End of the Year

For the changes in my attitude that I have started to make, I call it a good year

Last Look at 2003
A couple of good links of the "best" of 2003: FAIR's Best of Counterspin FAIR's P-U-litzer Prizes for 2003 Stupid...

Handshakes

I made a mistake tonight.

More Cthulhu Fun

When I first saw the thumbnail of this, I thought: "Are those bat wings?

Critique and Ego

The worst critics I know in my writing groups deliver critique verbatim from notes they have inscribed ahead of time.

Pardon Me Boy....
...is that the realm of Great Cthulhu? Cthulhu fhtagn! (Just to be safe?) Almost as terrifying is this haggishunt that...

Resizing the Cats

They've grown large -- it's hard to hold them as we once did, in our cupped hands. Virginia Mew once again is the smallest cat in the house, though she's not as timid as she was while Tracy and Ambrose were alive.

America Invaded by the Gullible

Where we reject the word of the border vigilantes out of hand, we all too eagerly accept without question the word of those whose authority derives from nothing other than their office stationary.

Self Quoting
From Undernet #political_forum: [EmperorNo] "Evolution loves death more than it loves you or me," says Annie Dillard. I disagree. I...

Statistics
Pax Nortona: Entries: 2091 Comments: 2437 Paths of Light: Entries: 173 Comments: 68 Approaching numbers 2500 and 75 respectively. Who...

Caroling

This is the attitude we should allow birth in our hearts in the season of the light that shines in the darkness, a light that the darkness cannot grasp.

I Predicted an Earthquake!

My prediction came to pass.

Two Sites about Arguments
A couple of sites that might be of interest: Nizkor's Logical Fallacies Page Rules for Flame Wars...

Mudslides in the Burned Over District

I often passed St. Sophia's when I sneaked up the canyon with my parents' car, a cream colored Ford Fairlane.

Christmas Past

When I was young, Christmas was a day on which we spent some time outside on the back lawn.

More Latin for Chat

I got the urge to look up more Latin for chat.

Christmas Day Terror Alert:
Santiago Canyon

The only explosions we saw

were the sycamores --

Xmas Card 2004
Click on the image to view the card a page at a time. Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy New...

My Christmas Reading

I've haven't read any good junk in a long time, so last week I picked up Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory MacGuire.

Orange Alert at LAX

I'm getting tired of these high adventure scenarios that are becoming more and more what bureaucrats feel must be an essential of our daily life.

Midwinter's Day: Orange Alert

Don’t fear Fear, says the terrorist.

Serial Thoughts on Working

Those who work with their hands are busy fearing with their minds.

Chat Challenges

There are a couple of questions that I like to spring on folks in chat rooms when their eyes grow blurry and they say things like "Oh, the slaves were so well treated. So much better than the working people". Or "We need a free market, absolutely devoid of governmental inference.

Ding Dong, Ho Hum for Us

I guess I must have been napping when today's tremblor brought down a cheap belltower in Paso Robles and raised the altitude of the surrounding hills by a foot.

Orange Alert

Is Bush so insecure about his popularity ratings that he's trying to upstage the news that on Thursday Christ was born in Bethlehem 2003 years ago?

Bush in 30 Seconds

Moveon asked its members to submit their dream ads designed to illuminate the real nature of the Bush record

Seasonal Bleakness

Many bloggers have stopped writing. Is it because they're too busy setting up for the holidays or because they're tunneled under the blankets?

Everybody Went for It?

Did George W. Bush fool everybody?

Reaganidolatry

It's Howdy Doody Time!

Go Away Forever

Awakened to the sound of shouting. Boys yelling. Two inside an upstairs condominium. A third on the street. The third wants in.

The Challenge of the Hijab

The arrival of Muslims with their conspicuous expression of their faith is becoming the test of our commitment to the principles of religious freedom.

Saddam Hussein has been Captured

Inside his ventilated grave

he flicked his eyes, probing

strobic flashes of his last seraglio.

Photodude and A Tree Named Saddam

And you know what? I don't have to answer him. I've said enough there and here about what my position is. His distortions will be plain to anyone who reads us both carefully.

This is Just Plain Wrong

Secular does not mean the absence of individual religious expression. It means that the State shall have no opinion where religious practices do no harm.

Capitalist Engineering

This is my Orange County. A place where the needs of business outrank those of the people who live and work there, the ones who make it prosper.

Polka-Dotted Roach from Poland
This one peddles the wonder drug of the age of elderly hard-ons: 213.25.247.29 Fumigated. He's from Poland. Perhaps John Paul...

Would You Trust This Man With Your Kids?

Sheriff John came on at the noon hour. You could draw a picture and send it to him. And he'd put it on the air and tell people that you'd drawn it.

Refrigerator Magnets

"I chant red thousand" is a particularly memorable line that is still in search of a poem.

An Honest Quiz
Nice to see a quiz maker who can admit that they don't have a box for everyone! Find Your Warped...

Touchy about Touching

How do you handle things like "friendly swats" or "pats" that come from someone you don't want touching you without turning into the Human Torch?

Sharon Smith 2

It doesn't say much for Old Nipper's ability to face a crisis if he loses it and points at the victim where nudity is involved.

Allergy
I must avoid horses. Their hair gallops in my lungs, tearing me up like they tear up the turf with...

At a Wedding in Santa Cruz, Circa 1985

A relative of the family was imprisoned in the kitchen because he could not walk or talk like the rest of us.

Self-Arresting

The East Point, Georgia Police have now made it easier for you to conduct your very own Citizen's Arrest!

A Coming War

Is it only a matter of time before we invade the Carlyle Group?

Testosterone Poisoning

I'd always suspected this of my locker room peers.

Dream
I'm living with my parents because Lynn is off at school somewhere. Either up north or back east, I don't...

The War is Over?

There remains an organization dedicated to driving U.S. forces out of Iraq. It lives in the eyes of every Iraqi man, woman, and child.

Sharon Smith: Fair and Balanced

Resigning over the distribution of this photo is no more called for than resigning because of a particularly bad photo kissing a baby or an editorial cartoon which skewers the target aptly.

Latinisms for IRC

A few phrases that seem apt for IRC discussion from More Latin for the Illiterati

Durham on My Mind

I drove around Durham some, but until the day I left, there were corners of it that I never explored.

For Sale on eBay: One Soul

Does eBay just want its share of what skeptics call the Snake Oil market?

Statistics
Pax Nortona: Entries: 2047 Comments: 2378 Paths of Light: Entries: 173 Comments: 63...

Early Nightfalls

The light doesn't end with a thunderfall or begin with a bang. I just notice that it is gone when the world turns a little too blue for seeing clearly.

Lillies of the Field

These are not awards. They are nonawards.

Um....

And why is her nose dripping?

Pessimistic Libertarians and the Libertine Fly Trap

I spent part of this evening talking about "what to do about the world" with a fellow who I guess was a left-leaning libertarian or so he thought. He admitted that he didn't "trust other people with his freedom".

Africa is a Country and Taiwan....

>....is China's colony according to the pResident

Running to Lynn's Defense
There's an angry white male attacking Lynn over at her blog who has styled her as a "manhater" and a...

Whiting Ranch Wilderness 16

A Word Against a Proposed Policy in France

If someone bashes a little Muslim girl over the head because she is wearing the hijab, it's not her fault!

An Open Letter To Joseph Lieberman

Remember how you criticized Gore for losing the election by running "too populist" a campaign?

Libertines: We Do Good for Society

We don't promote greed. What we do is take the money where it cannot be used by pressure groups for their own narrow purposes and give it to people who we can trust.

Superior Communication

Does the Gettysburg Address rendered in Powerpoint become every bit as exciting as a company meeting?

Christmas: A Debate

We keep our Christmases simple in these parts, mostly because we are not blessed with children.

Intimacy
This is from Thunder and Lightning : Cracking Open the Writer's Craft by Natalie Goldberg: We need to build our...

Send Coal to Walmart
Send a lump of coal to Walmart by clicking here! You even get to choose the size and shape!...

Hate the Parents

The theory I proposed was that two types of individuals came forward because of the publicity: those who actually suffered abuse and those who wanted the cachet of being a survivor

Support our Boys!
A Feline National Guardscat shows off substandard equipment issued to his unit in the War on Terrier....

Bush Google Bombed!

Make that number 33

A Blogger's Bill of Rights

My weblog policy is consistent with these assertions of rights.

Hiking Uphill

I've observed that, when a hiking a steep grade, it is best that you do not look to the summit. Plant your steps evenly and at a rate you can sustain without becoming winded.

Whiting Ranch Wilderness 15

Mist, Rain, and Spin

A brown haze has parked itself on the alluvial plain beneath Portola Hills.

I am not Violent -- Oh, Violet. OK
you are violet#EE82EEYour dominant hues are red and blue. You're confident and like showing people new ideas. You play well...

Another Goodie
Anyone else remember this program and its near hit closing theme?...

Right Wing Terrorism at Home

The Bush Administration does not want any airplay which makes the Right look like an Enemy of the American People that outclasses the worst of the Weathermen

The New Holocaust

The decision as to what is necessary and unnecessary is a private one, to be made by the patient and the doctor, not by medically untrained outsiders.

Statistics

Who will be the one hundredth commentator on Paths of Light? Who will be number 2500 at Pax Nortona?

Abraham Lincoln

You -- an ordinary citizen -- could make an appointment at the White House and talk to the man himself.

Whiting Ranch Wilderness 14

Whiting Ranch Wilderness 13

Two People Framing an Excursion

Fifty steps down into Whiting Wilderness, I saw a tiny monogamous or perhaps unmarried California Mouse crossing the trail.

Dream
It's been awhile, hasn't it? Lynn and I find ourselves in a place where the skeletons rise out of the...

San Bernardino Fires: Approaching Disaster

If we get two or three days of heavy rain, you may be reading about houses sliding off the hillsides and homes spared by the fires being washed away.

Whiting Ranch Wilderness 12

Holiday Madness 2

Walmart acts immorally and possibly illegally in many ways. While I do not support fraud as a means of battling an evil giant, I stand by my pledge not to shop there for these other reasons.

Smoke this Roach
This one is a pill-pusher and a casino: 61.181.5.98...

Whiting Ranch Wilderness 11

Idi Amin

One authoritarian dictator is pretty much like another. Right wing critics of Amin don't like to talk about the fact that he got to live the good life in Saudi Arabia until his death from multiple organ failure in Jeddah or that he was put out of power by socialist Tanzania.

I Pledged

I took the Wal-Mart Pledge

Mute Troubadour on the American Dispensation

Maybe that's just a local thing.

In A Bookstore Cafe

Perhaps you would like to try.

More than a Tempest

it is precisely because Wizbangblogs is attempting to position itself as an authority on what is good and what is bad that challenging the award category is important.

Three Rights

Three fundamental human rights occur to me after the recent discussion here about domestic violence.

Post-Turkey Day

Congress goes into special session to discuss this Turkey.

Techie Women of Quality Take Heed!
Misbehaving.net is compiling a list of techie women with blogs. If this sounds like you or a friend of yours,...

Honor, Shame, Friends, and Therapy

I can do without the good old days when we kept matters of incest and rape to ourselves. Rofayda Qaoud deserved shelter and understanding. If she couldn't find it within her family and her circle of friends, why couldn't she go outside of that box for it?

Prejudiced against the Rich?

"The rich are not like you and me" F. Scott Fitzgerald says in The Great Gatsby.

Culture of Victimization

If the charity of the wealthy is to be taken seriously, there can be no returns on it.

No More Pink Flamingos at Buckingham Palace?

If I were Elizabeth 2, I wouldn't invite this boor back to my house.

Policy Statement Amendments
Additions to the Web Site Policy. The philosophy statement has been amended to read: Philosophy: My comments area is not...

Open Letter to Yule: Violence against Men

The trouble with the men who you describe is that their comments serve to close down debate, not present better solutions that cover all the cases.