Do you really want this in the White House?

Buyer beware, if you're planning to vote Republican in the presidential election: Massive police raids on suspected protesters in Minneapolis (emphasis mine).

Not protesters on the streets, mind you, but warrantless house raids of homes. Homes, people.

This is what 8 years of Bush rule has brought the Republican party to.

Buyer beware.

ETA: Bra-fucking-vo.

Electronic fun

In just the same way that I've been reducing my physical CD collection, I've been looking for a way to reduce my book collection and still have stuff to read. A wonderfully altruistic act my one of my fellow Shadow Unit fans has opened a new door for me.

Let's face it, I'm too cheap to buy a Kindle, and I'm never an early adopter of tech anyway. So when my fellow fan turned the entire first season of Shadow Unit into a file that was readable on my Palm with the installation of some software, I gave it a try. And fell back in love with my Palm.

I'm now a Mobipocket fan as well. So far I've bought a short story collection I'd tossed out because I only wanted one story from it (not an efficient use of shelf space), the complete Shakespeare, Anne McCaffrey's first 3 dragon books (which I've been wanting to re-read, but not to own physical copies of), and an electronic subscription to Fantasy & Science Fiction.

I *love* carrying tons of reading material around in my purse without all the extra weight. I love that I'm adding books more cheaply than if I'd bought them printed, and not adding to my lack of shelf space. I especially love that I'm not killing trees for my reading habit.

I am picky, though - if a new book comes out in a compatible ebook edition for the same price as the new book, I'm not buying it. I want a discount for the fact that no physical books had to be created. I know what it costs to reformat text into multiple software-compatible formats, and it's a LOT cheaper than the paper book process.

So score one for nifty ways of being eco-friendly - and back-friendly, too. My purse no longer weighs a ton.

Girly day

What a lovely day off this has been. I got to be all girly.

I got my hair cut, in an actual style. Didn't do Locks of Love, since my hair wasn't quite long enough, and the style I wanted was about shoulder-length.

After cleaning out all of my fall and winter clothes that were too big (what a change that was!), I bought a whole bunch of new outfits.

Heck, I even bought skin care products & makeup!

All this day needed to be complete was a pedicure & a frozen margarita. Hmmm, I need to find a good, non-alcoholic, program-friendly substitute for that ... :)

Go a little greener

Sign up at YellowPagesGoesGreen to get your local phone company to stop sending you either the white pages, yellow pages, or both. This is perfect timing for me, since I was just this week trying to figure out where to move our phone books, which we never use, so they wouldn't be so much in the way. I'm thinking the recycling bin is the perfect place for them ...

Home of a happy, happy camper

Rachel Maddow is getting her own show on MSNBC, to air right after Countdown with the fabulous KO.

She has long been my favorite guest talking head on Countdown (she was tied for first until Dana Milbank had his unfortunate departure), and by far my favorite substitute when Keith was on vacation.

I'm so utterly full of squeee ... This woman is damned smart, and I love hearing her talk about almost anything. I can't wait to see what she brings to the table full-time.

(And yes, I know that she's been on Air America forever, but I don't ever listen to the radio ...)

This is wrong on so many levels

Sin City with Disney Princesses.

So cold, so very verrrry cold ...

Wicked cool

Fascinating article about dopamine.

Aw, dangit

Isaac Hayes has died.

OK, universe, you don't like me, and I don't like you. But could you please take some awful people, too, once in a while???

Your laugh for the day

Presented without comment:
Pictures Taken At Just the Right Time

All my funny men are dying

First George Carlin, and now this: Bernie Mac dead at the age of 50.

Just damn.

If the world ends tomorrow, it was nice knowing you

The Large Hadron Collider is starting up tomorrow (link complete with creepy picture of how big the stupid thing is beneath Geneva), so if the world does end in black holes and mass destruction, it was nice knowing you all!!

Through the gates to the other side

As of yesterday, I'm officially on Step 7 of Radiant Recovery. Yay, me!

This is the "get a life" step, where we figure out how to live into our true selves now that we're out of the shadow of addiction. For me, this mostly involves learning how to be happy, and how to play.

I suck at play. I never figured out how to bring the things I loved to do as a child into any kind of adult activity. Except for reading, of course, but that's not really playful. It's just enjoyable.

I remember long days in the summer when I was a little kid, laying on a blanket in the middle of the living room floor. I pretended the blanket was a boat, and the living room carpet the ocean. I always had my dolls and stuffed animals with me, and my plastic Sears Mary Poppins "carpet bag". That blanket took me all over the world.

Now, after 10+ years of being blocked, I'm finally breaking through my writer's block. I'm participating in an online writer's course, which is helping to break down the walls, and free my inner voice.

That's the kind of get-a-life play I can get behind.

It's my day off - can you tell?

Posting like mad here ...

Having just finished The Omnivore's Dilemma, which I highly recommend, I'm interested to read this related article: eating a grass-fed burger can actually reduce the carbon in the atmosphere.

It makes sense to me, since what's described in this article and in the book is the way herbivores lived in the centuries before we decided that feeding corn to cattle was a good thing (really, really NOT a good thing, for them or for us).

I'm going to explore more and see if I can find a local farm that follows these precepts and buy from them. Maybe out toward Frederick somewhere ...

Lost month

Looking back, I now realize I lost all of July's exercise time to this friggin' Excedrin detox and the headaches therein. Bah!

So here I am at the end of the first full week of August, determined to get back on the wagon, headaches or no. The exercise should help (she said, with hope in her heart ...)

Details will follow in my Twitter feed, as usual. My goal this time is to do another 4 week cycle, then move up to practicing clubbell moves with dowels, so I don't hurt myself or the furniture (or the flat-screen tv!). Maybe by the middle of fall I'll actually have the strength built up to work with my 5-lb mini-clubbells, which would be so cool ...

Way cool

The Art of the American Snapshot

(via Librarians' Internet Index)

Surreal moment of the week

Brought to you by iTunes:

I've been massively weeding my physical music collection, ripping what I want to keep into iTunes and then boxing up all the rejects for sale or giveaway.

My surreal moment came when I was ripping Brian Eno's Music for Airports ... and iTunes categorized it as "Easy Listening". !!!

This is how bad my memory has become

I can't believe I forgot to post this: I was coming out of the ladies room this week at work, heading into the elevator lobby, and found myself face-to-face with Sen. John Edwards. He was surrounded by security people, and between that and being so gobsmacked at realizing who he was, I was unable to squeak out even a tiny greeting.

So much for that brush with fame.

But how cool was that??