Not sleeping well again...

Sshhh... I'm practicing esquivalience right now.

I'm not sure why, but I haven't slept well in the past two days. Everything seems to be under control, as near as I can tell. There's a lot to do, but I 'm getting through each item in order and not having any notable failures. I've had to give up on the notion of taking an Japanese classes this quarter: Omaha's schedule of her radio show, the Democrats' organizational meetings and so on has prioritized my time away from taking any evening classes.

Monday night, Omaha tried an experimental recipe of broccoli and cheese casserole, and I don't think we'll be making it again. I was the only one who liked it and it was a bit too salty. Last night, I went with macaroni & cheese which was much better. It fed Kouryou-chan and I, and fallenpegasus stopped by and joined us. He was here for a ride to the airport.

I think a lot of my anxiety is coming from the press. The Evangelicals have really swallowed completely two contradictory facts: they are in power, they can pull the levers of Congress and make it do what they want, and yet at the same time they're the most oppressed minority in the United States. The FCC is planning on an expansion of power to limit the "adult" content on cable television-- not Playboy or Heat, but John Stewart and Adult Swim-- on the grounds that cable is "pervasive" and therefore regulable. "Parents' groups" are pushing to get books (books!) rated the way movies and games are rated, so that they'll know if their children are being assigned "R" rated stories in high school reading. The FBI announced last week that it's #1 priority is the prosecution of pornography. And not child pornography, but the plain ol' consenting adults kind.

Bleah. Maybe I should join a seminary or something.

Although many of my friends are into it, I'm not a big fan of Rob Brezsny's Free Will Astrology. I've never been able to figure out if he's serious or not, although much of what he writes is fun and useful. But I like the idea of pronoia. It's something I've lived with most of my life. Currently, life is making pronoia hard to practice.

More Newsy Stuff

Oh good, we horndogs aren't the only ones to notice! The Wall Street Journal editorials page has an article with this headline: The Other Russian Revolution, with this tag: "From Russia's dark history of wars, repression, and hunger has emerged a generation of amazing, stunningly beautiful girls..."

On the other hand, in between its campaigns against contraception and its boycott of Starbucks, Concerned Women For America (now there's a busybody name if ever I crafted one!) has discovered the truth about feminists: They're all witches. Oooh, and they quote the Bible, Romans 1:20-25! (That's the passage where Paul disses lesbians, so there's a second accusation they're telegraphing their target audience.)

A sad, strange sighting

This morning as I headed to work, I walked through the band of woods behind my house to the road and then down to the bus stop, I passed by one of the saddest scraps of personal remnants ever left behind: a pair of pants, filthy, with a belt still in the loops; several random, scattered pages from one or two porn magazines; and a letter from the Division of Child Support.

The letter was a note to a man telling him that DCS needed to know his current employment status and his current phone number. There was a SASE attached with a form for his response.

There was nothing I could do; there was no sign of the man, and I had only a name. Not even an address for him; just the return address on the SASE. I hope the rest of his family isn't in a similar state of wreckage as he must be.

Fucking Vultures!

Today, when I got home, Omaha and Kouryou-chan weren't there. They were down at the park, so I sat down in front of the TV. I realized that I hadn't actually seen any of the disaster from Katrina, so I turned on the news channels. I had pulled in all of the news, all of the numbers, all of the material details but, great gods, the human images are horrifying.

I will say that of all the channels on the air, I can understand why FOX gets the attention it does. They're most in-the-midst of it, they get the best folks on the air, they're actually interviewing cops and doctors on the ground rather than politicians or theorists. They're good at covering disasters.

At one point some reporter was interviewing a doctor at a Red Cross recovery center in Gulfport and the talking head in the studio asked, "Who are all those people in the bright shirts behind you?"

"The ones in red vests are Red Cross. The ones in the bright yellow shirts are Scientologists, who are volunteering their expertise as grief counselors."

More like grief vultures.