Inedible Ink

This time of year my house gets a stream of anonymous visitors. They travel under the guise of darkness dressed in clothes that Goodwill would throw out. Hats, eye patches and fingerless gloves are sometimes parts of their dress.

They take a handout without asking and they leave without saying thanks.

Trick or Treat? no, this occasion is not Halloween. It is the quarterly municipal bulk trash pick-up. Everything that has not fit in the trash can for the last three months gets shuttled out to the curb to await a man driving the front loader.

They are not children in fancy dress. The gold teeth and cataracted wall-eyes are not props. These are men and women trying to make a profit from my trash. A pinto primer colored Chevy truck cruises the neighborhoods where discards are at the curb a day or so ahead of the front loader. They appraise the neglected couches and forsaken mirrors, they evaluate the derelict appliances and assess the dilapidated exercise gear.

They are the gleaners. At dawn they’ll be gone, along with that pedalless tricycle.

Marvel.com - Stephen King and Marvel Join Forces

STEPHEN KING BREAKS NEW GROUND AT MARVEL WITH ORIGINAL COMIC SERIES BASED ON HIS EPIC THE DARK TOWER

New Comic Series Exploring the Origin of the Notorious Gunslinger Character Marks First Time Stephen King Has Produced Original Content for the Comic Book Format.
Marvel Comics to Launch First Issue in April 2006.

NEW YORK – World Fantasy Award-winning writer Stephen King, long acknowledged as the master of modern horror, and Marvel Comics join forces this spring to launch a ground-breaking new comic book series adapted from King’s magnum opus, The Dark Tower.

This newly announced comic book series is to be the backstory to the Roland Deschain Gunslinger character.

With any luck, Stephen will get this written a tad faster than The Dark Tower novel series. The seven book series spanned 20 years of writing.

For immediate openings in our checking, savings, and retirement accounts. Experience being tracked by Quicken a plus. No foolhardy missions or frivolous errands. Limited travel required. Exponential career growth options. To join a great team apply within. MiCasa Capital Stewardship E.O.E. currency and denominations. drug residue test required.

It is impossible to make s’mores in the microwave. It is possible, but not desireable, to make s’mores indoors provided an open flame is used to heat the marshmallows.

Dilbert creator Scott Adams gets a blog:
Link to him he needs the traff… oh nevermind.

People who are trying to decide whether to create a blog or not go through a thought process much like this:

1. The world sure needs more of ME.
2. Maybe I’ll shout more often so that people nearby can experience the joy of knowing my thoughts.
3. No, wait, shouting looks too crazy.
4. I know – I’ll write down my daily thoughts and badger people to read them.
5. If only there was a description for this process that doesn’t involve the words egomaniac or unnecessary.
6. What? It’s called a blog? I’m there!

The blogger’s philosophy goes something like this:

Everything that I think about is more fascinating than the crap in your head.

The beauty of blogging, as compared to writing a book, is that no editor will be interfering with my random spelling and grammar, my complete disregard for the facts, and my wandering sentences that seem to go on and on and never end so that you feel like you need to take a breath and clear your head before you can even consider making it to the end of the sentence that probably didn’t need to be written anyhoo.

Group condemns chicken choking toy - Boston.com
SYDNEY, Australia –But Michael Beatty, a spokesman for the Queensland state branch of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said the chicken toy that squawks and flaps its wings when strangled is was “grossly irresponsible” and sent the wrong message to young children.

“What’s next? Burn a cat? Shoot a dog?” Beatty said. “Children of that age are likely to turn around and try the same thing on their pet bird or even the cat or dog. Then they’re going to wonder why the animal fights back.”

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals seems to have taken no position on spankable monkey toys.

The following came to me in an email last week, the author has consented to my posting it here.
The ministry is called Mobile Loaves and Fishes.
They take credit card donations [here].

Just to let you know what many Texans are doing lately…

On MLF’s first trip to Louisiana and Mississippi, the team came back telling of the tremendous sense of hopelessness among the people they met. These poor folks had just lost their homes, their jobs, all their possessions, and their way of life. That was early September. On October 12 a group of us went back to places the team had visited before. It was amazing and thrilling to hear some new perspectives. The hopelessness was replaced by a hopeful spirit of desire to get things back together. There was a true “can do” drive in almost everyone we met.

(more…)

You have no idea how wrong this is….

The quiz must not know I’m more like Sweetums.

Oh well, here ’tis…

You are Kermit the Frog.
You are reliable, responsible and caring. And you
have a habit of waving your arms about
maniacally.

FAVORITE EXPRESSIONS:
“Hi ho!” “Yaaay!” and
“Sheesh!”
FAVORITE MOVIE:
“How Green Was My Mother”

LAST BOOK READ:
“Surfin’ the Webfoot: A Frog’s Guide to the
Internet”

HOBBIES:
Sitting in the swamp playing banjo.

QUOTE:
“Hmm, my banjo is wet.”

What Muppet are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

New York Post Online Edition: news

October 12, 2005 — A debonair New York socialite filed a $5 million legal notice against the Catholic Church yesterday — claiming his molestation at age 7 at the hands of a young priest led him to become gay.

I have always considered homosexuality to be the result of human free will (decision-making) combined with some odd sort of natural inclination.

The idea of a “natural” inclination to same sex trait always seemed to be in conflict with the natural selection of the fittest. Darwin’s fitness, after all, is likelihood of reproduction while Richard Simmons’ fitness is likelihood of wearing spandex. It’s not like men having sex with men are stacking the odds in favor of their own genetic reproduction and proliferation of the trait. See this Modest Proposal at the Republic of T in a piece called Blue State Birth Rates.

No, if it was purely breeding and instinct you could guess that we’d all be shooting for 16 kids like the Duggars of Arkansas:

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Michelle Duggar just delivered her 16th child, and she’s already thinking about doing it again.

But I’ve been told again and again something along the lines of “I would never choose this. It is too difficult and upsetting to the people I love.” How can I argue with the contents of a gay persons heart? Tell them: “You do not feel that!” as if that ever worked.

The Albany lawsuit claims that abuse by a priest made the claimant gay.

The third way! Instead of the nature v. decision debate the assertion inherent in the suit is that gay is a passable, contagious if you will, affliction.

The other more obvious assertion in the action is that it is bad to be gay and punishable to make someone gay. It must be bad to be gay, otherwise you wouldn’t sue the guy for $5 Million you’d send him a card every winter solstice and FTD him some flowers on the anniversary of your youthful encounter back at Camp Tekawitha.

Rightly, gay people all over the world should respond by suing their initiating seducers for financial losses including lost wages for jobs that may have discriminated against gays, recompence for pain and anguish for themselves and their families, the inflation adjusted cash price for the children they were denied.

This is one lawsuit against the Church where I’m going to hope that the plaintiff wins. What’s $5 Million dollars against the whole gay agenda?

Wisconsin State Journal

From the opinions page of the “WSJ” (in this case that’s Wisconsin State Journal):

Wisconsin’s wild pigs deserve to be shot.
That needed to be said before some pack of porcine protectors starts picketing to save the poor creatures’ bacon.

Seems like the unwelcomed feral animals threaten native wildlife, damage property, and spread disease. Sounds awfully familiar to me. This same essay goes on to say this about shooting feral cats:

Thankfully, the idea was shot down after cat lovers raised a ruckus. There are better ways to cope with wild cats.

Hmmm, the “better way” of dealing with feral cats I’ve most often heard bandied about is the capture castrate and re-release method. That is actually illegal in Wisconsin, prohibited by a law that prevents the “release” part of the equation as pet abandonment. I’m sure that “You feed it: You own it.” is the applicable equivalent to habeus corpus in matters of cat ownership.

Sounds like ecological affirmative action to me. Maybe that’s the way they meant it.