A Woman's Function is Laborious

Hope and Change

2009-01-19T15:46:00.004-05:00

I haven't blogged in over 20 months! Mostly, I haven't had much to say. However, I am feeling more heartened now than I ever have before. A momentous thing is happening this year, a thing that represents a great change, that somehow gives me hope for the future... Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood blog. Watching conservatives come out of the closet like this moves me in a way I never would have imagined.

When I was in my early twenties, I was quite left-of-center. A lot of this posture and puffery was due to my intensely-felt desire to root for the underdog and to fight what I perceived as injustice. As I got older, I began to realize how imaginary the injustice really was as I encountered more and more of that nasty Real World I had assiduously avoided in college.

One thing I began to dimly realize was how certain groups were immune to criticism and how other groups were criticized immediately, no matter how mild the comments made. Certain groups had to preface every utterance with a disclaimer, and other groups could make bold, outrageous statements with impunity, even riotous support.

[c.f. Razib's comment: "I will tell you something that many readers might find shocking, but people who know me will know is true, I would try something on people in my freshmen year classes when I first met them, I would assert, "White men should be killed and their women should be used as fuck-animals... " versus the way that most Christians have to preface even the midlest comment with, "I don't mean to offend anyone..."]

Thank you, Andrew Breitbart! Big Hollywood is professional, constantly updated, always engaging, and profoundly entertaining. It is clear that a lot of time and planning went into making this blog a success. A lot of people have taken tremendous career risks by choosing to blog on Big Hollywood. Thank you, brave souls, for speaking out!

Code Monkey Like You

2007-05-15T12:08:00.000-05:00

I was actually cheered up by a NYT article, for once. The internet has really allowed people to circumvent the traditional marketing chain. This is wonderful news for creative types!

I haven't had a chance to explore anything more about Jonathan Coulton, but I love Code Monkey.

Via Half Sigma, which has a lot of great content that I would love to respond to, blog about, argue with, etc., had I the time.

I emote, therefore I am

2007-04-18T13:37:00.000-05:00

I am so sick of cheap sympathy. I am tired of the phony grief over what happened at Virginia Tech. By phony I mean the cheap and syrupy sympathy from people who have absolutely no connection with the university, people for whom the event is some abstract event they gawk at on the television.

I have gotten multiple solicitations this morning from different universities, some employers and other alma maters, asking for all of us to come together and send notes of condolence in groups—this department, that department. Then, everyone falls all over themselves in a rush to compose the most cliché-filled and saccharine note, usually saying something stupid like, “Now we are all Hokies.” It’s revolting.

First of all, those of us without connection to the school have no idea the pain that the students and families are suffering. Even as bad as it is right now, it will be much, much worse in the future. Six months or a year from now, when the families and loved ones start to come out of their initial shock, they will be screaming with grief. Once the scab starts coming off the wound, all of these flash-mourners will be nowhere around. These cookie-cutter notes do nothing but make the senders feel better. It is especially telling that everyone wants to do this little exercise as a group, so that the group members can earn maximum credit for their pornographic displays of emotion.

The solicitations aren’t even asking for anything useful like money. Have any of these trendy grievers priced a funeral lately? How about weekly therapy sessions?

I won’t say anything because I am coward. But I will believe that my colleagues actually care when they check up on the VT community in a year or five.

Hate Crimes Only Go One Way

2007-04-17T11:57:00.000-05:00

It is being reported that Cho Seung-Hui, the resident alien who committed the most heinous campus massacre on American soil, wrote notes railing against "rich kids," "debauchery" and "deceitful charlatans." While Virginia Tech is not releasing any more information right now, I wager the young man’s writing was a bit more pointed than that. I think there is a high probability that VT is scrambling to figure out how to spin what he really wrote. I love that “South Korea's Foreign Ministry said Tuesday the government hoped the Virginia Tech shootings, allegedly carried out by a 23-year-old South Korean native, would not ‘stir up racial prejudice or confrontation.’” Isn’t that nice? I think the words, “I am sorry,” would be sufficient.

We are living in interesting times, and I know I am not the only one wondering, after each affront, whether this event is “the one.” We are reaching a tipping point, and I think the incendiary event will be relatively mild. I don’t think last assault by a foreigner on our soil will do it, but it is certainly winding the spring tighter.

What’s the Word?

2007-03-18T14:27:00.000-05:00

For the heck of it, I went Googling to find a word which means “lover of Scotland or all things Scottish,” in the vein of “Francophile” and “Anglophile.” I found two words, neither of which are perfectly satisfactory and not at all in common usage: “Caledonophile” and “Ecossophile.” (Both, of course, are more pleasing than the more-common Scotophile.) Searching for these two words together lead me to a nice little Googlewhack of sorts. Who says that MySpace.com isn't good for anything?

This is how I chose to waste 20 minutes while the chicken finished baking.

Show of Hands

2007-02-23T16:12:00.000-05:00

Thank you to Majority Rights for a pointer to the band Show of Hands. Wow! I love acoustic folk music, but usually just ignore the lyrics. For example, I adore Tracy Chapman and the Indigo Girls (I know, I know!). For the past several days, I haven’t been able to stop playing Roots and Country Life. I have ordered Witness from the band’s website, and can’t wait to hear the rest of the album. Thank you very much, Guessed Worker!

Incompetent and Evil

2007-02-23T15:56:00.000-05:00

This post is brought to you in a roundabout way by Mean Mr. Mustard’s comments on a Fred Reed article. Russell’s post about paranoia is interesting and, I believe, debatable. Is it possible to be both incompetent and evil? I think that is more common than we tend to acknowledge.

For example, I am teaching from two different textbook which I think are both. I usually try to give academics the benefit of the doubt. I know that once people get into the Marxist echo-chamber, it is difficult to see any other world-view. Many times, as well, certain turns of phrase are simply poorly-written instead of being deliberately misleading. However, past a certain point I think you have to stop assuming good faith on the part of a text-book author.

Take, for example, del Carmen’s Criminal Procedure: Law and Practice, 6th edition (Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth Publishing Company (2003). It informs us that the US Supreme Court runs the political gamut from conservative (Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas) to moderately conservative (Kennedy, O’Connor) to moderate (Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter, Stevens) (del Carmen, 2003, at 5). This I would classify as incompetent.

More ominously, the textbook maintains that it is almost impossible to define the rule of law as it operates in the United States (del Carmen, 2003, at 23). I would be much less irritated by this promotion of critical legal theory in a book intended for law students, who would be expected to read more skeptically, but this is an introductory text written for para-professionals such as police and corrections officers. It is one thing to alert students to the finer points of an academic debate within a profession, but it is entirely another to use a relatively-obscure academic debate to cast aspersions on the foundations of Anglo-Saxon common law. This I would classify as evil.

What does this have to do with Russell's post? Absolutely nothing. It has just been rattling about in my brain for awhile now.

You paid what for that coffee maker?!?

2006-11-18T16:02:00.000-05:00

I had initially wanted to bzz Storyville coffee on this blog. I have never bzzed before on this blog, and I will likely never do it again, but I really like the coffee (and I am a woman obsessed with coffee). However, the Storyville site is down, and has been for days. Trés obnoxious. So, instead of promoting Storyville, I will send all four of my loyal readers back to Sweet Maria’s. Sweet Maria’s provides freshly roasted coffee from people who know coffee. Plus they will teach you how to roast your own, if you are into that kind of thing.

Receiving the coffee from Storyville has reminded me of a few things I had forgotten since I left Seattle. Number one: Starbucks coffee is burned sawdust. Number two: As long as the beans are good, even a $17 dollar coffee maker makes great coffee.

Yes, I own the cheapest Mr. Coffee Wal-Mart had to offer. I dream of a Technivorm, but I have told my husband that if we ever have $200 to burn, I want another shotgun. Some days I entertain the thought of actually buying the Dutch monstrosity, but then I realize that if I actually fork over that kind of cash to purchase a machine which pulls 220v to boil water, then I have to upgrade my el cheapo coffee grinder to some kind of yuppie burr grinder. Plus, I would have to unplug the stove. Granted, I would use the coffee maker every day, and I don’t use my oven every day, so . . .

No, buying a $200 coffee maker is the equivalent to admitting defeat. I think it comes with a radio preset to NPR. I purchase the Technivorn, the next step is driving north for weekly cultural trips to Ithaca. There comes a time when a woman has to draw the line.

Right after my next cup of coffee.

Autism / PCOS / Syndrome X connection?

2006-11-15T14:22:00.000-05:00

I read Simon Baron-Cohen’s November 10 article on autism in Seed. He speculates that mothers of children with autism may be more likely to have testosterone-linked medical conditions.

Has anyone out there investigated the rise of PCOS and autism? Could the rise in autism rates have anything to do with the rise of obesity in the first world?

Thanks to MR for the link.

Tuesday Musings

2006-11-07T15:58:00.000-05:00

These days, I teach online for several for-profit universities—mostly grammar and composition. Almost as soon as I got out of the hospital this past summer, I threw myself into work. I took on extra classes, and had seven of them at one time. Now, I am back down to three, and after working ten hour days for the past two months, I can finally step back and relax a little bit.

If you had asked me before if I would be the kind of person to respond to grief through work, I would have denied it. I am not a particularly industrious person, and I have been inclined to think of myself more as the curl-up-on-the-couch kind of griever. However, I haven’t really had much to grieve up until now (which is a testament to the greatness of my life).

Know I know better—-work is easy. It’s the “what-if” game at 3:00 am which is hard. It’s the mental chess you play which always ends up at the same place, no matter how you arrange the pieces. Oh, and the anger and bitterness—don’t forget that. It is funny how prickly we can become. I joined several grief and loss boards, and the hierarchy which emerges even from tragedy is amusing in a dark and twisted way. The moms of stillbirths rank above those women who have simply miscarried. The childless and infertile women lord above the stillbirths, and the queens of tragedy and bitterness are those who are on the IVF juggernaut. Such tragedy all around.

Speaking of anger and bitterness—I read with amusement Lawrence Auster’s rancor at John Derbyshire’s recently-professed agnosticism. See here, and here, and here, and here. Goodness! I have always found strange those who insist that one cannot be truly conservative without faith. Does lack of faith obviate Natural Law, for example? And if it does, then Natural Law must perforce be false. If it does not, then can’t even a godless heathen stumble onto its truths?

How to Fold Fitted Sheets

2006-11-07T15:25:00.000-05:00

I never knew how to do this!

2006-08-13T17:21:00.000-05:00

A Cradle Song
by William Blake

Sweet dreams form a shade,
O'er my lovely infants head.
Sweet dreams of pleasant streams,
By happy silent moony beams

Sweet sleep with soft down,
Weave thy brows an infant crown,
Sweet sleep Angel mild,
Hover o'er my happy child.

Sweet smiles in the night,
Hover o'er my delight.
Sweet smiles Mothers smiles
All the livelong night beguiles.

Sleep sleep happy child
All creation slept and smil'd.
Sleep, sleep, happy sleep,
While o'er thee thy mother weep

Sweet babe in thy face,
Holy image I can trace.
Sweet babe once like thee,
Thy maker lay and wept for me

Wept for me for thee for all,
When he was an infant small,
Thou his image ever see,
Heavenly face that smiles on thee.

Smiles on thee on me on all,
Who became an infant small,
Infant smiles are his own smiles,
Heaven & earth to peace beguiles.

Our Son

2006-08-09T22:25:00.000-05:00

Our baby boy was stillborn on June 30 at 12:44 am, at 37w4d, due to eclampsia. I was hospitalized for 13 days. Thanks to the prayers of friends and family, and the goodness of the Lord, my physical health has been restored.

I never blogged about my pregnancy—I was always very protective of it. I never e-mailed our baby's ultrasound pictures to anyone—I kept them private and fiercely guarded. Our son was always very healthy and active, but I was fearful almost from the time he was conceived.

If the current speculation about pre-eclampsia is correct, there is a strong biological reason for my fear and trepidation. As a Christian woman, I struggle with the fact that the Lord put the conviction in my heart that I would never see my child born alive. There are days I appreciate the kindness of being forewarned. Other times I struggle, as all of us do, with trying to change the past.

I have debated blogging about it at all, but it is one of the most important events of our lives. Unfortunately, as well, stillbirth is not rare, and those of us who have experienced it find ourselves in a silent sorority. When I was in the hospital, nurses would come up to me quietly and say one of two things: "I am so glad to see you—we thought you were going to die!" or "I lost my baby, too." Even today at a follow-up appointment a medical technician shared her story of loss with me. I feel like a ghoul because, right now, stories like these are all I want to hear.

The Contra-Crunchy Conservative

2006-06-29T00:33:00.000-05:00

Another great blog is the The Contra-Crunchy Conservative, which I discovered via a wonderful comment from Bubba at Mean Mr. Mustard's.

Are You Ready?

2006-05-26T10:23:00.000-05:00

Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution points to a Houston Chronicle Online article for his "Houston fact of the day":

Spanish titles or resources for learning English accounted for half of the top 20 most popular audio books [in Houston public libraries].

My favorite gem gleaned from the article is:

Among the least popular resources was FEMA's publication, Are You Ready? An In-Depth Guide to Citizen Preparedness. The book is one of more than 3,000 titles that have not been circulated during the past two years.

I also suspect that the conflated category "Spanish titles or resources for learning English" is more full of "novelas"-- Spanish-language pornographic comic books -- than ESL materials.

We Are Collective Pie

2006-05-21T16:49:00.000-05:00

Our daughter has re-Christened my husband and me, no longer "Mama" and "Daddy," but both "Pie." I suppose we should have seen it coming, as I call him "Pookie Pie" and he calls me "Sweetie Pie."

I admire her syllabic economy, and note that she uses the interchangeable term for her collective parental units when she is being most rational and un-emotional: "Pie, what is that noise?" "Pie, where are we going?" "Pie, when are you going to turn off the computer and take me to the park?"

Of course, in the morning, after she wakes up alone in bed, she comes running into the living room to throw herself into my arms with a "Mama" sigh. And she hits her father's arms with torpedo speed after he comes home from work, screaming "Daddy home! Daddy home!" No gender-neutral term for the Biscuit when it comes to lovin'.

Good Stuff Out There

2006-05-20T22:07:00.000-05:00

I am really, really uninteresting these days, but there are at least two other bloggers out there who aren't. Which is my convoluted way of saying I have found some nice blogs out there which have given me some pause and a chuckle or two. One is Flea's blog, who is an anonymous skeptical pediatrician. I have also found Monstera Deliciosa, a funny and insightful blog (via Mean Mr. Mustard) from a woman after my own heart.

MR's new logo

2006-05-12T16:29:00.000-05:00

I dabble (barely) in graphic design. I would be the first to admit I am woefully ignorant, but at least I am learning to appreciate the importance of design and form (a difficult feat for an Aspie like me, who more naturally gravitates towards function, function, function).

Anyway, I just wanted to gush a bit over Marginal Revolution's new logo, as designed by Jacob Morse of Volo Creative. It is simple, elegant, eye-catching but not overwhelming. I love the clean lines and the perfect transmission of the concept of economics to a graphic. Well done, gents!

You don't see this very often

2006-03-30T11:09:00.000-05:00

From an AFP news story about the famous "national debt clock" owned by real estate developer Douglas Durst:

Durst insists that the clock is non-partisan in its effort to shame the federal government over what he sees as its willingness to gamble away the nation's future.

"We're a family business," Durst said. "We think generationally, and we don't want to see the next generation crippled by this burden," he said.

Imagine, a public figure mentioning that our nation should be "thinking generationally"!

Thank you for my first belly laugh of the day!

2006-03-30T11:04:00.000-05:00

... to Steve Sailer, who is reviewing "V for Vendetta":

An ambitious, deeply religious Conservative politician, he had imposed martial law in the wake of a terrorist virus attack, putting society under the thumb of fanatical Church of England bishops. (According to Google, the phrase "fanatical Church of England bishops" has never been seen before.) The government dispatched all Muslims and homosexuals to concentration camps (although the film forgets to mention how these two victimized minorities got along on the inside).

Good Night and God Bless

2006-03-26T03:14:00.000-05:00

Buck Owens has passed on.

There are days...

2006-03-25T01:28:00.000-05:00

...when I am really glad to be living in PoMo America.

And this is one of them.

Progressives have been hyperventilating over Daniel Edwards' sculpture "Monument to Pro-Life: The Birth of Sean Preston," which, according to Salon, is a "life-size piece depict[ing] Britney Spears crouching naked on her elbows and knees atop a bearskin rug," giving birth.

The biggest problem with this piece is that the sculptor is dedicating his work to the anti-abortion movement. Says Laura Barcella at AlterNet, "…Please don't use some nutty, obsessed artist's hypersexualized fantasy of celebrity childbirth as your twisted anti-choice propaganda. On second thought -- do that, if you really think it'll help your cause. I think it makes all of y'all anti-choicers look as crazy as the artist -- which, of course, you are."

The problem is, of course, the piece is a hoax.

Commenter quinnskylark [at the same blogpost, above] pointed to Dan Edwards' other work, which includes a Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy Memorial. He writes, "If I were a betting man, I’d guess that the artist’s point in this sculpture has nothing to do with the pro-choice/pro-life discussion and everything to do with the perception and judgment of pseudo-liberals. The press release is not meant to promote the work; it is itself part of the artwork, intended to provoke reactions like your blog post. Thus your reaction is also part of the artwork. A really good showing of the artist's work would be not only the sculpture, but framed reproductions of the condemning articles written about it. The fact that you were so emotionally affected by this artwork shows that it was successful. It is likely that the artist is not pro-life, but that he’s pro-self-expression. Perhaps he wanted to say that liberals could be as bad as conservatives when it came to reacting to opinions different than their own. If that's the case, it worked. You took the bait and revealed yourself to be a philistine in liberal clothing."

Well done, sir.

What We Have Lost

2006-03-14T00:15:00.000-05:00

The WarNerd nails it again:

So much of what made war worth doing died in '45. That's the Nazis' real crime, if you ask me: they ruined it for everybody except the damn suits.

Via Steve Sailer, natch.

Harvesting Federal Students Loans

2006-03-05T19:12:00.000-05:00

Expect to see the least among us saddled with increasing student loan debt, thanks to these kinds of "opportunities."

Online Colleges Receive a Boost From Congress

"This is a growth industry and you get rich not by being skeptical, but by being enthusiastic," said Henry M. Levin, director of Columbia University's National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education.

"Restore, I pray you, to them, even this day..."

2006-03-03T18:53:00.000-05:00

from ParaPundit:

America's Younger Workers Losing Ground On Income

A new survey shows that median incomes fell for householders under 45, even as they rose for older ones, between 2001 and 2004.

Randall Parker suspects this may be because the U.S. is becoming less white, and the predominate immigrant groups are downwardly-mobile.

He points out that "from 1970 to 1997 men under 35 experienced a 19% decline in income."

• The entry of women into the workforce in those decades has helped push median family incomes up over time. But even when men and women are included together, younger workers (age 25-34) are earning well below what they did in 1970. And at all ages, evidence suggests that families are putting in more hours of work to make their household incomes rise.

• Even with extra time at work, median family income has barely budged since 1995 for householders below 45, up about 5 percent after inflation through 2004.

He writes, "Some libertarians argue that a rising tide lifts all boats. Well, wrong. A large proportion of the boats have leaks and are sitting rather lower in the water. Think of all the technological advances that have boosted productivity since 1970 and then consider these results. Something is going terribly wrong."

Parker also refers to the problems facing the children of America's majority population, most notably raging student loan and consumer debt.

Is the problem really that we are all feckless debtors? I think there is some truth to this, and it has be admitted. We have all been raised with a buy-now pay-later mentality. However, even without the problematic consumer debt saddling younger people, there is the larger issue of student loan debt, due to America's education racket.

In the future, as men continue to eschew higher education, I believe that the student loan problem will fade away on its own. Higher education will not be tenable without men. It certainly will prove to be a bad investment, as future earnings will cease to track with education.

The bigger problem facing Red State America will be weaning our children off of credit.

"I'll explain it all to them when they get older about why they look so different."

2006-02-27T20:18:00.000-05:00

Black and white twins

When Kylie Hodgson gave birth to twin daughters by caesarean section, she was just relieved that they had arrived safely.
It was only when the midwife handed them over for her to hold that she noticed the difference between them.
Remee, who weighed 5lb 15oz, was blonde and fair skinned. Her sister Kian, born a minute later weighing 6lb, was black.

Notice they aren't in red, white, and blue

2006-02-23T12:41:00.000-05:00

Judi Werthein has designed a special "crossing trainer" to help illegal immigrants cross the border from Mexico to the US.

A Random Assortment of Links

2006-02-15T15:51:00.000-05:00

My husband treats me like a piece of property! And I like it just fine, thank you. For example, he sent me the link to Electric Venom's website, who has been discussing her family's decision to homeschool their young son. He also turned me on to Salon's article discussing the fact that more and more men are eschewing college. (Don't miss the "Letters" section. My favorite? "Sorry, but if the future of caucasian [sic] humanity depends upon women being nothing but fetus factories, as far as I'm concerned, the white race will just have to die out.")

JLH's pens the best blog entry I have ever read. The only thing I would add is one more link: "Why Some Old Lovers Look Alike."

Yes, it is true: "If your spouse is genetically similar, you're more likely to have a happy marriage, for example. Child abuse rates are lower when similarity is high, and you'll also be more altruistic and willing to sacrifice more for someone who is more genetically like you, research shows."

Like any good survivalist, I just purchased "How to Survive a Robot Uprising." Consider yourselves warned, people!

This was reported under "Odd News" on Yahoo! News...

2006-01-22T01:19:00.000-05:00

Marriage builds wealth more than being single?

By Joanne Morrison
Fri Jan 20, 1:55 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Staying married has its benefits, especially financial, as a new U.S.-wide study shows the wealth of a married person is almost double that of somebody who is single.

Divorce among U.S. baby boomers reduced personal wealth by about 77 percent compared to that of a single person, while the financial standing among those who remained married almost doubled, according to a nationwide study released this week.

"If you really want to increase your wealth, get married and stay married. On the other hand, divorce can devastate your wealth," said Jay Zagorsky, author of the study and a research scientist at Ohio Sate University's Center for Human Resource Research. (emphasis mine)

"If you really want to increase your wealth, get married and stay married..." It is hard to believe that this would shock anyone over the age of 12. As much as this is a dog-bites-man story, however, it is still quite telling that this was filed as a fluff piece.

The Sacred Nursery

2006-01-06T17:50:00.000-05:00

I think many of the cognoscenti are beginning to wake up to the reality of their lack of reproductive fitness (for example, university-educated women have a 35 percent lower fitness than those who leave school as early as possible).

After defining the worldliness which is killing our best and brightest White and Asian minds, Professor Geoffrey Miller speculates that the most important factors that will keep a population from entertaining itself to death include those which are near and dear to the Kinist heart: "Those who persist will evolve more self-control, conscientiousness, and pragmatism. They will evolve a horror of virtual entertainment, psychoactive drugs, and contraception. They will stress the values of hard work, delayed gratification, child-rearing, and environmental stewardship. They will combine the family values of the Religious Right with the sustainability values of the Greenpeace Left."

Of course, Steve Sailer has taken Mark Steyn to task for saying essentially the same thing with regards to the United States. Sailer points out that massive amounts of unskilled Latin American immigration will mitigate any increase in the native population, no matter how booming the natalist movement.

Sailer is right that there isn't much hope for a right-wing political boon from these demographic projections. The USA will become increasingly left-wing and totalitarian as it becomes more similar in population to other Latin-American countries. However, what is not being said is that Whites by definition will become increasingly more racially-aware, Christian, and conservative.

Those Whites who survive will do so only by embracing the Christian values of our ancestors. Whites who do not have a world view which eschews the nihilism of today's entertainment-based culture will see little reason to invest long-term time and resources into enterprises such as marriage or entrepreneurship which are the foundations of successful extended families and communities.

The Christians who survive will survive as Whites only through an explicit racial consciousness; less racially-aware White Christians will be lost through miscegenation and absorption into the majority non-White population. Many mainstream Christians may be comfortable with this, but the Christianity that their children's children may practice will not resemble their own.

Local Costs of the Iraq War

2005-11-03T02:22:00.000-05:00

Follow this link to see the breakdown of the cost of the Iraq War for various towns, cities and counties across the U.S. This breakdown is based upon a total cost of $251 billion. Bear in mind this is just through FY2006.

Unlinked to the Future

2005-10-31T03:00:00.000-05:00

The End of Courtship: Part 2 of 3 by Leon R. Kass.

Thanks to technology, a woman could declare herself free from the teleological meaning of her sexuality — as free as a man appears to be from his. Her menstrual cycle, since puberty a regular reminder of her natural maternal destiny, is now anovulatory and directed instead by her will and her medications, serving goals only of pleasure and convenience, enjoyable without apparent risk to personal health and safety. Woman on the pill is thus not only freed from the practical risk of pregnancy; she has, wittingly or not, begun to redefine the meaning of her own womanliness. Her sexuality unlinked to procreation, its exercise no longer needs to be concerned with the character of her partner and whether he is suitable to be the father and co-rearer of her yet-to-be-born children. Female sexuality becomes, like male, unlinked to the future. The new woman's anthem: Girls just want to have fun. Ironically, but absolutely predictably, the chemicals devised to assist in family planning keep many a potential family from forming, at least with a proper matrimonial beginning.

Avian Flu Wiki

2005-10-28T00:40:00.000-05:00

The Flu Wiki is a collection of resources on influenza and coping with an influenza pandemic.

Lone Star Statements

2005-10-27T23:34:00.000-05:00

"The Mourning News" has reprinted a bunch of single-star Amazon reviews of books from Time’s list of the 100 best novels from 1923 to the present. They are a scream! A few of my favorites:

The Catcher in the Rye (1951)
Author: J.D. Salinger

“So many other good books…don’t waste your time on this one. J.D. Salinger went into hiding because he was embarrassed.”

The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967)
Author: William Styron

“My great-great-grandfather is not gay! I don’t know why this William Styron is trying to lie on my great-great-grandfather. Needless to say I am a descendant of Nat Turner and it bothers me that this author is trying to lie to make this book more interesting. I cannot say for certainty that my grandfather was not gay or that he didn’t like white women and neither can this author but I can say that Nat Turner was married and had children and I am a descendant of that union! Other than that idiotic portrayal the book was good.”

The Great Gatsby (1925)
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

“It grieves me deeply that we Americans should take as our classic a book that is no more than a lengthy description of the doings of fops.”

Lord of the Flies (1955)
Author: William Golding

“I am obsessed with Survivor, so I thought it would be fun. WRONG!!! It is incredibly boring and disgusting. I was very much disturbed when I found young children killing each other. I think that anyone with a conscience would agree with me.”

Thank you to Marginal Revolution for the link.

Apples, Pumpkins, and Devolution

2005-10-26T23:27:00.000-05:00

I spent this weekend processing a pumpkin we bought from the farmer's market. Actually, Biscuit and I brought home two—one for me to cook with, and one to carve. We also bought a peck of apples, because she loves apples. She loves to eat them, she loves to talk about them ("Apple!" is her favorite word), and she loves to bang them together while eating them and talking about them.

We have yet to carve the big pumpkin. It has been sitting on the dining room table, all shiny and orange. Biscuit, who just turned two, is still convinced that it is one REALLY big apple. "Apple!" she exclaims proudly, as she sneaks onto the table to get at the bowl of fruit. Against better judgment I ignore that she isn't supposed to be on the table. Just this once. Again. "Apple," she says, as she points at the bowl of shiny red orbs. I encourage her, yes, they are apples. "Apple," she says, kissing the big orange pumpkin. No, I have to say, my heart melting, that is a pumpkin. She laughs and pats the pumpkin, as if she is patting my addlepated noggin. Of course it's an apple. Silly mommy. All the world's an apple to eat and bang together.

I haven't ever tried to make pumpkin puree before. I read several how-to guides on the Internet, but it still took me about two hours to cook the two halves to a desired consistency. I finally gave up and microwaved them. I won't be doing that again.

It also took me forever to puree the pumpkin flesh. I finally gave up and added water to make the puree smooth enough to actually mix in the food processor. Nowhere have I read that it is OK to add water, so I think I flunked that part of "Fall Homemaking 101." However, I did emerge with about 12 cups of pumpkin puree, which is delightful.

My first attempt at baking with the puree was to make pumpkin bread. I was happy to read that one can make pumpkin pie spice easily using ingredients already at hand. At least, I thought they were at hand. I had ginger, allspice, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg, all good stuff, from the Baker's Catalog. Well, all have gone MIA since the move. However, I am pleased to report that I substituted Chinese Five Spice and cinnamon and the result was quite nice. My husband, who is quite picky, proclaimed it edible. Huzzah!

Next, I made muffins, using the same recipe. I was able to locate the turbinado sugar for the muffin tops, and the results were gorgeous! I still have about 6 cups of puree left (in the fridge, natch—what, me freeze?). I am now looking for a recipe that will use pumpkin puree and apple sauce (from all the banged up apples).

While I was slaving over the hot food processor, Biscuit and I listened to The Proclaimer's 1988 album, Sunshine on Leith:

What do you do
Wnen democracy fails you
What do you do
When the rest can't see it's true?

Pat votes the Scots away
Just like her mother
But South always takes all
Just like her brother
The next time she might vote
So might the others
But time's running out pal
Cause they're giving up in numbers

What do you do
When democracy fails you
What do you do
When minority means you?
--"What Do You Do?"

This weekend I hope we can go apple picking. The critter will be in Heaven, and I will have more baking materials. I am really fond of baking right now because it keeps the house warm and it has been FREEZING. We have been putting plastic up on the windows and weather stripping the doors, but there is only so much you can do when it is 30 degrees outside. Brrr…

The People’s Cube takes on Cafepress and wins!

2005-10-18T09:23:00.000-05:00

You really should read the whole thing, but I am partial to the letter The People’s Cube (PC) sent to Cafepress regarding the removal of PC’s graphic "Cafepress is a left-wing nutjob:"

Courts have upheld that privately owned shopping malls are "Public Commons" where people have free speech rights no matter what the policies of the owners of the shopping malls. Web-sites such as CafePress, it could be argued, by allowing in the public, are Public Commons and as such don't have the right to limit anyone's free speech which includes, but not limited to, setting up a section named "Cafepress is a left-wing nutjob."

While the very concept of "Public Commons" is a purely leftist idea used by the Left to survive by parasitizing on capitalism through injecting communist propagandistic larvae into the host bodies of wealth-creating capitalists (which I guess has unfortunately happened to Cafepress at some point), I consider it a fair game to invoke this concept while fighting the Leftist infection itself.

While the "Cafepress is a left-wing nutjob" site merchandise is still banished into ether, PC’s "Che™ is dead" shirts have miraculously been restored! Now, if they only sold coffee cups...

Via relapsed catholic

Phone-tree Hell

2005-10-17T15:32:00.000-05:00

I always make phone calls mid-morning, after I have had my coffee and before I have had a change to get involved in anything else. It requires getting into the right psychological frame of mind, girding up one's loins in preparation to do battle with that frustrating post-modern beast, the Integrated Voice Response (IVR) system that almost all companies throw in front of their customer service reps in hopes that you, the customer, will give in and hang up before actually encountering a human being.

Well, gentle readers, the customer strikes back! Here is a "cheat sheet" which gives you the proper way to bypass the phone menu trees of most major companies. Many times pressing "0" works, but not always. Read more about this volunteer-supported database here. Enjoy!

Thanks to Gene Ex for the link.

"The common people swarm like summer flies

2005-10-13T21:04:00.000-05:00

And whither fly the gnats but to the sun?"

Great New Post from Bedlam Nation

So we are told in this story courtesy of NewsMax that sex between male and female soldiers is rampant in today’s politically correct up-to-date armed forces. Furthermore, this conduct is “the cost of doing business in the gender-integrated military.” And all because the “policy makers believe that men and women are interchangeable.”

One female soldier said sex is “what people this age do.”

Yes, naturally. But one of the chief functions of civilization is to channel this natural God-given impulse into its proper, life-giving path. At an age when they should be marrying and having children these young people are stationed in a foreign country “fighting” an unnecessary and ill-conceived war because we refuse to see who the real enemy is and to face what must be done.

...

Why has it come to this? It seems to me more and more that the proper functions of humankind have been utterly ignored in the quest for things that are abominable anyway. An army fighting for the right to enjoy sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll and abortion is not going to have any real motivation compared to a people engaged in a struggle to be able to reproduce and provide a future for itself and its children.

The Mothering Mentality

2005-10-13T15:10:00.000-05:00

"In the minds of many, the government should be well-oiled and ready, eager and full of verve, even before the disaster has stopped. Food should appear like magic, water flow from the hills, and new homes built silently in the night, as if by charitable elves. When this naturally does not occur, the result is, above all, a complete escape from reality. The government is incompetent, the rest of the world is ignoring our plight, no one cares about us, The Leader is racist, misogynist, anti-poor, a capitalist, a Christian, eats meat, and therefore is corrupt and evil and contains within him the power to in fact create such catastrophes to eradicate those that see him for what he really is.

...

"It was once easy to dismiss this as the mad rhetoric of third-world asshats, anti-West in toto and usually crushed by local animals who spent their aid money (the only Western product they enjoyed) on weapons and palaces instead of food and water. After Katrina, this isn’t so easy anymore..."

Read More at Dust My Broom. Thanks to relapsed catholic for the link. Vote for her, she's funny!

Happy Birthday, Johannah Faith Duggar!

2005-10-12T19:34:00.000-05:00

Michelle Duggar just delivered her 16th child, and she's already thinking about doing it again.

Johannah Faith Duggar was born at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday and weighed 7 pounds, 6.5 ounces.

Student Rebuked for Sitting During Mexican Anthem

2005-10-07T09:05:00.000-05:00

In Illinois, a 17 year-old high school student was reprimanded when he declined to stand for the Mexican National Anthem during a school ceremony.

Of the 2,550 students enrolled at Larkin last year, 38.4 percent were Latino. Nearly a quarter of students were new to English. Information for the current school year is not yet available.

Four years earlier, 20 percent of the school’s 2,029 students were Latino, according to the 2000 school report card. Some 10 percent of students spoke English as a second language.

As the school grows more diverse, cultural assemblies will follow, Bedard said. But they should take care to represent a range of cultures, including the homegrown one.

“If they have an assembly, I would be happy if they will not try to force students to honor patriotic elements of another culture unless they also honor our flag, our anthem as well,” Bedard said. “It’s just respect for both cultures.”

No kids please, we're selfish

2005-09-23T13:24:00.000-05:00

Childless at 48, I'm now old enough for the question of motherhood to have become merely philosophical. Still, I've had all the time in the world to have babies. I am married. I've been in perfect reproductive health. I could have afforded children, financially. I just didn't want them. They are untidy; they would have messed up my flat. In the main, they are ungrateful. They would have siphoned too much time away from the writing of my precious books.

From the Guardian on September 17 via American Renaissance.

This essay, surprisingly frank and self-aware, lays it all on the table, covering falling European birth rates and what it means for sustained European culture. The author continues:

Yet maybe the multiculturalism debate is sufficiently matured for us to concede that white folk are people, too. We encourage minorities of every stripe to be proud of their heritage - Jamaicans, Muslims, Jews - as well they should be. We don't assume that if an immigrant from China cherishes his roots and still makes a mean moo shoo pork he is therefore bigoted toward every other ethnicity on the planet. So can Italians not champion Italianness? Or the British their Yorkshire pudding? Indeed, the tacit consensus - that every minority from Australian aboriginals to Romany should be treasuring, preserving and promulgating their culture, while white Europeans should not - is producing a virulent, sometimes poisonous rightwing backlash across the continent, and a gathering opposition to the immigration that Europe sorely needs if it is to maintain itself economically. In the interest of civil, rational thinking on this matter, we should at least allow ourselves to talk about it. The long-dominant populations in most of Europe are contracting, and maybe by the time they're minorities in their own countries they will have rights, too - among them at least the right to feel a little sad.

We are living in the eye of a great big storm, one that will only fully be appreciated by our children as they try to write the history of their nation. The paradigm has irrevocably shifted, and even baby-boomers who have never before questioned any of their petty assumptions and motivations can smell the rain a'comin'.

"What they didn't steal they trashed..."

2005-09-17T21:10:00.000-05:00

"They took everything — all the electronics, the food, the bikes," said John Stonaker, a Wal-Mart security officer. "People left their old clothes on the floor when they took new ones. The only thing left are the country-and-western CDs. You can still get a Shania Twain album."

Joy!

2005-09-14T02:18:00.000-05:00

Google is now offering a blog search service at http://blogsearch.google.com/.

From the FAQ:

Blog Search is Google search technology focused on blogs. Google is a strong believer in the self-publishing phenomenon represented by blogging, and we hope Blog Search will help our users to explore the blogging universe more effectively, and perhaps inspire many to join the revolution themselves. Whether you're looking for Harry Potter reviews, political commentary, summer salad recipes or anything else, Blog Search enables you to find out what people are saying on any subject of your choice.

Your results include all blogs, not just those published through Blogger; our blog index is continually updated, so you'll always get the most accurate and up-to-date results; and you can search not just for blogs written in English, but in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese and other languages as well.

If you read this, you will go insane...

2005-09-13T22:57:00.000-05:00

The New Century Foundation has updated The Color of Crime for 2005. Those of you who are inclined to commit mayhem when confronted with facts should avert your eyes. The rest of us can safely read and analyze mountains of U.S. Department of Justice data in adult fashion. Really. I have faith in you.

Read Jared Taylor's press release at VDare.com, as well, and make up your own mind. As to the anonymous poster who chastised me below for linking to Jared Taylor and American Renaissance, I think Taylor's words speak well to the situation:

It is a sorry day in America when you are either brave or racist if you dig up and publicize crime data the Department of Justice has been collecting for decades.

Disgrace

2005-09-11T10:21:00.000-05:00

Purely by happenstance (not due to the events which unfolded 24 hours later in New Orleans), I purchased J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace from Amazon on the 28th of last month, and it arrived Friday. I finished it at 6 a.m. yesterday morning. At 224 pages, it is a fast read, but the book lingers long after it is put down.

Just as Nabokov wasn’t much interested in the political implications of child molestation when he wrote Lolita and was instead using Humbert Humbert’s tawdry obsession as a vehicle to explore the English language, Coetzee, too, seems to use the strife of post-apartheid South Africa as a literary device. Any sentiment Coetzee the author may have towards the country he has since fled is well-hidden. I won’t even attempt to engage in any lit crit here, since others have done it much better than I could ever achieve.

Whatever the author’s feelings towards black-ruled South Africa, he is too good an observer to refrain from describing the brutalities of that land. His novel ends with the utter debasement of his protagonist, David Lurie, an erstwhile college professor who finds at the end his only redemption is by making sure that the dog corpses he is in charge of incinerating are not debased:

It would be simpler to cart the bags to the incinerator immediately after the session and leave them there for the incinerator crew to dispose of. But that would mean leaving them on the dump with the rest of the weekend's scourings: with waste from the hospital wards, carrion scooped up at the roadside, maleodorous refuse from the tannery - a mixture both casual and terrible. He is not prepared to inflict such dishonor upon them.

So on Sunday evenings he brings the bags to the farm in the back of Lucy's kombi, parks them overnight, and on Monday mornings drives them to the hospital grounds. There he himself loads them, one at a time, on to the feeder trolley, cranks the mechanism that hauls the trolley through the steel gate into the flames, pulls the lever to empty it of its contents, and cranks it back, while the workmen whose job this normally is stand by and watch.

On his first Monday he left it to them to do the incinerating. Rigor mortis had stiffened the corpses overnight. The dead legs caught in the bars of the trolley, and when the trolley came back from its trip to the furnace, the dog would as often as not come riding back too, blackened and grinning, smelling of singed fur, its plastic covering burnt away. After a while the workmen began to beat the bags with the backs of their shovels before loading them, to break the rigid limbs. It was then that he intervened and took over the job himself.

Such is the place Lurie has found himself in. His lesbian daughter is now pregnant with the offspring of black thugs who raped her after they locked her father in a bathroom. His daughter refuses to leave her smallholding, even though she has family in Holland. She has agreed, with little or no resistance, to become the concubine of the local “big man” who arranged her rape.

‘How humiliating,’ he says finally. ‘Such high hopes, and to end like this.’

‘Yes, I agree, it is humiliating. But perhaps that is a good point to start from again. Perhaps that is what I must learn to accept. To start at ground level. With nothing. Not with nothing but. With nothing. No cards, no weapons, no property, no rights, no dignity.’

‘Like a dog.’

‘Yes, like a dog.’

I doubt that the Nobel committee would have awarded their prize to a novel which described a black family learning to accept their existence as being that of dogs. I don’t, however, think that Coetzee is being political in this book, either in endorsing or excoriating the situation. He merely describes the inevitable, and it is up to the reader to draw his own conclusion about its greater ramifications.

A Watershed Moment in U.S. History

2005-09-06T01:30:00.000-05:00

The events of the past week have opened many eyes, and I hope it has changed some hearts. Steve Sailer is doing brisk business in the bloggosphere as he explains what happened in New Orleans, and how it is being spun. Jared Taylor has written a great, no-nonsense article that shouldn’t be missed. And I just recently re-discovered my new most favoritest blog, relapsed catholic.

What a tragedy

2005-08-31T13:40:00.000-05:00

BILOXI — Biloxi residents got their first look today at the devastation Hurricane Katrina wreaked on their famed beach front.

Landmarks like Beavoir, the final home of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, are virtually demolished.

The Davis home, built in 1854, has been reduced to rubble and a frame of a house.

No Surprise

2005-08-16T16:23:00.000-05:00

On a whim, I searched the YWCA's site for the word "Christian." Results? "Nothing Found."

I was relieved to read, however, that "The YWCA is the oldest and largest multicultural women's organization in the world." Whew! At least they have their priorities straight.

Looks like I will have to find another place for a gym membership...

The Cleanup

2005-07-01T21:09:00.000-05:00

It has only been two days, but it feels like two years. The time seems to have run together. I want to document all that we have done since it has been so much fun.

Yesterday my husband and my father replaced the locks and I cleaned the hardwood floors and some of the more pressing areas of filth. We made appointments to have a dumpster delivered the next day (today) and to have the two garage door openers fixed or replaced. The gentlemen from the garage door company told my husband that our openers were the oldest working openers he had ever seen. "Working" was loosely interpreted, but we did choose to have both openers replaced due to safety issues. The new openers use sensors to keep them from coming down if anything is in the way, which is necessary with a toddler who loves to push every button she sees.

I bought ceiling paint (but haven't had a chance to apply it). I called a local pool repair company to find out what would be involved in fixing the in-ground pool we were stuck with. We trimmed the tree in the front yard which had grown out into the street. Oh! And my husband bought a riding lawnmower. It seemed at first to be a bit frivolous, but every other house on the block has one. In fact, these people seem to mow their lawns every day—it is just what men *do* here.

Today we were woken up at 6:30 by the waste management facility because the driver came by to drop off our dumpster but were weren’t at the house. Jim and my father ran out of the apartment while I stayed behind to feed Ellie and bring supplies. When I arrived, the dumpster hadn’t yet been delivered, but the garage doors were well on their way to actually opening and closing on demand. We met the neighbors who came out en masse to thank us for trimming the tree in the front yard, and to tell us that they had complained to the previous owners as a group about the fetid swamp that was our pool. I spent the rest of the morning running errands, which included picking up lots of pool chemicals to try to shock the beast into a state of, if not normalcy, at least less pestilential funkitude.

In the afternoon I dumped a bunch of chemicals I didn’t understand into murky green water, and hoped that I wouldn’t catch anything on fire. I made the mistake of using a leaf rake to try to remove the bigger chunks of biological effluvium, but that merely stirred up the murk on the bottom. I realized then that it was indeed possible for the pool to look even worse than it did the day we bought it, which triggered in me a grudging respect and perhaps even affection. The pool has begun to take on a life of its own at this point, swallowing up costly chemicals and my feeble attempts at stewardship with equal derision.

I realize that things would be much simpler if I turned on the filter, but I don’t actually know how to do that. Or where the filter is located, for that matter. It could be hidden in the jungle of weeds we hacked through today in our quest to win neighborly approval through lawn care. We discovered an amazing number of items in the flora of our backyard. My father found an owl statuette. Jim found the solar cover for the pool, which at one time must have been the bee’s knees. I found the pool’s outdoor lighting system, by cutting through a lantern’s plastic insulated wire cable. Like so much about this house, the lighting system was at one time of the highest quality but is now rusted and decayed beyond saving. It is such a pity. However, it feels good to know that at one time a family loved this house very much, and took great care of it. I hope we can live up to the dreams they had for it.

We Have a House!

2005-06-29T16:55:00.000-05:00

And it is filthy! But it is ours!

We had our first "final walkthrough" yesterday, where we found piles of junk left in the house and especially the backyard. There was a huge metal desk left in the basement and the pool was literally black with mosquitoes (I bet this is a big hit with the neighbors). We contacted our attorney, and the seller hired a "We-Haul-It" type company to remove his 3 lawnmowers and other seriously nasty junk this morning. We tried to have a FINAL final walk-through this afternoon, but the gentleman had deadbolted the front door, and we couldn't get in. We were able to verify that most of the problematic stuff was removed from the backyard.

Most of the stuff in the house we could live with, assuming he didn't do something truly dasterdly, so the fact that we couldn't walk through it isn't quite so problematic. He did, for some obscure reason, decide to repaint the dining room and living room, including over the beautiful hardwood baseboard and chair railings. I was told to use mineral spirits and lineseed oil to remove the paint. The seller couldn't be bothered to remove the cat-pee soaked area rug, but he felt the need to slop paint onto one of the house's main selling points the day before he moved out.

HOWEVER, the important point is:

We Have a House! (ok, so the bank owns the house and they are letting us pay rent, but work with me here.)

Fried Green Got-Yer-Goat at the Just Desserts Cafe

2005-06-29T16:44:00.000-05:00

A Free Stater has proposed that Justice David Souter's house be seized for a hotel, called the "Lost Liberty."

"The justification for such an eminent domain action is that our hotel will better serve the public interest as it will bring in economic development and higher tax revenue to Weare," Logan Darrow Clements of California wrote in a letter faxed to town officials in Weare on Tuesday...
Clements is the CEO of Los Angeles-based Freestar Media that fights "abusive" government through a Web site and cable show. He plans to move to New Hampshire soon as part of the Free State Project, a group that supports limiting government powers...

Closing Woes

2005-06-23T16:02:00.000-05:00

We still don’t have a closing date on our house. We had commitment weeks ago, but the seller’s attorney didn’t bother to read our attorney’s letter, which reminded them that they needed an updated survey on the property for our first-time homebuyer’s loan. So here we sit three days over the contract date. The only consolation (if you can call it that), is that the seller was counting on closing this week and took this week off from work. I am not happy that this poor guy sat around for nothing, but I did hear from the grapevine that he raised a royal ruckus with his attorney, and that makes a difference. We, the buyers, can complain until we are blue in the face and it would make no difference in this case. Them’s that writes the check do have some power, and I hope that the house seller gave that attorney of his what-for.

Raising Tomatoes

2005-06-23T15:46:00.000-05:00

I should have been blogging about this all along, but I was afraid that it would do nothing but document my failures, and boy, was I right!

Well, not really, since I am learning ninety-nine ways not to grow tomatoes, right? Right?

We live in a duplex, and I currently have nine plants in containers, planted with basil that was started from seed. The plants shot up fast and spindly, and now have a yucky yellowish cast. My neighbor has container tomatoes as well, and her plants are GORGEOUS-- deep green and healthy. I don’t know if I am over-watering or under-watering or if the water isn’t any good to begin with (we have problems with the well in other areas, too).

The plants have fruit, and I hope that they can recover from whatever ails them.

That's Outrageous!

2005-05-24T14:32:00.000-05:00

Denver Citizens ejected from a restaurant and public park for opposing illegal immigration

There’s A Fungus Among Us

2005-05-12T10:42:00.000-05:00

It looks like the Blessed household will be moving soon into our first house! We have been looking for a house for more than a year now, and are thrilled with what we have found. The house is a real estate dream—a real fixer-upper in a nice neighborhood, and well within our budget.

On Monday, we had the house inspected, using a company that had come highly recommended. The good news is that the inspection found few problems of which we were not already aware. The bad news is that the inspector found mold in the basement.

Yes, mold, which according to the inspector, would simply rise up and kill us dead in a matter of weeks. He recommended gutting the basement entirely, including removing the wood frames, and starting from scratch. Well, the REAL recommendation involved purchasing a $300 test from his company which would allow us to determine what sort of mold we had, therefore allowing us to more precisely engage in the intricate mold abatement program. Apparently, bleach doesn’t kill mold these days, but can cause some kind of chemical reaction which will result in the creation of a SuperMold(tm), known to produce spores the size of small ponies and vote Democrat.

I am very grateful for the mold education we have received, since I have been sick with some type of respiratory infection for the past two weeks. I am convinced that this is the result of walking through this particular house three or four times without a full HAZMAT suit. I think our daughter is also being affected. I hear her give the same barking 3-packs-a-day cough which has become my personal trademark, especially after I have been taken over with an uncontrollable fit on the phone to one of the battalion of contractors with whom I have been speaking in the past few weeks. Some would say mimicry, but I am convinced she has been exposed to the dread tortious moldus.

Seriously, there is mold in the basement. The house is filthy, as the owners simply don’t seem to be interested in cleaning it. Considering the house’s neglect, the fact that there is so little mold in the basement, and that there is no seepage, to us is a cause for jubilation. I think we can go far by ripping out the carpet and applying a bleach water solution to the walls. We will also be running a dehumidifier.

On a more dire note, the kitchen has no dishwasher, and no place to put one. Yes, I was horrified, too. What barbarians! However, the dishwasher will have to wait, because the tile in the bathroom is rotting out. Did I mention the house is a fixer-upper? Oh! And the house has a pool with a busted liner, affectionately known as the Toddler Pit of Drowning. For some reason, we are taking these issues a bit more seriously than the need to firebomb our basement.

On Corporations Running Scared from Abortion Lobby

2005-05-10T22:09:00.000-05:00

At the end of 2004, one of the elders at Trinity Baptist Church was fired from his job. It was Jerry Mestas. We appreciate Jerry because he is an evangelist, whose heart is thankful enough for the life and leadership of Jesus Christ, that he overflows in normal conversation about his Savior. He is bold, and he is always available to tell the story.

Faithful in All Things

2005-05-08T11:54:00.000-05:00

There is a blog that I just recently started reading that is one of the most humbling, edifying, and uplifting sites I could visit. It is written by a Christian woman who lives to serve the Lord and her husband, and through her posts other women by her godly instruction and example. I can crunch through hundreds of sites a day, but Kristen’s blog is so full of illuminating truth that one of her posts sustains me for days. Recently she has taken on women blogging, "Angel" paraphernalia, Laura Bush's public behavior, along with her continuing chapter-by-chapter study of Debi Pearl’s Created to Be His Help Meet.

I am speaking, of course, of Walking Circumspectly.

Toddlers mean! Women and children hardest hit.

2005-05-07T22:36:00.000-05:00

With our manufacturing base gone in this country, everyone scrambles for a cushy make-believe job. We don’t actually *do* anything, but we have to keep the rodent wheel spinning somehow. I have to admit I admire the obviously frustrated researchers who were able to come up with this study. Publish or perish, baby.

Recommended Site

2005-05-04T00:33:00.000-05:00

GovTrack.us

GovTrack.us fills the need for a source of information useful for people. It is both a large collection of data as well as a tool for filtering out what you don't want to see. You can dig deep in GovTrack, finding information the mass media does not have room for, and you can let GovTrack send information to you, like a newspaper customized to your interests. It's the power of the Internet put to use to close the citizen-country divide.

Note that once you have selected to monitor a Congresscritter or subject, you can embed these searches into your website or blog for daily updates.

Random Links

2005-05-02T12:52:00.000-05:00

Obesity is becoming a problem of the affluent:

In the early 1970s, 22.5 percent of people with incomes below $25,000 were obese. By 2002, 32.5 percent of the poor were. By comparison, just 9.7 percent of people with incomes above $60,000 were obese in the 1970s — a figure that jumped to 26.8 percent in 2002.

I personally blame the bacon bandages for the problem.

Christian Video Games?
This is a topic dear to me. I am a gamer, or used to be. Lately I have lost all interest—I even tried the EverQuest II 7-day trial and was left cold, but I have fond memories of gaming and empathize with this man’s attempt to square that circle. Is it possible? Probably not. However, I think this article does a good job fairly describing the challenges developer Rev. Ralph Bagley is facing trying to serve two masters.

Cast Iron

2005-05-01T23:12:00.000-05:00

I am still a pretty mediocre cook, but I have gotten much better than I used to be. Our family is very blessed that we have an old-fashioned “Leave It to Beaver” lifestyle. Mr. Blessed is able to come home for lunch. What would have been unremarkable for my great-grandmother’s generation is almost unheard of for my own. This means I get to prepare three interesting, nutritious, and frugal meals each day, seven days a week. It is certainly practice!

I have developed quite particular taste in cookware. I threw out all of my non-stick cookware and now only use cast iron and stainless steel pots and pans. And, oh, how I love my cast iron!

I think I have such devotion because my first pan was so entirely hard to use at first. Lodge claims that their cast iron is pre-seasoned but that is balderdash. I tried seasoning using their instructions, but it just wasn’t working. I will admit, Gentle Reader, that my first cast iron pan had me in tears. I would coat it with a thin coat of shortening and bake it for hours in our oven, smoking our apartment up miserably. Nothing I did would work. The surface would turn black in patches, not glassy the way I thought it was supposed to. But I persevered. I cooked nothing but sausages in it for the first four times or so (much to the delight of Mr. Blessed). I continued seasoning it in the oven over night, trying low heat as if I were cooking a turkey, and high heat if I could steal 30 minutes here or there. Finally, after several months, the pan transformed, taking on a hard, beautiful gloss. It cleaned up quickly and effortlessly. I no longer saw traces of brown on the paper towel when I lightly greased it for storage. I felt such accomplishment!

My second pan I have allowed to mellow on its own, as I am more confident in the process. It has taken much longer to season, however, and it still doesn’t have the super gloss of my first pan. However, the process of using cast iron and watching it season is actually quite psychically rewarding. It gives me a sense of accomplishment, and a funny sense of devotion. I truly love my cast iron pans, and can’t wait to add more to the collection. I am even excited about decorating our kitchen with cast iron pieces. I think that cast iron frustrates a lot of people, and it tends to get discarded easily. Taking old cast iron and breathing new life into it is a great way to reach back to our past, to a time when cookware had more personality.

And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool?

2005-05-01T22:44:00.000-05:00

It has been too long since I have posted to this blog on the topic that is most near and dear to my heart: being a homemaker. Part of the reason I haven’t is pride. Believing well that “Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding,” I have refrained from writing about my struggle.

I use the word “struggle” cautiously. In our pagan culture, the only visible expression of a homemaker’s life is that of drudgery, strife, and chaos. We are supposed to struggle; we are supposed to fail. And we are supposed to complain loudly and at length about our struggle and failure, taking a break only to go shopping. Any woman who is organized and competent in this sphere is deemed suspect—hiding dark secrets and compulsions.

So I have hesitated to add my voice to the existing din. However, I remember where I was two years ago, pregnant, wondering if I could actually make the leap. Could we afford for me to stay home? Would I be any good? Would I simply sit on the couch eating too much and watching TV? Would I lose my mind?

After a year and a half, I can honestly say that I do so much more than I thought I would. And there is much that needs improvement. A much-talked about article released today claims that “stay-at-home moms would earn an average of $131,471 annually, including overtime, if they received a paycheck.” I must admit that on some days when I have too many projects in the air, I do tend to console myself by thinking of how much we would be paying if we were to outsource my labor. This is silly, of course. It is never about the money. It is about the multi-tasking. Time is what matters. The phrase “Time is money” made no real impact on me until I quit my paying job.

So, in the interest of saving other women time, I will get back to blogging on housework.

"This place will be really great once we get rid of all those dusty books!"

2005-04-30T16:11:00.000-05:00

"Video games are an $11 billion business and a fundamental component of teenage life. Hosting video game tournaments at your library builds community, demonstrates your library's relevance to a different audience (young adults, teens, and especially males), and allows libraries to bring content directly into users' hands. Come to this exciting MLS Tech Summit to see firsthand how Ann Arbor District Library Information Access Systems geeks worked with the teen services librarians to bring video gaming tournaments to the community.

From The Shifted Librarian

Hmmm...

2005-04-30T15:43:00.000-05:00

At times like this I remind myself that I started a blog to learn the function and structure of the software, and therefore I shouldn't be frustrated. :) I can't seem to delete or modify the automatic post that Haloscan creates when I use their automatic installer. Why this should affect the code in my template I don't know. An, sweet mystery...

Also, the comments made to Blogger before this aftermarket modification are still there, available from the perma-link.

EDIT: Had I gone to HaloScan's forums, I would have seen that this is a known problem, and they suggest not adding or removing a post for 24 hours after modding Blogger's template. While I am certainly not prolific, I think waiting 24 hours is a bit excessive!

Anyway, I think the issue is with republishing the blog. I find that I can get the HaloScan mod to reappear once I republish the whole blog after I create or modify a post. What connection there is, if any, I don't understand.

I changed commenting software...

2005-04-30T15:26:00.000-05:00

I have changed to Haloscan so that folks won't be forced to use Blogger's comments, as per a reader's suggestion. Let me know if this causes you problems.

I’m shocked, SHOCKED. No, really.

2005-04-28T23:19:00.000-05:00

U.S. Supreme Court Justices don’t read amicus briefs. Who’d a thunk it?

From Crime & Federalism.

Museum of Foreign Debt

2005-04-28T22:53:00.000-05:00

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (Reuters) - Three years after staging the largest debt default in modern history, Argentina on Thursday opened what may be the first Museum of Foreign Debt to teach people the perils of borrowing abroad...

Since we always do things bigger and better here in the States, perhaps we can soon open up some kind of Disneyland Debt Museaum. That should employ several hundered out-of-work IT professionals, right?

Awwww, she named her Jayde!

2005-04-27T15:05:00.000-05:00

"I still don’t know if, or what, I am going to tell Jayde when the time comes. Maybe when she is nine or ten, I will sit her down and explain it to her. I just hope that she understands what happened and why I did it.

"Of course, it will be much harder to explain to her that she had a twin."

A twin that her mother had killed, and because of whom her mother is now suing as Jayde herself was not also killed. Yeah, I imagine that will take some explaining.

From Overlawyered.

Hacker deletes own hard drive

2005-04-27T14:54:00.000-05:00

Ooops.

Los Angeles, Mexico: It's Their City. It's Their Team.

2005-04-25T21:32:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Badlands for this story.

American Diabetes Association Sells Out to Cadbury Schweppes

2005-04-24T21:05:00.000-05:00

Today, the American Diabetes Association announced a corrupt new “multi-million dollar alliance” with Cadbury Schweppes Americas Beverages, a major manufacturer of sweetened soft drinks that are implicated in the epidemic of obesity and diabetes in the United States.

“Maybe the American Diabetes Association should rename itself the American Junk Food Association,” said Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert. “What will it do for an encore? Start selling candy bars for M&M/Mars?”

“If Cadbury Schweppes really wanted to reduce the incidence of obesity and diabetes, it would stop advertising its high-sugar products, and remove them from our nation’s schools,” Ruskin said. “This is just another attempt by a major junk food corporation to obfuscate its responsibility in the epidemic of obesity and diabetes in the United States.”

“The American Diabetes Association should return this corrupt contribution to Cadbury Schweppes immediately,” Ruskin said.

More information about the American Diabetes Association-Cadbury Schweppes “alliance” is available at: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050421/dcth002.html?.v=7

Taken verbatim from Commercial Alert.

Happy San Jacinto Day!

2005-04-21T15:44:00.000-05:00

That's "Hah-SEEN-toe" to you, Scorebored! :P

Read about it from the Handbook of Texas Online!

OK, this is funny!

2005-04-21T14:12:00.000-05:00

"I am the only hope you've got of staying out of deeper trouble than you or any student I've ever known has ever been in."

The last few minutes of this video from a biology class at Berkeley is of professor explaining the terrifying consequences that will soon befall the student that stole his laptop.

Via BoingBoing.

I am now going to go plant tomatoes, even though it is supposed to snow on Sunday. Yes, snow. It is weather like this that makes Yankees so durned mean, I am convinced.

I Owe my Soul to the Company Store

2005-04-21T11:48:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, Jorge Arbusto signed the Bankruptcy Reform Act into law as he had vowed. Who says he doesn't keep his promises to the people who put him into office? Heart of Her Husband has some great posts here and here about the implications of this "reform" for middle America. To celebrate, I tuned into Fox News just to count the number of mortgage refinancing commercials the "Fair and Balanced" channel was running. Yes, that sound you hear is someone losing another home to Dietech. Now, if you excuse me I need to compose some morally superior post telling women that they need to quit their jobs to stay home with their children, no matter how much it hurts financially. I am a "family friendly" Republican, after all...

¡Mira Los Jotos!

2005-04-18T13:22:00.000-05:00

Liberalism and multiculturalism are on a collision course. Thanks to Modern Tribalist for the latest:

When the call came on his cell phone, Roberto Hernandez was driving to work in San Francisco. The caller, who identified himself as Juan, said in Spanish that he had met Hernandez at a gay bar and wanted to see him again.

"Refresh my memory, there are so many Juans," said a puzzled Hernandez. The man described himself as slim with "a very nice butt." Eventually, the caller offered to give Hernandez his phone number -- then announced that the conversation was being broadcast live nationwide on the "Raul Brindis and Pepito Show," a Spanish-language morning radio program.

"Why did these people have to treat me this way?" Hernandez said of his public outing, which led the Federal Communications Commission to fine the station owner $28,000 this year. "Why the hell do they think I deserved something so brutal and humiliating?"

Such on-air mockery of gay men, lesbians and transgender people is common on Spanish-language radio and television, media watchers say, and it has raised the ire of gay rights groups.

more...

Bwahahahahaha!

2005-04-15T19:54:00.000-05:00

Slime-mold Beetles Named for Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld

Namesakes of the U.S. President and two of his key people might be crawling around your back yard as you read this.

Three new beetles of the genus Agathidium have been named after members of the current administration: A. bushi, A. cheneyi and A. rumsfeldi.

Two former Cornell University entomologists, Quentin Wheeler and Kelly Miller, were in charge of naming 65 new species of slime-mold beetles, which they discovered while studying the insects’ evolution and classification.

Thank you to Little Geneva for the link!

The Beginning of the End

2005-04-14T20:49:00.000-05:00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bankruptcy legislation making it tougher for heavily indebted Americans to wipe out their obligations won final congressional approval on Thursday and President Bush said he looked forward to signing it into law.

Sought for years by banks and credit card companies that say people are abusing bankruptcy to escape repayment, the measure cleared the House of Representatives on a 302-126 vote. It passed the Senate last month by 74-25.

The bill now goes to the White House, where it is seen as part of the Republicans' legal reform agenda...

Marvelous!

2005-04-13T19:19:00.000-05:00

I just received my first order from The Bulk Herb Store, which is now online. I had been meaning to order from them for years, so when they unveiled their new site, I placed an order immediately.

My only regret is that I didn’t start ordering from them sooner. Their products are fantastic! I ordered Mama’s Red Raspberry Brew and St. John’s Wort, and received my order within a week of placing it. The packaging was impeccable. Each of the 1 lb. bags of herbs were packaged in heavy-duty ziptop bags, clearly-labeled with exact ingredients, and mailed in a clean, crisp cardboard box which perfectly fit the packages. The peppermint in the pre-mixed tea is making our whole apartment smell divine, and the tea tastes as good and fresh as it smells.

I also appreciate how easy their website is to use. The site is easy to navigate, and the products are clearly and methodically described. The Pearls offer plenty of articles and other resources for those new to herbalism, and recommend several books for further reading.

Be warned, however, that if you haven’t seen a full pound of herbs it will surprise you. I am used to paying supermarket prices for tiny amounts of herbal tea, and I was flat out gobsmacked when I opened the (heavy) package and realized that it was full of what will surely be a year’s worth of tea. What a blessing for such a thrifty price!

Fannie Mae: The $30B Scandal That TV Forgot

2005-04-12T08:35:00.000-05:00

WHY isn't TV news giving the Fannie Mae scandals the same level of coverage that it gave to Enron?

Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored mortgage association, has been battling a mounting scandal since last year. It has accounting errors of about $11 billion. That's more than 19 times larger than Enron's $567 million error. Fannie faces a Justice Department inquiry, an SEC investigation and an Office of Federal Housing Enterprise complaint.

The mess has caused the departure of CEO Franklin Raines and several other top executives. And Fannie Mae stock has dropped roughly 30 percent, from nearly $80 a share to around $55. That's an added loss of more than $20 billion.

All of this is news — $30 billion worth of news — but the only journalists out there covering it on a regular basis are print reporters. TV news is out to lunch...

Read more from The New York Post.
Thank you to Walter Yannis and Original Dissent.

No Irish Need Apply

2005-04-10T08:29:00.000-05:00

Abstract:

Irish Catholics in America have a vibrant memory of humiliating job discrimination, which featured omnipresent signs proclaiming "Help Wanted--No Irish Need Apply!" No one has ever seen one of these NINA signs because they were extremely rare or nonexistent. The market for female household workers occasionally specified religion or nationality. Newspaper ads for women sometimes did include NINA, but Irish women nevertheless dominated the market for domestics because they provided a reliable supply of an essential service. Newspaper ads for men with NINA were exceedingly rare. The slogan was commonplace in upper class London by 1820; in 1862 in London there was a song, "No Irish Need Apply," purportedly by a maid looking for work. The song reached America and was modified to depict a man recently arrived in America who sees a NINA ad and confronts and beats up the culprit. The song was an immediate hit, and is the source of the myth. Evidence from the job market shows no significant discrimination against the Irish--on the contrary, employers eagerly sought them out. Some Americans feared the Irish because of their religion, their use of violence, and their threat to democratic elections. By the Civil War these fears had subsided and there were no efforts to exclude Irish immigrants. The Irish worked in gangs in job sites they could control by force. The NINA slogan told them they had to stick together against the Protestant Enemy, in terms of jobs and politics. The NINA myth justified physical assaults, and persisted because it aided ethnic solidarity. After 1940 the solidarity faded away, yet NINA remained as a powerful memory.

from "No Irish Need Apply": A Myth of Victimization
Richard Jensen (Professor of History Emeritus, University of Illinois, Chicago)
Journal of Social History 36.2 (2002) 405-429

Man arrested, cuffed after using $2 bills

2005-04-08T12:47:00.000-05:00

Sam Francis' anarcho-tyranny in action:

A man trying to pay a fee using $2 bills was arrested, handcuffed and taken to jail after clerks at a Best Buy store questioned the currency's legitimacy and called police.

According to an account in the Baltimore Sun, 57-year-old Mike Bolesta was shocked to find himself taken to the Baltimore County lockup in Cockeysville, Md., where he was handcuffed to a pole for three hours while the U.S. Secret Service was called to weigh in on the case.

More...

Excuse Me While I Squeal Like A Little Girl

2005-04-07T03:31:00.000-05:00

Steve Sailer has added me to his list of links! I am shocked, shocked. And delighted, of course, because I certainly don’t deserve it. My beloved husband may find it insufferable because lately I have actually caught him rolling his eyes every time I say, “You know it is quite interesting you should bring that up, honey. Steve Sailer says . . .”

Speaking of Which...

2005-04-07T03:19:00.000-05:00

Lately I have been thinking of a particular observation of Mr. Sailer’s regarding pornography. A year ago he wrote about the business:

“I understand that this is a supply driven market -- there are a lot of women out there who want to star in dirty movies. But, this is clearly not, generally speaking, a wise career choice. If the government shut down the making of new pornography, there'd still be plenty of old product for customers to buy, but there would be fewer women wrecking their lives.”

Were that it were true. I think that the explosion of amateur porn clips on the web demonstrates that women are remarkably determined to wreck their lives, for no apparent gain. See, for example, the jail bait Hannah whom Michael Blowhard seems a bit taken with. Actually, don’t *see* the clip, because it really won’t surprise you, at least not if you watch enough HBO. The only thing more boring than young girls acting like they just invented lasciviousness is old men who pretend that young girls have just invented it.

In the comments, Michael Blowhard writes, “Part of what makes my eyes open so wide when I run across stuff like that is thinking about her parents. Were they downstairs? What do they think she's doing with that videocam? In how many teen bedrooms around the country are things like this going on?”

This is the big question for our time. I suppose in my cynicism I can understand an honest whore. A woman who makes a buck on her back at least makes a buck out of the wretchedness, but what do these girls gain by their promiscuity? Specifically, what is fueling this tremendous seller’s market, especially when by all accounts it is flooded?

Even more specifically, what is causing middle-class parents to facilitate the degradation of their daughters? It does seem clear that this kind of behavior (on the part of parents) starts before our daughters even hit puberty. The web is full of middle-brow hand-wringing regarding the sexualization of increasingly-younger children.

It is impossible to even purchase moderately modest clothing for young girls. And I don’t for one minute buy the argument that “it’s what the kids want, and we can’t stop them.” Everyone has boundaries that they will not cross. Imagine, if you will, that it has suddenly become the fashionable thing for pre-teens to dress up in neo-Nazi uniforms and run about giving Roman salutes. Do you honestly think for a moment that modern American parents wouldn’t step up and say firmly, “No, you aren’t going to dress and act that way.”? Of course not.

Therefore the only conclusion a reasonable person can draw from this is that middle-class parents want their daughters to prostitute themselves. But why? What do they stand to gain (“they” being both parents and daughters)?

In our post-Christian society, I think that middle-class parents are selling their young daughters off the same as did the pagans of yore. Instead of currency, these parents gain social status. There is no such thing as bad publicity, and notoriety is the exact same thing as glory in an age where the only evil act you can commit is to judge another. We prostitute our daughters nowadays for the same reason that pimps have always turned out pretty young women—-sexually attractive and available young women confer social status to the ones who can procure her services.

Sociologist Rodney Stark has argued about the beneficial social force of Christianity, specifically for women:

“Christian women had tremendous advantages compared to the woman next door, who was like them in every way except that she was a pagan. First, when did you get married? Most pagan girls were married off around age 11, before puberty, and they had nothing to say about it, and they got married to some 35-year-old guy. Christian women had plenty of say in the matter and tended to marry around age 18.”

In post-Christian America, girls again have no say in who enjoys their favors. They are put onto the sexual treadmill before puberty and are convinced that the only evil that may befall them comes from stepping off. Our daughters are whores because we are their pimps. We feed on their youth, we feed on their fear, and we dump them, spent before their time, once they are no longer of use to us. As in all pagan cultures, we are eating our children. Our female population is showing the effects more starkly, but they are only harbingers of what is to come.

Speaking of Junk Science...

2005-04-07T01:02:00.000-05:00

"Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome," or CSAAS, is a prosecutor's new best friend:

According to CSAAS experts, not reporting abuse is thus consistent with suffering from child sexual abuse accommodation syndrome. So is bad behavior, trouble in school, the failure to tell an accurate story, and even the recantation of the entire allegation of abuse. In other words, every criterion usually used by the defense to discredit a witness is actually transubstantiated into evidence that is perfectly consistent with abuse.

And here's the genius: Not exhibiting these signs of CSAAS doesn't mean a child wasn't abused—just that he or she didn't get the syndrome. In other words, a noncredible witness is suffering from the syndrome, but a credible one is merely a credible witness who was legitimately abused.

CSAAS is a prosecutorial silver bullet and a fabricator's best friend. Every mistake you make is consistent with it; every mistake you don't make further confirms your credibility. No wonder prosecutors rely on it to bolster disintegrating cases. By making credibility tautological, CSAAS makes it nearly impossible to present a defense or attack an incredible witness.

From PointofLaw.com

Not that California courts needed CSAAS to engage in previous witch hunts, of course. But every little bit helps.

And, before anyone jumps in, I don't think that prosecuting Michael Jackson is a witch hunt. I do think that nefarious legal tactics trickle down and hurt most those least able to defend themselves. And I am sure we can all think of unpopular groups of people who are most vulnerable through their children.

Working for a Battered Women’s Shelter

2005-03-17T20:13:00.000-05:00

I dropped out of college too many times to count, and during one of my more pathetic attempts to be “authentic” I moved back in with my parents. They lived in a sleepy Texas town which I despised for not being Austin. At the time, I was a feminist who saw White patriarchy as the root of all human evil. I happened to have a lot of time on my hands as I was under-employed due to the fact that I had no need to pay for rent or food. I wanted to do my small part for the revolution and to free women from the shackles of their oppression, so I volunteered at the local battered women’s shelter.

Every thought I had in my head at that time came from some book. It never occurred to me that any of my cherished beliefs would be challenged by the real world. Working for the shelter opened my eyes to many things, but it would be several years before I would be able to fully grasp what I had learned from the experience. For example, during our four hour long orientation, it was stressed to us that we should expect to see many of the same women over and over again. This, it was explained, was due to the fact that it takes a woman seven tries on average to finally leave her abuser.*

After four hours of orientation, we had hours of work to do in the shelter before they would put any of us on the phones. After we had proven ourselves reliable, we would be able to “person” the phones from home. I learned quickly that volunteers didn’t last long in the shelter, at least not the ones my age, the political ones. The older ladies who were volunteering out of a sense of civic duty were the only ones who could be counted on. I remember being very surprised that these women were not feminists, were not, in fact, even interested in feminism. They were married, their children were grown, and they didn’t have jobs (and never wanted one). They volunteered out of a sense of charity and commitment to the community. They loved their husbands, they loved their grandchildren, and they loved the Lord, not necessarily in that order. They would talk for hours about their families and their community, but had no time at all to talk about politics, which is all I thought about. Of course, I thought they were stupid.

I did have an affinity for the director of the shelter, who was a Seven Sisters graduate, newly moved to the town. She was the only one, in my opinion, who “got it.” She didn’t get along with these older women, and I didn’t understand the hidden tensions. The secretary of the outfit was kind enough to explain to me once, in a disgusted whisper, that the Director only intended to live in the town for a few years and move on, once she had put in enough time to put this job on her resume. I assume that the blank look I gave her stopped her from elaborating further on this conflict.

I was soon promoted to manning the phone from home on Wednesday nights, in addition to some weekend hours at the shelter. I didn’t have to do much of anything but make sure to always answer the phone, so I enjoyed being able to read my books while I “fought the power.” Most of the older ladies had better things to do than stay tethered to a phone for 12 hours straight, so it was a good fit. Should a call come in, I would need to leave to bring the woman to the shelter, but in our small town, most calls were not intake calls.

The shelter itself was supposed to be in a secret location. The idea was that the secret location would keep batterers from finding and stalking the clients. I say “supposed” because I soon found out that the one group of people who were supposed to not know the location of the shelter in fact knew it well.

It was indeed true that we got to know the clients very well. The vast majority of the women who came into the shelter came in knowing how the system worked. They knew they were entitled to pick through the donated clothes, they knew we had food; the children especially were directed towards the kitchen. I remember being surprised most of all that the women didn’t seem scared. I expected to see piteous creatures out of the “Burning Bed” but instead encountered women who were mostly angry. Hopping mad. Enraged, in fact. It was this kind of woman who would restlessly pace the small space, ask us to watch her kids while she “went out for a cigarette,” and go outside down the block to a payphone. She would then call her batterer/accused and proceed to tell him where she was. She wanted to see him.

I tried very hard to reconcile this with my understanding of “Battered Women’s Syndrome.” I made excuses: “This is just part of her abusive conditioning” or “She is using her anger as a cover for her fear.” I worked hard, but it was very difficult to hold an ideal in my head when the reality was the woman standing outside the shelter, screaming obscenities at her mate once he drove up. We volunteers would look at anything but each other as she screamed and cursed, and got right in his face making threats. We would straighten the place up or offer the blank-faced children a scruffy toy. Eventually she would wander back in and tell us what a son-of-a-cur her man was, and ask us to recommend a lawyer, one who didn’t charge too much.

I eventually left the town and went back to college. The experience I had, especially the time I spent working the phones, stood me in good stead, as I will post about later. I still think about the shelter, and those quiet, hard-working civic-minded ladies. They didn’t think of the politics of the place—they were volunteering because that is what Christian women of their age and station did, and it didn’t matter if it were a battered women’s shelter or the local rotary club. They volunteered because they loved their town and the people in it, even the least among them. They would bow their back and set their mouths and do their job through my and the Director’s prattle, even though they didn’t approve of what they saw or heard. Had it not been for the efforts of these Christian ladies, that shelter would not have remained open.

At the time, I wanted to wake them up and give them a sense of the underlying purpose of their work. To this day, I almost wish I had, if only to alert them to the ends to which their hard work was to be put. I wonder if they would have been so stoic and tolerant of our bilious folly had they understood the family- and community-destroying purpose of feminism. In all honesty, I think they would have. These women were of a generation that had no time for anything but immediate, local problems, and they trusted the Lord to sort the rest out. I can only hope to be a small fraction as good and pure as they when I am their age.

* I went looking for this factoid, to see if I could find an example on the Internet. After looking for a short time, I gave up in disgust. Who can trust preposterous assertions such as this: “DV crosses all demographic – racial, ethnic, economic, class, sexual orientation, occupation, educational, etc. – barriers. There are doctors, ministers, psychologists, police, attorneys, judges and other professionals who beat their partners. Battering happens in rich, white, educated and respectable families. About half of all couples experience DV at some time.” Of course, the whole point is, “We must examine the historic and legal permission that men have been given to be violent in general, and to be violent towards their wives and children specifically.” The problem is that men exist in general. We need to work towards a solution to that, sisters.

Mr. Bad Example

2005-03-17T18:54:00.000-05:00

I started as an alter boy, working at the church
Learning all my holy moves, doing some research
Which led me to a cash box, labeled "Children's Fund"
I'd leave the change, and tuck the bills inside my cummerbund

I got a part-time job at my father's carpet store
Laying tackless stripping, and housewives by the score
I loaded up their furniture, and took it to Spokane
And auctioned off every last naugahyde divan

I'm very well aquainted with the seven deadly sins
I keep a busy schedule trying to fit them in
I'm proud to be a glutton, and I don't have time for sloth
I'm greedy, and I'm angry, and I don't care who I cross

I'm Mr. Bad Example, intruder in the dirt
I like to have a good time, and I don't care who gets hurt
I'm Mr. Bad Example, take a look at me
I'll live to be a hundred, and go down in infamy

Of course I went to law school and took a law degree
And counseled all my clients to plead insanity
Then worked in hair replacement, swindling the bald
Where very few are chosen, and fewer still are called

Then on to Monte Carlo to play chemin de fer
I threw away the fortune I made transplanting hair
I put my last few francs down on a prostitute
Who took me up to her room to perform the flag salute

Whereupon I stole her passport and her wig
And headed for the airport and the midnight flight, you dig?
And fourteen hours later I was down in Adelaide
Looking through the want ads sipping Fosters in the shade

I opened up an agency somewhere down the line
To hire aboriginals to work the opal mines
But I attached their wages and took a whopping cut
And whisked away their workman's comp and pauperized the lot

I'm Mr. Bad Example, intruder in the dirt
I like to have a good time, and I don't care who gets hurt
I'm Mr. Bad Example, take a look at me
I'll live to be a hundred and go down in infamy

I bought a first class ticket on Malaysian Air
And landed in Sri Lanka none the worse for wear
I'm thinking of retiring from all my dirty deals
I'll see you in the next life, wake me up for meals

Written By Warren Zevon & Jorge Calderon
c. 1991, Zevon Music

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

2005-03-17T18:42:00.000-05:00

I keep hearing this giant sucking sound...

2005-03-13T20:07:00.000-05:00

American Jobs

Created to be His Help Meet

2005-03-12T08:08:00.000-05:00

I have recently started reading Debi Pearl’s new book, “Created to be His Help Meet.” It has really convicted me to be better at my job. All too often I make excuses for not doing something I know needs to be done—dishes that have piled up, clothes that need folding. A great irony of our age is that while we live with all kinds of conveniences to make our jobs easier, we actually end up doing less overall. Can you imagine what our grandmothers and great-grandmothers could have accomplished with our modern tools? And here we squander them.

I was thinking about this a few weeks ago, when all of us were sick with colds. I had a fever, and was lying on the couch watching TV and I came across a program called “How Clean is Your House?” In it, two middle-aged British ladies humiliate themselves as they visit the filthiest homes in the developed world. Apparently, they cannot identify stains without getting on their hands and knees and sniffing them. They will walk into a home covered with dirty clothes, animal refuse, moldy food, and make a big show of inspecting, with white-gloved fingers, the dust on the piano keys. Along the way, they purport to impart cleaning tips, but this show is strictly for “entertainment.” All the while, the families in whose dwelling the camera crews have invaded stand there beaming as if they were thrilled to be seen on television with a bathtub full of cat feces.

“Wow,” I thought, as I lay there on the couch, “I feel so much better about my house!”

Which is exactly the point, of course.

For Scorebored

2005-03-11T09:16:00.000-05:00

So what happens when…?

2005-03-07T13:05:00.000-05:00

When you are perceived to be responsible for the destruction of an ethnic group’s country and culture, while at the same time you invite the same ethnic group to live next door? La Voz de Aztlan is supportive of an Hispanic gang who claims to want to kill Americans who don’t want immigrants moving into the United States with criminal intent. La Voz de Aztlan calls it “chickens coming home to roost.”

I wonder what Iraqi gangs will call it once they have been resettled here in large numbers?

But I don’t worry, because Jorge “Invade the World! Invite the World!” Arbusto tells me he is a Christian, and that is all I need to know.

Thank you to Modern Tribalist.

Steve Sailer interviewed by Luke Ford on Race

2005-03-07T00:08:00.000-05:00

Ethnic diversity isn't of much interest or value to little kids. They need to learn to deal first with all the human diversity that is found in even the most mono-ethnic communities: young and old, boy and girl, and all the different personality types that you see even in one extended family. Further, kids need some homogeneity and safety so they can learn independence. Before the great crime wave began in the 1960s, kids used to walk or ride their bikes everywhere. Now, moms chauffeur their kids everywhere, which is bad for kids and bad for women.

Read more from Luke Ford's interview of Steve Sailer.

My husband keeps telling me...

2005-03-07T00:05:00.000-05:00

That they are going to put me on a list somewhere...

Thank you to Little Geneva.

The Reading

2005-03-04T23:05:00.000-05:00

The Reading

Through the metal detectors, past the racks
Of new arrivals, nodding at the gray-haired
Men in drowsy contemplation of
The plastic-bound periodical pile,
Then on between the self-help and the seven-
Day returns, toward the reference stacks –

Got my foolscap and my new gel pen;
Always-jammed copier wants my quarters.
Returning from my scanning scribbling pawing
Expedition through the spines, I hear
The fussing of a baby somewhere on the
Borders of my Dewey-dirtied mind.

There she sits, one of ours, in the
Age when peace should be descending on
This queen who never will enjoy the rest
She thought she earned by honor and by will:
Rough grandma with too-long permed hair draped
Across the collar of her Carhart jacket -

Cigarette creases mitered into her frowning
Face, staring into the monitor, piloting
The mouse with one hand and performing part-time
Soothing with the other, rocking the child
In the carrier on the floor at her
Feet. The child is not like me, not like

Her, and I'll bet he’s not like the absent mother.
The squalling curls up from a brown, brown face; the
Sound cuts in front of me, imposing on me,
Elbowing, taking liberties, demanding,
Entitled, not like Our Sounds. And grandma drags
Her eyes up to mine, and offers that smile that sprang

Proud from a wide spot in the road somewhere,
Someplace where grace gets said and two jobs get worked
And no one laughs at macaroni from a
Box. And I know this ain’t what she wanted
From her labor, And she knows she taught someone
Better. And her eyes shine down, down

To her future, her breath already spoken for,
Years to be burned, raising this little stranger
While the childmother runs out the reel on her gifted
Life, mocking without knowing, betraying blood and
Soil on the altar of what she learned from school and
Tube and church and choking family silence.

Sure he's a Whore, but he's OUR WHORE

2005-03-04T12:53:00.000-05:00

Free Credit Reports

2005-03-04T02:34:00.000-05:00

Under the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions (FACT) Act, all U.S. residents can request free copies of their personal credit reports from the credit reporting agencies once every 12 months. This program launched December 1, 2004 for consumers living in Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Nevada, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico. The Midwest will have access to their annual reports in March 2005, the South in June 2005 and the Northeast in September 2005.

When your state launches, you can request your personal credit reports online through the central FACT Act Web site at www.annualcreditreport.com. You can also request your reports by phone (1-877-322-8228) or mail. After 12 months have passed, you can return to the same site to request your reports again.

(From TrueCredit)

Alas, Must I Rock the Baby?

2005-03-02T00:09:00.000-05:00

Now observe that when that clever harlot, our natural reason . . . , takes a look at married life, she turns up her nose and says, “Alas, must I rock the baby, wash its diapers, make its bed, smell its stench, stay up nights with it, take care of it when it cries, heal its rashes and sores . . . ?”
What then does Christian faith say to this? It opens its eyes, looks upon all these insignificant, distasteful, and despised duties in the Spirit, and is aware that they are all adorned with divine approval as with the costliest gold and jewels. It says, O God, because I am certain that thou hast created me as a man and hast from my body begotten this child, I also know for a certainty that it meets with thy perfect pleasure. I confess to thee that I am not worthy to rock the little babe or wash its diapers, or to be entrusted with the care of the child and its mother. How is it that I, without any merit, have come to this distinction of being certain that I am serving thy creature and thy most precious will? O how gladly will I do so, though the duties should be even more insignificant and despised. Neither frost nor heat, neither drudgery nor labor, will distress or dissuade me, for I am certain that it is thus pleasing in thy sight. . . . God, with all his angels and creatures is smiling—not because the father is washing diapers, but because he is doing so in Christian faith. ~Martin Luther

Thank you to Chad Degenhart for this wonderful quote! Also seen at Buried Treasures.

Republicans: Golfing War Mongerers

2005-02-24T14:53:00.000-05:00

"If the big, strong, strappin', kickin'-ass, rootin' out the terrorists, Republican Party doesn't address the southern border, then they are are just full of crap if you want my opinion. Maybe they are the war-mongering, country-club, golfing buddy, checkered-pants political party that the left says they are. After all, here is a chance to protect the American people without starting a war AND THEY WON'T DO IT.

I think a lot of us are coming to this conclusion. And it is depressing as all get-out. By the way, congrats to us all, "More Africans Enter U.S. Than in Days of Slavery." I used to think my major in Latin American Studies was useless. Now I realize that I was just studying our country's future.

I am back, sort of.

2005-02-21T11:34:00.000-05:00

Blogging doesn't seem to suit my temperment, but I am going to post when I get annoyed, which may be frequently. :)