Squirrel's Ink

I've noticed I get more political when I am angry, and after yesterday's conversation, I am very angry indeed. How can people tell such outrageous lies and not get laughed or booed out of the public arena? Why are people so willing to believe such crap? I think that's what makes me angriest - no matter how retarded the lie, people believe it. And that makes them retarded, too.

Sarah Palin herself tells reporters the bill number and the section that she is pulling death panels from. She does it, probably knowing that most of her followers will simply believe her instead of checking to see that such a disgusting thing exists. She gave details, she wouldn't do that if it was a lie! It is utterly retarded that I felt like I had to go and read the section in question (scroll to page 425) so that I can vouch that there are no death panels, because I am going to see people this weekend (my family!!!) who refuse to believe any news source other than Fox News.

Slacktivist posted a great news clip that shows the sheep running off after rumors without checking the facts first. It made me happy that Barney Frank responded so well.

Obama's website has a lot of links to well-respected (and therefore liberal and not to be trusted) newspaper articles and other resources that clearly state that the insurance companies are out to kill health care reform, a conspiracy that is totally believable, but it's also not as likely to raise people's hackles like euthanasia. Unfortunately, that one lie, that one tall tale, may be enough to not only kill health care reform, but kill Democrats, which is of course exactly why those fuckers did it. They didn't have anything constructive to add to the conversation, so they'd rather fuck up this country like we're still in the Bush era. (I know I keep harping on this, but how can people be so stupid? How do such stupid people find ways of feeding and cleaning themselves?)

To sum up: I am very angry indeed. I had very little opinion one way or the other on health care reform, since my health care problems have more to do with the fact that my Catholic employer wants to deny my access to certain products than the insurance companies themselves. I do not approve of what is happening now. I do not approve of people accusing the president of being a Nazi over provisions that do not actually exist. DO NOT EXIST. I do not condone lies. I frown upon screaming down intelligent debate. I don't know that I can do much about it, however - I live in a very liberal state, and have a very liberal f-list, both on LJ and on Facebook. All I can really do is seethe quietly in my air conditioned room, and try to come up with polite ways of telling my family to fuck off if they bring this up when I see them on Sunday.

JC Lira needs to hurry up and get published, and thus save the world from the horrors of books such as this one. The environment was raped in order to publish this drivel.

Remembering last year's torments that befell me when I read some of the free books from Comic-con, I deliberately did NOT choose a book with a woman's leg on the cover. Dark Rain is very much not a paranormal romance. It sounded promising enough for the bus ride to CT, if not terribly original. It's set in a cursed town inhabited by the descendants of the Salem witches, and a horrible evil discovers their town and starts running amok, etc., etc.

It's utter crap. I opted to take a nap on the bus rather than read it. Since I just watched "Unbreakable" yesterday, let us compare this book with an M. Night Shamylan film. Both take an idea that has potential (at least for bus reading), depending on what you do with it, and then completely trample it with art school experimentation. Shamalyan does all these artsy shots, right, where he shoots the entire scene in one take through, say, the bars of a window or a mirror. It distracts from the story that he's trying to tell. This author does the same thing. Using sentence fragments.

And one sentence paragraphs.

Many of them.

Paragraphs that didn't follow the basic rules of structure. Poor editing. And frequent references to character's dark pasts. In the same scene. Paragraphs that had either been cut off too soon.

Or not soon enough.

You may understand now why I would rather take a nap. The prose was piercing. Grammar rules rae there for a reason. I get enough of this kind of writing from my students.

According to the author's note, this guy has somehow gotten five books published, as well as numerous short stories in respected sf/f magazines. That only goes to show that publishing is going down the shitter. Let's just shove out crap with grievous grammar abuses and hope people think it adds to the creepy factor. Raise the bar, people!

Oh, and publishers? When giving out free books at conventions, you want to put your BEST foot forward, not your worst. I grabbed a Bujold off one table, possibly the same table that I got this one from. Bujold = good reviews and better sales. Richards = crappy reviews like this one.

BTW, if anyone wants to read this book for him/herself, feel free to comment here and I will send it to you.

I finished the book. It didn't get any better.

Me and my sister, talking about the movie (which she dragged her husband to, but which I didn't have any interest in seeing):

Her: It would have been better if they'd gotten better actors.

Me: It would have been better if it'd been based on a better book.

Husband: HA!

Awesome sum-up of the books in Bingo format here:



Meyer's does a good job of capturing adolescent girls. What I really don't like, though, is more what it says about love. Romance is obviously the main focus of the story, but its a twisted romance. She becomes utterly obsessed with him, to the point where she decides not to let anyone know she's seeing him, just in case he loses control over his vampiric thirst and kills her - she doesn't want him to get in trouble for her death. Characters react with shock to how unusual this is, but no one says anything like, "that's really creepy and stalkerish, you really need some psychiatric help." Its played more as a sign of how unconditionally in love she is. Seriously, people were burning Harry Potter books, but they encourage their kids to read this? Its "Witchcraft is evil!" vs "Bella and Edward wait until they're married to have sex!" without bothering to look for the underlying messages. There's nothing redeeming about Bella. She falls in love with him because he's hot and mysterious and all emo, even though he's over a hundred years old. She doesn't have a life outside of Edward. She's portrayed as caring about people other than Edward only superficially.

And seriously? I know its fiction, but if *I* were a hundred year old vampire, the LAST place I'd want to go back to was high school.

It supposedly gets even creepier in future books, but I'm not really interested in reading them. Suffice to say, the main plot of the second book is "Edward leaves Bella for her own good, so she tries to kill herself." Really? People think this is more fit for teens than Harry Potter?

People are dumb.

So my mom sent me this:



Needless to say, I was pissed off. I hit Reply All and sent back all of this:

Dear friends and family,

I regret to inform you that the video which has been passed on to you is complete and utter bunk. Obama was born in the US and has a US certificate. It is going to be a very short trial.

Photos of Obama's birth certificate are posted online at www.factcheck.org. The video that was forwarded to you is pinned on the presumption that factcheck.org is not actually a non-partisian organization and cannot be trusted. Obama, they say, sat on the board for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which received its funding from the Annenberg Foundation, the same place that factcheck.org received its startup funds. Their website:

http://www.annenbergfoundation.org/

However, Walter Annenberg was a Republican. He was buddies with Nixon and Reagan. His New York Times obituary goes on for five pages:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9800E3DE1038F931A35753C1A9649C8B63

But he's dead, you say? His widow is still involved in politics. She's a supporter of McCain, as listed on his own website – Leonore Annenberg of Radnor PA:

http://www.johnmccain.com/informing/news/PressReleases/1b838127-b4a0-4868-9906-62f555376089.htm


So if there are any political shennanigans going on over at factcheck.org, its far more likely to be in the Republican's favor rather than the Democrats. Check out the photos of Obama's birth certificate for yourself here:

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html

This video is not the first time that Obama's citizenship has been called into question. Here is a link from snopes.com, which specializes in debunking internet rumors, with a variation of this myth:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/citizen.asp


So now the question becomes: why isn't Obama going to court with his birth certificate? According to this site, he moved to have the case dismissed:

http://dockets.justia.com/docket/court-paedce/case_no-2:2008cv04083/case_id-281573/

No point making a court appearance for a case that will probably be deemed frivolous. Better to spend that time campaigning.

Sincerely,
Janet



If anyone is interested, here are some other problems I found, all within the FIRST MINUTE of the video.

**In the opening spiel, the guy (Molotov Mitchell) mentions introducing the public to “black liberation theology” and “liberation theology” “before anyone knew just how scary any of them are.”

This is a really weird claim. We learned a little about liberation theology in Catholic school. It's been around since at least the '70's, probably earlier, and was popular in Latin America. Although it is most commonly associated with Catholicism, the Church has distanced itself from liberation theology because many practitioners tended towards violence. So how exactly did Mitchell tell everyone about liberation theology before anyone knew how scary it was, when most of the really scary stuff happened when this guy was too young to hold a camera? I don't get it.

**Again in the opening spiel, the guy mentions cracking open the story on Barack Obama supporting infanticide. This claim might sound familiar: its the same claim that Palin has been making in her stump speeches recently.

To say the least, saying Obama supports infanticide is a distortion of the facts. Obama is pro-choice and votes to protect abortion rights. The situation, in brief, is that Illinois had a law protecting the lives of babies that were born alive after botched abortions. A new law was introduced to the State Senate that aimed to expand on this, but the language was so vague that it could possibly have been used to undermine abortion. Obama voted against this new law. Hate on him for being pro-choice, but lets not be silly and say he favors infanticide. Here is a Time magazine article:

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1849483,00.html

**”As an independent film organization, we've taken it upon ourselves to expose the corrupt things in Barack Obama's past, things the mainstream media has been all too willing to conceal.”

I find it difficult to believe that Fox News would be in on this conspiracy of secrecy, especially not when their man is down in the polls.

Note also how many times he repeats that he is independent, that he finds he needs to reassure people that he is not a conspiracy nut, etc, even as he implies that there is a conspiracy going on. He's making an argument from authority: “I must be telling the truth because I'm an independent, therefore I don't support either candidate, therefore I have no reason to lie!” He's trying to make people believe him based on who he is, rather than because he has all his facts straight. They're about as straight as that tower in Pisa.

**The screen goes black and the words “www.nohussein.org” and “www.obamacrimes.com” flash up.

Please note the name of that first website. It does not say “nobama”, nor does it say “nobarack,” both of which utilize names Obama is normally known by. Unlike George W. Bush, who uses his middle initial and so gets called “W” as a term of endearment by supporters, Barack Obama is almost never referred to with his middle name. So why does this website use his middle name in its web address or title?

His middle name triggers negative emotions with the sort of people this site is trying to influence – it makes people think of Saddam, it reminds people of his Muslim father, it makes people think “foreigner” and “terrorist.” In other words, this is an appeal to emotions.

In fact, the entire site is an appeal to emotion – fear. It repeats the bit about infanticide, and then goes on to talk about Bill Clinton vetoing the ban on partial-birth abortion. According to this site, Democrats = baby killers.

Don't be afraid. Be aware. Make an informed choice, not one based on lies and fear.

Whew! And that's only the OPENING SEGMENT! In only the FIRST MINUTE of watching, this guy has proved himself to be completely untrustworthy. I could do the rest of the video, but Heroes reruns are calling me.

BTW, I'm still voting Obama. In case you couldn't tell.

She is peeing on the couch.

ON THE COUCH.

Not only did a roommate catch her, but it SMELLS like cat pee. She needs to stop, and she needs to stop in a matter of weeks, or she is going to a shelter. We solved the pissing on the bathmat problem by buying easily washable bathmats and hanging them on the side of the tub so she couldn't reach them. We solved the pissing on the porch problem by keeping her indoors. The couch, though? I have no clue how to solve this. At this point, I think she's marking territory anyway, so if we cover the couch with aluminum foil or whatever she may just start pissing on my bed or something next.

I put her in time out when my roommate caught her, but there are many hours of the day when I am not home and she can pee without getting caught.

Does anyone have any suggestions for getting a cat to stop pissing on anything upholstered? Otherwise she's out. The behavior problems are just too much.

And after that glowing recommendation, anyone who wants her should let me know.

So my awesome, fabulous, wonderful roommate who I love to death told me today that he is moving out when our lease expires in June. I am heartbroken.

My dilemma is that I wanted to stay here in this fabulous apartment that is in an unsafe neighborhood because I love the people who live here (and also, it really is a great apartment.) If the person who I see the most and who is the most fabulous is moving out, then that really gives me an excuse to move to Park Slope, which is safer, trendier and most importantly, closer to my job. It might be worth the inconvenience and aggravation of having to move YET AGAIN to be able to sleep in longer and walk around at night without much pepper spray. I am on a move-at-least-once-sometime-twice-a-year kick. When I moved in here, I thought "Finally! Time to buy some furniture!" Maybe its fortunate that I haven't yet.

I hate stress.

Oh, and who won the Super Bowl? When I left the yellow guys were in the lead.