

So Barack Hussein Obama Jr. is half American and half Kenyan by birth and also by citizenship.

Well, as a matter of fact, Obama does have dual-citizenship. Many people do, including Hizzoner the Governator. However, natural-born US citizenship trumps foreign citizenship if you live in the US and have US citizenship by birthright. Here's a refresher course for anyone who's forgotten their junior high civics class. I realize it's not as interesting as the rant above, but here's what the 14th amendment to the US Constitution says about the citizenship of children:

Birthright citizenship in the United States of America follows from the rule of jus soli whereby any person born within the United States and subject to its jurisdiction is automatically granted US citizenship. This status is unaffected by the legal status or the citizenship of that individuals mother or father. Children born to foreign diplomats or to hostile enemy forces or born on U.S. territory while it is under the control of a foreign power are not considered subject to U.S. jurisdiction and therefore are not citizens at birth.

Birthright citizenship of individuals born outside of the United States is passed from mother to child following from the rule of jus sanguinis (right of blood). Jus sanguinis is not conveyed to individuals born out side the US where only the father is a US citizen.

In addition, birthright citizenship is conveyed to children adopted from foreign countries and brought to the United States by US citizens, and to children of "unknown parentage found in the United States while under the age of five years, until shown, prior to attaining the age of twenty-one years, not to have been born in the United States."

Following are the requirements for the office of US President:

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

Since there's not enough time to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1866 (or for Hawaii to secede from the Union) before November, I think we can safely assume that Barack Obama's "claim" to citizenship is going to hold up. His birth certificate proves he's over the age of thirty-five. He's been spotted on various occasions over the past fourteen years hanging around voting and drafting legislation in the Illinois and US Senate, engaging in suspicious home-buying schemes with Tony Rezko and getting his weekly dose of anti-American indoctrination by Rev. Jeremiah Wright on Sunday's. Eligibility case closed ... find another loophole, assholes.

Speaking of Rev. Wright, Obama certainly hasn't been given a pass on his religious affiliations, unlike McCain and Clinton. One of the inalienable rights holding up the foundation of this country is Freedom of Religion, and yet everyone from major news affiliates to the outer fringes of the blogosphere have weighed in on Senator Obama's choice of church and pastor.

Up there in the requirements for the office of President you can clearly see that those dunder-headed framers of the Constitution completely forgot to include a requirement for (or against) any religious affiliation. They treated the office of President as if it were a secular office! You think they intended for the President to fairly govern the entire population, whether that President is Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Unitarian, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Quaker, Hindu, Shinto, Zoroastrian, Church of Satan, Wiccan, snake-handlin' Church of God with Signs Following or atheist. Well, okay ... Obama is fully prepared to do that. If you listen to the keynote address he gave before the Sojourner's group in Washington, DC, he clearly states that one's personal religious practice and beliefs have no place in forming public policy. He is perfectly capable of separating the way he chooses to practice his freedom of religion on Sunday from his job in the government. I doubt most of us know as much about the Sunday habits of our neighbors, our co-workers, or the CEO's we work for as we do now about Obama's ... nor do we need to in order to live our lives, do our jobs and let others live and do theirs. You'd hardly know it, but we still claim to separate church and state in this country.

Still, the media and the true patriots and the white folks are hammering away at the "pastor problem" on the basis that they wouldn't choose that church or that pastor. Well, hell, I wouldn't choose any of their pastors, either. I don't do church ... but if I did I'd be more likely to frequent a black church than a white one ... they're just a ton less boring. Nevertheless, after cherry-picking a few out-of-context statements from a handful of sermons Wright gave in his thirty-five years of sermonizing, stringing them together to give the worst possible impression of Rev. Wright, and handing Obama as much flak as he's been taking for them, you'd think he wrote the motherfuckers. Did he hear them? Maybe. Maybe not. He probably takes some Sundays off.

I did hear them. I've listened to the "offending" sermons in their entirety, and I didn't find them remotely as offensive as the hate-filled rantings of Jerry Falwell (may he slowly roast in hell like a pig on a spit), James Dobson, Pat Robertson or that lunatic, Fred Phelps. How in the hell is Rev. Wright's call for god to damn America any more inflammatory than the Crispy Coalition and Pocus in the Fanny's declaration that he already has?

Every jot and tittle of Obama's personal life -- including the name he inherited and had nothing to do with -- is being dragged through the muck because he has no real scandals, no real political blunders, no extramarital sexual improprieties with hookers or staffers or queers (oh my), no shady past and no real dishonor to attack. If that's being "given a pass" then by all means, let's stop doing it right this minute, and let's start treating him like Hillary Clinton ... the entitled heir to the White House who can "mis-speak," flip-flop like a trout in a skillet all day long and then hop into bed with Richard Scaife for a little "no hard feelings" editorial board reunion:

This alone has to amount to some sort cosmic encounter like
something out of a Wagner opera. Remember, this is the guy who spent millions of
dollars puffing up wingnut fantasies about Hillary's having Vince Foster whacked
and lots of other curdled and ugly nonsense. Scaife was the nerve center of the
Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

Perhaps the reason the original commenter (waaaay up at the top of this post) didn't feel Obama's being raked over the coals enough is that he just keeps on smiling that big infectious smile and doesn't appear to be suffering. It's not his style. His style is to respond rather than react, to understand that attacks come from fear, and to give those attacks exactly the measure of response they deserve, knowing full well that most of them say more about the people who launch them than they do about him.

My earnest belief is that, if Obama goes down in defeat, it's not because he doesn't deserve the office ... it's because this country doesn't deserve him. And in that event, we will most surely get what we do deserve ... another unending round of fraud and deception, broken promises, White House drama, pandering to the military-industrial complex and special interests, self-serving politics, increased poverty for the middle and lower class, increased wealth for the wealthy, escalating war, global enmity, recession and impotent hopelessness.

There's an upside to our chickens coming home to roost ... we're gonna need the eggs.

Kwach

Mistress President??

Okay, so this morning I sat down with my coffee and opened my e-mail, as usual, and found a link Ev had sent me in the middle of the night while she was winding down from work, as usual, and that's where my morning took a bizarre turn ...

The link she sent me was to the video of the McCain Girls (they use that phrase lightly) singing "It's Raining McCain" (which, if you haven't seen it, is worth checking out ... and don't give up on it until you see the floating dismembered heads and the girl bathing herself in little McCains ... really).

So that led me to follow some links to a few obscure blogs where I stumbled across this video by some Hillary fans singing "Making Our Dreams Come True" a la Laverne & Shirley. It's a series of still shots, and they go by fairly quickly, but about halfway through the video I could swear I saw ... nooooo ... couldn't be ...

So I rewound the video. There it was again! I paused. I gaped. I guffawed. There, buried deep in the middle of the video, is the subliminal take-home message. Hillary is going to make our dreams come true! Especially if our dream is to take it up the ass in a really big way:

Vote Hillary ... and Bring Your Lube!

Kwach

Bunnies and Baskets and Floods, oh my!

As requested, here are the pictures of Ev's Easter basket. Nothing says, "Some Bunny Loves You!" like an assortment of hoppy ales, tasty stouts and dark chocolates!

After Ev left for work, I drove down to Cairo with the kids to see if our house is under water yet. So far, so good! Cairo is still dry, but it sits at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, surrounded by a levee wall on the Ohio side and dirt levees on the Mississippi side. Both rivers have risen to about 53 feet now ... 14 feet above flood stage ... and expect to crest at 55 feet in the next couple of days.

To the right is a shot of the Mississippi River from the top of the Cairo levee. To the right of the levee, about 200 yards away, are the houses of Cairo. To the left of the levee, that dark, heavy tree line off in the distance is the normal bank of the river.

Below is a shot from the bridge to Missouri, where you can just barely make out a farm, or what's left of it, in the middle of what's usually a field.

This next shot is from the levee gate on the Ohio that (usually) leads to an access road for vehicles needing barge access. You can see the "No Parking" sign just past the flotsam. Downtown Cairo lies 200 feet behind me ... at the bottom of a steep hill.

Next, we drove across the bridge into Kentucky. The line of barges on the left are docked along what is normally the western bank of the Ohio River. Today the Ohio River extends from it's western bank to the hill leading up to the town of Wickliffe, five miles away.

These are raised train trestles in Kentucky. These are the lucky ones. Most of them were under water.

Between the two rivers is the southernmost tip of Illinois, a spit of land known as Fort Defiance. Ordinarily, Fort Defiance is a broad, grassy State Park with a tree-lined drive leading to a tower from which you can observe the muddy water of the Ohio and the clearer water of the Mississippi mixing and heading south to the Gulf of Mexico. Today we could only see the top of tower from the Kentucky bridge, sitting in the middle of the river with water up to the floor of the observation deck. This is the entrance to Fort Defiance ...

And a view from there of the bridges that link Illinois, Missouri and Kentucky.

It looks like this is about as bad as it's going to get here, and Cairo will survive the Flood of 2008 unscathed. But this Arizona desert native is duly impressed. That is one hell of a lot of water!

Happy Easter!

Kwach

Ho Ho Ho! Merry Easter!

Well it's Easter. Since I'm at work and not at home, I can't post the picture of the most excellent Easter basket ever. The Easter Bunny was extra sensitive to my celebratory needs. The longer the Easter Bunny and I shack up, the better the Bunny gets at assessing my needs. When Lori and the kids get home, I'll make sure she posts some photos.

This year's Easter workfest has been less exciting than last year's, except for the fact that every single analyzer is struggling with it's crappy software issues and alarms are periodically going off everywhere. The blood banking machine can't read the bar codes, the hematology analyzer can't remember how to make slides, the platelet shaker thinks it's battery is dangerously low...and it's all lies. The analyzers would really like to be home celebrating, incubating their peeps and measuring the glucose and specific gravity of the chocolate bunnies. They're hoping to malinger their way to a day off, but I'm on to their tricks. No dice, analyzers. If I have to be at work, so do you.

Pretty much the only business we're getting today is E.R. patients, and they're mostly kids who ate 10 pounds of chocolate and a few Easter eggs that sat out all night, and have sore bellies now. This supports my "most parents are morons" theory. If you give your kids 10 pounds of chocolate for breakfast, why are you surprised when they come down with a sudden onset of nausea and vomiting? Maybe you can test this theory on yourselves be eating 20% of your body weight's worth of chocolate in a half hour, then wait two hours and assess the health of your digestive system. Get it now?

Enjoy your holiday! Remember, Jesus died for your Easter basket!

The Reason We Have Kids (Besides that our birth control failed)

Okay, we're all in agreement that George Bush is a moron. Everytime he opens his mouth something stupid escapes. Imagine being Laura and having to listen to him all the time. I'd have killed him by now. But aside from being a famous idiot, or maybe because if it, he's coined a few phrases that have become part of the national lexicon: the Decider, fool me twice...I won't get fooled again, and a bunch more.

Lori and I were talking about phrases we picked up from our kids that have become part of our family lexicon. Here are of some of Katie's greatest hits:

1. There's no "I" in "can't", but there's an "I" in "I can't"
2. He's a sexaholic. He's addicted to sexahol.
3. There's no "me" in "team." Oh wait...yes there is.

What are yours? What phrases belong to your family alone, and make you laugh every time you use them?

Isn't That What You Women Want?

I had a conversation a few weeks back (and forgive me if I've already told this story...I've been hit on the head) with a coworker from Nigeria, which obviously makes him black. Okay, not entirely obviously, since I'm sure there are white people in Nigeria, but he isn't one of them.

So my Nigerian Coworker says to me, "Well, Evelyn? Are you supporting Mrs. Clinton?" and I said no, I was leaning more towards Obama. Then he said, "I don't understand you women. You all say you want a woman in the White House, but then you don't support her."

I asked him who he was supporting, and he said Mrs. Clinton. So I got to say, "I don't understand you black people. You say you want a black man in the White House, but then you don't support him."

Clearly it's not as simple as that. I do feel a little like a gender traitor by not supporting Hillary, but a lot of that visceral guilt is at least offset by the fact that at least I'm not lining up behind yet another white guy. Although I did originally like Kucinich, it wasn't because I believed that his commie views had a chance in hell of inspiring the electorate to shuck off the last eight years of creepy reactionary totalitarianism; instead, I supported him with the same hopeless affection I'd feel for my son in a pick-up game against Michael Jordan. "Come on, Dennis! You can score at least once before you get crushed!"

But now, in the race between Hillary and Obama, I'm supporting Obama. Partly because I think he's a straightforward guy with sound ideas and a willingness to see more than one perspective, and partly because I just have Clinton fatigue. I think Hillary would probably make a fine president, and I'll completely support her if she's nominated, but I'm just tired of the Clintons.

I know more about the Clintons, both professionally and personally, than I do about members of my own family. I know the fairytale story of Hillary's misguided beginnings as a Goldwater Girl before her political epiphany. I know the story of the Clinton's troubled marriage, their unstoppable political ascendancy, their endless scandals, perceived scandals, and non-scandals. Since yesterday, I now know about Hillary's secret association with a right-wing religious group that combines bible study with shadowy political manipulations (And how secret can it be if I know about it? I'm not exactly roaming the halls of the Capitol building swapping dirt with the power elite).

The national media has spent the last 16 years studying and dissecting the Clinton family, teasing out personal facts about their lives that might titillate conservative radio hosts and sell a few papers. Want to know how many days a year the Clintons sleep in the same bed? How about the history of Hillary's hair? Bill's flings? It's all there, in respectable media outlets like the New York Times as well as the tabloids. Since 1992, so many whispered allegations and conspiracy theories have emerged that it's become somewhat of a family joke in our house. But even assuming that 75% of what's written about the Clintons is either political spin or outright lies, I'm tired of hearing about it. I'd like to have a fresh start, someone new in the White House who at least has a chance of passing some progressive legislation.

I have no doubt that were Hillary Clinton elected President, the Republican party would start a four year long campaign of smear tactics, stonewalling, false accusations of wrongdoing, and various other acts of political mayhem that would paralyze the government and keep Bush's insane policies untouched for another term. And boy-howdy, can we not afford that.

Whether she would be a skillful President is a moot point. She has virtually no chance of being an effective one. She'll never be able to create bipartisan cooperation on any issues. She is the poster child for partisan gridlock. If Hillary Clinton were to propose legislation that said that hacking up puppies with a machete was bad, I have no doubt that the Republican Party machine would be able to produce 15 experts in puppy-hacking that would repudiate her, while implying that she actually has a sordid secret association with an underground Satanic puppy-murdering group that wants to increase your taxes and abort your grandchildren.

We don't have time for that foolishness. We need someone in the White House that can actually get something quickly moving to get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan, heal our battered economy, restore the Constitution and regain our respect in the rest of the world.

That's the second best thing Obama brings to the table. He's not Hillary Clinton.

Earth Calling Hillary ...

I just finished telling Ev why I don't blog about politics, and then I ran across a blog entry by CBS News' Ryan Corsaro that's going to make a big fat blogging liar out of me. I can't leave this one alone.

While Obama was giving a landmark speech in Philadelphia on race in America, Hillary Clinton was posing for a photo-op with Philadelphia Mayor Joe Nutter, former ambassador Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame and fielding questions from the media. They asked her the obvious question ... what did she think of Obama's speech?

"I did not have the chance to see or to read yet Senator Obama's speech,” said Clinton. “But I am very glad he gave it. It's an important topic. Issues of race and gender in America have been complicated throughout our history and they are complicated in this primary campaign,” continued Clinton. “There have been detours and pitfalls along the way.”

With that pithy summation of the issue of race in America, she moved on, hoping to discuss the economy, the Bear-Stearns bailout and the war in Iraq, but those pesky reporters kept harking back to The Speech. This is my favorite passage from Cosaro's article:

Clinton appeared to entertain the idea of making her own speech on these issues, but repeated that she would not agree to make a similar speech until she had viewed the one he made today, also in Philadelphia. “I’ll take a look at it,” Clinton assured members of the press.

Just read that over and over again and think about it.

There's a lot I could say about Obama's speech in Philadelphia, but it's been said already by better political minds than mine. What I will say is that, if I were running against Barack Obama, I'd sure as hell be paying attention to what he's saying. How do you get too busy for that?? When she gets around to watching it on YouTube, I hope it will be painfully obvious that it hardly needs the "me, too!" candidate to "make a similar speech" even if she could. It's not as if she's going to improve on it, any more than she improved on the borrowed "Yes, We Can!" slogan by changing it to "Yes, We Will!"

This is the woman who is running for the Presidency of the United States, and she wants to study the front-runner's speech so she can "make a similar one" of her own. Now there's some leadership for you.

And I just love "I'll take a look at it." Like she took a look at the intelligence reports before voting to invade Iraq? Don't do us any favors at this late date.

Kwach

Happy Birthday, War.

This morning, as I drove through a blinding rainstorm that's in the process of devastating huge chunks of the midwest, it dawned on me that I was driving through a blinding rainstorm in Oregon exactly five years ago, listening to the same radio pundits discuss the same war, which has now devastated huge chunks of the mideast. That morning they were waving flags and triumphantly broadcasting the opening shots of Operation Iraqi Freedom. This morning they were much more subdued in their praise.

I thought it was wholly appropriate that the heavens should be crying buckets on both occasions.

Sometimes I think there really might be a god, even if all he can do at this point is cry and regret ever playing in that mud puddle.

Kwach

Our Adventure In The Land Of Sky Blue Waters, But Without Any Crappy Beer

In no particular order, this is my life this week:

We've gotten somewhere between six and ten inches of rain in the last two days. Like the snow and ice, it's an interesting thing to see, but not so interesting if you have to actually leave the house and do anything...like work, for instance.

Lori and I went to Wisconsin to pick up the new eBay truck this weekend. It was in the mid-60's here when we left Saturday morning and in the 20s when we arrived in Racine eight hours later. We stayed overnight outside of Chicago and came home Sunday, to temps in the mid-60s again.

Racine was a nifty place. We picked up the truck, loaded it on the car dolly and detoured to the lakefront before going home. Lori had never seen the Great Lakes before and was having trouble wrapping her mind around a landlocked lake that looks like the ocean. It was freezing by the lake, of course, and ungodly windy. But the lake itself was impressive, and so were the hardy little ducks bobbing in it. If I could speak duck I would have told them that the bobbing is much nicer in temperate Southern Illinois.


We had foolishly driven up on the 294 tollway, which cost us $15 in tolls just to get around the city of Chicago with a car dolly. Hello IDOT? Have you considered changing your acronym to IDIOT? The tollroad was that kind of teeth-jarring, suspension-breaking, surface-of-the-moon roadway that leaves you wondering why they don't take some of the bazillion dollars they extort from us downstate rubes and apply it towards a little road maintenance.
On the way home from Racine we made the obligatory stop at a roadside cheese store for cheese curds. Then I was REALLY mad about the $15 in tolls. Think of all the extra curds that would have bought! We bought some cheeses and sausages, tried on some cheesewear (cheese-wedge hats, a cheese fez, cheese slippers. You know...all of life's necessities), and headed back towards Illinois. but we were smarter on the way home. The nice tollbooth lady who was shaking us down for $4.25 at the last booth before we left the tollway told me that we should come back on Route 41, which is free.

She was right. It was free, and therefore much more pleasant. It was also fun to drive past the snooty rich folks in the northern 'burbs. At least, I'm told there were snooty rich folks. When you've achieved a desirably high level of snoot, you get to live in a house that's not visible from the street. We did, however, get to see their gates, which are undoubtedly worth more than our entire family compound, with the cats thrown in.

The weather was fine, the drive was nice and for once, I was actually able to go 65 mph pulling something. I was totally proud of myself until I got pulled over outside of Effingham. The cop said to me, "Did you know the speed limit is 55 when you're pulling a trailer?"

Well, crap. I didn't know that. This was one of those rare times when I wasn't actually making the decision to do something stupid. I told him that no, I didn't know. Actually, I was proud of myself for keeping up with the flow of traffic for a change. I had no idea I wasn't supposed to.

He said, "Look. I've got you on the speeding, and the seatbelt violation. I'm going to write the seatbelt violation up and leave the speeding alone. That way you won't get points on your license." In a moment of rare self-restraint, I didn't say, "I wouldn't get points on my license and I wouldn't be out $55 for the seatbelt violation if you hadn't pulled me over in the first place, Asshole."
Instead, I signed the ticket (Which I threw in the glove box with my other three seatbelt tickets. Don't fence me in.), laughed at his joke, and drove away. Slowly. Really slowly, since he'd pulled me over at the bottom of a hill and I had no momentum to carry me up the next one. I sort of halfway expected him to pull me over again at the top for going below the 45 mph minimum. Look at this thing. Does it actually look like it could speed?

I expect to end up in prison someday for my seatbelt violations, which will be fun because I can get Melon's likeness prison-tattooed on my neck and I'd have an excuse to shave my head and lift weights all day. And I could have conversations like this:
"What are you in for?"
"Murder. You?"
"Seat belt violations. Lots of them. I'm crazy. Don't fuck with me. Oh...and touch the red blankie and I'll shank you."

So...We were home by 4pm. Life was good. We'd gone out into the English world...wait, we're not Amish...We'd gone out into the civilized world, interacted with strangers, and successfully nabbed another truck. And it's a pretty one for a change.

Now I need a weekend to recover from my weekend.

The Drive By, and How It can Improve Your Life.

I haven't blogged in a week. Not because of my recent brain woe or anything similarly dramatic, but because I've been busy driving by our eBay trip to Wi-SCAH-nsin. Towards that end I've invested in a stereo for my favorite truck that, in fact, cost more than I paid for the truck. I also checked out the tow dolly situation with my favorite U-Haul guy, Josh (What? You don't have a favorite U-Haul guy?), and went to HowTo.com to learn how to remove the drive shaft of the eBay truck for transport. I've decided to check it out by removing my own drive shaft and see if it seems pretty straightforward. I even got up early to give it a whirl...but it's raining. A lot. Like Hemingway famously opined, "Why did the chicken cross the road? To die. Alone. In the rain."

So I can't practice my drive shaft removal project unless I'm willing to lay in the freezing mud (I'm not.), and I'm experiencing..surpise!...a little anxiety about that. Which brings me to my two topics for today:

1. I have a not-so-secret longing to go to Auto Mechanic's School.
2. The importance of the Drive-By to any new project.

Auto Mechanic's School

I love messing around with the truck, but my knowledge is limited to whatever I've fixed during it's previous disasters. What I would like is a comprehensive knowledge of how to repair all the structural parts. I know I can't ever do anything with the computer-driven stuff, but I ought to be able to replace a tie rod or a drive shaft or an oil pump without dragging out the book and studying up on it like it's open heart surgery or flying the airplane after the pilot dies.

My theory of everything is that other people do it, whatever "it" is...and I'm as smart as other people, ergo, I ought to be able to do it. In general this works well, however the theory goes a little awry when I'm confronted with the fact that I'm old, small and weak. Sometimes I go track down the Man Friend to loosen things, or the Heating & Cooling guys next door, who are both big and friendly. What I really need is a set of air tools. Then I'd be unstoppable. I'd have this whole place reduced to it's component pieces in minutes!

I want someone to go to Auto Mechanic's School with me so that I'll have someone to help me take shit apart and laugh with when it won't go back together, and someone who'll help deflect the stares of the burly 20 years old guys who'll wonder why their moms have invaded their sacred place. I'm taking applications for the position of Auto Mechanic School Buddy. If anyone is interested, the requirement for the position is pretty much anyone with a pulse. It doesn't even have to be a particularly strong pulse. If you can survive the class with me, you're hired.

My other topic for the day?

The Drive-By

In our family lexicon, the drive-by is not the one most people think of, in which one can shoot the person or persons one deems most deserving of a bullet hole or two from the comfort of one's car, without needing to leave the car in the case of inclement weather or in the middle of a good NPR segment.

The drive-by in our family is part of the decision making sequence that follows:
1. Think about it.
2. Study up on it, usually via the Internet.
3. Drive by it.
4. Go in.
5. Process the experience, and whether it might ever be worth doing again.

The drive-by is a critical step, because it's the bridge between the intellectual part and the physical part. For instance, someone I know has a ticket (or two or three) for seatbelt violations. Since that particular someone has a fondness for driving around enjoying the Southern Illinois countryside, she has acquired her tickets in three different counties. Although I...uh...she has not actually paid the tickets, she has located all three courthouses and driven by them, thus paving the way for the day she actually enters them and pays the tickets.

See? The step between deciding to do something and actually doing it requires a careful examination of the outward appearance of the thing and psychological preparation for any potential pitfalls.

Using the Drive-By Method of decision making, one can make a variety of decisions that initially seem too ludicrous to consider, like driving to Wi-SCAH-nsin for an eBay truck, for instance. But without my drive shaft removal drive-by experience, I'll be anxious about whether I've brought the right tools, whether I'm strong enough for the project or whether it's beyond me for some other reason.

And you know what that means: extra processing at the end. And you, my Internets pals, will be the lucky recipients of that. Right here. Stay tuned.

Now What Am I Going To Do For A Living?

Well, there...now that my worst nightmare, the most embarrassing moment, the thing I've dreaded for years has actually happened...now I'm ready to change my name (What do you think of Evie-Lou Cummins-Goins? Too much?), move away and become an alpaca herder in Wyoming.

Last night I had a temporal lobe seizure at work. And let's remind ourselves of what that involves, shall we? Uncontrollable weeping, hallucinations, paranoia. Sort of a cross between schizophrenia and a panic attack. It's awful on the inside, and it looks awful on the outside.

This is how Wikipedia describes temporal lobe seizures:

Simple Partial Seizures (SPS) involve small areas of the temporal lobe and do not affect consciousness. These are seizures which primarily cause sensations. These sensations may be mnestic such as déjà vu (a feeling of familiarity), jamais vu (a feeling of unfamiliarity), a specific single or set of memories, or amnesia. The sensations may be auditory such as a sound or tune, or gustatory such as a taste, or olfactory such as a smell that is not truly present. Sensations can also be visual or involve feelings on the skin or in the internal organs. The latter feelings may seem to move over the body. Dysphoric or euphoric feelings, fear, anger, and other sensations can also occur during SPS. Often, it is hard for persons with SPS of TLE to describe the feeling. SPS are often called "auras," and are sometimes thought to be preludes to more severe seizures.

So what does that mean to our Evie? It means that I start with a small headache, and quickly progress to a kind of weeping, fearful confusion in which I hear whispering voices, smell odd and inappropriate things, and see strangers lurking in the periphery of my vision. I'm completely overwhelmed: nothing looks familiar or safe, the lights are too bright, the analyzers are too loud, people keep moving erratically, and I have to fight the impulse to curl up in a ball under the bench and hide. All of this, while unpleasant at home, is truly mortifying at work. It feels insane, it looks insane, and I'm sure it does considerable damage to my credibility as a Laboratory Professional.

So after an hour or so of weeping, Lori came to get me and we dropped by the E.R. We actually spent so long waiting there that I felt pretty much back to normal by the time I was seen and released. I went back to the lab, gathered my stuff, and went home.

But the worst of all? I'll have to go back today.

On the bright side, TLE is supposed to be associated with creativity :

As Eve LaPlante discusses in her book, "Seized," the intense emotions, sensory experience including vibrancy of colors, and particular mental state provoked by temporal lobe abnormalities may have contributed to the creation of significant works of art. A number of well-known writers and artists are known, or in many cases suspected to have had temporal lobe epilepsy, aggravated, in some cases, by alcoholism. They include Charles Dodgson (a.k.a. Lewis Carroll), Edgar Allan Poe, Fyodor Dostoevsky (whose novel The Idiot features an epileptic protagonist, Prince Myshkin), Gustave Flaubert, Philip K. Dick, Sylvia Plath and the contemporary author Thom Jones. Peter O'Leary also discusses this in his book "Gnostic Contagion: Robert Duncan and the Poetry of Illness."

Unfortunately, I've never shown any inclination in that direction. Nor, sadly in this one:

In some modes of presentation women can feel orgasms when suffering a temporal lobe epilepsy episode. No cases have so far been reported for men.

An Open Letter to Barack Obama

Barack,

If you're reading, I have some urgent campaign advice you really need to hear. (And if you're not reading, why not?!?)

First, I want to let you know that you're doing well down here in Southern Illinois, and I'm behind you all the way, but after tonight's primaries I'm a little worried. You're not carrying rural Americans, and I know you want to fill in that gap in your campaign strategy. I've been watching the polls and the primaries, and I don't think your campaign advisors are on top of this. The good news is, it can easily be fixed, so listen up.

I was looking at the state by state results tonight and I couldn't help but notice that in virtually every primary, if you look at the results by county and precinct, there's an undeniable pattern. Hillary takes the rural votes and you takes the cities. The pattern stays true whether you win the state or not. The Obama precincts look like little walled fortresses of urban-hood, strategically placed to fortify the three or four cities in every state from an unwashed peasant uprising.

So far the Team Obama strategy has been working, at least as far as the delegate count goes, but you've taken some hits this week and ... crappola ... you lost Ohio and squeeked out a tie in Texas. You've got to increase your appeal to the folks out there in the hinterlands. There's nothing wrong with what you're saying ... your speeches are a thing of beauty. But, despite the sell-out crowds at your big-venue rallies and the support of virtually every college-aged kid in America, there are too many people who are connecting with Hillary instead of you, and since no one on your payroll will tell you why, I will.

It's the suit.

Don't get me wrong, it's a great suit. I'll bet you paid a lot of money for it, and it makes you look very dignified and polished and Presidential, but it's gotta go. People are talking about it, and not in a good way. Some have taken to calling it the funeral director suit.

Dude. We totally love this picture of you riding the ferris wheel with your girls at the Iowa State Fair. We loved the khaki pants and the blue shirt you were wearing in the infamous "Obama doesn't salute the flag" photo. The swimsuit photo? Also fun and spontaneous. As Ev says, when you aren't wearing the suit you look approachable. Approachable is good.

The suit worked great in the beginning of the campaign. It was easy to picture you giving your Inauguration speech or a State of the Union Address. Why not save it for one of those occasions? For one thing, you talk about change in every speech, but if a man never even changes his suit, how is he going to change the country and the world? These are the questions rural Americans are asking. How will you answer? More to the point, what will you wear when you do?

And I'm sorry we even have to bring this up in America in the 21st century, but the unfortunate fact is, there is an evil faction in this country ... a small but loud-mouthed collective of tiny-brained, hate-mongering, near-illiterate bigots and fear-mongers who are saying you dress like a Black Muslim. Or worse, a Civil Rights leader from the 1950's. Nothing scares the be-jesus out of a racist like a black man in a dark suit. Barack! You've got to put out some of these fires! Wear some jeans and a colorful shirt! Besides giving the bigots less ammunition you'll be sending a message to Joe and Jane Average that you're a guy who can come out from behind the desk, roll up his sleeves and do a day's work.

Consider your formidable opponent. Hillary is the Great Feminist Hope. She came into the race with the admiration, respect, and support of an overwhelming majority of women. She's a savvy politician who knows her strengths, and every day she sits down with her strategists and then goes to her closet. She emerges and takes the stage exuding confidence, just as you do, and displaying her considerable grasp of policy ... in a veritable rainbow of colorful pantsuits that say, "I may be a successful woman, but underneath all the fame and money and power I'm just like you. I'm a wife and mother. I've taken some hits. I've been cheated on and I survived. I've cleaned up puke, changed diapers, dragged myself to dance recitals and school pageants and stayed up half the night building a diorama depicting the Fall of the Roman Empire out of paper mache and Tempera paint. And right after this speech we're all headed over to the Cracker Barrel for Sunday Brunch!" And don't think the couture homage to Ann Richards is completely coincidence, either. She's getting a lot of subliminal messages in there while you're showing up every day in the suit.


(The truth is, she's got as much in common with a farmer's wife in Ohio as a wolf has with a wounded rabbit, but she looks like plain folks and they like it. I refer you again to those county by county maps. )

So here's the deal. We're getting down to the wire, and this could go either way. I'm still believing in you to win the nomination, and sending in donations when I can, and I don't want a thing in exchange for this advice except your promise to lose the suit. Put on the khaki pants or a pair of jeans and a colorful shirt and roll your sleeves up. Show the farmers and beef ranchers and small-town rural folks that you aren't just going to stand around in a suit being a politician. I, and millions of other Americans, really need you to win this presidency. Don't you own some grubbies??

Yours truly,

Kwach

Because I've Been Asked...

I have a friend who's very gay-friendly, but not a native speaker of English. She was reassuring me once about her gay-friendliness and mentioned that her uncle is also The Gay.

Okay...how much do we love this?

Subsequently, we've gotten to be closer friends, and have moved from discussion gayness in the abstract to discussing it in some detail. In those conversations, we refer to the actual sex act as The Sex. My friend is also having The Sex, but she has it with The Husband instead of The Girlfriend.

Therefore: Lori and I are The Gay. We have The Sex. The Gay Sex. We both speak English fluently, but we have come to prefer this slightly butchered phrasing to the more technically correct but soulless kind found in Standard English.

So...Sassy Pants? Enjoy The Sex. With The Boy. Or The Girl...hell, I don't care. Just come back and tell your lascivious Aunties about it afterwards, okay?

Guess Who's Got Another eBay Truck?

After a week off from the ice? It's back. We're once again fully engaged in the scraping, slipping, fishtailing part of winter. I have a little post-holiday letdown in the wake of Pulaski Day, the new eBay truck is bought, and now the logistical challenge of picking it up in Racine, Wisconsin is before us. This is the eBay truck:

It's a '91 Ranger with an extended cab. Like all eBay trucks, it'll need some work, but we paid $592 for it, so I can afford to put some money into it.

I haven't been to Wisconsin in 15 or 20 years, and Lori's never been at all, so this will be another eBay adventure trip. We will, of course, have pictures and narrative to share when we get home.

I'd love to go up Friday, but I think Lori's working, and then I work the weekend. We're both off next weekend, so that'll give all you Northerners plenty of time to give us good touring advice between Effingham, IL and Racine, WI. And if we wait for the weekend we can stay over in Chicago and see that, although I can't imagine where we'd go if we just had a few hours.

Ah, but that's why we have you, our Internets friends. Where should we go if we have a single evening and morning in Chicago?

Happy Pulaski Day!

We're all wearing our traditional Pulaski Day leiderhosen, drinking pilsner beer, and singing Pulaski Carols! Gather 'round, kids. I'll read you "The Night Before Pulaski Day."

Well...no. You're obviously a clever bunch. None of that is actually true. I'm actually at work...no leiderhosen, no pilsner...just a bronchial lavage culture waiting to be set up and the warm homey hum of the analyzers.

However, I'll still wish you the traditional Pulaski Day greeting:

Everybody have fun tonight! Everybody Wang Chung tonight!

Now drop the Pulaski Ball over Times Square, and let's get started with the fireworks and the polish sausage hunt.

(That Casimir Pulaski...he was an odd man, wasn't he?)

Happy Casimir Pulaski Day!

That's right, it's Casimir S. Pulaski Day here in Southern Illinois! Woohoo!

Lest you mistakenly think this is a non-event just because you can't buy a Casimir S. Pulaski Day card at the Hallmark store, you should know that every year, on the first Monday in March, we close the schools and celebrate the birthday of this Revolutionary War hero.

Kazimierz, as he was known in his native Poland, was a nobleman and soldier who valiantly fought the Russians in his homeland and then immigrated to America, where he served as a General in the Continental Army. He was shot in the groin at the Battle of Savannah, died of his wounds, and was buried at sea (or possibly in Savannah -- there is conflicting evidence) without ever setting foot in Illinois.

In fact, he has nothing at all to do with Illinois, except that there's a large Polish-American community in Chicago and they like a nice parade up there.

Downstate we named a town AND a county after him (take that, Chicago) and the Pulaski Store makes some damn fine bbq sandwiches, which could easily be enjoyed while watching a parade on a school holiday if you wanted to.

There are songs written to commemorate General Pulaski ... sort of. Sufjan Stevens wrote this one about his adolescent girlfriend who died of bone cancer on Casimir Pulaski Day. The noise band Big Black has a track called "Kasimir S. Pulaski Day" on their 1987 album "Songs About Fucking" which isn't about Casimir Pulaski, either. It's about a car bombing on Pulaski Road in Chicago. It's not as heartwarming as this one ... even less so if you can understand the lyrics.

You may have gathered from previous posts that we aren't big holiday celebrants, but we did celebrate this one by taking a drive through Pulaski County in the rain this morning. Along the way we passed a long line of cars slowly following a garbage truck down Main Street. We're not sure if it was a parade, or if there was a Casimir Pulaski Day Queen on the truck, but we waved just in case.

Parade or not, we didn't want to miss this opportunity to wish our readers a happy holiday. Everybody Wang-Chung tonight!

Kwach

Your Call Is Important To Us...

I'm thinking my call is not important to them, since I've been on hold now for more than half an hour. I'm sure my call would be much more important if I owed them money instead of the other way around.

In the meantime...what's up with y'all?

In the event that my call becomes important enough to actually pick up the phone, I'll have to go, but there doesn't seem to be much danger of that. So this would be an excellent time to say that finally the sun has come out and I can sort of imagine that life might be worth living again. Oh...and it's Friday. What's not to love about that?

I think I may have found a good truck on eBay, but there's still five days until the auction ends, and you know how that goes.

Okay...apparently my call is NOT important to them, since they just hung up on me. I don't think I'm up for another half hour worth of classical music and empty promises. If I were, I'd have stayed with my last girlfriend.

Just kidding...she didn't play classical music.

Our Hearts Were Light and Gay

Ha! I found out today that there's someone who reads us that:

a) Neither of us gave birth to.
b) Neither of us slept with.
c) Neither of us ever will, or will even potentially sleep with. What with him being...uhhh...penile. Like someone from a penile colony. Maybe he's Australian. Isn't Australia a penile colony?

We were informed, without solicitation or any money changing hands, that someone who could be doing important things instead chooses to read our homey little gay blog. On purpose. Not because we're pestering him at work, saying, "Hey! Read this! Do you think I'm brilliant??" Although he's actually the husband of Lori's friend, which sort of makes him a distant relative, so I think we may lose points for that.

Although we're both still vying for the rights to the Feral Mom fantasy, (but not the guitar nightmare...eeek!) any husbands of our friends will be safe from us, and not just because we're a pair of middle-aged dykes with no social skills. But as a consolation prize, all incompatible man-people will receive a "get-out-of-a-potentially-awkward-interaction-free" pass from us, some dubious medical advice, and a lovely parting gift...maybe a cat or two. Because we're neighborly here in Nowhere.

(Heh? Who's your favorite gay blog? Remember, members of the academy, when it's election time...vote early and vote often.)

eBaying At The Moon

I'm back on eBay shopping for trucks. This time it's for Carrie's Man Friend, but really...I'd look for anyone. I love the strategy. I'm not a hunter or a fan of hunting but eBay has a sort of hunting feel to it. You go out and stalk a truck, then follow it through the woods until you can shoot it and drag it home.

What's not to love about that??

Anyway, when I find one, I'll post a picture in all it's crappy glory.

Diebold Accidentally Leaks '08 Results!

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

Election Fun From Nowhere

I don't normally blog about politics. Pandagon, Feministe and a few others do such a fantastic job that I'd be embarrassed by the comparison. But I do following it closely. I'm concerned about all the usual policy issues that liberal pinko lesbian mommies care about: our various wars and potential wars, health care, abortion, gay marriage, etc ... but I also follow it for the psychology. I love the psychology; it's a people-watching project at it's finest.

Part of the fascination is the marathon aspect of a two-year election cycle. American elections aren't won and lost in a single moment (with Howard Dean's scream being the possible exception), they're generally decided by a couple of candidates jockeying for an advantage, looking for a toehold, hoping to find some little something that will push them ahead long enough to gain that elusive momentum. Candidates get tired and accidentally speak candidly. They say things that sound human instead of presidential. Or they try to change directions, with disastrous results. Think of Hillary's "Yes, We Will" Obama ripoff. Now think of New Coke. Bad ideas. Go back to what was working for you.

Part of the process of electioneering is good campaigning, and part of it is strategic smearing by proxy. The polls say Americans don't approve, but it generally works like a charm. Karl Rove, for instance, speaking off the record about an illegitimate biracial McCain baby, can be more effective than a comprehensive healthcare policy at getting the public engaged. Swiftboating, Whitewater, plagiarism ... those buzzwords might be the lever that prys the election loose. Many voters don't know or care much about the stories behind those labels, they're just pretty sure that they're incriminating. And any lie repeated enough becomes the truth. If you can get the words to stick in people's minds with a negative connotation, it might be enough to put one or the other over the top.

I love the psychology, the sports parallels, the strategizing, the history. It's fun to view the sport of electioneering through a long lens and watch it evolve, or not, over centuries. The Founding Fathers were as vicious in their campaigning strategies as any Karl Rove. Allegations of sexual misconduct, racketeering, and outright treason are as old as democracy itself.

By a hair-thin margin, I think I'm for Obama. His platform is almost exactly the same as Hillary's, but I think he might be able to restore our international credibility somewhat better than Hillary can. He's fresh and new, and he's black, which might help cause the rest of the world to give us a second look after the eight long dark years of fascist White Guy domination.

Even though I support Obama, I like Hillary Clinton. I admire her toughness and intelligence, but I think a Clinton presidency would be a grim business. She'd be working hard trying to restore our nation and the Clinton family's personal legacy. I don't see a lot of joy emanating from a Clinton White House.

And that's too bad. I think Bill Clinton must have been one of those guys who knew how to think and work and strategize when he was "on", and then knew how to relax and laugh when he was on his own time. Hillary will be the sort of president who's up every night until 2a.m., poring over position papers and memos until she has a heart attack at her desk. She's a hard worker. She's like the kid who's number one in her class and isn't about to lose that spot by staying out late and skipping a homework assignment.

In the end, I'll be happy with either Obama or Clinton. I think both of them will dedicate themselves to undoing the last eight years of shameful American foreign and domestic policy and digging us out of this massive debt sinkhole Bush has created.

In fact, the biggest advantage either of them has is that they're not Bush. The only good thing about George Bush is that he set the bar so low, virtually anyone looks good in comparison.

It's New, It's Blue, Get Used To It

I've been in a deep blue funk for the last few weeks. I'm tired of ice and snow and short days. I'm tired of looking at my pale, pasty coworkers. I'm tired of leaden skies, wet feet, stuck cars, heavy outerwear, slushy roads and broken trees.

Today Lori and I went for a walk, thinking that maybe a brisk walk in the bracing slush would lift our spirits. We walked down Kaolin road for a while and enjoyed the winter scenery. BTW...Kaolin, for those of you who are remiss in your education, is a slippery kind of clay that's used as the principle ingredient in Preparation-H. The walk was nice, and I felt a little more engaged, until we got to the curve in the road where the county animal shelter is located.

I stopped to pet a couple of the dogs in the outside enclosures. They were glad for the attention...lots of licking and snuffling and trying to press their noses through the wire. Then Lori and I noticed one laying very still. Like, deadly still. Like...dead. Bastards!

I don't know that the dog actually died from exposure, but if it was sick, I'll bet the cold didn't help it's chances any.

Let's think about this. We round up dogs...strays, runaways, neglected and abused...to protect them from the harsh world. Then we store them in wire pens in February. Then they die. See? No more need to save them from the world!

Clever, eh?

I went home and called the Sheriff's office, but really what I want to do is bitch someone out. Maybe at the next County Board meeting. I'm not much of a dog person; I prefer cats and their "screw you" attitude to dogs and their "please, please, please"-ing. But really, I still prefer the company of dogs to that of most humans. And nothing deserves that sort of treatment.

So...the walk would have helped with the funk. But the Universe and the County conspired against me.

Oh...and my friend Mark just called and told me to let it go. I'll consider it.

Ice Storm '08 - 1/2

Here we go again.

They've been predicting another ice storm in our area for the next couple of days, so when I looked outside this morning I was relieved to see just a light sprinkling of tiny ice pellets on the grass. Whew!

I got dressed and headed out to work. No. The tiny sprinkling of ice pellets is on top of the 1/4" of clear ice that has been falling since 2 AM. The cars are once again encased, the roads are once again ice rinks and it's only just begun. It's supposed to get worse and keep doing this off and on through tomorrow night without ever getting above freezing.

We were smarter this time and brought in LOTS of wood and stacked it all over the living room. Well, it looked like a lot last night. It doesn't look like enough now. Before it gets any worse out there I'm going to bring in more so it can be thawing BEFORE we need it this time. We never did get the emergency non-electric coffee pot or the kerosene lamps or the firestarters because the stores are still sold out of all of those, but so far we still have electricity. That probably won't last, since the trees are already icing and the ones that were stressed and mostly broken last week will probably go down this time. If I worked for the utility company I'd be suicidal about now.

So that's the news from Nowhere, IL ... (sigh).

Kwach

Dude! Can You Push My Car?

Now that I've been to work one day in a row (and spent most of it talking about the repeal of the Texas dildo law), I'm worn out. Luckily it's not the work that's worn me out, since if my work was any more sedentary I'd be able to do it in an iron lung. I'm worn out from spending the week in a state of hypervigilance. Make sure the cars don't get squished. make sure everyone's got a warm, dry place to sleep, make sure we all have enough beer and cigarettes to survive an Armageddon...

At this point I've pretty much had it, and it's only been 4 days since our ice storm began. I think I wouldn't have made a very good Katrina survivor. If I were a Katrina survivor I'd have saved the girlfriend, the pets and the children, then climbed up on the roof with a six pack of beer and a book and tried to pretend this wasn't my life. The National Guard could save me or not, I don't care. As long as they regularly air dropped care packages of books and beer, I'm cool with sitting up there as long as I need to. Good luck to the rest of you.

So we survived our flirtation with Arctic living, and although I still haven't got my truck unstuck from the ice, I want to reward myself with a nice long drive this weekend. Maybe the weather will settle down enough for a trip somewhere. I think I can justify it if I say I'm going to Memphis for hurricane lamps and kerosene. I was in our local Wal-Mart last night and the camping aisle was wiped out of stovetop coffee makers, hurricane lamps, sterno stoves and candles. Like everyone else in Southern Illinois, we've made a solemn vow to stock up on those things for next year's ice storm, but if we don't get started buying them now, we won't think of it again until we're sitting in the house watching Mrs. Undrfoot, our yard cat, glaze over again.

I'm officially tired of winter now. I'm ready to tool around on the mower again. And sweat. And complain about sweating instead of complaining about freezing.

Maybe Memphis isn't far enough. Maybe the Yucatan. I remember now...we need sombreros and Bohemia beer from street vendors in Mexico more than we need candles. And a talavera toilet. Nothing says "Ice storm? What ice storm?" like a talavera toilet.

Part One, In Which We Push Cars and Contemplate Suicide

There are probably 30,000-ish people in the southern seven counties of Illinois. Although we all experienced my ice storm...screw 'em. It's my blog, so this is my story.

Monday I was a good little housebutch. I finally took the last of the Christmas decorations down to the shed, stored the tires from the ill-fated blue truck, and I started the laundry. I was standing in the yard at 11-ish talking with Carrie when it started to lightly snow. "Crap.", says I. It was going to be a pain in the ass to get to work.

By 1 o'clock, however, it wasn't a pain in the ass, it was impossible. I scraped and chipped the ice off my truck at the top of my driveway...and then stopped and scraped again at the bottom. I made it a mile into town before I stopped to scrape a third time...then I turned back and called in.

Yay! No work on a Monday!

I called Lori at work and told her to come home now, before she ended up spending the night in town, and got busy collecting firewood. Mountains of firewood. I thought that would last us until April at least. We congratulated ourselves for the weather, then put a movie on and sat down to enjoy our unexpected vacation.

We alternately watched "Gandhi" and watched the ice and rain falling. At 11 when we went to bed the ice was still falling and Gandhi was still dead. At 11:10, the power went out. We laid in bed, listening to the limbs break, and Lori said, "I hope the branches don't fall on the cars.

Well, okay. Guess who got up 7,000 times in the night to see if the exploding trees had landed on the cars? The crack of the trees breaking and falling became my nocturnal obsession. Every 10 minutes another tree fell, and ever 10 minutes plus one second I shot out of bed to stare presbyopically out the window for squished cars and/or trucks.

Finally the sun came up, and no cars were squished. An inch of ice coated everything and an enormous limb had landed 5 feet behind Lori's car, but we were in good shape. We boiled coffee water on the stove (Yay for gas stoves!), put on all the clothes we owned, and headed out into the yard.

The next door neighbor (Remember him? Lives with his dead parents behind a wall of unkempt grass and trees?) had a backyard that sounded like a war zone. Every few minutes one of his 40 foot tall trees exploded and fell over. We stood in our yard and watched in awe until we figured out that several of the exploding trees were precariously balanced over Lori's car.

We decided to move the car. After 10 minutes of spinning tires fruitlessly on ice, I decided to kill myself by wedging my head into the crotch of one of the neighbor's trees and waiting for it to explode. I figured, "Hey! I'm a lesbian. I'm all about wedging my head in crotches!"

Yeah, it would be chilly for a while, but not too much chillier than one of my exes, and the tree wouldn't call me at work later to tell me that I'm an asshole and it never wanted to see me again, but if it ever did, would I stop and pick up Chinese food on my way home? And fill up it's gas tank? And take it's trash cans down to the curb? And then go to hell, because I'm still an asshole and the tree still hates me?

So we crammed a lot of crap under the car tires until me, Carrie, and her Man Friend were able to push it across the field and onto a patch of gravel. Then we trudged home to fire up the chainsaw and start cutting up more trees.

Oh...and I hate Big Brother...which is why I'm blogging now and not in the morning, like the good lord intended. However Big Brother is almost over, CSI is about to start, and I'll finish my adventure story in the morning.

Ice Storm '08

That's what our local Storm Team Weather crew is calling it. Our favorite reporter interviewed a youngster over in Missouri who told us (repeatedly) that it's "really cold."

Well, yes. It IS really cold. It's really cold, it's really slick, it's really pretty and it was really inconvenient being without power for a couple of days.

Even if you have a fireplace, a kerosene heater, a lot of candles and a gas stove, a couple of days off the power grid sure makes you cognizant of the many ways you rely on electricity.

Next year we're going to store some firewood someplace out of the weather ... and buying a non-electric coffee percolator.

Ev's been composing a blog post in her head since the power went out on Monday night, but her usual blogging time is during her morning coffee and she's pretty wore out right now from all the chainsawing, ice chipping, wood thawing, car extricating and shivering. So I'll just leave you with a couple of pictures of our yard and she can fill you in on the details of our adventure when she's had some time to get warm and recover her sense of humor.

Kwach

Plants Are Our Friends

I bought this poor unloved african violet at Wal-Mart a few months ago for 50 cents. It had three leaves left alive, and I felt bad for it. I guess the Wal-Mart associates in Lawn & Garden aren't the nurturing type. I figured that for 50 cents I could see if it could recover, and if I failed to bring it back it wouldn't be tragic. Now it's the most perfect african violet ever. Too bad I can't have this effect on humans. I should learn to like people like I love plants and cats.

Maybe someday.

Why Your Phlebotomist Hates You

Huh. Beware: full-blown rant ahead.

I just read a blog with a post about blood draws, and how awful they are. Okay, I've had enough. All you people who think that a) blood draws are excrutiatingly painful, b) your phlebotomist has it in for you personally, or c) 5 or even 10 tubes of blood is an exceptional amount, more painful, or likely to drain you dry...stop being such weenie-headed titty-babies.

Blood draws, especially for us reasonably healthy adults in decent shape, is a quick and mostly painless project if you shut up, stop wiggling, look away, and don't pretend you know more than we do. Phlebots draw blood from hundreds of people a day. just because you only have it drawn once a month doesn't make you special.

They know how to find a vein and insert a needle. They know how many tubes to draw (as long as some nurse doesn't call down to the lab 5 minutes later to add more tests), and they're not the slightest bit amused by your drama. Sit up, stick out your arm and shut up. If you're a fainter, tell them. It's a lot easier to get blood from an unconscious person who's laying on a bed than it is from a person who just slid out of her chair onto the floor. Plus, the laying-down people are less likely to puke.

And unless you're a child, or or over 80, or a cancer patient, a burn victim, or missing an arm...please, please don't demand your blood be drawn with a butterfly needle. They're expensive, they're more likely to clot (and cause the phlebe to stick you again), and they're a pain in the ass. A vacutainer draw is quick, easy, less likely to clot or hemolyze the blood, and less likely to cause your phlebe to think unkind thoughts about you.

By the way...the rule of thumb is that the sicker a patient is, the less likely they are to be babies. Cancer patients? Cheerful and brave. Twenty year old men getting their pre-employment screening so they can be longshoremen, lumberjacks or fork lift operators? Blubbering whiny assholes who beg for anesthetic, pass out on the floor, and wet themselves.

Remember...the more you whine and cry, the more we make fun of you after you leave.

Ennui. It's not just for breakfast anymore.

I'm restless AND suffering from ennui. Who says I can't multitask?

This is my only day off in a nine day stretch so I feel like I ought to make good use of it, but I can't seem to get moving. I've been pretty much sitting on the couch drinking coffee, watching the fire and reading since 10 o'clock this morning, and I'm about to have self-esteem issues.

What I should be doing is cutting some more dead trees before they fall down, taking the last of the Christmas oramentation down to the shed (Yeah, I know it's February. I've been busy, so shut up.) and driving around pretending to be checking the storm damage on the house but really just listening to NPR and watching the scenery. Instead...I'm not. I'm restless about the pace of this house buying project, anxious to get started on the fixing and cleaning, and frustrated that I can't. Therefore, I'm generally uninspired about actually doing anything beyond poking at the fire and snacking.

I can't decide if this is PMS or if my inner sloth has sprung forth, ready to do battle with SuperEvie, but I'd like her to go away please, and let me get back to my real self.

Super Tuesday

I just got a phone call from my son.

Usually he calls when he needs something (like money), but today he called because he was excited. He'd just voted for the first time in his life, and he wanted to tell me about it. I'll admit, I was somewhat surprised he even had a voter registration card. This is the same kid who didn't get around to getting a driver's license until he was 17. He's never shown much interest in politics, preferring to invest his energy in death metal music, graffiti-esque art, perfecting his homeless waif look and avoiding an education at all cost.

And then he went to the Obama rally in Phoenix. He saw Caroline Kennedy and heard Obama speak, and now he can't stop talking about being part of "history in the making" and going to college ... and voting. My God, it does a liberal Democrat mom's heart good!

Say what you will about Barack Obama, he's done what many have tried and few have accomplished ... he's getting out the youth vote. He's crossing party lines and color lines and gender lines and he's inspiring people. He's reaching disheartened old voters like me and disinterested young voters like my son, and getting them out to the polls because they're excited about casting their votes. He's more than a candidate, he's a phenomenon, and he's gotten two generations of Kwachie's all kinds of whipped up about the possibilities.

Kwach

Home Ownership the Ev and Kwachie Way!

The only thing more fun than renovating an old house is renovating an old house with an audience, don't you think? And since the house renovation project will, no doubt, be fodder for a LOT of blog posts in the coming months, I thought I'd get a good early start by introducing you to what a $13,000 house in Cairo, Illinois looks like. That way you'll be able to really appreciate the story as it unfolds.

Right off the bat we know we have to rent a big dumpster and fill it up so we can see what we haven't been able to see under all the junk. Everything in the kitchen and basement goes in the dumpster, down to the walls. Then we get the home inspector to come and give us a thorough checklist of what we already know it needs and what we don't know about yet.

What we know already is that it has no heating or cooling, so we're going to have to buy a furnace. The chimney attached to the fireplace needs a flue and the old chimney that used to be attached to the original heating system has collapsed and will have to be removed. Then we need an electrician and a plumber to a) determine what works and what doesn't and b) fix what doesn't.

This is not Ev's first renovation and it's in far better shape than her first one. Her first renovation was a 100 year old farmhouse with big woe. The electric had to be 100% replaced, starting at the power pole. The bathtub had fallen through the floor into the basement, the roof had to be replaced from the rafters out, large areas of the wood floor had to be repaired, there was no kitchen to speak of, the septic system had to be replaced ... and then the whole front porch fell off one night while she was sleeping. When she tackled that project, on her own with the help of library books, she was a single mother with three little kids and two jobs, and her strategy was to get one room livable and then they all lived in that room while she worked on another one. The kids remember gathering around the kerosene heater holding umbrellas while it rained in the dining room.

In this house it won't be hard to have livable rooms to retreat to when we need a sanity break. There are many rooms that don't need anything but paint and cleaning. There are others that are more daunting, and unfortunately those are the ones that allow you to pee indoors and eat food. But there's a damn fine library in Cairo for the stuff Ev's forgotten, and now we have the Internet! I've already registered with an old house renovation discussion forum where we can pick up advice and encouragement as needed. I anticipate that our biggest hurdle is going to be the fact that we ain't as young as we used to be. On the other hand, we ain't as poor as we used to be, so we can pay people to do stuff this time. Hey, it's good for us AND good for the Cairo economy.

I'm going to call my friend who works in the Assessor's office in Cairo and find out about the house next door. It's a big, beautiful old thing on the corner lot that looks like it's had a fire upstairs. We want to find out if it's on the demolition list, and if it is we want to find out whether we can find the owner and pay them to let us salvage the good stuff before it's gone ... and then we want to buy the lot it's sitting on.

And so, without further adieu ... blogosphere? Meet the house. House? Meet the blogosphere.

http://flickr.com/photos/10490004@N06/sets/72157603752566273/show/

Kwach