Christopher Street

When Democracy Failed

Reprinted with permission.

Warning #1: This is really, really long.

Warning #2: This is really, really liberal.

Warning #3: This is really, really unflattering to our current President.

When Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History
by Thom Hartmann

The 70th anniversary wasn't noticed in the United States, and was barely reported in the corporate media. But the Germans remembered well that fateful day seventy years ago - February 27, 1933. They commemorated the anniversary by joining in demonstrations for peace that mobilized citizens all across the world.

It started when the government, in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis, received reports of an imminent terrorist attack. A foreign ideologue had launched feeble attacks on a few famous buildings, but the media largely ignored his relatively small efforts. The intelligence services knew, however, that the odds were he would eventually succeed. (Historians are still arguing whether or not rogue elements in the intelligence service helped the terrorist; the most recent research implies they did not.)

But the warnings of investigators were ignored at the highest levels, in part because the government was distracted; the man who claimed to be the nation's leader had not been elected by a majority vote and the majority of citizens claimed he had no right to the powers he coveted. He was a simpleton, some said, a cartoon character of a man who saw things in black-and-white terms and didn't have the intellect to understand the subtleties of running a nation in a complex and internationalist world. His coarse use of language - reflecting his political roots in a southernmost state - and his simplistic and often-inflammatory nationalistic rhetoric offended the aristocrats, foreign leaders, and the well-educated elite in the government and media. And, as a young man, he'd joined a secret society with an occult-sounding name and bizarre initiation rituals that involved skulls and human bones.

Nonetheless, he knew the terrorist was going to strike (although he didn't know where or when), and he had already considered his response. When an aide brought him word that the nation's most prestigious building was ablaze, he verified it was the terrorist who had struck and then rushed to the scene and called a press conference.

"You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in history," he proclaimed, standing in front of the burned-out building, surrounded by national media. "This fire," he said, his voice trembling with emotion, "is the beginning." He used the occasion - "a sign from God," he called it - to declare an all-out war on terrorism and its ideological sponsors, a people, he said, who traced their origins to the Middle East and found motivation for their evil deeds in their religion.

Two weeks later, the first detention center for terrorists was built in Oranianberg to hold the first suspected allies of the infamous terrorist. In a national outburst of patriotism, the leader's flag was everywhere, even printed large in newspapers suitable for window display.

Within four weeks of the terrorist attack, the nation's now-popular leader had pushed through legislation - in the name of combating terrorism and fighting the philosophy he said spawned it - that suspended constitutional guarantees of free speech, privacy, and habeas corpus. Police could now intercept mail and wiretap phones; suspected terrorists could be imprisoned without specific charges and without access to their lawyers; police could sneak into people's homes without warrants if the cases involved terrorism.

To get his patriotic "Decree on the Protection of People and State" passed over the objections of concerned legislators and civil libertarians, he agreed to put a 4-year sunset provision on it: if the national emergency provoked by the terrorist attack was over by then, the freedoms and rights would be returned to the people, and the police agencies would be re-restrained. Legislators would later say they hadn't had time to read the bill before voting on it.

Immediately after passage of the anti-terrorism act, his federal police agencies stepped up their program of arresting suspicious persons and holding them without access to lawyers or courts. In the first year only a few hundred were interred, and those who objected were largely ignored by the mainstream press, which was afraid to offend and thus lose access to a leader with such high popularity ratings. Citizens who protested the leader in public - and there were many - quickly found themselves confronting the newly empowered police's batons, gas, and jail cells, or fenced off in protest zones safely out of earshot of the leader's public speeches. (In the meantime, he was taking almost daily lessons in public speaking, learning to control his tonality, gestures, and facial expressions. He became a very competent orator.)

Within the first months after that terrorist attack, at the suggestion of a political advisor, he brought a formerly obscure word into common usage. He wanted to stir a "racial pride" among his countrymen, so, instead of referring to the nation by its name, he began to refer to it as "The Homeland," a phrase publicly promoted in the introduction to a 1934 speech recorded in Leni Riefenstahl's famous propaganda movie "Triumph Of The Will." As hoped, people's hearts swelled with pride, and the beginning of an us-versus-them mentality was sewn. Our land was "the" homeland, citizens thought: all others were simply foreign lands. We are the "true people," he suggested, the only ones worthy of our nation's concern; if bombs fall on others, or human rights are violated in other nations and it makes our lives better, it's of little concern to us.

Playing on this new nationalism, and exploiting a disagreement with the French over his increasing militarism, he argued that any international body that didn't act first and foremost in the best interest of his own nation was neither relevant nor useful. He thus withdrew his country from the League Of Nations in October, 1933, and then negotiated a separate naval armaments agreement with Anthony Eden of The United Kingdom to create a worldwide military ruling elite.

His propaganda minister orchestrated a campaign to ensure the people that he was a deeply religious man and that his motivations were rooted in Christianity. He even proclaimed the need for a revival of the Christian faith across his nation, what he called a "New Christianity." Every man in his rapidly growing army wore a belt buckle that declared "Gott Mit Uns" - God Is With Us - and most of them fervently believed it was true.

Within a year of the terrorist attack, the nation's leader determined that the various local police and federal agencies around the nation were lacking the clear communication and overall coordinated administration necessary to deal with the terrorist threat facing the nation, particularly those citizens who were of Middle Eastern ancestry and thus probably terrorist and communist sympathizers, and various troublesome "intellectuals" and "liberals." He proposed a single new national agency to protect the security of the homeland, consolidating the actions of dozens of previously independent police, border, and investigative agencies under a single leader.

He appointed one of his most trusted associates to be leader of this new agency, the Central Security Office for the homeland, and gave it a role in the government equal to the other major departments.

His assistant who dealt with the press noted that, since the terrorist attack, "Radio and press are at out disposal." Those voices questioning the legitimacy of their nation's leader, or raising questions about his checkered past, had by now faded from the public's recollection as his central security office began advertising a program encouraging people to phone in tips about suspicious neighbors. This program was so successful that the names of some of the people "denounced" were soon being broadcast on radio stations. Those denounced often included opposition politicians and celebrities who dared speak out - a favorite target of his regime and the media he now controlled through intimidation and ownership by corporate allies.

To consolidate his power, he concluded that government alone wasn't enough. He reached out to industry and forged an alliance, bringing former executives of the nation's largest corporations into high government positions. A flood of government money poured into corporate coffers to fight the war against the Middle Eastern ancestry terrorists lurking within the homeland, and to prepare for wars overseas. He encouraged large corporations friendly to him to acquire media outlets and other industrial concerns across the nation, particularly those previously owned by suspicious people of Middle Eastern ancestry. He built powerful alliances with industry; one corporate ally got the lucrative contract worth millions to build the first large-scale detention center for enemies of the state. Soon more would follow. Industry flourished.

But after an interval of peace following the terrorist attack, voices of dissent again arose within and without the government. Students had started an active program opposing him (later known as the White Rose Society), and leaders of nearby nations were speaking out against his bellicose rhetoric. He needed a diversion, something to direct people away from the corporate cronyism being exposed in his own government, questions of his possibly illegitimate rise to power, and the oft-voiced concerns of civil libertarians about the people being held in detention without due process or access to attorneys or family.

With his number two man - a master at manipulating the media - he began a campaign to convince the people of the nation that a small, limited war was necessary. Another nation was harboring many of the suspicious Middle Eastern people, and even though its connection with the terrorist who had set afire the nation's most important building was tenuous at best, it held resources their nation badly needed if they were to have room to live and maintain their prosperity. He called a press conference and publicly delivered an ultimatum to the leader of the other nation, provoking an international uproar. He claimed the right to strike preemptively in self-defense, and nations across Europe - at first - denounced him for it, pointing out that it was a doctrine only claimed in the past by nations seeking worldwide empire, like Caesar's Rome or Alexander's Greece.

It took a few months, and intense international debate and lobbying with European nations, but, after he personally met with the leader of the United Kingdom, finally a deal was struck. After the military action began, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain told the nervous British people that giving in to this leader's new first-strike doctrine would bring "peace for our time." Thus Hitler annexed Austria in a lightning move, riding a wave of popular support as leaders so often do in times of war. The Austrian government was unseated and replaced by a new leadership friendly to Germany, and German corporations began to take over Austrian resources.

In a speech responding to critics of the invasion, Hitler said, "Certain foreign newspapers have said that we fell on Austria with brutal methods. I can only say; even in death they cannot stop lying. I have in the course of my political struggle won much love from my people, but when I crossed the former frontier [into Austria] there met me such a stream of love as I have never experienced. Not as tyrants have we come, but as liberators."

To deal with those who dissented from his policies, at the advice of his politically savvy advisors, he and his handmaidens in the press began a campaign to equate him and his policies with patriotism and the nation itself. National unity was essential, they said, to ensure that the terrorists or their sponsors didn't think they'd succeeded in splitting the nation or weakening its will. In times of war, they said, there could be only "one people, one nation, and one commander-in-chief" ("Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer"), and so his advocates in the media began a nationwide campaign charging that critics of his policies were attacking the nation itself. Those questioning him were labeled "anti-German" or "not good Germans," and it was suggested they were aiding the enemies of the state by failing in the patriotic necessity of supporting the nation's valiant men in uniform. It was one of his most effective ways to stifle dissent and pit wage-earning people (from whom most of the army came) against the "intellectuals and liberals" who were critical of his policies.

Nonetheless, once the "small war" annexation of Austria was successfully and quickly completed, and peace returned, voices of opposition were again raised in the Homeland. The almost-daily release of news bulletins about the dangers of terrorist communist cells wasn't enough to rouse the populace and totally suppress dissent. A full-out war was necessary to divert public attention from the growing rumbles within the country about disappearing dissidents; violence against liberals, Jews, and union leaders; and the epidemic of crony capitalism that was producing empires of wealth in the corporate sector but threatening the middle class's way of life.

A year later, to the week, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia; the nation was now fully at war, and all internal dissent was suppressed in the name of national security. It was the end of Germany's first experiment with democracy.

As we conclude this review of history, there are a few milestones worth remembering.

February 27, 2003, was the 70th anniversary of Dutch terrorist Marinus van der Lubbe's successful firebombing of the German Parliament (Reichstag) building, the terrorist act that catapulted Hitler to legitimacy and reshaped the German constitution. By the time of his successful and brief action to seize Austria, in which almost no German blood was shed, Hitler was the most beloved and popular leader in the history of his nation. Hailed around the world, he was later Time magazine's "Man Of The Year."

Most Americans remember his office for the security of the homeland, known as the Reichssicherheitshauptamt and its SchutzStaffel, simply by its most famous agency's initials: the SS.

We also remember that the Germans developed a new form of highly violent warfare they named "lightning war" or blitzkrieg, which, while generating devastating civilian losses, also produced a highly desirable "shock and awe" among the nation's leadership according to the authors of the 1996 book "Shock And Awe" published by the National Defense University Press.

Reflecting on that time, The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983) left us this definition of the form of government the German democracy had become through Hitler's close alliance with the largest German corporations and his policy of using war as a tool to keep power: "fas-cism (fbsh'iz'em) n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."

Today, as we face financial and political crises, it's useful to remember that the ravages of the Great Depression hit Germany and the United States alike. Through the 1930s, however, Hitler and Roosevelt chose very different courses to bring their nations back to power and prosperity.

Germany's response was to use government to empower corporations and reward the society's richest individuals, privatize much of the commons, stifle dissent, strip people of constitutional rights, and create an illusion of prosperity through continual and ever-expanding war. America passed minimum wage laws to raise the middle class, enforced anti-trust laws to diminish the power of corporations, increased taxes on corporations and the wealthiest individuals, created Social Security, and became the employer of last resort through programs to build national infrastructure, promote the arts, and replant forests.

To the extent that our Constitution is still intact, the choice is again ours.

Thom Hartmann lived and worked in Germany during the 1980s, and is the author of over a dozen books, including "Unequal Protection" and "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight." This article is copyright by Thom Hartmann, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so long as this credit is attached.

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Food for thought, eh?

Cast Thy Bread Upon the Waters

The Unitarians brought me bread. A loaf of bread. Apparently home-baked, or, at least, home-machine baked. They dropped it off at the house last night while I was out getting my nails done. They told John that they gift all their visitors with bread.

They also sent me two letters of welcome, one from Reverend Snavely and one from Nancy, the membership coordinator.

I guess they are interested in feeding my tummy as well as my soul.

Hey, Lori!

So I was standing in a parking lot in Waldorf, MD this morning, brushing my hair. I was getting ready to go into a hair salon for a business meeting and I didn't want my hair to feature gloppy remnants of this morning's gel. Hey, I'm a classy girl.

So, I'm standing there, next to the open door of my truck, brushing my hair and I hear, "Hey, Lori!"

I whip around. Scan the lot. See no one I know. Thinking that maybe someone was calling for *another* Lori, I resume my brushing. Then I hear, "Is that your real name, Lori?" I looked around again to see a small group of men walking toward my car. Still confused, I looked away again.

As they passed the truck the lead one slowed down and looked right at me.

"So, Lori...How can I get my name on my license plates?"

My license plates. My plates have my name on them. Now it all makes sense.

"Ummm...pay the MVA $50?"

"That's all? That's not bad. That's not bad at all. Thanks, Lori."

Ummm...you're welcome, oddly friendly strange man.

At that point, he went into a restaurant with his friends, I went to my appointment and then we were all run over by a large centipede.

Bridging the Ophthalmology Gap

"I have in my hands," Dr. Gedamo exclaimed, clutching a sheaf of papers in his trembling fingers and pacing in circles about the carpet while I stood at the window, barely able to make out the Capitol dome through the thick, churning fog that rolled in off the Potomac, wondering to myself what matter could possibly be so urgent as to bring the distinguished Ophthalmologist bursting into exam room three at the unseemly hour, "definitive proof that your contacts are too strong!"

So I have had a headache for a month. At first, I assumed that it was just allergies, the pollen count being 17 Kajillion the last time I looked. I took some advil, the headache went away till the next day. But the next day, long about mid-morning, it would be back.

Weekends seemed better, but I thought that that was because I was inside more. More inside means less exposure to pollen and less allergy. Hence, fewer headaches.

Now, there is an important bit that I have skipped and rather than go back, I am just going to tuck it in here. I wear contacts. I have worn contacts, off and on, since I was 13. For the first 10 years or so, mostly on. For the last 13 years, mostly off. But still, off and on. These days, I have been inclined to only wear them on the weekends, when I am outside, when we are out on the boat, when we are at the odd amusement park--times when glasses are a pain in the toches. Most of the time, though--at work, at home, at the movies, watching TV, surfing the net, writing in my LJ--most of the time, I wore glasses. Till about six weeks ago.

Six weeks ago, I started a new job, a job that involved large amounts of outdoor canvassing. In addition to the monster blister on my foot, the thing that bugged me the most was the swapping of glasses for sunglasses for glasses again. Not to mention that my prescription lenses are not dark enough for the big, high, noon sun. No problem, thought I. I can wear my contacts.

Now, I got this last incarnation of contacts/glasses in October of 2000. The contacts are 2-week disposables. I had gone through about 6 pairs in the last 18 months. That's how much I had worn them, to reiterate not much at all.

So, to recap for those with attention spans shorter than mine--I'm getting these headaches. I think it's pollen. I don't get them on the weekend.

And then, last week, I wore my glasses on a weekday. It was overcast so the sunglass thing wasn't going to be an issue and, more importantly, there are just some days that I can't face putting the contacts in. So I wore my glasses on a Wednesday and it was the first weekday in weeks that I didn't have a headache. So, science girl that I am (and how my husband is laughing at that, I'm sure), I wore the glasses the next day. No headache. The next day. No headache.

Hmmm. I began to sense a pattern.

Maybe it's not pollen. Maybe it's eyestrain. Maybe I need new glasses.

But my head only hurts when I am not wearing my glasses. Maybe I need new contacts. But shouldn't those prescriptions be the same?

Hmph. I am so painfully naive in the ways of the world.

So I go to the eye doctor and tell him of my headaches and he agrees that it sounds like eyestrain. He checks my eyes and tells me that my prescription is the same as it was 18 months ago. Once I recover from the shock of that (my prescription has never been the same from one annual visit to the next, not in 31 years. Has my eyesight stabilized, at age 36? Or is this the just the tip of Myopia Mountain, before I begin the long slide into Bifocal Gorge? But I digress...), I begin to panic.

My eyes are fine. Specifically, my glasses are fine. If my prescription is fine, why the headaches? What is wrong? My head is racing, all the things that can be wrong with me running like the bulls through the Pamplona of my brain.

And then, Dr. Gedamo says the thing that I least expected. Turns out that my contacts are not the same prescription as my glasses.

Are you puzzled by that? Join the club.

See, at my level of blind-itude, apparently contacts aren't made in the same increments as they are for more normally sighted people. They are less granular. So, while my glasses can be made to precisely match my ocular defects, my contacts, well, not so much.

I need a -6.25 astigmatic lens. That doesn't exist. So, the good Dr. G made a judgment call. He had to choose between the -6.0 contacts, which would offer me good close-up vision but distance vision that was a little soft, and the -6.5 contacts which, apparently, would allow me to read my name on a grain of rice at 60 paces.

He chose B. So, I've been wearing these super high octane lenses for the last 18 months. And I didn't notice, because I never wore them for more than a day here and there.

We're going to try some other brands, some other tweaky prescription-y things and see if there is any compromise between underpowered and supercharged. That will likely take several tries and correspondingly, several weeks.

For now, I am wearing my glasses.

And they were all run over by a large centipede.

Angel renewed?

From AICN this afternoon. There are spoilery bits behind the cut. As well as at the link. Don't go there if you are spoilery-bit free!

ANGEL's Fate Determined??

I am Hercules!!
We've not been able to confirm this with our best sources, who appear to have retired for the evening, but the switchboard has been lighting up all Tuesday night with news from lesser sources that the WB finally decided to slide Angel off the bubble and into a fifth-season renewal.
For those just joining us, this is exceedingly good news, because:

a) Tim Minear's fourth-season finale script is an amazing knee-slapper, and spins the show into a wholly unexpected direction (hint: one of the show’s most prized elements returns to loom larger in the Team Angel lives than ever before);
b) Some of the best writers from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly are expected to migrate toward Team Angel, transforming the franchise into a kind of Mutant Enemy supershow; and
c) For the many asking if Spike will die at the end of the Buffy series finale or if Spike will be a component of the Angel cast next season, the answer is apparently yes. You heard me.

The WB announces its autumn slate on May 12.
All rejoice now.

I am Hercules!!

Sad Buffy Picture

I guess they're really done.

Sigh.

All that I am or hope to be, I owe to my mother. -Abraham Lincoln

It seems to me that my mother was the most splendid woman I ever knew...I have met a lot of people knocking around the world since, but I have never met a more thoroughly refined woman than my mother. If I have amounted to anything, it will be due to her. -Charles Chaplin

No matter how perfect your mother thinks you are, she will always want to fix your hair. -Suzanne Beilenson

Happy Birthday, Mom.

And stop trying to fix my hair. :)

So, today, I went to church.

Turns out that I am a Unitarian Universalist after all.

Those of you who know me, know that I am not big on church. Me and religion--hmm. Just don't get along, the two of us. Which is not to say that I am off God--my relationship with my creator has always been pretty healthy. I just always found organized religion distasteful. It always seemed, to me, that religion was was what kept us separate, kept us suspicious of each other, allowed for a large enough disconnect that some of us felt the need to, say, fly planes into buildings to make a point. Even among people that supposedly believe the same thing, there was a gulf. I remember talking with a friend, a friend who was "saved" and asking him if, in his book, I was destined for heaven. I told him that I believe in God, that I try to be a good person, that I try to live a good life. Do I get into paradise?

He countered with that question. "Are you saved?"

Well, no, not in the strictest sense. I was baptized, I believe in God, I am a good person.

"But, are you saved?"

Well, I guess not, not in the way that you mean.

"Well, then, I'm sorry. You're not going to heaven."

What kind of freaky God do you worship?

I was first given to understand that I wasn't going to heaven when I was 9. My grandmother had died when I was eight and a year and a half later, my grandfather married a Baptist woman. Before they married, though, he converted. And then tried to convert all of us. His technique was interesting, though, to say the least. He told us that he was sorry--they are always sorry, aren't they?--but that we were all going to hell. My mother, always game, said, "why is that, Daddy?"

"Well, you're not Baptists and only Baptists are going to heaven."

"So, you are telling me that my Methodist Mother is rotting in hell?" I love my mom.

"I'm sorry, babe, but yes."

Again, what kind of weird-ass God is this?

It would be a question that I would ask a lot over the next 25 years, as I encountered various levels of bile, all disguised as "Christian". And then, today, well, I went to church.

After I took the Belief net quiz last week, I got a call from . He was chuckling and said to me, "You are a Unitarian Universalist."

Thinking that he had just seen my entry for that day, I replied, "It would appear so." "No, " he said. "You *ARE* a Unitarian. It's perfect."

Now, I trust , especially in matters of facts and knowledge. So I did a little research. Turns out that these UU folks have it going on in a big way. They don't have the weird God. In fact, God is pretty much optional. What they do have is a very aggressive approach to human dignity, equality, strength and moral courage. They don't claim to be God's disciples, messengers, or even, really, followers. Sure, they seem to think that God is cool, as is Jesus, but they also seem to think the same of all the great prophets and philosophical leaders.

Mostly, though, beliefs aside, they were just pretty joyful people. I guess when your goal is to be a good person and to live a good life, because it's the right thing to do and not because you have to to get into heaven, well, living that way must be a joyful thing. I drove home from the service in a stunningly positive mood. I called all my family members and wished them a happy Easter. I came home, woke John and made breakfast. Then we went to Borders and I bought three books: a copy of Carl Dennis' Practical Gods, a Jan Burke mystery, and a small pocket bible.

And, the Mariners won. And they didn't need extra innings to do it, which is refreshing.

All in all it was an excellent day.

Regarding the bible purchase, just in case you think that my one day at church made me all *fundamental*, I bought it because my listening comprehension isn't very good and if I am going to keep going to church, I want to be able to read along with the pastor. Don't think that I'm going to go, you know, *weird* on you.

And...baseball!

In the dogfight that is the American League West, anyone want to venture a guess as to whose dog is on top right now?

That's right. My boys, getting it done.

Reading and Writing

Here's the thing. If I could write like Jessamyn, I would never take my hands off the keyboard. If you aren't reading her, man--you should be.

On the subject of writing, someone asked me the other day why in the world I do this--you know, write personal things and then publish them for all the world to see. After explaining that, for me, there is a huge distinction between personal and intimate--and that I share the former freely and the latter never--I told him that I like to write.

And then I realized that that was a lie.

I don't really like to write. I find it tedious. I am a pretty good talker, but writing--well, let's just say that it takes writing and rewriting and rewriting to even come close to being able to express myself with half the precision that I find second-nature with the talking. And so it frustrates me. And sometimes, I just can't get it, just can't capture the moment, the joke, the subtlety of a phrase, the complexity of an emotion. I just can't do it. Not all the time and not consistently well. But I keep plugging away, because sometimes--sometimes--I write something that I like, something that I think is funny, or evocative or poignant and then I feel a sense of accomplishment that is different from what I feel when I do something easy, something effortless. I feel like I have done something real.

And that's pretty cool.

Buffy question

I suppose that the detail of this might be a tiny bit spoilery, so...

Faith's comment to Buffy about Dawn--"Brat's all woman sized"--got me thinking again about the nature and scope of the veiling spell that gives everyone--even Faith and Angel, who weren't there for season five--the Dawn memories.

Anyway, my question is, how are Buffy's (and Xander's and Willow's and Giles'...) memories of what happened in seasons one-four different now than mine are? Cause the veiling spell, well...didn't reach me. I mean, obviously Dawn would have been in the house with Buffy and Joyce and Faith during 'Amends', for example, so how does Faith's memory of that night differ from mine? And Dawn would have been there for Parent-Teacher night, right? Does she remember seeing Spike? More importantly, did he see her? That sort of thing.

I want some sort of meta-comic that tells the whole story again, but with all these new memories.

Happy Birthday and made up words

One of the things that I seem to do a lot of these days is collect business cards. I collect sometimes 15 a day, sometimes 75 a week. Some of them are studiously business-like, some amazingly tacky. But, what they usually have in common is that usually the titles listed on them--you know, titles like owner or manager or associate or partner--usually these titles are actual English words.

But not today! Today I was handed a business card from someone purporting to be a cosmotogist.

Now, I am fairly certain that what this person actually is is a cosmetologist. Or a cosmologist, although that seems less likely.

But, to my actual point, how does that happen? How are you something and you can't even spell what you are?

"Hi, I'm Joe. I'm a firefider. Have you met my cousin Lindsey? She's a nerse. Her husband? Why, Bob's an acownent."

Cosmotogist.

Boing.

And, now, the OHBTI, to , who taught me how to use that word, 'boing': May your days be filled with radishes. And your nights with pretty cosmotogists.

Happy Birthday, Dad.

Today is my Dad's birthday. He is 61, if I am doing the math right, although since I told him last year that 60 was the new 40, I guess that makes him 41 in Lori years. Not sure if it actually works that way, but I'm going with it. Math is hard.

I have a couple of appointments today and when I originally made them, as I was writing them in what passes for my calendar, I noticed the date and mentioned, to the people that I was making the appointments with, that it would be my Dad's birthday that day. I've also mentioned this to my business partner and a couple of other folks. No matter who I tell, though, that my Dad's birthday is coming, the response is always the same.

"Really? What are you getting him?"

Hmmm. What am I getting him?

When I was younger and much, much more spoiled, I used to say--half seriously--that for his birthday, I was going to let my Dad take me shopping. I mean, buying me things was the thing that gave him the most joy in the world so who was I to deprive him of that, on his birthday of all days?

Now, though, his birthday is harder, and not only because I am shorter on cash than I am used to. No, his birthday is hard because he neither wants nor needs for anything. He has less impulse control than I do--what he wants, he buys, leaving precious little for Christmases or Birthdays. It can be a little frustrating.

He doesn't have one thing that he would like, though, and that is a winning baseball team. He's a Pittsburgh Pirate fan, you see, and a foul-weather one at that, which, frankly, is the only kind that has been possible for the last 10 years. I don't think that the Bucs have had a winning season since the days of Bonilla and Bonds in the early 90s. That might--might--change this year, though. They bought a little talent in the off-season. USAToday thinks that they are capable of playing .500 ball and--gasp!--maybe contending for the wild card late into September. Now the stars are going to have to line up for this to happen, but wow--what it would mean to him if it did.

So for his birthday, I am asking those of you who have any sort of relationship with the Baseball gods to say a little baseball prayer for my Dad's team. Also, if you want to send him an email so that he can see how many people know that his daughter loves him more than the sun, the moon and the stars, well, that would be OK, too.

Send my Dad a birthday email!

Well, der.

What's YOUR Myers-Briggs personality type? Find out!

Idle Chatter

My husband doesn't really like American Idol, but he watches it with me most weeks, partially out of inertia, partially because he thinks Carmen is hot and partially because none of us can look away from a good train wreck. It's a fact.

With that in mind, he was especially funny last night, punchy from lack of sleep, sitting on the couch watching Ricky sing "Endless Love" and trying to twist a magazine subscription card into a sharp enough point that he could stab himself in the neck.

Maybe you had to be there.

In other "can't make an entry out of *this*" chatter, I am annoyed with my web hosting provider, so annoyed that I am about to become an object in motion. Yes, my annoyance is of such power at this point that it may, indeed, act as an outside force and force me to actually do something about Hostrocket's crappy service. I'm leaning toward using pair.com, cause it's what John uses, and it's based in my hometown, and the price is right. Anyone that has another rec, though, please shout it out.

And the Mariners are losing to the Angels and I am tired and tomorrow is a Big Day, business-wise, so I should stop trying to think of things to write and just go to bed.

The last time I took this quiz, I was a Reform Jew.

I guess I'm just really fickle when it comes to God stuff.

According to the SelectSmart.com Belief System Selector, my #1 belief match is Unitarian Universalism. What do you believe? Visit SelectSmart.com/RELIGION

Home...

When I am in my home, my own home, the one I pay for in Maryland, and I speak of the place I grew up, the place my parents still live, the place in Pennsylvania, I call it home. As in "I am going home to visit the folks this weekend." When I am in my parents home, I am invariably asked when I am going home and I know that they mean my own home. Odd how two places can be home at the same time.

We went home to visit the parents last weekend, as we usually do this time of year. We always go home at Christmas (and Memorial Day, and Labor Day and my birthday and Thanksgiving) , but we typically skip the travel during the first quarter of the year--the weather in the mountains is too unpredictable. Turns out that if it was unpredictable weather I was trying to avoid, I should have waited another couple weeks. Suffice to say that it's been a while since I drove on a road which was a solid sheet of ice when it was 58 degrees outside. You think that I kid, but I assure you, it happened. My husband already wrote all about it, better than I could have, so please read all about the ice here.

In addition to the weird, weird weather, there is not much to report from the home of my youth. My aunt bought a new house, and it is old and sturdy and full of character. It's also painted a butt-ugly shade of brown. She intends to repaint this spring, so we spent an afternoon studying paint chips and trying to decide what color will look OK with the brown roof. My Aunt wants peach, my Mom voted for sage. My vote was for a pale yellow--but I am fond of a yellow house. It's worth noting that the only colors that are really under consideration are about 17 shades of peach and an additional 17 shades of sage. I went off the board with my recommendation. Nothing shocking there. It didn't faze my aunt at all when she said "peach or sage" and I said "yellow". I've always been difficult that way.

Baseball, baby!

When you're a kid, your life is divided up quite neatly into semesters and quarters and grading periods and breaks and summers and Christmases. Even today, I tend to think of the vacation that I take at Christmas as "Christmas break". But other than that, as an adult, there are not such clear delineators of our time.

Seven years ago and change, all that, well, changed for me. Suddenly, my life was divided clearly and decisively, as it had been in my youth.

There was baseball season. There were the holidays. And there was the awful time between the holidays and baseball season. Today the awful time between the holidays and baseball season officially comes to an end. Yay!

I love baseball.

That's how my Mariners play. Every day. You should watch them sometime. But I warn you--it may change your life.

For those that might catch it, yes, that bit --the bit behind the cut--was a reprint of what I wrote last year. John Fogerty may disagree with me, but I think that plagiarizing myself is a very efficient use of my time.