Much That Is Hidden

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Hey Cubs fans! To ensure a stress-free post season, why not do like me and get your unofficial Chicago National League Ball Club pacifier? You won’t regret having the amazing soothing power of a custom-color pacie to get you through those late innings of potential opponent come-from-behind victories. And if the Cubbies do get picked off, you’re right there sucking with them! Order now and get the bonus three-pack in home, away and neutral “O’Hare incognito” colors.



Also available from MLBabies: Dodgers Diapers, Phillies Tippy Sipper and Brewers Blankies.

Labels: Cubs, fun, humour, martyrdom

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Lots of good remembrances on the blogs today. The theme I am relating to best is not so much remembering what we've lost but rather what we've given away. Former U.S. Senator Gary Hart wrote one of the best essays, copied here from HuffPo:

Six years ago three thousand Americans lost their lives. They need not have. Their deaths could have been prevented. Their lives could have been saved.

The Bush administration was warned months before 9/11 that terrorists were going to attack America. They did nothing. They have yet to be held accountable for the preventable loss of American lives. Yet the administration blames its critics for not understanding the terrorist threat.

The perpetrator of those American deaths is still at large and the war to eliminate those who harbored him threatens to drag on inconclusively for many years. Instead, administration operatives, with the approval of their masters, find it convenient to use him to create fear, and therefore justify their positions of power.

The United States has suffered more than 30,000 casualties in another war that had nothing to do with those attacks. This folly is producing more haters of America than it can ever possibly eliminate.

The backbone of domestic security, the National Guard, is deployed in that war and is thus not at home being trained, equipped, and deployed to protect America.

The consolidation of federal border protection and attack response in a single agency did not begin until at least 18 months after it was proposed and, six years later, it has proved to be woefully inadequate, in large part because those responsible for its administration possess a political philosophy that does not believe government can or should be effective. And they use every occasion to prove it.

The U.S. is currently pursuing a foreign policy in the Middle East and throughout the Arab world that is dementedly designed to promote a clash of civilizations. When this policy produces further attacks, our current policy makers will respond that this is what to expect from those who hate America and only tough-minded conservatives know how to deal with them.

Those who claim to understand terrorism and the use of force, meanwhile, have so exhausted our combat forces that our true national security is greatly at risk and our nation is weakened.

This administration stands indicted for incompetence and mendacity. That it still commands the loyalty of even a quarter of our fellow citizens is testament to the persistence of willful ignorance. Against all the facts assembled in this indictment, that the administration's operatives can still make claims on strength, security, and determination is chutzpah on stilts.

That the media still treat these operatives and spokespersons, and indeed the president himself, seriously is witness to their desire for "access" and "sources" rather than their commitment to the truth.

America is today under the steady gaze of billions of the world's citizens and even more under the examining lens of history. Nothing is more difficult than to admit that we made a tragic mistake in selecting our leaders. But that is the first step toward redemption. Absolute rejection of those who lay claim to ownership of security is the next.

We are too old to behave as adolescents any longer. That includes particularly our president. America must grow up. We must redeem ourselves in the name of those who lost their lives unnecessarily six years ago. We must reclaim our dignity and our honor from those who have neither.

And here is my annual perspective check from that watershed time (cut me some slack on my over-the-top newscaster tone).
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Labels: death, facts, histoire, justice, life, madness, martyrdom, milestones, politix, religion, remembrance, terms of enragement, tragedy, turrists, war, weaponry, words

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Something happens to me whenever I go into an office supply store. I get a buzz (and no, not from the Wite-Out) because there's just so much cool STUFF! I can barely contain my excitement as I flit among all the different kinds of paper, card stock and poster board, various shapes and sizes of functional doo-dads to go on the desktop, and big ticket items - furniture, monitors, printers, whiz-bang computers - to cram onto my wish list. And the pens, oh sweet Jesus the pens!

Of course budgetary constraints usually sober me up in short order, and yesterday my inebriation was abruptly squelched by the fact that an ink cartridge, just a black one and the generic brand at that, costs TWENTY-EIGHT DOLLARS. I knew the things weren't cheap because I've bought them before, but for some reason it just hit me there at the register (they have them stocked behind the counter, I suppose because they cost their weight in silver), and with what I consider to have been fairly restrained incredulity I asked the clerk, "For real?" My voice may have cracked just a bit.

So my thought on this is that somehow I must be the genius appointed to invent the refillable ink cartridge. Of course then the forces of cartridgenious no good will dispatch their minions to dispatch me from this plane of existence, and then within a few months some giant conglomerate will invest in a way to make color laser printers as affordable as a DVD player, thus rendering my martyrdom insignificant.

So that's $29.66 out of thirty, here's your change, sir - you have a wonderful evening.
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Labels: ink, martyrdom, office supplies