Hello again Lovely Internet People! I was sitting here trying to figure out what to write about today, and as I was looking through my Twitter Feed I found a topic that was so strikingly obnoxious I just could not ignore it. So today we are going to have a little conversation about Plagiarism.
I don't know how many of you are aware of the latest scandal out of Washington DC where a certain elected representative who has a long history of promoting unethical and immoral behavior in the form of LYING, has now been shown to have wandered into the nearby territory of THEFT. That is what Plagiarism is you know, it is THEFT! And it is the worst kind of theft as far as I am concerned. Stealing people's money or possessions is a terrible awful bloody freakin slime ball thing to do, but stealing their ideas, their thoughts, their visions, that is just unforgivable. The only true freedom we have as human beings is our freedom of thought, the only thing in this we world we can ever truly own are our thoughts, and to have someone else steal them and claim them as their own is truly horrifying to me.
In the interest if full disclosure, yes, I have taken the words of other people and used them on the silly pictures that I make. And I have stated very clearly, and very repeatedly, that 99% of those pictures include the words of somebody else. And while I did not credit the original source on any of the pictures, I have encouraged others to share that information in the comments if they know where it came from. I have never claimed or inferred that they are my own original thoughts, that is where the difference lies.
I suppose I should also be clear about the fact that I have never had an ounce of respect for the man long before this latest blatant expression of his contempt for basic human decency. All of his other expressions of contempt for basic human decency prior to this one were more than enough to convince me of his complete lack of a functioning moral compass, but this time he stepped beyond the boundaries of simple condescending contempt and jumped head first into a quagmire of reprehensible repugnance.
And then he decided that the best way to defend himself against the allegations of Plagiarism was to challenge Rachel Maddow to a duel? Seriously, WTF is that? I would like to let him know that my husband has gallantly offered to take Ms. Maddow's place in said duel, any time, just let us know whenever you are available, he will be happy to oblige. Personally, I think a verbal duel between Mr. Paul (and no, I am not crediting him with the title of his office and yes, this was deliberate) and Ms. Maddow would make for some awesome television, but I am sure the little turd-let hasn't got the intestinal fortitude to even attempt to match wits with such a superior opponent, nor does he have any wits of his own with which to work, which is apparently why he feels the need to have other people steal other people's words which he will then claim as his own.
Mr. Paul needs to climb down off his high horse and join the rest of us in the real world for a little while. Someone who has spent his entire life sucking from the government teat should not be lecturing any one else on how to live their lives. If I had spent as much of my life lying, stealing, cheating, and discriminating against everyone who is not just like me, I would be in jail, for life. But somehow I am supposed to believe it is okay for him to do these things because some moronic fools on the other side of the country were suckered into voting for this abhorrent abominable degenerate. NO, I do not think so. Not gonna happen. It is NOT okay, and I am not going to sit idly by and pretend that it is when ever fiber of my being is screaming at me that it is not.
There is very little I can do about the vile wretched reprobates currently usurping the prime directive of the offices to which they were elected. I don't live in their districts and I sure don't have any money to contribute to those who would campaign against them. The only power I have is to speak out against their abuses and hope that somebody, somewhere, who might be able to do something more proactive, will actually pay some attention.
Until next Time ...
Hello again Lovely Internet People! Mother is feeling rather unwell today, actually, Mother just feels like shit. I try not to talk to all of you about all of the physical failings of my body because I really doubt that very many people care and there is nothing any one can do to fix it even if they did care, so it seems rather pointless to mention it all the time. Of course since I don't spend a great deal of time detailing all my ailments and issues most people assume that I am just a lazy person who doesn't want to work for a living when nothing could be further from the truth. I would LOVE to be able to work for a living at a real job like a real person, but I cannot. So I get to spend my days spinning the wheels in my head trying to figure out some way that I could possibly earn enough money to pay my freakin bills and maybe even have some money left over to eat.
I want to work. I actually enjoy working almost as much as I enjoy learning new things. I spend thousands of hours each year working my ass off, but none of the work that I do translates into monetary compensation, at least not much, certainly not enough to survive on. I am not a greedy person, I don't need lots of money, I just need enough to make sure the lights stay on and that I have a place to turn the lights on in. And maybe some food, I don't eat much, but them danged kids still think they need to eat every day for some strange reason. Silly children.
I have never really minded being poor. I don't lack for much of anything that is important to me, mostly because there aren't very many things that money can buy which are important to me. Beyond paying the bills the only reason to have money as far as I can see, is to make life better, for yourself and those around you. And there are a lot of things I could make a lot better if I had the money to do them, but very little in my life would change, other than not having to stress out every damn day about whether or not I will have a roof over my head next month.
The hardest thing to deal with at the moment is that I know pretty much exactly what I want to do now with the rest of my life, and I think I can make a living at it, someday, but someday is probably going to be a long ways away, and I don't know if I have the time to wait. And, of course, in order to do what I want to do I am going to need to spend some money on it, long before I stand any chance of making any money from it. And it is entirely possible that I will never make any substantial money from it and it will prove to be just another of the many ways I have gone about wasting money I do not have on a feeble attempt to improve my lot in life which will do little to nothing beyond costing me money.
My gawd is it any wonder I am fucking crazy?!? How could anyone who is me, not be crazy? But the question remains, am I crazy because of my life, or is my life crazy because I am? I don't know anymore. At this particular moment in time I am not sure that I know much of anything except that I have to do something, even if it is wrong. Which it probably will be because I can't seem to do much of anything right.
I could probably really use some help from people who know what the heck they are doing, but since I am incapable of asking for help I am trying to figure out everything on my own and I am not having a lot of success at the moment. I am overwhelmed and under funded and not sure what the best way to go about doing all of this is or even if this is worth bothering doing. Is my having fun and bringing a tiny bit of joy to any one who happens upon it really worth a few hundred dollars when I don't have any hundreds of dollars? I guess when you consider how many thousands of dollars I have spent on quilting stuff that will never make me a dime this doesn't seem like such a bad idea. Especially when you consider how much I really do not even like quilting, but was just using it as a way to not face the reality that is my life.
I have been thinking about selling off a lot of my quilting stuff that I am never going to use and using that money to fund this project. Unfortunately I will probably have to explain to my husband at some point what I am doing and why, and I really don't want to do that. I am pretty sure he could be helpful and supportive, but I can't let him because I can't really explain what I am doing or how it is going to make any money any time soon. Mr. Logical and Practical is not going to like any of this very much I am afraid. I think I can justify it enough to get him to go along with it, but I would really like to not involve him any more than absolutely necessary. I just don't need the additional stress that he tends to bring to anything I try to do.
Okay, I think I have probably outdone myself in the talking in circles and never really saying anything category today. No wonder I can't get anyone to come read this stupid Blog, when I constantly fill it up with such ridiculously boring and stupid posts like this one what the heck did I expect? And if I can't even come up with enough interesting and entertaining crap to get people to come to this Blog, why on earth would I think I could come up with anything that would make them go anywhere else that I might be able to receive some form of monetary compensation from? Yes, I have officially lost my mind. But since I have never let that stop me before I really don't see any reason to start now.
I hope somebody out there found something in here worth giggling at, and I would really like to hear from you if you are that somebody. I know, I know, I tell you all the time that I don't care if people don't like what I post, but I really do care very much if you do like what I post, and I would love to hear that from you once in a while. I know I am not very good at dealing with people, but I really do want to Love everyone, and to bring a little happiness into as many lives as possible, and it would probably be helpful if I had some kind of idea what I have to offer that would fulfill that intention. Pretty much everything I have written here, and most of what I have posted on my Facebook pages, are things that bring me some kind of enjoyment, but what is it that I post that you all find enjoyment in? What is it that you all want from me? Any positive input would be greatly appreciated.
Until next time ...
Hello again Lovely Internet People! You know what I just realized? We just skipped right on over the two year anniversary of the birth of this Blog! Totally and completely missed it. Oops. Oh well, I am in the middle of conceptualizing a whole new massively major project and I tend to be a little distracted by all of that, so forgetting my own anniversary is not all that surprising.
When I first started the Facebook Page, and then this Blog I really didn't have any plan for what I wanted to do with them. I certainly never expected them to grow to the proportions that they did, that is still just amazing to me. I have just been stumbling along, trying to find my footing, trying to define myself and my life and what the fuck I am doing here, and doing a pretty piss poor job of it most of the time because I really had no clue what I was doing or why I was doing it.
After two very short years I have come to learn a lot about what I really want to do with what is left of my life, and the results are far different than what I envisioned when I began this journey. By allowing myself this avenue of expression I have finally begun to see just how much I have been missing in my life, how much of myself I have sacrificed for the comfort of others. This simple experiment in self expression has led me to the discovery of so many things about myself that really shouldn't have surprised me nearly as much as they did. And I know there is so much more yet to discover, there is something inside me that is straining to break free of its confines and I can't help but feel this is going to be epic. Monumental, in a way that the Basket from last Spring never could even begin to match. I am becoming what I am meant to be, and she is so different from what I had been led to believe. What I have trying to be for the last quarter of a century is not who I am, I never felt as if who I really am was an acceptable person to be, until now.
I am beginning to understand my place in this world, why I am the person I am, and now I just need to figure out how to do what I need to do to be who I am supposed to be. I have a lot of work ahead of me, but I am starting to get some idea of how to go about doing that work. Now, if I could only figure out how I am going to get someone to pay me for it, I would be in good shape. I really need a new source of income, preferably before we end up being homeless because we can't make the rent. As much as I hate money, we do need some to survive on this stupid planet these days, and our businesses are just not doing good enough at the moment to do that, so I need to figure out a new way to increase my income at least enough to be qualified as having one.
I know, I am probably talking in circles at you all again, sorry about that. That is just how my brain works. I am still trying to sort out the details of all that I have learned about myself, and I am still trying to figure out just exactly what the next steps will be in my attempts to create this new life that I am envisioning. As soon as I know what the heck I am talking about I am sure I will let you all know, but everything is still in the conceptualization phase, and I don't have a concrete concept to share with you just yet. Hopefully soon, but not yet.
In the mean time I have a lot of work ahead of me so i suppose I better sign outta here and get to working on it. I will be back again soon, with lots more nothing to say. Until next time ...
Hello again Lovely Internet People! I was just sitting here enjoying my Tuesday and decided I would pop in here and see if we could find something interesting to talk about today. My wonderful husband, who almost never actually reads this Blog, has a delightful little habit of trying to tell me, at least once a day, what I should write about here. I really wish he would just write his own Blog and quit doing that, but he is just so darned helpful.
I spent the entire day yesterday in the kitchen, in part due to that wonderful helpfulness of his. I started out in the morning making some pretzel bread rolls. I discovered something like them at the store last week and they were absolutely delicious so I set out to make my own. Unfortunately the recipe I found was only for a very small batch, 8 little rolls, that was all it made. So, after I finished the first batch, and determined they were almost as delicious as the ones from the store, I made another batch, this time doubling the recipe. Much better. Now there are enough that I even let the kids have some.
As I was cleaning up the kitchen from the last of the bread making, my wonderful husband decided that he wanted to make donuts, from scratch. Translated into normal English, this means he wanted me to make donuts from scratch, but he would cook them when they were all ready to be cooked (I don't do deep frying, that is his job).
Of course, being the glutton for punishment that I am, I decided that since I was going to be stuck in the kitchen for the rest of the night anyway, I might as well make dinner too. So I set about chopping all the veggies and meat to make fried rice. Of course chopping and cooking all that stuff meant that I didn't have the time to mix up the donut dough, so I had to do that after dinner.
Once I finally had the dough made, kneaded, risen, punched down, rolled out, and cut into two dozen donuts, with a half dozen cinnamon rolls made from the scraps of dough leftover, and everything rising on the counter for the second time, the phone rang. It was my oldest (not-so-)long lost son, and this was the first time I had heard from him in over a month, so I really needed to talk to him. And of course my husband is watching a movie in the living room with the two youngest boys, so the TV is blaring while I am trying to talk on the phone, and deal with baking the cinnamon rolls, and making the icing for the donuts, and cleaning up the disaster area I had created in doing all of this cooking and baking shit. Fun times.
It was almost 10 o'clock last night by the time my wonderful hubby finished cooking all the donuts, which I of course had to do the glazing of, but they were delicious, so I guess it was worth it. Of course the kids don't like them though, so now I have two dozen donuts to eat before they go bad, which if you know me you know that's not gonna happen, so I guess "worth it" becomes a relative term.
I did actually manage to get everything done, and the whole mess cleaned up and put back to normal before I went to bed last night. For me, that is a major accomplishment! So, YAY ME! (I couldn't resist, and decided there was no reason I should resist anyway; I don't know about the rest of you but I could use a lot more celebration in my life.)
Well, now I have a kitchen full of good food to eat, and a head full of new ideas and good intentions, I guess I better sign outta here and see what other interesting things I can do today. If I come up with something really good I might be back, cause you know I cannot keep good things to myself very well. If I don't come up with anything good, well, then I will still be back, just with a whole lot of nothing to say, as usual.
Until Next Time ...
Hello there Lovely Internet People! I hope everyone out there on the interwebz is having a beautiful day! I shared an article this morning on my Facebook pages that contained a poem written by a beautiful young woman who had taken her own life in response to the bullying she was subjected to. You can find that story here, in case you missed it earlier.
Now bullying is a topic that I have written about a lot, both here and on Facebook, so it shouldn't come as a shock to anyone when I tell you that I cannot stand bullies. What might be surprising if you haven't been paying attention, is that I acknowledge quite readily that I can be as much of a bully as anyone else. We are all bullies to one degree or another, it is just a part of human nature. And while I fully support all the efforts currently being made to bring awareness to the devastation that can result from the societal acceptance of such destructive behavior, I really don't think we are ever going to be able to stop bullying from happening. We should certainly keep trying, but I think there is a very important piece of the puzzle that we are missing here.
I really like the idea of the "Stand Up, Speak Out" campaign, but we need to take it much further. We need to be teaching kids how to defend themselves! No matter how hard we worked to eliminate bullying, it isn't going to happen, we can reduce it, but we won't ever be rid of it, because our society demands it. Everything in our lives today is a constant reminder of how demented our priorities have become, we are constantly told how damaged, or broken, or just plain fucked up we are by advertisers trying to sell us their latest miracle cure for how messed up they want us to believe our lives are.
Where are all the billions of dollars being spent on telling people that it is okay to accept themselves just as they are? Oh yeah, there is no profit in that. How can we convince people to sell their souls for our products if they like themselves? They might figure out they don't really need 90% of the crap that keeps us living the high life while they toil there lives away for that little carrot of lies we dangle just out of their reach. We can't have that now can we?
Yes, yes we fucking can have that! That is exactly what we need, and we need it desperately! We need to throw off the yoke and take back our lives. But, until that happens, we really need to give the kids who are being tormented and tortured every day the tools and the skills to defend themselves. I survived my adolescence solely because I had just enough of those skills to make it through the daily grind, if I had more of them, I might have been able to not just survive but to thrive, and that is what I want for every kid. They all deserve to thrive, to have the best possible life in the best possible world, and it is up to all of us to try to give them that opportunity.
So, now that I have finished my habitual long and circuitous route to get to the freakin point, what can someone who is being bullied do to protect themselves? You use whatever the heck you have to work with I guess. Humor and intelligence have always been my best defenses, but a quick foot to the groin has come in handy at times as well. I learned to use their words against them, to twist what they said against me into something that made them look as stupid as they were acting.
I remember in 8th grade, one of my usual tormentors started accusing me of being a "witch". No, not the kind with the "b" in front, an actual, magical type, hocus pocus witch. So I stood up in front of the entire class, and I put a "curse" on her. I waved my hands in the air and mumbled a few nonsensical words and then told her she had been cursed for all eternity. She freaked out! She spent weeks begging me to remove the curse! I never did.
Whatever rumor they tried to start, whatever assumptions they tried to make about me, I usually found a way to counter, by taking it and running with it. When they tried to get physically aggressive, I found the largest person in the school, and made her my best friend. She was 5' 11" tall and weighed in at over 350 pounds, in the eighth grade, and she was a bad ass! People tend to not want to fight you as much when they know they are going to pay for it, all I had to do was mention her name and they would scatter away like frightened little mice.
Because I had always been a target I chose to befriend the other targets. The outcasts, the "losers", the "rejects", those were my people, and they still are. I like real people. I have no interest in shallow, status quo loving people, never have. Different, weird, strange, these are some of the words they used to describe me, and I embraced those words, with every fiber in my being, I own them, and I take PRIDE in them!
The victims of bullies will remain victims as long as they do not know there is another way. We need to show them the way. The answer is not to just educate the bullies, and the bystanders, we need to educate their victims too. We need to empower kids to take control of their own lives and their destinies. They can do it, they are perfectly capable of defending themselves if we allow them to know that they can. Maybe, just maybe, if we let them stand up for themselves before they are completely broken, then maybe we can start saving some lives.
Do not live your life in fear of the bullies. Never allow others to define who you are, and never believe that any one else can determine your value. And for goodness sakes remember, no matter how loud or insistent the negativity may be, there is 99 times more quiet positivity stand right there beside you. Just because you can't hear it at the moment doesn't now mean it is not there for you to gain strength from. We are out here, and we will love you, just the way you are, but you have to make it through the shit first so that we can have that chance.
Until Next Time ...
Here is a song that I re-wrote for my kids last night, This one is sure to be a hit with all ages!
Hello again Lovely Internet People! I have been sitting here for nearly three hours staring at this blank page and trying to figure out what the heck to write about today. Drives me crazy when I do this. I have too many things to say, and to do, I don't have time to waste with indecision and writer's block. This shit really blows.
Well, now it is an entirely new day and now I do have some really good stuff to share with all of you. After the several hours I spent sitting here doing absolutely nothing I had a sudden inspiration yesterday afternoon and I took off running with it. And boy howdy did I run! It turns out I have another hidden talent that I was previously unaware of, and this one is turning out to be more fun than I ever could have imagined!
Mother has ventured into the world of song writing! Well, not really, more like, song re-writing. If you have been around here since the beginning you probably don't remember me mentioning once, a long time ago, that when I was a teenager I had a major mind-crush on "Weird Al" Yankovic. Right up there with the one I had on George Carlin. While I enjoyed pretty much all the songs that "Weird Al" put out, I never really thought that I could ever do something like that. Until I tried. It turns out, not only can a write like that, but I think I might actually be pretty danged good at it!
I shared a couple of the songs that I re-wrote with a friend of mine in the music industry, and she said they were good! Then I shared some with my husband and the kids, and they all liked them too! Now, I realize that this is not a diversified audience sampling, but I am still going to take it.
I have been going back and forth all night about whether or not I want to publish my new songs here in written form, or wait until I can record them myself before letting them out into the interwebz. I have decided I cannot wait. These are too much fun to keep hidden away. I wrote them, so I do own the copyrights to all of them, so don't try to steal them or I will be really sad. If you want to use them, I could easily be talked into selling you the right to do so, but I do expect to be credited, and maybe even paid.
Either way, I sure hope you all enjoy reading these as much as I enjoy re-writing them, because I have a whole bunch already done that I am going to share, and I hope to re-write a whole bunch more before this phase of my creative development is over. I am seriously having WAY too much fun with this shit!
I decided to turn them into pictures so it will be easier to keep my name attached to it. Any attempt to remove my name would prove intent of fraud and theft. I really want you all to be able to share it with every one who might enjoy it, I just want credit for what I have created. Just like everybody else.
So, Until Next Time ...
