Nancy "McCain Shill" Pfotenhauer

Nancy Pfotenhauer is a McCain shill, who is, in her smart sophisticated way, the flip side of Palin. Nancy Pfotenhauer is a younger version of Cindy with a good education and frightening connections, namely Koch Industries. This is another link I stole from Dr. Zaius. Thanks Dr. Zaius for your linky greatness. You are a friend of the lazy blogger.

The Real McCain

Please link and pass it on. This is what you need to share with the people in your family, or your friends, or the people you work with who disagree with you because of the McMaverick's mythology.

I Heard About It First On Twitter

Get your Rolling Stone Video here! New Rolling Stone!

John McCain's greatest hits of bad behavior, lies, misrepresentation, and snarling meanness. Oh sure you guessed he was a nasty prick, but now there is well researched proof and a video interview of the Rolling Stone editor telling the high points on John's low points. If you don't see it here, get your Rolling Stone Magazine where high quality magazines are sold. This one will be a collector's item.

A Woman's Voice

I first heard this song done by Judy Collins, then later I heard Joni Micthell sing it. Now that I've discovered the YouTube, yes, you heard me I discovered the YouTube, I've listened to so many incarnations of the song I have finally settled on this later Joni Mitchell. I had this CD at one time, sadly it's gone, but who the hell needs anything like a CD anymore? We have the YouTube.

The art on the cover is a self portrait. She's a damn fine painter as well. Here you have the art of an older woman. There is no video, just look once and then listen.

Joni Mitchell sings Both Sides Now

My Books and the Places I Read Them

My Library

My books are roughly separated into fiction and nonfiction (all initially alphabetized by author's last name) with some sub-categories. I try to keep poetry, languages, philosophy, linguistics, reference books and others I can't quite categorize together, but as I read or research (ha!) or search for a favorite and pull it from the shelf, I don't always replace it. Like a teenager at the public library, I do not leave the shelves as I found them.

This is the music I listened to while putting these photos together to show you my personal library and the places in my house where I read. So, as you look at my books, can you listen to Joni Mitchell perform, All I Want?

I would so like to see your personal libraries, hear how you organize your books, where you read them, and whether you're a good library patron in your own library. Don't make me turn this into a meme. Because I will!

Guess Who's Leaving Pennsylvania?

From the Huffington Post:

Twitter is turning out to be a good place for hot tips on breaking news.

ABC News Exposes Palin Lie

One of my new twitter friends linked this story from The Daily Kos.

Thanks jpat1eco whoever you are. I'd link you man, but... No blog to link.

Helpful Hints for Voters

Register to Vote, Volunteer for your Candidate, offer to give rides to those in your neighborhood who need help registering and voting, volunteer to be a monitor at your poling place, and try to counter disinformation with truth whenever possible. Talk to neighbors, friends, and family about your reasons for voting for Obama, your reason for not supporting McCain. A fight with family members is common enough about small potatoes, but this fight is not small potatoes, it's about whether or not there will be any potatoes at all.

A little help for new voters or voters volunteering to help other's find their poling places:

And if that's not enough...

McPalin Plans To Play Down and Dirty

We knew they would. With nothing positive to offer, with a bankrupt country after the first eight years of Busheney, and John's nose all up in Bush's ass for all those years, the Republican's have no game plan, except the Rove model of slander and lies and voter suppression. One of the news alerts I get every morning is the Washington Post, mostly because Eugene Robinson works there. But I did find this interesting and instructive. I hope the Obama Campaign has a strategy for dealing with the slime machine, because it about to start pumping a daily fog of slimy stuff.

From the Washington Post:

Okay, I Lied, So Sue Me.

Have another look at Sarah Palin. For all you (white men who are the only demographic that gave her a boost in the polls) take a look at Sarah at home, in the air, in the woods. So how do you like your UBERMILF NOW MOFO'S!

Thanks Linda, I needed that link!

On Stepping In It

I know of no other blogger whose writing is as counter productive as mine. I have never seen another blogger have to back track and retract her previous posts with the frequency that I do. Maybe it's time to shut the fuck up. Maybe it's time to take a break and read for a while. When you start congratulating yourself on your writing, it's time to quit writing. I'm sloppy in the extreme. Ignorant. Woefully under educated. Out of my league. Thoughtless, careless of other's contributions and feelings. And I can't seem to read when I write. It's as if there is a switch that's thrown when I shift from one medium to another that turns off every other creative function.

Shorter days sometimes trip the switch that is at the heart of a mood disorder. Today I feel prickly, pissed off, alienated, and mired in self loathing. I need to go out to the grocery store and I am dreading it. I have to work to assemble a disguise, so that my feelings won't show. I need to look normal. I need to make sure I am invisible. The barometer is shifting as a storm moves in. Maybe it's weather related. I have tools sitting on a table outside that haven't been used in a month. It's time to stop everything unrelated to some practical, necessary task. I need to make a list and make sure that somewhere on the list is read the book Nick gave me for my birthday. But mostly I need to shut the fuck up.

On Writing

Writing is my real love. I am a fast first draft writer. I'm usually happy with my first drafts, but when you write fast, you write sloppy. Down and dirty is what it is. It's raw and immediate. I sometimes drift from past to present in the space of a paragraph. I begin with memory and become snared in the story so that what I'm writing about the past becomes the present. But as fast as I write, I edit slowly, over and over, looking for these tense shifts, and again getting caught up in the immediacy of the story. Sometimes I am working on character's names, and all I'm looking for is a name here and there. Oh, I might catch something in one of these searches, but mostly not. So for thirty years I have been working on the novel, Maggy. Most of the poems I've posted here, were written in one flash of feeling or insight. But I have poems I've been working on for years. I may write them in a moment of inspiration, but I tinker endlessly. The short story is a new form for me. Again, these stories are all relatively new. The first story I wrote is the one called, Still Life. I wrote this story in the evening after the police left. It was a way to cope with my feelings after a burglary in my home. It's the only story I've been working for years. I'm satisfied that it's finished, but I bet a careful reading by any one of you might turn up a typo or punctuation problem. I'm too close to it, too familiar with it now to notice those mistakes. All the rest of the stories are very new, written in that fast all at one sitting pace, except the most recent, which is a work in progress.

Having a blog is a distraction from that kind of writing. Here I can write fast and let it fly. I may go over something a time or two, but mostly I write fast and post. I have a few readers of the fiction who have left comments here and there, but mostly these are brief comments. The one time I asked for editorial help I got it in spades on the story, The End Of Love. I asked my regular blog commenters to comment on that particular story, and to feel free to make editorial suggestions. It was like having a real writing group again. I've missed having the feedback you get from being in a writing group. I had 24 comments and they were all helpful. I made many changes, large and small. I think every change made the story stronger, tighter, and scrubbed it of spelling errors. I'm very grateful for that help.

Yesterday I got an email from a blogger who has never commented anywhere on my site, but who I have seen on other sites leave nice, interesting, intelligent comments. One of the things I noticed first was his avatar--his is a water color self-portrait. Diva and he and I are the only three I've seen. So to find an email from Steve Emery in my inbox was a big surprise. But what he says left me sobbing with gratitude. Kindness and generosity sometimes do that to me. It's never expected. I should work on my expectations.

Thank you Steve for your comment. I treasure it. It's both helpful and an encouragement to believe that I just might be on to something here. What follows is Steve Emery's comment.


Thanks for your comment on Vulture Peak Muse. It's interesting to me how the comments of other bloggers gradually accumulate in my mind until they form some tantalizing half picture. Then I have to go look for the rest, or at least as much as they reveal.

Your work is all compelling, and a bit frightening. Some passages ring with something like wry laughter (Lucy and the UPS man) and some drip with beauty (the description of the Willamina woods) - but others are so casually brutal, or so grindingly cruel. I can't help but understand and hate Maggy, and feel trapped between the two feelings. And the sharp edges and regret in some of the poems... "I spent my life retreating from desire."

Several times, lately, I've had the mental equivalent of stumbling on the scene of a crime - reading in several different blogs of the cruelty of men (and women) to women of extraordinary appearance. I have encountered almost no violence in my life since grade school bullying, and I am shocked by it in almost any form. I am deeply dismayed that people are repeatedly hurt for any reason, and the idea that one might be beautiful enough to continue attracting painful attention sounds like a nightmare. I would not have thought it common or likely but for stories I keep finding lately. Yours (fact or fiction or a combination - I don't know) and Liberality's, most recently.

Blogging opens up all sorts of places for everyone to view. I wonder if we are doing something truly new in this, or if it's just a new medium for some old business that found other expression in other ages, like diaries. I believe there is "nothing new under the sun," where humanity is concerned. Technology is just new varnish - the furniture is all the same.

But I doubt it was this easy to see and find so many people's stories, and to experience so many different people's pains and joys.

Thank you, again, for your kind words about my art. I admire the power of yours - though it leaves me a bit shaken.

Steve

Pass it on

From Diva to Dcup to me to everyone. Don't Vote

Pass it on.

Declare Yourself

Declaration of Independence.

Stewart on McCain and Congress

My week night guilty pleasure is my obsession for Jon Stewart. I watch in real time and reruns. Here is a recent favorite of mine, Stewart Takes on MCain, Congress,and Wall Street.

Cindy's Secret Advice To Sarah

Good Advise

Take A Look At This!

From Nothing is off the Table:

The end of Free-Market Fundamentalism

American News Project

This is another post I have stolen. I found it while visiting Vigilante at The Vigil. It was in his comments thread that I read this post imbedded in a comment left by Nothing Is Off The Table. It's a must watch bit of video.

Flagellation

Oh dear, I'm must punish myself again. Impulsiveness is a problem, and should be curbed. I'd don't want to be seen or thought of as the John McCain of bloggers. I'd like to be smarter than John, which isn't saying much. Talk about lowering the bar. Maybe it's my age and underlying mental illness, but I just blurt out the damnedest things sometime.

Of all the weapons in my arsenal, I am probably best with a gun. Yes Sarah, I can shoot a gun quite well, and I'm accurate. But a gun isn't a weapon to punish yourself with, it's a way to end it all, and I'm too interested in the outcome of the presidential campaigns, for that. I can fence. I still have my custom made foil, and I sharpen the edges of the blade, hoping to wear away the bead of steel at the tip so it could really be used as a weapon of self-defense. But it would be damn hard to do more than scratch and scrape my legs and feet since I am too close to myself to do much harm. I have my strait edge razor, but I don't really want to bleed out, that's not the point of self-punishment. The point of self-punishment is to hurt yourself, not kill yourself.
Jesus everyone knows that.

When I was a kid we had every kind of weapon to play with. Guns, knives, and whips, mainly. If I had looked a bit I probably could have found the poisons. I had no use for poisons. Or at least not the imagination. However, I did love the guns, knives and whips. It never occurred to me to use the guns, knives or whips on myself. And in mastering the use of these weapons, I didn't really think of them as weapons to use on a person, especially not on my person. But along with the target practice of shooting cans and bottles, I threw a switchblade at trees, loving the thunk sound and the quivering of the handle when the point was firmly sunk in the bark. I'm not proud of hurting trees, but I didn't really think of trees as having feelings back then.

Now let's move on to the whips. Why did we have whips? I have no idea. I never saw a whip used on anyone, except in the Westerns my dad and I went to on winter afternoons after school. But I did still want to master the use of the whip, even if, in my young life there was little likelihood I would be asked to keep the cattle moving on a long winter round-up. But just in case, I thought it would be good to be able, on a long cattle drive to send the long tail of the bullwhip to crack just above their heads. So I practiced, and got pretty good. The arm action that worked best for me was to give my arm almost the same motion as throwing a rock or a baseball. It was an overhand or sidewise action with a snap of the wrist that seemed to travel down the length of the braided whip and end in a loud crack sound, like a small boom. A crack a boom a snap. And you can't use a bullwhip on yourself--it's too long. What you need for flagellation is a cat-o-nine-tails or a quirt. Now I have used a quirt. And any Ag store worth it's name would have a nice selection of quirts, mainly used in horse training, dog training, and the like--moving livestock is its intended use. I was a horse rider from my earliest memory and some farmers insist that knowing how to use a quirt is as necessary to riding as spurs. I don't agree about either the quirt or the spurs, (I've used both) but as a kid, what did I know? I just wanted to ride. So I used the damn quirt, mostly held in the right hand, the hand not holding the reigns, and I wore the damn spurs, but never used them the way intended. I thought they were cruel and I was a better rider than that. But my impulsiveness as a woman who blurts out whatever is in her mind, often at inappropriate moments, and often in writing is making me want to punish myself. Maybe I need to make a trip to the Ag store and get me a quirt to remind myself that there will be consequences for future screamed on the page brain farts. Cause who needs to read that. It's just embarrassing.

I know writers who crumple the page and throw it away or delete it. I've done that. But sometimes I like to look back at how damn dumb I have been. It's instructive to have your humiliation out there. Reminds you what you don't want to do in the future. And in the end allows me to forego the trip to the Ag store.

Tengrain, Tengrain, Come Out Wherever You are.

I have been following Tengrain's funny, smart comments all around the blogosphere. Town sounds better. But hell, let's be honest, I troll the ether looking for Tengrain. I have blog rolled Tengrain, but just when I think I am there, no luck. What the hell? So, please, please won't someone please drop Tengrain's http:// thingy in my lap again? I bet UC's got it. I find Tengrain at Johnstown, but when I try to follow him/her home(I'm not fussy) it turns out to be a snipe hunt. Once I actually located Tengrain. I had the best laugh of the previous week or so. I read post after post and split a gut. I'm worried laughter is a little like the orgasm, always too rare, but never a bad thing. But that the use it or lose it adage applies. Tengrain left me a sweet, sly little comment today, but left it unlinked, so I could not follow Tengrain home. WTF? Why so mysterious? Maybe we're soul mates. Come on...

PS, I found Tengrain, obviously. But Tengrain has no use for me. I'm going to take to my bed now in abject embarrassment. Oh, I know I could delete this post, but I think the occasional humiliation is cleansing for the soul. Like a little flagellation.

Yes, Liquid, Ms Illusion?

A cryptic message from the Liquid One.