Eep! I'm offline!

We're doing some shifting around of furniture in the Plucky household, and our old faithful computer has been disconnected from the cable modem until we drag ourselves off to the store and get some really, really long ethernet cable. So, I'm left to blog at work, and it's been freakishly busy there as of late.

So expect not that much to go on around here for the next few days. I know not that much has gone on for the past few days as well. On top of everything else I just haven't felt much like blogging.

But I'll get my groove back soon enough, I'm sure.

No rest for the wicked

I keep trying to blog today, but other stuff keeps coming up. So I think I'll just give up. Sorry.

Expect updates tonight or tomorrow. I might just make tomorrow a day off from everything, though. There is much hectic-ness.

Have fun with this for now.

Top of the Blogs

I know I commented at the Dog House about how annoying "regurgiblogging" is, i.e., look-at-this-link-to-another-person's-writing-and-read-my-one-word-comment style blogging, but I just got back from a late showing of X-Men 2 and I'm afraid that's all I have the concentration for. Bamf! Snick!

So while I run around my apartment chasing my cats around and pretending I'm Mystique kicking ass, read these other people's blogs.

Al-Muhajabah has information on a petition to help save Amina Lawal, and also some info on why real Islamic law does not say people should be put to death for adultery.

Brooke Biggs makes some pointed observations about animal versus human rights. I can't think my way out of that contradiction either.

And Pandagon is running a contest to name Geraldo's new, ridiculous, all-caps blog. That's right, Geraldo Rivera has a blog, blogging is officially no longer cool. My vote for the blog name? "Drawing Lines in the Sand..."

And that's all you'll hear from me tonight. I have Mutant Fever. Bamf! Bamf bamf!

Welcome to my blogroll...

Mac-a-ro-nies and Thousand Yard Glare!

It's my Mom's birthday today

I forgot to call her. And now I'm stuck at work where I can't call long distance.

I'm definitely going to bad-daughter hell when I die.

Pyrrhic Victories

I wonder what the IDF actually thinks it wins if they have to win it this way.

GAZA CITY (CNN) -- Israeli troops surrounded and attacked the home of a Hamas military leader Thursday in Gaza, killing him and his two brothers, Palestinian security sources said.

At least 10 other Palestinians, including a 2-year-old and a 13-year-old, died in the attack and 47 others were wounded, the sources said.

Emphasis added. What's to stop the young, impressionable relatives of that 2 year old and that 13 year old from growing up and becoming suicide bombers? What has the IDF won at the loss of two children?

I wonder what Hamas actually thinks it wins if they have to win it this way.

"The boom was just outside the entrance," said the owner of the bar, Gal Ganzman, his shirt covered with blood. He was standing behind the bar when he heard the explosion. "I'm alive, I'm fine," he said, visibly shaken. "One of the waitresses lost an arm but she's still alive."

What's to stop the young, impressionable relatives of that waitress from becoming IDF soldiers who buldoze unarmed activists and shoot Palestinian children?

This conflict, to me, has reached monumental levels of stupid, useless tragedy. We need to send in some blue-helmeted UN Peacekeeping troops to babysit both sides until they get the whole "killing innocent people" thing out of their system. And I mean both sides. The IDF is equally as guilty of keeping this vicious cycle going as is Hamas and the suicide bombers.

Plucky Punk's Happy Land...now with comments!

Yay! Courtesy of Enetation, now you can tell me what you really think! However, if the comments just become a painful reminder of how few people are actually reading this blog, I'll just remove them. No biggie.

Will the real Democrats please stand up

Hesiod points us towards a video clip of that excellent President Bush versus Governor Bush debate that was on The Daily Show the other night. Hesiod also thinks this would be an excellent theme for an anti-Bush campaign ad.

I agree. You hear alot that the Democrats are lost votes in the last two elections because the politics of the country have moved towards the right. I'll go out on a limb here and take the position that the opposite is true. I think the Democrats have gotten the most right-leaning voters that they are going to get, they shouldn't try to court any more. Rather, the Democrats need to court all the people who voted Green, or didn't vote at all, because they feel the party has degenerated to a bunch of decadent Republican wanna-bes. I want a Democrat with moxie, who will call Dubya on all his bullsh*t, dress up like Trent Lott on Saturday Night Live and say they will "leave no white child behind", or who will tell neo-con chickenhawks that he fought and bled for his right to question the government.

Please, Democrats, I practically beg you, don't play it safe in the next elections. Stick you necks out, take risks, act like you have a pair. This will get you votes.

Or, at least my vote.

We are all The Media's sheep

Bob Harris, who's guest-hosting This Modern World, points out these scary incidents of media manipulation.

As a rule, passive tense equals at least some level of manipulation. Any decent writer knows to avoid it, precisely because it's confusing -- but editors often rely on passive tense to keep uncomfortable questions about individual and collective responsibility (including their own) at bay.

The people who manipulate public opinion in this way are the same people, I am convinced, that are responisble for Josh Gracin not being voted off American Idol tonight.

I told you I was obsessed.

Proof Democracy doesn't work

That crap factory Josh Gracin has yet to be voted off American Idol. Seriously, I started watching that show pretty much by accident and now I have to keep watching it week after week just to make sure he gets voted off. I want to see the look on his face. It's become a dangerous obsession of mine.

If he wins, I may just move to Canada.

Embarrasingly Revealing Internet Quiz Result of the...well, you know...


So which fairy tale archetype are you? Hmm??
made by Michelle at EmptySpace.

I've never really thought of myself as a scruffy nerf-herder. Scoundrel, maybe, but definitely not a nerf-herder.

**UPDATE** What's really funny is, my husband took the same quiz and got "hero". We're a match made in heaven, really.

Freedom Food

This Mark Fiore cartoon is excellent, and not just because I myself stated that burritos would soon be called "freedom wraps" during a drunken conversation the night after Mardi Gras at O'Flagherty's in New Orleans. (Try the Guinness Floats, trust me.)

Oh yeah, this will make them not want to be America-hating terrorists

US Forces Make Iraqis Strip and Walk Naked in Public

Via Cursor.

And now for something completely different.

I know this is hardly the kind of post one should follow up a rant about fetal murder with, but this is definitely the best news I've heard for awhile. I've always thought Chewbacca was the Star Wars character I had the most in common with. I have alot of hair, am far too tall for my own good, and kind of make that rawwr noise when I yawn.

Why Scott Peterson is a Double Murderer

I've been meaning to write about this for a few days, but have been too busy nursing my swollen gums through a vicodin haze. Hearing about Scott Peterson's double murder charge brought this to mind, and this article in Salon (you'll have to click through the ad, you know the drill) really brought it to the forefront of my mind.

Is abortion morally wrong? What makes the choice of, say, a teenage girl with her life ahead of her, to have an abortion any different from the the "choice" Scott Peterson made when he killed his wife and unborn child? To me the answer is obvious. To compare the free choice of one person with the robbing of one expectant mother of the choice to have a child is disgusting to me. I'm going to attempt to spell out why to those who find the answer a little less clear.

Why would it be wrong to have an abortion? Is it because you're killing something that's alive? We kill living things all the time with no guilt. There must be something inherently different about human life that makes it sacred. Is a developing embryo a human being? What would make it so? It lacks most of the anatomy of a human being. In some stages of development it's more like an amphibian or reptile in its structure and anatomy. But frog-killing is certianly not murder.

It ceritanly has the possiblility of becoming a fully developed human being, though. But every living cell in my body carries the blueprint to make an entire copy me, especially in this age of cloning. Not to mention the fact that once a month a woman's body expels a cell that is specifically designed to become another human being. Is every woman guilty of murder because she didn't get pregnant and allow the potential life to happen?

So it's not the fact that it's alive, and it's not the fact that it has the potential for human life. Is it because an embryo looks like a tiny little person? We kill and cause immense suffering to other animals that are very similar to us in appearance. Perhaps it's because developing human embryos are more intelligent than animals. Yet the parts of the brain that house human intelligence do not develop until very, very late in pregnancy. And again, we have no problem hunting, experimenting on, or killing other intelligent animals like whales, dolphins, primates, cats, dogs, pigs...I could go on and on. Besides, if we base our right to life on our intelligence alot of people would have to die right freaking now.

From these arguments I'm able to come to the opinion that it is wrong to oppose a woman's right to choose abortion. I don't know what choice I would make in a similar situation. I know it would be a hard decision for me. I find it completely misogynist for some of the right-wing to assume that is a choice that would be made friviolously, because, you know, it would be so annoying to have to have a baby.

So why did Scott Peterson kill two people and not just one? Because Laci Peterson made a choice. She chose to give birth, and that's as sacred as the choice not to give birth. And both choices should be equally as respected. The fact that there are men out there who want to force either choice on any woman is sickening to me.

I'm sure I've offended someone with this rant. I don't care. It's my blog. Nanny nanny boo boo.

**UPDATE*** I had wanted to add, but totally forgot, that the above arguments are something I mostly got from reading Carl Sagan. Go read a book and get off the internet.

**Post-Update Addendum** Silvan adds:

It should also be mentioned that many of these self-proclaimed "Right-To-Lifers" only extend their mighty logic to embryos and not to adult humans. For example, all those humans on death row or those humans dying in wars, all at the command of many of the same people that tell us to keep our mitts off of those precious tadpoles.

Good point. It seems often that "Right-to-Lifers" stop caring about the life as soon as its born!

Welcome to The Dog House

From my sickbed I notice that Polizen is now The Dog House. Go read Silvan's list of French products to rush out and buy. Heck, if the boycott on these products turns out like the boycott on the Dixie Chicks, they should be best-sellers any day now!

Ow...

Not much blogging for a few days, I'm sure. I'll be going in to get another tooth removed tomorrow, and don't think I'll be feeling up to it. But if something stirs me enough for me to break the vicodin haze, maybe I'll post something.

Until then, make sure you floss. Trust me.

Lost in the Looting

Little Red Cookbook gives us a link to these pictures of items that used to be housed in Baghdad's Museum of Antiquity. I also recognized some items that I had first become familiar with in my schoolbooks, namely these two heads.

Happy Hilarious Easter!

from Atrios.

Tim is great!

Just wanted the world to know...

Cultural Illiteracy

Brooke Biggs at Bitter Shack of Resentment hits the nail on the head as to why the White House not caring about the destruction of National Museum in Baghdad was so reprehensible.

What is inexcuseable is the Pentagon's weak explanation that everything happened so fast that they couldn't put a good plan together in time. Let's remember one crucial thing about this war: it was pre-emptive. Which means we controlled the timetable. We could have delayed the war until a decent plan was in place.

We just didn't bother because we just didn't care. And we just didn't care because our leaders spent more time in corporate management classes than in art history or cultural anthropology class. Our leaders are cultural morons.

I think this is exactly the thing that bothered me the most. It's like we're saying "Oh, sorry we destroyed your culture, but here's a McDonald's and a Wal-Mart and lots of other shiny new American corporations to replace it with."

The Iraqis cannot live by bread alone. And while it is very important for us to make sure they have that bread in the coming months and years, it really blows that we've allowed their cultural heritage to be destroyed. The lost antiquities were the type of thing that would have restored a national pride, and that a fallen people could have used as symbols to rally around when rebuilding their government.

But not anymore.

Embarrasingly Revealing Internet Quiz Result of the Week.


So which LOTR Villain are you? Hmm??
made by Michelle at EmptySpace.

Wow, I'm cool. Via Sisyphus.

Cineastes Unite!

Everybody sign this petition to keep the Ben Affleck-Jennifer Lopez remake of Casablanca from happening!

Via TBogg.

Alright, listen up everyone.

I'm just going to say this once.

If you are, say, calling customer service or technical support for a company that provides you with a device or with service for that device, and you want an employee of that company to do something for you that has been told to you is against company policy by other employees, by statements in the manual of that device, and on the website for this company, then let me assure you that yelling, screaming, cursing, ad hominem attacks on the supervisor of that employee, especially when I am that supervisor, is not the way to get that against-policy event to happen. Calling the employee names until she cries is not the way to get that against-policy even to happen. (You've never lived until you've had to talk a 17 year old girl at her first job down from her assh*ole-induced panic attack in the callcenter bathroom.) "The customer is always right" does not extend to include the right to cause severe emotional trauma!

Attention America...before you buy anything or sign up for any service, please read the warranty and/or the service contract first! That way, when exactly what the huge money-grubbing corporations do exactly what they tried to tell you they were going to, you won't have that surprised look on your face. And you won't want to yell at me.

Yes, the companies are out to screw you for money. But it's not like it's a big secret. If you don't want to have to pay for out-of warranty exchanges on your over-priced, high-end, luxury-item electronic equipment, then maybe you should move to Communist China where you don't have to worry about these things! It's called Capitalism, it's what allowed you to become wealthy enough to afford those things in the first place!

So, the next time you call your ISP, or your phone company, or your cable company, or anything, try to remember the person on the line probably hates that company even more than you do, has probably been screwed by that company to a greater degree than you have, and is not personally responsible for anything that happened to your poor widdle self.

So please, try to be a little nicer.

I hope the degree of my ire will excuse my run-on sentences and otherwise generally poor grammar.

I am no loger ashamed...

Because skippy watches American Idol, too!

(You'll have to scroll down to the post titled "and now for the really important news", skippy's links are blogspotted...)

Is Sexism not as bad as Racism? Should rich women have fewer rights?

I haven't been commenting on the Augusta National Golf Club and their inablility to enter the 20th Centruy by allowing women, mostly because I didn't think the concerns of wealthy people were that important in this time of war. However, something hit me today while watching Martha Burke, head of the National Council of Women's Organizations, on the Daily Show. (Which is really what I tend to watch instead of the news).

If this golf club refused to admit black people as members, would people still say "there are more important things to worry about?" If the NAACP were protesting against the club, would people still be so flip in dismissing it?

This is a club whose members are all wealthy and don't really have a care in the world, so it's hard to get concerned about their problems. But if a group of black men were saying "we want to join the rich white southern club," I think we would be a million times more concered than we've been about the women who want to join. Is sexism not as bad as racism?

It's easy not to care about the problems of a bunch of wealthy women. However, should the rich white men who run this club be allowed to discriminate as much as they want as long as the people they discriminate against are also rich? I feel safe in saying that discrimination against anyone is part of the problem, and ending discrimination against anyone is part of the solution.

The Rittenhouse Review, also an Aries

Hey, Happy Birthday, Jim!

Unspeakable Arrogance

After September 11th, many people asked "Why do they hate us?" like it was a hard question or something.

Why do they hate us? Well, maybe one of the reasons it that we keep saying things like this.

Sure, there's been some pilfering of food, appliances, medical supplies, and historical relics. But by the standards of a country whose rulers have routinely expropriated billions in oil revenue and seized whatever property struck their fancy, walking off with a jar of peanut butter and a fridge is more petty mischief than looting.
....That's not to say that the crowds' exuberance has been harmless; I'm sure that a lot of glass and more than a few noses have been needlessly broken, and I'm sure that some goods have been transferred to people who won't fully appreciate their value.

Some pilfering? Petty mischef? Just alot of broken glass?

How about 7,000 years of history lost forever?

As examples of what was gone, the officials cited a solid gold harp from the Sumerian era, which began about 3360 B.C. and started to crumble about 2000 B.C. Another item on their list of looted antiquities was a sculptured head of a woman from Uruk, one of the great Sumerian cities, dating to about the same era, and a collection of gold necklaces, bracelets and earrings, also from the Sumerian dynasties and also at least 4,000 years old.

How about an entire city torn to the ground?

A young man named Rafiq was panicking in a terrible way and said in a broken voice, "Where are the American forces? We want to stop this situation. There is stealing and looting and we need safety. WHERE ARE THE AMERICANS?" ... "This isn't freedom, this is bullsh*t," a kid said to me. It was like the report of a rifle.

How about sick people going untreated because the hospitals have been looted?

International Committee of the Red Cross official Roland Huguenin-Benjamin told CNN that hospitals have been looted and pointed out that potential patients will not be able to make it to the hospitals to receive treatment "unless some sort of security can be re-established in the city."

Take a look at this Yahoo News slideshow for a closer look at these "small potatoes." Some of these pictures are of Iraqis looting Saddam Hussein's palace. Fine. But the images of destroyed museum artifacts are disturbing. Not to mention images of people looting humanitarian food supplies and hospitals.

If that's not enough for you, how about this horrible quote Free Pie found in Atrios' comments?

Limbaugh actually said the following today in regards to the museum looting:

"What culture? What cars have they invented? How many Nobel Prizes have they won?"

What culture? Oh, I don't know, that is the part of the world that pretty much invented the city, and the number zero (which is the exact amount of respect I have for Limbaugh). Or how about this amazing piece of architecture (found at Veiled 4 Allah)?

Why do they hate us? Because we're a bunch of completely inconsiderate assh*les, that's why.

And the first person to say "Oh, that means you think people deserved to die on 9/11" gets a verbal punch in the nose (addendum: not an actual punch, as this right-wing thug that Digby posted about suggested). That shows, to quote Bill Maher, an inability to mentally walk and chew gum at the same time.

Okay, rant over.

Deja Vu all over again

You know, this line didn't convince me last time, and they'll have a really hard time trying to convince me with it again.

Fleischer would not rule out military action against Syria, but emphasized that it is U.S. policy never to do so.

"We always leave options on tables, but our course of action with Syria is focused on reminding Syria that this is a good time for them to re-examine their support of terrorism, and a good place to begin is with their harboring of these Iraqi leaders who have fled to Syria, who should be allowed to find safe haven there."

Syria flatly denied the accusations.

As Tom Tomorrow said, "second verse same at the first".

Good News, Funny Photos

This news made me happy, but also a little weireded out because of the photos of soldiers all in matching pajamas. They look a little like escaped mental patients.

KUWAIT CITY - Unexpectedly released by Iraqi troops, seven U.S. POWs basked in a warm welcome Sunday and were declared in good shape after their 22 days of imprisonment....Shortly after their capture early in the war, the seven had been shown on Iraq's state-run television - giving a human face to the peril confronting American troops. After their release, Young's father, back in Lithia Springs, Ga., watched shaky video footage of his son on CNN. "It's him, and I'm just so happy that I could kiss the world!" Ronald Young Sr. said. "It's him! It's definitely him."

Yay! Also this photo of a servicewoman living it up in the lap of cheezy deposed-regime luxury is very amusing. Via Electrolite.

Flexing the Freedom Muscle

I will give you 500 dollars if you can give me examples of right-wing "pro-war" protesters being treated in a remotely similar fashion as the left-wing "anti-war" protesters have been treated recently at Yale.

From Atrios (edited slightly for language*):

1) Wednesday morning - Publishing of an article on Katherine Lo,
whose suite was entered by three men armed with a 2x4 after she displayed an American flag upside-down outside her dorm room window. They attempted to enter her room, which was locked, and left the following note: "I love kicking the Muslims b*tches ass! They should all die with Mohammad. We as Americans should destroy them and launch so many missiles their mothers don't produce healthy offspring. F*ck Iraqi Saddam following f*cks. I hate you, GO AMERICA."


2) Wednesday evening - A group of undergraduates participated in a silent, non-violent vigil-type action in the University's dining halls to mourn the loss of Iraqi civilians in the current conflict. Raphael Soifer, a participant, was followed out of Davenport and spit on by a husky white male.

There's more, and it ain't pretty. And please, none of the "Well, in Iraq under Saddam you wouldn't have the freedom to decry the government," because that's the stupidest argument ever. That's like saying "Since you can show your dissent, that automatically means you shouldn't." What good is ability to flex your "freedom muscle" (to coin a kinky-sounding phrase) if you never actually flex it? If you have the ability to say, play the violin, and then say "I'm not going to play it, because I already can," then eventually you will lose that ability.

Am I the only one this is an obvious connection for? The less we allow ourselves to use the freedom of expression that people have fought and died for, the more the muscle will atrophy and eventually our freedom will be a 90 pound weaking that gets sand kicked in its face by Canada. And nobody wants that.

*I edited the language a little so that people reading this site from work won't get blocked out by their horribe fascist web-nanny software.