A Couple of Things from Friends

I communicate with most people I've known for more than one year on-line, because phone calls get expensive, and it's too far to drive to their houses for tea. But I've had an interesting early-afternoon of on-line happenings, and I just felt like sharing.

So here's a conversation I had with my friend Dustin:

Dust says:
I had a letter published in the campus paper today. http://www.da.wvu.edu/XMLParser/printstory.phtml?id=13376
Dust says:
It's basically just me calling out one of their editorial writers on being a complete jackass.
kati says:
lol
kati says:
I'll read it now
Dust says:
Here's the editorial I was responding to: http://www.da.wvu.edu/archives/app/XMLParser/printstory.phtml?id=13351&archivedate=09-16-2004
kati says:
first of all, that is a brilliant letter.
Dust says:
Thanks.
kati says:
I'm gonna go read the opinion collumns now
kati says:
wow.
kati says:
you know he's going to get a job at Fox news network when he graduates, right?
Dust says:
Yeah. He's like Bill O'Reilly's youthful ward.
kati says:
lol
kati says:
I'm sending you an email right now. It's a really great anti-bush article by a conservative columnist. It's brilliant.
Dust says:
Cool.
Dust says:
I can't believe Helsley just casually calls liberals "ugly." I mean, "whiny... mean-spirited, uneducated and arrogant" is a load of crap, but they're the sorts of things one frequently thinks about one's ideological opponants. But "ugly?" Now we're at playground level.
kati says:
lol
kati says:
Ann Coulter made the same argument, actually
Dust says:
The absurdity is only increased because this is the liberal columnist he shares the page with: http://www.da.wvu.edu/archives/app/XMLParser/printstory.phtml?id=13352&archivedate=09-16-2004
Dust says:
He's too new for his photo to be in the online version, but let's just say he's not winning any contests.
kati says:
lol-- yeah, those conservatives are all ugly.
Dust says:
I know. Also whiny, mean-spirited, uneducated and arrogant.
Dust says:
And they want to eat our babies.
kati says:
well, I heard that baby-eating is good for the economy
Dust says:
It creates jobs.
kati says:
and stops terror
Dust says:
And protects the family.
kati says:
and makes one attractive
Dust says:
and causes Jesus to love you more.
kati says:
and means you're patriotic
Dust says:
and it supports our troops
kati says:
and it stops the evildoers
kati says:
you see, this courtney balestier is going to be writing for the associated press.
kati says:
there's really no comparison
Dust says:
Yeah.
kati says:
Have you seen Outfoxed, by the way?
Dust says:
No. I plan to.
kati says:
It's great. I just saw it yesterday.
kati says:
The best stat from the movie, and I may be misquoting it because i didn't write it down, was that viewers of the Fox NEWS Network were five times more likely to be misinformed about general goings on in the world and in national politics.
kati says:
now that's journalism!
Dust says:
I've heard that.
kati says:
The movie made me want to write hate mail to the people of Fox.
Dust says:
Have you heard about how Bush is reluctant to debate?
kati says:
no, but it doesn't surprise me
Dust says:
The debate commission or whoever wants three, and Kerry said, "Sure." And the Bush campaign is stalling, saying that seems like too many.
Dust says:
Three!
kati says:
Isn't it always three?
Dust says:
I believe so.
kati says:
The first is on the 30th, right?
Dust says:
Yeah.


And also, you really got to check this out. This came in an email this morning:

...you've got to be f**king kidding me:

http://www.giantmicrobes.com/

Fun for the whole family. Try:
http://www.giantmicrobes.com/maladies/badbreath.html
http://www.giantmicrobes.com/calamities/blackdeath.html
http://www.giantmicrobes.com/critters/bedbug.html

wow.
-T

No really. You did just click on those links and see that stuff. And you know, what the hey. I've already cut and paste so much... Here's that article I mentioned to Dustin:

Subject: Charley Reese Piece

The following opinion piece by conservative columnist, Charley Reese is worthreading and circulating. Reese is a columnist for the King Features Syndicate.He turns out three columns a week and is known as a staunchly committedconservative.I guess that's why this column is causing such a stir. Heapparently took a good hard look at Bush & Co.'s record vs. rhetoric, and hecame to some inevitable conclusions.

VOTE FOR A MAN, NOT A PUPPET by Charley Reese

Americans should realize that if they vote for President Bush's re-election,they are really voting for the architects of war - Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld,Paul Wolfowitz and the rest of that cabal of neoconservative ideologues andtheir corporate backers.

I have sadly come to the conclusion that President Bush is merely a front man,an empty suit, who is manipulated by the people in his administration. Bush hasthe most dangerously simplistic view of the world of any president in my memory.It's no wonder the president avoids press conferences like the plague. Take awayhis cue cards and he can barely talk. Americans should be embarrassed that anArab king (Abdullah of Jordan) spoke more fluently and articulately in Englishthan our own president at their joint press conference recently.

John Kerry is at least an educated man, well-read, who knows how to think andwho knows that the world is a great deal more complex than Bush's comic-bookworld of American heroes and foreign evildoers. It's unfortunate that in ourpoorly educated country, Kerry's very intelligence and refusal to adoptsimplistic slogans might doom his presidential election efforts. But ThomasJefferson said it well, as he did so often, when he observed that people whoexpect to be ignorant and free expect what never was and never will be.

People who think of themselves as conservatives will really display theirstupidity, as I did in the last election, by voting for Bush. Bush is as farfrom being a conservative as you can get. Well, he fooled me once, but he won'tfool me twice. It is not at all conservative to balloon government spending, tovastly increase the power of government, to show contempt for the Constitutionand the rule of law, or to tell people that foreign outsourcing of American jobsis good for them, that giant fiscal and trade deficits don't matter, and thatpeople should not know what their government is doing. Bush is the mostprone-to-classify, the most secretive president in the 20th century. Hisadministration leans dangerously toward the authoritarian.

It's no wonder that the Justice Department has convicted a few Arab-Americans ofsupporting terrorism. What would you do if you found yourself arrested and afederal prosecutor whispers in your ear that either you can plea-bargain this orthe president will designate you an enemy combatant and you'll be heldincommunicado for the duration? This election really is important, not only fordomestic reasons, but because Bush's foreign policy has been a dangerousdisaster. He's almost restarted the Cold War with Russia and the nuclear armsrace. America is not only hated in the Middle East, but it has few friendsanywhere in the world thanks to the arrogance and ineptness of the Bushadministration. Don't forget, a scientific poll of Europeans found us, Israel,North Korea and Iran as the greatest threats to world peace.

I will swallow a lot of petty policy differences with Kerry to get a man in theWhite House with brains enough not to blow up the world and us with it. Go toKerry's Web site and read some of the magazine profiles on him. You'll find thatthere is a great deal more to Kerry than the GOP attack dogs would have youbelieve. Besides, it would be fun to have a president who plays hockey,windsurfs, ride motorcycles, plays the guitar, writes poetry and speaks French.It would be good to have a man in the White House who has killed people face toface. Killing people has a sobering effect on a man and dispels all illusionsabout war.

-Charley Reese

When It Rains...

I'm sitting in the computer lab doing some research on the Internet, waiting to see if any of my guys are going to come by for tutoring today. But then the smell of rain assaults my nose (it's a pleasant scent, but it was most certainly an assault with aggressive vigor) and I look up and I can't see through the stain glass windows. But I know that it's raining. I can't hear it over the fan. But I know that it's raining.

This is only important because it means that it is far less likely that people will show up at all-- for tutoring, or for art class at 6:00. I should be really disappointed about this, but I find myself half-hoping that no one comes so that I can go home.

Three hours to quitting time means that I have only worked 31 hours in the past three days, and not yet the 34 total that I'm pushing. When it rains, it pours, or so they say. I've had a fairly lazy schedule the past couple of weeks, and I knew it wouldn't last, so I took advantage of it. I volunteered to stay home when the repairpersons visited our house, and I did a little paperwork with John downtown, and I did A LOT of research for theatre stuffs for the year. But all that ended Monday morning when I had to wake up early and head in for a HOPE Program presentation, and man, you know, I love every minute of it, but I am tired.

Also, in my own defense, I know that not many people are going to show up for art anyway. Two tops. Maybe only one. When I went to call everyone to tell them we were starting up again, I found that the people who had signed up were not actually the people who wound up joining. So I didn't have anyone's number. I saw two people, and they said they'd come, but you know how that is. This just means that it will take about two weeks for word to get around that art has started back up again. Then they'll be beating down my door.

I've now been trained in ESL and Adult Literacy. Allen Frantzen, the director of the Literacy Center at Loyola University uptown has been so incredibly helpful that I don't even know what to do. He's loaned me books and given me advice and said to call or come by if I had any more questions or needs. And he started being that helpful when I was just email text in his inbox months ago. He's just that passionate about his work.

I talked with Sr. Angie today about what I'm going to be doing this year, and she was very helpful with what we should do to get started with ESL and AL. There are four people I need to meet with in the next week, but I"m not going to do that tomorrow. I'm going to stay home.

Probably, anyway.

Anyway, we also talked about Art and Theatre and RCIA, and I am so thrilled with what's going to happen this year. Theatre is especially looking to be an amazing feat of epic proportions, and I'm only exaggerating slightly. The group is so jazzed up and ready to go. They started suggesting fundraisers to do even before I got around to telling them we didn't have funds. They anticipated it, and found solutions. They're bursting with ideas and they want to invite millions of people along for the ride. It's bloody brilliant.

My next goal is to force myself to speak Spanish to my guys (and by the way, I use the gender-neutral form of the word "guys"), even though they understand my English. Because some of them would understand Spanish better, and it's easier for me to speak Spanish than for all of them to speak English. Theoretically, at least. I can speak okay to one person, and not so bad to very small groups, but Theatre is already about 20, and oh my... shuddering, shuddering, shuddering. But no, this is a good opportunity for me. Be strong, Kati. Be bold. Be daring.

Off the subject completely, I just checked my guestbook and found that I have acquired readers from among my fanfiction readers. So I figured I should say hey and update a bit on that account. I am working very hard on the next chapter. In fact, I've finished a draft, but it's kind of choppy and needs to be re-worked. Ideally, I'll have it done within a week, and sent off to the betas who will have it back to me in another week. Oh my, that's sounds like such a terrible long time. I'll do my best to expedite that.

give my love to the kids,
Kati