Example?

War or free health care?
War or no poverty ?

$506,939,570,818 And rising every millisecond.

US Direct Cost of Iraq War

$647,200,000,000

US Defence Budget

$48,789,000,000

Russia Defence Budget

$261,300,000,000

'08 Interest On Federal Debt

$281,500,000,000

US Federal Health Budget

47,000,000 US Citizens

Without Health Insurance

36,500,000 US Citizens

Living In Poverty

7,000,000 US Citizens

Prisoners or On Parole

The Afghanistan War bankrupted Russia. What will Iraq do to America?

Syrup

I have no friends now.
But I have an acquaintance that I play online scrabble with.
She has become my virtual best friend.
She puts up with my rants and sends me virtual hugs.

Thanks to her I have retained some sanity.
Here is something she sent me.


Their marriage was good, their dreams focused.
 Their best friends lived barely a wave away. 
I can see them now, Dad in trousers,tee shirt and 
a hat and Mom in a house dress,lawn mower in one hand,
 and dish-towel in the other. 
It was the time for fixing things. A curtain rod,
the kitchen radio, screen door, the oven door, 
the hem in a dress. Things we keep.
 

  
It was a way of life, and sometimes it made me
 crazy. All that re-fixing, eating, renewing,
 I wanted just once to be wasteful. Waste 
meant affluence. Throwing things away meant you 
knew there'd always be more.
 

 
But then my mother died, and on that clear
 summer's night, in the warmth of the hospital
 room, I was struck with the pain of learning that 
sometimes there isn't any more.
 

 
 
 
Sometimes, what we care about most gets all 
used up and goes away...never to return. 
So... While we have it... it's best we love 
it... And care for it.... And fix it when it's broken..
... And heal it when it's sick. 
 

 
 
This is true... For marriage.... And old cars....
 And children with bad report cards..... 
Dogs and cats with bad hips.... And aging 
parents.... And grandparents. We keep them
 because they are worth it,because we are worth it.
 Some things we keep. Like a best friend that 
moved away or a classmate we grew up with.
 

 
 
There are just some things that make life important,
 like people we know who are special.... 
And so, we keep them close.
 
 

 
 
Good friends are like stars...
 You don't always see them, but you know 
they are always there.
 

 
People are made to be Loved and Things 
are made to be Used 
  
 
There is so much confusion in this World
 because People are being Used 
and Things are being Loved.


When my mum died I realised with a bang that
there would be no more stories about me as
a baby, as a child. She held the memories of
me before I had my formed my own memories.

When my dad died and as I held his hand and
he stopped breathing I realised
no more songs, no more war stories,
no more tales of the past.
Nothing left of the pictures painted
in words of my grandparents 
(his mum and dad) or his life on
the farm in the 1930's.
All is silence now.

That is what I learnt...ask your parents
for their memories.
Without them you cannot trace the line
 of who you are.

Obs-head Revisited

There is something in the air.
A realisation.

Mowing the lawn the other day it came in a flash!

Women of my age and older mow lawns.

You don't see women of 38 minus mowing lawns.

This has something to do with 1975.

It has to do with the idea/ideal that in the days of popular consciousness raising we, the women of that generation believed we were equal.
We believed in it.
We still do.

Our baby sisters do not.

They are demanding all that was fought for and achieved by all suffragettes and women's movements (albeit taken for granted) and yet they will sell their bodies to MTV, to magazines, to television programmes, to men...to MEN for a pittance.

The bums shaking vibrantly on video clips, the beautiful black sisters bottoms, without faces, their breast heaving with pretend sexual excitement, barely clothed while the beefy black men are swathed in white silk shirts, baggy expensive trousers and gold dripping from their long tough fingers.

So my baby sisters are prepared to be taken 'seriously' in career, 'seriously' in political rounds, 'seriously' in medical demands, but are used and abused, ignored, brushed aside by the usual round of paternalistic bosses/friends/power brokers.

As I push the mower up the incline and along the borders of my life, I realise that it is those men who are the first to laugh, deride, scoff at the 'hairy-armpitted-so-last-century-liberationists' that slurped up the gains they themselves have won.
No more opening doors, marrying the pregnant girlfriend ( to give 'it' a name), no more having to show respect, mind your language, protect and 'husband' the woman in your life and no more mowing lawns.

There is not even a counter offer of more time in the kitchen, in the children's lives, in the toilet scrubbing the stains, in the laundry separating the coloured from the whites.

Just more sex, more frequent mate-time, more freedom to drink and 'do' sport, more of the same but more.

In China there will be an excess of 30 million men(in comparison to available women) within a decade. Men without a chance in hell of getting married, having babies, a family, or even a girlfriend.

As "he who must be obeyed" said...
"Social experiments ( in this case the Chinese 'one child policy'), throughout history never work. They always present with problems unimagined."

And as my neighbour fires up her mower this morning and pushes it around her manicured lawn ( she being 62) I realise that we have paid the price of 'freedom' for our young sisters, our daughters.

They saw what we did and said;
"No way?"

They think they are better.
Did we do that? Did we give that impression thinking we were actually saying, "We are as good as that"?

Sick sick sick....and ....

Filipinos hanging around for Easter.
A hellava way to spend their religious celebrations...and so so sick.
Nailing yourself to a cross...what are they doing idolising the way the Romans tortured people?
Like getting up on a box and covering yourself with a blindfold and attaching yourself to electrical wiring in honour of Abu Grahib....bloody sicko!

Just for a chuckle...

The boss had to fire somebody, and he narrowed it down
 to one of two people,Debra or Jack.
It was an impossible decision because they were both super
workers.

Rather than flip a coin, he decided he would fire
the first one who used the water cooler the next morning.

Debra came in the next morning with a horrible hangover
 after partying all night. She went to the cooler to
 take an aspirin.
 The boss approached her and said:

'Debra, I've never done this before but I have
 to lay you or Jack off.'

'Could you jack off?' she says. 'I feel like shit.' 

Books to be Read!

Because they speak for and to me, another two books to be added to my long list on the waiting list.

"The Portable Atheist"
subtitled:
"Essential readings for the Nonbeliever"

Edited by Christopher Hitchens
(Anglo-American)
Christopher assembles writings of doubters such as George Eliot, Joseph Conrad and Albert Einstein.
Primo Levi whose faith in faithlessness is also there, remaining unshakeable as he faced the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
It includes verse from Lucretia, the Roman thinker who disparaged religion 2000 years ago.

A letter from Salmon Rushdie to the world's 6 billionth child.
"You will be strongly encouraged to imagine a heaven with at least one god in residence. This sky-god, it's said, made the universe by churning its matter in a giant pot. Or he danced. Or he vomited Creation out of himself. Or he simply called it into being and, lo, it Was...Imagine there's no heaven, my dear Six Billionth, and at once the sky's the limit."

(Don't you just love it?)

Hitchen's own introduction where he blasts religion's "pathetic solipsism", "this insane eschatology, with its death wish and its deep contempt for the life of the mind."

(Ahh the 'life of the mind'...what a way to put it!)

He goes on to write;
"Religion was the race's first ( and worst) attempt to make sense of reality. It was the best the species could do at a time when we had no concept of physics, chemistry, biology or medicine."

Hopefully we will all arrive at the necessity of atheism.


In the great and wealthy land that is our nemesis, USA,( the country we love, and we love to hate and are attached to) comes a new book from an Australian author who has written speeches for great occasions.


"American Journeys"
by
DonWatson
(Australian)

"It is early morning and under the palm trees on Ocean Avenue, past the fun park on the pier where the old Route 66 ended and began, the homeless rise with the sun and pick up their beds. They put their belongings in plastic bags and drag them down the streets or push them in supermarket trolleys. Wrapped in garbage bags, on breezy days you hear the susurrations in the plastic before you see them emerging from the side streets: grinding along the pavements with heads bowed, rustling and whistling like sailing ships."

Now THAT is writing!!

...Because they are....

Bit tired of this.

Distant relative comes to visit.
Stays overnight.
Rabbits on about how much he, they are worth.
A dodgy but legal scheme that takes double the amount for connecting selling real estaters to buyers.
Owns five houses plus the present abode.
How to 'draw down' and ' borrow against', thereby 'tax free' income up to $80,000 a year.

They say we pensioners 'suck of the teat of the land'. Geshus...

Tax dodge, tax evasion, tax minimisation, tax free, tax rebate...anything but tax.
So they get the utilities allowance, the phone allowance, the discount with rates, water, maintenance of properties, trusts, squirrelled money here, there anything but being open full tax paying citizens.
They move it about, borrow other peoples money, depend upon the desperate to sell and the needy for a roof over their head.

They connive and manipulate and 'massage' the markets, the money, the tax, the government.

And ....
because they can..they use others for penny pinching...eating, drinking, supping, free accommodation for the night...

"Oh we had this in Morocco."
"Oh when we were in Paris, we really didn't like it"..
"Oh St Petersburg is a real hoot to see".....
On and on...and the stomach churns and the mind boggles at the hide of the visitor.

And nerry a bottle of wine in sight, or a packet of biscuits.

Another evening and a surprise party for a newly married older couple.
Work, wash, place, feed, top up drinks, 'champagne anyone?'
"What does he do for a living?"

"OH nothing...used to breed gold fish but now lives off....shhhh (sotto voce) ..investments".

So where is their contribution?

"Just come back from the Gold Coast. Phew it was exhausting with a baby ( 2 months) and a 3 year old in tow. Flew my mother in law out from Ireland"

Blah blah blah...on and on...
No gift for the 'happy couple', no champagne ( "It is to be a nibbly and champagne get together"), no work input to make things go smoothly, no help.

Because they can...
Because they are ...
sucking off the teat of the poor.

As he who must be obeyed says;
"There is a finite amount of money in this land. The rich don't take it off each other, because they know how to hide and squirrel it away. They can only, and do only take it from the poor...out of their mouths, out of their homes, out of their jobs, out of their fear, out of their gullibility and vulnerability and out of their very hides".

Fuck you!

YUP

WHY WOMEN ARE SO CRABBY!

We started to 'bud' in our blouses
at 9 or 10 years old only to find that
anything that came in contact with
those tender, blooming buds hurt so
bad it brought us to tears. So came the ridiculously uncomfortable training bra contraption that the boys in school
would snap until we had calluses
on our backs.




Next, we get our periods
in our early to mid-teens
(or sooner). Along with those budding boobs, we bloated,
we cramped, we got the
hormone crankies, had to
wear little mattresses
between our legs or insert
tubular, packed cotton
rods in places we didn't
even know we had.



Our next little rite of
passage was having sex
for the first time which
was about as much fun
as having a ramrod push
your uterus through your
nostrils (IF he did it right
and didn't end up with his
little cart before his horse),
leaving us to wonder what
all the fuss was about.




Then it was off to Motherhood
where we learned to live
on dry crackers and water
for a few months so we
didn't spend the entire day
leaning over Brother John.
Of course, amazing creatures
that we are (and we are), we learned to live with the
growing little angels inside
us steadily kicking our
innards night and day
making us wonder if we
were preparing to have
Rosemary's Baby.



Our once flat bellies looked
like we swallowed a whole watermelon and
we pee'd our pants every
time we sneezed. When
the big moment arrived,
the dam in our blessed
Nether Regions invariably
burst right in the middle
of the mall and we had to
waddle, with our big cartoon
feet, moaning in pain all
the way to the ER.




Then it was huff and puff
and beg to die while the OB
says, 'Please stop screaming,
Mrs. Hearmeroar. Calm down
and push. 'Just one more good
push' (more like 10),
warranting a strong,
well-deserved impulse
to punch the
%$#*@*#!* hubby
and doctor square in
the nose for making us
cram a wiggling,
mushroom-headed
10 pound bowling ball
through a keyhole.



After that, it was time
to raise those angels
only to find that when
all that 'cute' wears off,
the beautiful little darlings
morphed into walking,
jabbering, wet, gooey,
snot-blowing, life-sucking
little poop machines.


Then come their 'Teen Years.'
Need I say more?


When the kids are almost
grown, we women hit our
voracious sexual prime in
our early 40's -
while hubby had his
somewhere around his 18th birthday.



So we progress into the
grand finale: 'The Menopause,'
the Grandmother of all
womanhood. It's either take
HRT and chance cancer in
those now seasoned 'buds'
or the aforementioned Nether Regions, or, sweat like a hog
in July, wash your sheets
and pillowcases daily and
bite the head off anything
that moves.



Now, you ask WHY women
seem to be more spiteful
than men, when men get
off so easy, INCLUDING the
icing on life's cake: Being
able to pee in the woods
without soaking their socks...


So, while I love being a
woman, 'Womanhood' would
make the Great Gandhi a tad
crabby. You think women are
the 'weaker sex?' Yeah right.
Bite me.

And the Moon...

"And the moon rose over an open field"
"How high the moon?"
"Moon river wider than a mile"
"By the light of the silvery moon"
"Moonlight becomes you it goes with you hair"


Finally being able to capture the moon with a little cheap digital camera, is a delight.

Visitors come and go..and is it a phenomena that I have not noticed before but do the relatives who want to sit and talk about;
1 Themselves
2 Their trip..s..
3 Cities that have been visited overseas
4 Past careers
5 Present careers and how much money they are making....

...is it me or is it these world travelled, world weary, "don't give money to the arts or the poor", wealthy hardly-ever-see relatives are the very ones who won't even bother to contribute a bottle of wine to a dinner, when they sup, sleep and breakfast at your house.

Why?
What are they thinking as they rabbit on about the 'markets' and the schemes and the 'way around the tax man' and 'oh by the way we own five houses beside our own'...holy hell!! NO wonder young people cannot afford to buy their own HOME (ie in comparison to an 'investment'!!)
Who are these people and why are they so quick to flop gratuitously and obscenely into my lap their money obsessed vomit?

In my own home I want to talk about family and love, and pain and joy and the whole damn thing.

But they?

Spew forth about how it is.."long term investments you know, five to twelve years"...
"Oh? And how old will you be in twelve years?"
Seventy three?
"A young chicken"
Really?
My mum died at seventy four and you are related to her. What the hell are you doing living like this?

I said nought.

And so it goes.

How high the moon?

We will all find out too soon.

Suggestion Number 1

SAVE WATER, SHOWER WITH A FRIEND.

SAVE THE WORLD, SHOWER WITH AN ENEMY.



(Surely the Israelis know that that would have helped in the past. Maybe it is something they could do now. Imagine...all those dangly bits hanging around under the dripping water, showing that we are all the same without our head-dresses, skull caps, shoes and ties.)

Strip off your religious convictions for you have nothing to loose but your chains.
Ie fear and bigotry, hatred and revenge.

HEY!!

OIY!!! ISRAEL!
Stop it!
STOP IT!