Archives: August 2007

Beats a burning, I guess . . .

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Published on: August 18, 2007

Once again, we’re making headlines here in Northern Idaho. No cross burnings this time, but rather a hoped-for book ban. Some may say this is silly, but I say it is time. We need to stand up for what is right. No more smut in schools. But why stop there? Let’s get it out of other gathering places as well. More specifically, it is time to address smut in churches.

You want to limit our children’s exposure to descriptions of violence, rape, incest, murder and sorcery? Ban the master of smut and filth: The bible. This collection of short fiction stories covers everything from erotic poetry to bestiality and homosexuality to murder and rape, all woven against the backdrop of the story of an angry supernatural being who behaves like a very powerful amoral child, smiting and coveting humans throughout history. At one time, he knocks up a minor character called Mary and demands that the world worship the offspring of his affair, a magician named Jesus.

The first part of the book (pre-wizard) is mainly people performing acts of cruelty and having a lot of sex and the supernatural Yahweh critter throwing hissy-fits and killing people. At one point, after a lot of gay sex and people not doing what he orders even though they are supposed to have “free will” and do what they want, Yahwey says “no way” and causes the world to flood. What a pouter!

The second part covers more of the sorcery of the Jesus fellow, performing transformation spells and giving free-love hippie speeches that nobody seems to listen to. Eventually, Jesus is killed, gets reanimated, and then takes off, vowing, like the Terminator, to come back. During his moments of reanimation, Jesus was the oddest zombie I’ve ever heard of. Instead of hunting the living for brains, he gave a couple more speeches and hung out at parties, showing off the holes in his hands and drinking with his friends.

It can be a bit of a rough read, but that is because it was written by a lot of different people who didn’t seem to have a solid agreement on the motivations of the main characters, and some of whom must have been rushed to publication while all they had were their basic background notes. Heck, there are sections that are just lists of things. But, if you’re banning smut, you might as well ban the poorly-written stuff as well as the good stuff. Cheers.


Insurance

Categories: Family, News, Politics, Whatever
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Published on: August 18, 2007

Monkey with banana

The insurance nightmare continues. I have been covered under my employers’ group insurance policies for the past 21 years, and my parents’ policy prior to then. Now that I am self-employed, I have to cover my family via an individual/family policy, no mean feat considering the I have mild sleep apnea and my wife and son have asthma. Our glorious leader pushes personal responsibility and the benefits of privatized medicine and insurance. The big flaw I see with this is that even if you can afford insurance, no insurance company has to provide you coverage. Want insurance, but have any health issues, no matter how easily treated?- abandon the idea of being self-employed and join a corporation so that you can get group coverage. Still, the Presidunce pushes for switching from employer-provided insurance to employee-provided insurance. Guess who the biggest winner there is. No, not the employer, who definitely does get lower costs, and not the employee, who can now be denied coverage, but the insurance company, which no longer has to insure the workers.

I suppose there’s always the Bush Insurance Plan, which he promoted in Ohio:
“The immediate goal is to make sure there are more people on private insurance plans. I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room.” Unfortunately, I am guessing Pres. Bozoman won’t be offering this service as preventive coverage.


Woodies

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Published on: August 17, 2007

It is the Coeur d’Alene Wooden Boat Festival this weekend. We’ve been to the Sandpoint wooden boat festival two years running but haven’t made it to the Coeur d’Alene one yet. Maybe this will be our year. I like wooden boats. I wouldn’t want to own one, but do enjoy their look. They have much more character than an aluminum or fiberglass boat, and usually neater shapes as well. Unfortunately, they are also a lot more upkeep. Upkeep is why (assuming I don’t win millions in the lottery) I will never own one. I barely keep up with my current fiberglass boat, and basically all it needs is a good waxing on occasion. What are the odds I’d manage the sanding, staining and refinishing of a wooden boat?

If you’ve ever seen me pull up to the dock, you’d run. Er, know that I make entirely too much use of my bumpers and prayer. If not reduced to splinters, I would end up with a dock-shaped hole in the hull in no time. Really, considering my fine nautical skills, I shouldn’t be driving anything short of an aluminum boat, loaded with styrofoam and powered by a very weak trolling motor. So, no wooden boat for me, but I’m still taking the wife to check out all the fancy woodies down at the lake.


Fall

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Published on: August 17, 2007

It is hard to believe, but summer is almost done. I have yet to take the boat out on the lake and already the eggplant is rip and demanding immediate harvest; it is time for riso dell’ autonne. If only I could raise my own lamb . . . however the children refuse to eat anything they have named and I am too much the sucker for guilt. Still, we can get excellent fresh lamb from the local farmers’ market. While the cotolette alla griglia con aglio dolce would be best with home-raised lamb, I am willing to make it with local farm-raised instead.

The end of summer means fall planting. We are still hitting the upper nineties during the day, but cooling rapidly in the evening. My tomatoes are tortured, although the wasps seem perfectly content. It is time to get the new trees in the ground. I have an English Filbert, several varieties of maple, arrowwood, plums and some random bushes. Unfortunately, I have no replacement for my beloved recently-departed Burr Oak.

Ach!- So much to do and the year is almost over. The bathroom window and the swamp cooler both need to be framed out and our brilliant governor needs mocking. At least the wife’s been in overdrive lately, making pesto and salsa by the gallon, canning peaches and bringing in the fall harvest (which, yes, includes entirely too many eggplants). We should eat well this winter, if only we can find a baguette worth buying.

And on an entirely unrelated note, if you haven’t seen the movie Darwin Awards, please do so. If only for the shower scene, it is the funniest movie I’ve seen in a while. Sure, there isn’t a lot of plot, and it drags at times, but for the most part, this film is hilarious.


Ambush bugs, that’s what

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Published on: August 16, 2007

Ambush Bugs Part I

Yay! So, it turns out my mutant bugs are ambush bugs. I need to get out and take some more pictures before they decide to take off for the season.

Ambush Bugs Part II


Dusty

Categories: Blogging, Family, Whatever
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Published on: August 16, 2007

And to think it started as such a promising day. After hitting 107f yesterday afternoon, it cooled off quickly, reaching 69f by 9pm. Still, I was looking forward to the rain-showers the weather fools had promised for today. Instead, the morning’s clouds have burned off and it is in the 90′s. So much for a nice rainy day. Worse still: A damned gopher ate my baby burr oak tree.

In other exciting news, thanks to an update to the BlogSecurity article, I’ve undone yesterday’s updates and switched to just using .htaccess to secure my site. The good news, I guess, is that my themes once again conform to the WordPress standard. The bad news is that not everything is working on the back-end. I had to drop the fckeditor.


All better now.

Categories: Blogging
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Published on: August 15, 2007

I’ve updated my site, theoretically making it more secure based on the information over at BlogSecurity.  It looks like things worked, although if you see a glitch somewhere, please let me know.  I haven’t checked all of the comments pages, and there’s something annoying going on with the funny animals theme.  If I set that as the default, I get a bunch of headers errors on the back-end.  It is fine on the front, however, so I am ignoring it for now.  What else?  It would be nice to know how to change the default values in WordPress for the various variables.  The ones of most interest to me are stylesheet_url and stylesheet_directory, which I had to hard-code to the new locations based on the BlogSecurity advice.  Oh, and my google rss links aren’t working at the moment.  Grrr.


Updating

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Published on: August 15, 2007

I am going to be updating my site throughout the day during breaks from work, so if things aren’t looking quite right, that is because I’ve just hopelessly mangled the code.  Also, I am disabling my theme switcher widget, so you’ll all be stuck with whatever theme I am working on at the time.  So sorry.


Kids are great

Categories: Family, Photography
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Published on: August 15, 2007

Time for some nair.

For other children, Marco-Polo and other games involve quickly determining who is "it" and then playing.  For my children, these are games of shouting "1!-2!-3!-4!-Not it!" and then arguing constantly over who was last.  This continues for thirty to forty minutes, or until everyone involved in the game has hurt feelings and nobody is speaking.  Kids are great.

 "I really would like to outfit them with shock collars."   This is my wife, having just called the kids to dinner seven times.  They feel, apparently, that if they dive underwater when being spoken to, that they do not need to listen.  I think the shock collars would be a bit drastic.  We should fill the pool with dirt and create another garden.  Then ground the kids until they are 23.

We have been discussing having more children, so figuring out a parenting style that works, injuring neither us nor the kids, would be good.  At present, our parenting style is great from the kids’ perspective, but leaves us fuming and at risk of strokes.  More children?  No!– we are not planning on getting knocked up, but rather trying our hands at foster care.  Surely, getting kids who are grateful to have a stable home life is how you end up with well-behaved children, right?  Or do we still need to figure out this whole parenting thing?


Hubba Buggah!

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Published on: August 13, 2007

As promised, more of the randy little bugs.  Below, you can see them enjoying the sites at the heart of a flower while preparing for the future.  And as you can see, they like big girls.

Frisky critters

 

 

Another flower, another chance at romance.  Ain’t it sweet?

Frisky critters in pink and white

 

 Little exhibitionists seem to like it in groups.  Okay, time for dinner.  All this bug sex is making me hungry.

Frisky critters in a group

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