Furibundum

Despite the whole of his spiel or whatever the purpose, regardless of anything else he might have had to say, Osama bin Laden's latest audio installment was really pretty much spot on in many respects at the start. In it he talks about the dangers of global climate change , and how the preponderance of responsibility for the mess lies squarely at the feet of the United States and the Western industrialized nations. Al-Quaeda à la Al-Gore, you might say. But the similarities between the two of them shouldn't in fact surprise anyone, actually, seeing how that bin Laden is so much a Democrat at heart. Leave it to Rush Limbaugh to point out this inconvenient truth , check, check, checking off bin Laden's parroting so many of the Democratic party's talking points. To bin Laden criticizing George W. Bush for rejecting the Kyoto Protocol for benefiting giant corporations, Limbaugh asks, "Does this not sound like an average Democrat? Okay, blame the U.S. and greedy, evil c...

Like most other gay folks, I was gratified the other night to hear President Obama announce at the State of the Union address his intention to put repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell on the agenda for 2010. Of course we were all hyped when we heard it the first time, too. Back when he was pandering the rainbow coalition for votes during his campaign, pledging to be a "fierce advocate" for LGBT rights. To start working toward getting rid of DADT during his first year as president was part of that promise. Not that he has totally snubbed us, I guess, but tagging him a "fierce advocate" is probably a stretch . It's really little wonder that much of the queer community reacted approvingly, but also with a fair amount of skepticism, the other night after hearing him vow again to do what he vowed once before with nothing gotten done so far. This DADT thing, I wouldn't think, should be such a big ordeal to get over and done with in short order. Even military p...

To be honest, I never really knew what was the big deal about food waste being tossed out into the landfills. I mean, I've heard about it and all, how that it's a bad thing for the environment, I just did not get why. Nor cared enough to bother taking five minutes to Google about it to find out the reason, until now. (Is Google as a verb supposed to be lower case? Haven't troubled myself to figure that one out yet, either.) So yeah. I kind of just took for granted what was being said by the greener people than I am, that our uneaten scraps of food were, like so much other stuff, contributing to the detriment of the environment. I could not reconcile in my own head, however (what little time I did spend thinking on it) why tossing leftovers into our own compost bins is an eco-friendly thing to do, but having it hauled away by others to rot elsewhere was an entirely different and bad thing. Well, consider me educatated now via EcoWatch.org : "Rotting food in the landfil...

I had to give it an overnight rest to let pass the euphoria that I get whenever Obama talks to me. Had to let it wear off before I could process objectively about his State of the Union address last night. I already admitted that I knew it would happen, no matter my disappointment lately , once he did that thing he does so well when he opens up his mouth to speak. I had expected to get all giddy again, and I did. Frankly, I suppose I can't help but be biased still, but not only was the speech delivered with his regular panache, I think it did good tagging all the stuff that should have been tagged. Despite some thinking it was too much of a mashup of affairs ("they had decided to serve up a buffet of all of it" so thinks Politico "), I would suppose that if it had not, he would have been beaten up for being too à la carte. Really, he had no choice but to bring it all up, though. I mean, a year ago he did come to the table with an already full plate of less-than-savo...

Chris Matthews after covering President Obama's State of the Union address said : “I forgot he was black tonight for an hour." And there was that other time he said about then Senator Obama: "The fact that he's good at basketball doesn't surprise anybody." I don't think Chris Matthews is racist, but seriously... for making his career out of dissecting what everyone else might say and why did they say it, you'd think he might stay a bit more alert to what comes out of his own loud mouth.

I probably ought to mention that I haven't always been such a wackadoo about living so cheaply, nor was I one to spend an awful lot of time thinking very much about the environment. It has only gradually progressed to how funny I am about it all now over the last few years, and then only due to a most desperate downward shift in my own personal economy back then. Going from riches to rags can have its advantages in terms of evolving a new and better outlook on things, though. I don't intend to nor would I want to change that, however rich I might end up some day. But it's still relatively new for me, so I do admit that I am in no position to offer up any ground-breaking tips on frugality, as I mention over in the sidebar there; nothing new here. This blog is truly only to document what it is that I am doing now, and as I've mentioned before, to keep track of whatever new things that I will hopefully learn as I go along. It's still an ongoing adventure for me, a gra...

Since Scott Brown beat out Martha Coakley for the Massachusetts Senate seat (mostly because she ran a sucky campaign; the loss of it squarely on her shoulders, in my opinion and others' ), the Democrats are all discombobulated now. What with the passage of Obama's aim to overhaul health care shot down in that one fell conservative swoop and Teddy rolling over in his grave, the party has been acting rather awkwardly ever since; it's kind of embarrassing. Losing the seat to a Republican and with no hope bringing off health care reform as intended, the Democrats have started whistling a different tune. Just last year, getting the bill done was of such high import that Obama was setting deadlines to ramrod making legislation ready by the end of summer the year . As President Obama put it often, "Health reform is not a luxury that can be postponed, but a necessity that cannot wait" . Now it seems maybe not so much. Despite at first wanting to have something signed int...

Republished here from blog days gone by, circa 2007. Still pissed off at my old stuff getting stolen away by Steve Shickles and 451 Press without credit, so I'm taking it back, one article at a time. So what it's old news, it's my old news. Funny, though, being reminded what once seemed so worth writing about, that you have since forgotten entirely. Like this dandy of a post, Aussie Justice redux: (First published December 11, 2007) If you and eight of your closest friends happen to fancy gang-raping ten-year-old girls, Australia is the must-see place to visit. Queensland and surrounding territories are particularly desirable since this lovely lady, the Honourable Judge Sarah Bradley, will be your ally if by some chance others might frown upon your prepubescent dalliances. Not to worry, Judge Sarah’s got your back. She’s works for the Children's Court of Queensland, after all, so she’s a pro when it comes to handling such kid things. There’s probably even some w...

To change or not to change, that's the question; or when is the better question, to change clothes, I mean. I suppose at some point there comes a time you really should, but for me that time usually comes later than sooner. Although I do go further than most folks might be predisposed to even think about, I will admit. I've said before in babbling on about reasons why I hand wash my laundry , that I get away with a lot just being single, but it's really not such a bad thing wearing mostly the same clothes more than just once before getting them clean. I suppose there are some people who actually do manage to get some way dirty during the course of a day. I mean those others who do stuff besides just mostly sitting around, like I do. Other than when I step outside for a smoke I don't do too much, hardly anything that would get me dirty, that's for sure. Yeah, it seems to me a total waste of the resources required to always be wearing different clothes; water, utilit...

I've said it before, how that I am baffled about not getting whatever memo I was supposed to, telling me just exactly what is the homosexual agenda. Frankly I wouldn't even know we have one, except for the radical religious right-wing sermonizers always talking about it. Seems they must have intercepted my and others' directions for what to do, because I can't find one individual gay person who knows, either. Apparently part of it is to make straight people switch bedding with the reverse sex for doing it same-same instead, because that matters to us somehow. Then if all else fails, we are called for to kill them. Plainly that seems wrong; I don't blame the wingnuts for trying to stop us there, we leaving behind so many categorical casualties in our homosexual order of business. At least that's what you'd think we're up to, reading what douchebag Peter LaBarbera has to say about it. He the founder of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality , who e...

I once worked for a publishing company that put out several agricultural industry publications, including a magazine for beef producers. Later on I worked for a different publishing company that also put out several agricultural industry publications, including a competing magazine for beef producers. One time there, the big wigs flew in from New York for a strategic planning meeting; part of our analysis was to compare the two magazines' online content. Rather than bring up on the giant screen at the front of us all the BEEF magazine website (beefmagazine.com), the boss brought up the beef magazine website (beefmag.com) instead. I thought that was funny.

Again with the baking soda, while I'm at it. Miracle powder is really what it is, I can't figure out why folks don't buy up pallets of this stuff at a time. Of course I don't either; I only get the normal small-sized boxes singly. Ultra-cheap is one thing, but people looking at me funny out in public makes me uncomfortable buying in bulk. I really can't possibly begin to imagine over 500 uses but I reckon I could come up with at least ten or so right off the bat. And as far as for personal healthful living, in addition to calming down the insides , baking soda as tooth cleaner can't be beat. By itself with a bit of water is fine, with a splash of hydrogen peroxide instead is even better. Good Lord, over the past fifteen years or so how many of the national brands of toothpaste have come out bragging about now with baking soda? Or peroxide? Or both, if you want to pay a premium nearly five bucks a tube. Which would be stupid when it costs literally just pennies t...

No matter how the head persons at Royal Caribbean might try to legitimize this, it is just way too out of line for defending. That's my opinion, anyway. Here's the deal. Only sixty miles from the absolute destruction and carnage on account of last week's earthquake, Royal Caribbean's luxury liners are still queued up for letting their guests get their party on at the Labadee Beach resort in Haiti. Cutting loose and enjoying such watersports like jet skiing and parasailing, grooving on barbecues and shopping sprees, rum cocktails brought directly hammockside, and never minding not so far away the bulldozed mass graves, buildings brought to dust, the dying without food or water, the buried alive... One passenger said he was sickened by it all. "I just can't see myself sunning on the beach, playing in the water, eating a barbecue, and enjoying a cocktail while there are tens of thousands of dead people being piled up on the streets, with the survivors stunn...

I thought this was an appropriate way to wrap up the week. To Haiti, some can go there and help hands-on while most of us can not. The rest of us can play some part, donating as we are able toward what is needed for those desperate and dying as we speak. Some can do a lot, others of us not so much ; but whatever the contribution, the meaningfulness of it must not be underestimated. We are helping to save and restore lives, heroes as much as the next guy, and should be proud being part of a global alliance come together to take care of the most needy at this time. Even the wackadoodles chipping in deserve kudos for that; I'm guessing that Pat 'Haiti-made-a-pact-with-the-devil' Robertson is in all likelihood doing his deal. So here's to all of us, I suppose, giving to make a difference, Nyoy Volante's A Hero Has Arrived .

I am one of those people who whines from time to time about quite awful stomach pain, acid indigestion and that sort of thing. I don't suffer quietly, either, even if I only have the dog to bellyache to. So I'm pretty sure he is quite the happy pup that I have gone ahead with this method lately to shut me up from griping. It is certainly nothing cutting-edge, to be sure. Millions of folks have done this for many coons' ages, but for some reason it never occurred to have a go at it until just recently. I'm kind of slow on the uptake about certain things, even though this is probably one of the cheapest remedies of all the things to make me better. Plain old baking soda and water . Frankly, it works for me anyway just as well as and better than some other fixes I have taken over the years. As cheap as it plainly is on the face of it, I take it even one step further by swapping out the buck or two Arm & Hammer branded box for the 50-cent Dollar General box. Sodium bic...

"#WTF @451Press still publishing, getting paid for, removed my name as author of ...MY old content there. I have no access to stop it.." Difficult to express pissed-offedness in 140 or less but trust me, I am not a happy camper. Up until sometime early on in 2008, I was the writer of the Current Events blog for the 451 Press network. I knew this part seemed screwy when I signed on with them: the agreement was that if and when I might leave 451 Press they could continue on using my content forever (for free of course), but that I'd still get byline credit. So I figured I was all right with that. Maybe not so much thrilled, but all right. It was kind of frustrating after I did leave, I'll admit, continuing getting Google alerts via email of traffic to my old posts, a reminder that my content was still putting coin in someone else's pocket rather than mine. That persists to this day, the alerts, but I've grudgingly lived with it. At least my stuff is still getti...

Ummm... I'm actually having trouble even finding the words for what to say about this. Which should make the group over at Conservapedia very pleased, seeing that they "prefer conciseness over liberal wordiness" anyways. So to be concise: this batch of loons is beyond question all-out bonkers. Conservapedia, The Trustworthy Encyclopedia (think Wikipedia with a right-wing nutjob twist) is calling now for all illiberal wiki correspondents out there to join up for the Conservative Bible Project , helping to give God's Word an extreme make-over with a bent more to the right. Seems that the lads who put together the project decided that the Bible, as it is, reads just too liberal, that there is no "fully conservative translation" of it. So to remedy that offense, they contrived this project, setting down their own ten commandments of how to make sure that in the end God doesn't come off all progressive: " Framework against Liberal Bias : providing a st...

[ Update Jan 15: Fixed links to support planting a tree for Haiti ] In the wake of the devastation left behind after the earthquake hit Haiti on Monday, there have been the usual calls for donations that follow any catastrophe. Seemingly dozens of disaster relief groups are pleading for contributions to help the survivors and the country get better. Of course, do your study on whichever aid organization you might be inclined to chip in to support; sadly these worst of times inevitably bring out the scammers in hordes. The New York Times has an extensive list here of agencies you might consider. This is clearly no time to be cheap, I know that. Unfortunately many of us are dealing with personal situations right now that preclude being able to give like we once could have, and it is frustrating. However, excepting the most dire of cases, there is something that most of us poor can still do to help Haiti. Maybe not for the short term. But what the blow of this earthquake has managed to...

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Seems like a logical follow up to the clothes washing post for saving some cash, especially considering that switching up the drying part of your laundering routine is where can be found the lion's share of savings. And it couldn't be any easier done, simpler even than diddling around with the clothes dryer and the perma fluff high heat low delicate whatnot dials and buttons. Personally I always just left mine on however it was when I got it and let it run until the clothes were dry. Never monkeyed around with figuring out the differences, seemed to work out all right. But yeah, easier still is good old fashioned air drying your washing instead of putting it through the dryer. It uses none of the electricity and sometimes also gas, and requires no special equipment to get the job done. Unless you splurge on a clothes drying rack like the one in the picture (my granny used to have one) or from any other style out there. It's a handful of bucks that will save you fists full ...

How I started Friday's post the other day, supposing that I "must be mentally retarded" turns out to be truer than I had really meant it at the time. Here's the deal, thanks to a quickwitted reader pointing it out to me... I am not forty-eight after all. Which might explain why I seemed so perplexed the other day about how that had not occurred to me yet, because literally it has not occurred to me yet. God only knows how mathematically-astute Erika remembered from whatever or whenever long ago it was that this trivia might have come up, but she's right; I was born November 1962, just now over forty- seven years ago. I really have nothing to say for myself about that, particularly since I spent most of my professional career diddling and dawdling with numbers. It's embarrassing. I also said in the same post that "I'm not that retarded as everyone celebrating 2010 as the start of a new decade still nearly a year away." I stand corrected abou...

I will admit some of the things I do that are on the cheap, I do only because I am single. I would never have considered, for example, washing by hand the mountains of laundry piled up back when I did have a family being raised. However, for just one it truly is not so big of a hassle hand washing most clothes. Seriously saving an awful waste of water, electricity and maybe gas (depending on what heats up your water) also comes with saving an awful waste of wampum. Depending on the variables of where you live, the number of loads and type of machine, of course, how much saved will be different. However, considering that on average a single load of wash by machine uses forty gallons of water, the relative sparing on water alone is significant. Again, good for the pocketbook, good for the environment . Granting also that a whopping 95% of the energy used by a washing machine could be going just to heat the water, using that much less water extrapolates to that much less cash to heat it u...

Starting off with correlating those of us "moonbat liberals" who have dared put down Brit Hume's jabbering about Tiger Woods, to the Romans feeding Christians to lions in primeval times, Matt Barber's write-up gets even more absurdly off-point after that. Hume went on FOX asserting his own faith in Jesus Christ and continued on proselytizing that "the extent to which [Tiger Woods] can recover seems to me depends on his faith". Hume pontificating that Tiger the Buddhist really should do some rethinking and accept instead the forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith for so much of that extra sex. "Tiger," he said, "turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world." Sure, after the comments were made we moonbats were pissed and said so, although I would hardly categorize it as Barber asserts "apoplectic" or with "unbridled hate". And not quite beca...

I've intended to start this blog for awhile now and figured since I have some spare time on my hands, why not now? Not that it's unusual for me having spare time, I just didn't want to come across lazy. On saving green, that's what this is about. I am notoriously cheap, probably to a fault, but seems to me most people chuck out way too much cash when there are often less expensive alternatives. Extra coin in the pocket is always a perk, and most often cheap is even better for the planet. And since green is in, saving some green is extra cool. Granted I take things a bit far sometimes, and also granted I don't do nor give up everything I could or should. But take what you will from here, I'll try to learn something new along the way as well, and for what it's worth I'll be back posting once I get things tweaked and ready to go.

I suppose because I must be mentally retarded that it only occurred to me today that I am actually forty-eight years old. The birthday was a couple of months ago but it really meant nothing to me at the time. I've had several forty-something birthdays already, I guess I just was thinking they would go on forever but really... forty-eight? Late this year I'll have my final one beginning the last year of the fourth decade of my time on the planet, starting my fiftieth year which is a very disturbing thought. I know I'll still have another year after that before it ends, it's not like I'm thinking this year's birthday ends the run; I'm not that retarded as everyone celebrating 2010 as the start of a new decade still nearly a year away . But psychologically, the thought of the five-oh closing in gives me the willies. As absurd now as it seems, my twenty-fifth birthday bugged me for some reason about getting older, and I've nearly doubled that already. In no...

While restaurants and grocery markets are regularly chucking away perfectly good eats, food pantries are begging for donations finding their need now bigger than ever before, and soup kitchens are at capacity turning away for lack of food many of the hungry. And all this while those trash bins sit filled with absolutely okay grub. Department stores are just as inglorious, casting off their unsold and still new shoes, coats and other clothes while the homeless people are sleeping cold on the same sidewalks just on down the road. And in the most recent for-now-in-the-news-anyway example of bad made even worse, H&M dutifully slashing them up before hauling them off to be dumped guaranteeing their unusableness to any destitute who might come snooping along; Walmart to that same end with each piece of clothing being hole-punched through by machine. I'm not so thick in the head as to think that this sort of wrongfulness is uncommon at all. Nevertheless it is notable and worth pointi...

I am glad I don't fly anymore, that's for damn sure. I would have little patience for dicking around with the dumbass security procedures they've come up with since I last went up. If not for being mongered by propagating so much irrational fear, I'd like to think most would find much of our security setup now either laughable or intolerable, depending upon one's frequent flyer status. When Richard Reid botched his shoe thing , I honestly thought it was a joke when, with a jerk of the knee, it was mandated that the shoes come off before stepping foot on an airplane. Even at the time, I distinctly remember thinking that if I were going to blow up a plane still, hypothetically of course, I'd just cram it in down there with my private parts instead. Worthless ridiculous procedure, the shoe rule. Unpleasant thought there, but if you are willing to blow apart yourself, this bit is really no better off than that at the finish. Then there was that terrorist alert scare...

The 1977 MG Midget, in all of its glory 141 inches long, 60 inches wide and 48 inches tall ... seriously a tiny car. I had one, just like the one in this picture, and it was awesome ! Lord only knows why other than for its undeniable cuteness I thought this might be a good idea, but thank God for temporary lapses in discernment. I sat in it today and remembered how much a hoot it was way back when. It's still around and taking up space now in Mom's and Dad's barn, except for when they take it out for a spin around the countryside. It might be somewhat older and a bit worse for wear, but aren't we all? The MG still kickin' it probably better than some of us, me admittedly being one of that some. Anyway, yeah. So I firstly hunkered down into the seat which seemed so much lower now than before. The getting in wasn't nearly so hard actually, I kind of just fell into it, as the struggle to get back up and out. The thing practically trails the road. No joke, sitting i...

"It feels like the weight of the world has been lifted off his shoulders. Here's a guy that's a decorated war hero who we maintain should never have been charged in the first place," so says the lawyer for one of the five Blackwater guards gotten off scot free from mowing down 17 Iraqi civilians for no reason, back in 2007. Stupid ass remark. Decorated or undecorated, war hero or antihero, since when that justified one beating the rap I don't know. Timothy McVeigh was a decorated war veteran , Bronze Star amongst other military bling, didn't seem to sanction absolution there. Vets gone bad, it happens, so that comment alone pissed me off. I digress. Back to the letting off the whole of the Blackwater bad guys. In his ruling dismissing the case against them, the judge had nothing to say about the massacring they pulled off whatsoever. Instead he dropped the case on the grounds that the five had had their constitutional rights violated by being threatened wit...