Conversation Last Night At the delagar House

Me: (at the worktable doing my prep, to the kid, who is browsing YouTube Comments): Hey. Hey. Hey.

Kid: What?

Me: Hey!

Kid: What?

Me: I have to go to the optometrist's tomorrow. (Pause.) I hope I don't fall into the lens grinder and make a spectacle of myself.

Kid: (Rising from her chair, looking deeply concerned): OMG, Mom, I hope you don't either. (Pause.) Because that is the worst. Joke. In. The. World!

You reap what you sow, folks.

So....

The kid wants a blog.

I am reluctant for a couple of reasons. One, she's eleven, and two, she's given, as I may have mentioned, to long bouts of existential angst.

So, well, the first time she gets a comment from some lout who tells her she's a loser, yikes.

Or worse, what if she doesn't get comments! (I've been around the 'sphere. Billions of blogs get no comments at all.)

Or what if she gets comments like HEY U GRATE SUX NOW?

For all these reasons, I have told her she has to be twelve before she can have her own blog -- only she really wants one now, first, and second, I sense that the heyday of blogging is peaking now, and that if we wait another year, well, blogs will be out with roadsters and eight-track tapes.

So what do y'all think? Should I give in?

Stupid Girls

I love this video!

Pink: Stupid Girls

Via Flea at One Good Thing

Just Whining Now

(1) Okay, so you have to understand a couple of things for this first one.

Number one, it is hot in Arkansas in the summer. I am talking killing hot. A hundred and four here yesterday at six p.m., so hot that when I took the trash out the air felt scary: standing on my driveway felt like standing in an oven.

Second, my university is always short of parking, but this summer even more so, since construction guys are rebuilding everything, not only tearing up parking lots, but parking giant construction trucks and tools everywhere on the lots, as well as roping off the lot you drove merrily down the highway planning to park in. Also, there is very little shaded parking space, but there is some, and getting that shaded space makes a huge difference -- if you can park your car in the shade, then when you emerge from a long day of teaching composition and Jonathon Swift, your car will be relatively cool and your nearly useless ancient car AC will keep you nearly cool all the way home, instead of your car being 135 degrees inside and you having to drive home with the windows down, broiling and cussing in the 104 degree heat, sun beating down on the top of your head, and when I say you here I mean me.

So I get up an hour earlier than I have to most days so I can get to school early enough to get one of the few parking places in the shade. (There are only about six.) Only today when I arrive, what do I find? All of them gone -- and -- and --and! Why are all of them gone? Well, the construction guys have three of them, and I can't really grudge them that. They're actually working all day in the sun while I have my office job with all day air conditioning, so, okay.

BUT! Two of the other spaces? Are taken by this TOOL in a giant white SUV. He has parked his giant SUV across the line of two spaces, so that he can take BOTH SHADED SPACES, so that no one will park too close to his purty SUV and nick his pretty paint job. (Of course he has backed into the parking space, because that is so much safer and more convenient.) Then he has covered all his interior windows with foil sunscreens to protect his seat covers.

I idled by the space a minute. Never have I ever wanted to key anyone's vehicle before. Ever. Ever.

But I took a deep breath, though what Rabbi Hilleh would want me to do, and drove on. Parked my car in the broiling sun, and hiked in.

(2) Did you know MLK Jr. was a Republican? Hey! So was Abraham Lincoln! Maybe we should let Ms. Sparkle know that? Or send her a history book, except, well, she'd have to be able to read, so what's the point?

(3) Flies! Gnats! Crickets! I'm expecting locusts next. It's that season in Arkansas.

(4) Plus, everything is breaking. The AC broke -- I told you about that. Then the stove broke. Now the dishwasher is broken, and the dryer isn't working, and the hard-drive on the kid's computer is down, and the vacuum cleaner died. Some of this stuff the landlords will fix, as soon as they get back from Florida (they're spending a month in Florida), or they say they will fix these things; but lots of them are our problem. Money money money, water water water.

Obviously, the solution is MORE RUM!

Here is the story Drudge is pushing and the Right-Wing (which, in case you need reminding is not racist, no, no, no!) is buying with big wide eyes and  both hands: this home-schooling, charming family of Xtians in Akron, Ohio, who were off at a 4th of July Celebration, Celebratin' teh Freedom, as they manage to make clear about 15 times in this here news clip, claim that on the way home from their 4th of July Freedom Celebratin' they got Attacked by...a Black Mob.

Fifty! Black! Kids!

Yeah, you heard it right.  And they were, like, yelling, "It's a Black World!"

And they punched and kicked Daddy in the head and when sweet 90 pound daughter sprang to his defense, they knocked her down and kicked her too!

Daddy says he spent five nights in intensive care!  That's how badly he was beaten.

Yet you'll notice in the news clip...hmmm....no bruises on any of them?  Not a nick or a scratch?  Nor, well, jeez...none of them look particularly upset?

Also, they claim they were coming to the aid of a threatened buddy, yet the buddy isn't here to say, yeah, it happened just that way?

Anything seem odd about this story to you?

Me, too.  But not to the Right-Wing, who are all, oooo, wooo, those Black People!  How come no one calls this a Hate Crime?  See, See, see!  Just what we've been SAYING!  They're roaming the streets in MOBS!

The Right and Socialized Medicine

As you know, I lurk on the Right-Wing blogs (as much as I can bear to).  I used to comment, on the few blogs over there that allow comments (many of them do not, which I speculate has to do with their authoritarian natures: no one is allowed to speak in this house but Daddy), except, well, no matter how polite and reasonable I attempted to be (and I swear! I swear! I tried polite and reasonable!) I always ended up being banned, almost always for the high crime of using that evil tool, reason, against them.

Anyway, now I mainly just lurk.

Here is what I have discovered about socialized medicine. 

The Right-Wing seems to hate and fear socialized medicine for a couple of reasons.

(1) It will "be like the post office," by which they mean, well, I don't know.  What's wrong with the post office?  I love the post office. For less then fifty cents they bring letters from anywhere in the country right to my door.  For far less than ten bucks, they bring books, DVDs, toys, exotic foods -- well, you get the picture -- again, right to my door.  They don't require me to be home, either, as UPS and Fed Ex frequently do.  They'll leave the package in my parked car, if I leave it unlocked, or tucked out of sight behind my stoop wall.

When I go into the post office, my post office folk are friendly and efficient.  They remember not only me but the kid and that she likes science and manga.  If the line is getting long, as it always is around lunch and three o'clock (redneck rushhour, mr. delagar calls this) they do what they can to sort things and move them along, though of course they can only do so much -- at lunch, some of them are eating, too, and at all times, only so many of them are on shift.

And I am living in a small city, less than a hundred thousand people.  Some of the Right-Wing folk might be living in bigger places.  I suspect, though, that their main complain is that, where they live, the post office is staffed by "those" people.  You know -- N.O.C.D.*  

Which is what they're afraid of -- that if socialized medicine comes, why, Black and Brown people might easily get put into positions where they could be telling good White People to stand in line!  What to Do!  Denying WHITE PEOPLE the right to -- to -- 

Well, it doesn't matter.  World Turned Upside Down, that's the point here.

(You can tell this is what they're worried about by reading between the lines of their screeds.  They almost never openly say "black people" when they're speaking about their experience with the post office or their experiences with public hospitals.  But watch for code words -- "fingernails this long," or "that hair," or "popping that gum the way they do"-- dogwhistle terms they all understand.)

(2) Poor people will get medicine too.  This is bad.  Some of them come right out and say this.  We can't give the poor access to medicine because then they'll survive and who wants this?  Others pretend to care about the poor, but, as in Doctor Wife Mom's blog, you can see she really only wants medicine going to her tribe -- rich white people with health insurance.  (In other posts she's been snitty and angry about nasty slutty women -- she's careful not to say black women -- who have dozens of abortions, using abortions, she claims, as birth control.  She says she's seen plenty of these women in her years as a doctor.)

People without health insurance, or people without money?  Well, they're really not on Doctor Wife Mom's radar.  I'm guessing she doesn't even really consider them people.  They're not in her Tribe, are they?  How could they be people, then?  People in her Tribe need the Best Medical Care Evah, which means no rationing, no Socialized Medicine, no sparing of any attempt to squeeze even an extra second, damn the cost, full speed ahead....but those poor (brown) people over there across the county that can't afford to pay the $1500.00 it would cost for a day in the ER, and so can't get this nifty wonderful care that's been keeping her Daddy going?  Well, she just can't see them at all.  

(Which this is what's been happening to one of my students -- I'm not drawing that figure out of a hat.  She's a black woman with three kids, two hers and one a niece she's taken in.  She had chest pains back in May, went to the ER, because she has no health insurance.  She works a minimum wage job 30 hours a week and goes to school part time.  They work her up, run some tests.  She gets a bill a few days later for just over 1500 dollars, which did I mention she's got three kids in the house and is working for minimum wage?  So the next time she gets chest pains, guess what she does?  She lies down and waits for them to go away.**)

(3) It will cost a lot of money, which will raise taxes.  Waaah!  Those Lie-brals are so stupid for calling it "Free" health care!  Okay, first, who is saying that socialized medicine is "free"?  Second, yes, taxes, boogah-boogah.  You know what else we pay taxes for? Roads, the FDA, the military, National Parks, the Supreme Court, hundreds of other things we want and need.  Socialized medicine is something most of us want and need.  Also, does anyone think we are not paying for medical care now?  Some sources I've seen say we're paying one-fifth of our GNP for the lousy medical care we get now.  I know a huge chunk of my personal income goes straight to medical care -- first the insurance, that comes off the top, and then I write a dozen checks to the various doctors I owe money to, around town (the surgeon who did my shoulder, the three separate dentists we are always in hock to, the orthodontist, the anesthesiologist I am still paying off, for my surgery which was done in December, the check to the clinic for my daughter's test, from three years ago, I'm still paying those off...) -- and this isn't counting the money for our prescription drugs and the little incidental medical expenses that keep coming up: mr. delagar needs a new CPAP machine, or the kid loses a filling...so you know what?  Slightly higher taxes?  Do you think I actually care?

What they're really worried about, of course, is Brown people getting something for nothing.  Brown people don't pay taxes -- it's a Right-Wing article of faith.  So if we have socialized medicine, well, all those NOCD people will be getting a free ride!  Bad enough they get a free education and all that free welfare!  Now they'll get free X-Rays and free chemotherapy, oh, you can just see steam coming out of the wingnut ears.

*In England, this was Not Our Class, Dear.  In America, of course, it's Not Our Color, Dear.

**Our school has a clinic for students; I set her up with this.

Cooking....

....sort of.

Anyway, new posts up at Cooking With Delagar.

Separate But Equal

Who would have guessed that could go wrong?

The ACLU makes them quit.

I went to a sex-segregated HS in Jefferson Parish: my brothers got Physics and Latin, along with actual teachers with actual degrees in the subjects they were teaching. They also had a real gymnasium. I got civics and a "science" teacher who had taught second grade the previous year. We walked across a highway to use the beat-up parish gymnasium and baseball fields, and played volleyball all year long because that was the only sports equipment our school had.

(I did take Latin my junior and senior year -- they bussed us over to the boys' school -- because they were trying to appease the wicked feminists who were objecting to the inequity in the system; no one did anything about the rest of my inept teachers, though. Well, they weren't training me to be a scholar. They were training me to be a young lady.)

Ezra!

Ezra Klein is hard to find these days, since he went and moved his blog on us.

But here is a fine post on Waxman he's written.

You might remember Waxman from back when he went up against the Abstinence-Only crowd; now he's working on Health Care. But he's done plenty in DC. When the Whacks on the Right tell you Government Doesn't Work, here's the guy you point to in response.

And We're OFF!

The semester begins!

WLIT at 10.20, Second half of Freshman Comp at 12.40, every day all day all week long, now until August 2.

Well, we get Fridays off.  Yay Fridays!

How much rum is too much rum, do you reckon?

They're LOONY!!!

Over and over, I'm seeing this one on the RW Blogs:

Sarah Palin as Obi Wan Kenobi.

Okay, y'all.  That's way too many Cheetos.  Put down the keyboards, come out of the basements, get a nice, long drink of water and have a walk.

Please.  For your own sakes, never mind the Nation.

There's a Name for This....

I know I shouldn't be laughing, but...

Heh. Heh. Heh heh heh.