I hate painting.
general
Open Comments
One of the dangers of having a controversial website that is also open to viewer comments is the threat of visitors' words being attributed to the site owner.
As an aside, Dennis Prager rehearses the now-common (but still pretty good) observations about the difference in reaction in insulting Islam and insulting other religions. He points out the absurdity of the Federal Koran-in-the-toilet suit versus the crucifix-in-urine modern art piece. Putting a Koran in a toilet and putting a crucifix in urine are essentially the same thing, but the reaction is entirely different.
In this video, Ibrahim Hooper, of CAIR, makes just such a claim against Robert Spencer and his site Jihad Watch. "[Hooper] quoted a genocidal comment that was made on this website yesterday, and made it appear as if I had written it," Spencer writes.
His response: "In reality, someone kindly alerted me to the existence of the comment shortly after it was posted, and I removed it and banned the poster."
So it was on the site for a short period of time, but then disappeared. How then would Hooper have known it was there? Someone emailed him? Someone at CAIR monitors Jihad Watch continuously?
Spencer continues,
The comment itself seemed to me and to others who posted on the same thread to have been written by a provocateur -- someone who wanted to discredit Jihad Watch and me by planting a comment here. Such people come through here fairly often. And now, after Hooper's use of this comment despite its being deleted, I suspect even more strongly that it was written by a provocateur. (Jihad Watch)
Could it be that someone who is critical of the site posted such a comment to make the site look bad? It seems entirely possible.
The Confederate Flag
While wandering around Gatlinburg some weeks ago, I noticed several "Dixie-sympathetic" shirts. Confederate flags, Confederate war heroes -- the works.
A few of the shirts I saw:
- I don't wear this shirt to piss you off, but if it does, that makes my day.
(Why would that make your day? Are you just trying to be provocative? If so, to what end?) - It's a Southern thang. Yanks'll never understand.
(What is the "it"? The Confederate flag? Racial pride? Pride in one's heritage? A drawl?) - It's not a Redneck thang, it's the RIGHT thang.
(Does that mean that slavery was the right thing "RIGHT thang"?) - Heritage, not hate.
(Yes, but that heritage included a war for the right to keep people enslaved.) - Dixie defenders (with a portrait of Lee)
(I just picture Dixie cups on this one...)
My personal favorite:
I only saw it in shop windows, never on someone. Which is a shame, because I would have loved to walk up to someone wearing it and request the history lesson.
August, and Everything After…
And so August arrives, and instead of thinking, “I start teaching next month” it’s a question of a few days. August 20 — kids return and I, for the first time since finishing college, will be doing the work I spent all that time preparing for while in college: teach English.
I have nine years of teaching behind me. Seven are teaching EFL: English as a Foreign Language. One I spent working with autistic children. One I spent trying to teach science and social studies to at-risk youth, and spent most of my time teaching social skills. Now, for the first time since student teaching, I’ll be teaching “The Most Dangerous Game” and gerunds and dangling modifiers and indirect modifiers and interpretative skills and how to avoid run-on sentences.
I’ve got some planning done, bought a new domain name to have a class blog and to have a place to stick Moodle, and I’m starting to feel relaxed about it. Excited, even…
I loves you, [L]
Last night, before L went to bed, I'd put in a Nina Simone CD, figuring it was calming enough to play in the evening.
Little did I know.
A few minutes later, while trying to put the Girl to sleep, I began the CD again. She wasn't crying, but she wasn't settling down. I rocked her, walked her, bounced her gently, talked to her -- all the tricks, but she was just not completely calming down.
When track six -- "I loves you, Porgy" -- began, instant calm. So I did the logical thing: hit repeat and put the Girl to sleep by playing one of the loveliest songs ever...about fifteen times.
As an aside, here's a very sweet claymation video set to a Simone song:
Eight Hours’ Sleep
Who would have thought it was possible for a little, sweet, burpy seven-month-old to sleep a full twelve hours, enabling parents to get work done and get eight hours’ sleep?
Who would have imagined that a body used to significantly less sleep can sleep a full eight hours without the whole system going haywire?
Who would have thought it would only happen one night?
Homeowners
As of Thursday afternoon, K and I are homeowners.
And it was surprisingly easy. We'd heard so many horror stories about people buying houses -- troubles with financing, troubles with closing, troubles with the realtor, troubles with everything. We literally had no issues at all. We found the house, made an offer, waited for the counter offer, accepted the counter offer, set a date for closing, then closed the house.
I suppose it helped that the owner now lives in Nashville and was simply interested in getting rid of the house and not terribly worried about how much money he was making. He was just losing money, I guess, paying double mortgages.
So now we're slowly moving in, and the real work begins.
Tour de Steroids
Last year: Landis, Ulrich, Basso.
This year: Vinokourov, Moreni, and Rassmussen.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to watch the Tour again. What’s the point? It’s no longer a contest of who has the most endurance, who trained the most, who has the most — dare I use THE sports cliche? — heart.
It’s who can best hide his doping.
Anyone who wins a stage, a title, the Tour itself will now be immediately suspect.
Landmines
When the Girl is being put to sleep, she sometimes gets angry. Scratch that -- furious. She can howl and scream and whimper endlessly when I'm the one trying to put her to sleep instead of K.
I usually just wait her out. She'll literally scream and push and wiggle and cry until she literally passes out. While she's doing this, I simply walk around the apartment, holding her close, and whispering sweetly (or as sweetly as I can manage while every last nerve in my body is being assailed simultaneously). There comes a time when she's crying, then whimpering, then crying, then tumbling quietly toward sleep -- until something disturbs her and reminds her, "Oh, yes, I am indeed irritated."
That's when toys can become landmines.
There are two beeping, flashing, musical toys that are particularly deadly. In one of them (a caterpillar that plays about four songs and flashes lights where one wouldn't think caterpillars would have lights) has expired: the batteries are dead, and gosh darn it, I just can't seem to remember to replace them. Touch it and it begins a loud, loud, loud symphony.
The porcupine is not much better. Give it a kick (as I did last night) and it begins talking to you. Nothing too intelligent, but you wouldn't expect physics from a porcupine.
Last night, I kicked it dead center. I'm not sure which woke L: my sudden, frustrated gasp, or the porcupine.
Potter v Pope
In Poland, the Catholic Church is very much against Harry Potter -- sort of like religious conservatives here.
Why?
We all know the standard reasons: wizards and sorcery are simply forbidden in the Bible. It's that simple.
Yet K pointed out the "real" reason Potter worries the Polish church. I read the BBC News article opening to her:
The seventh and final Harry Potter book has broken sales records on both sides of the Atlantic, selling 11 million copies in its first 24 hours.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sold 2.7 million copies in the UK and 8.3 million in the US. (BBC)
She responded, "See, that's why the Polish church is so scared of Harry Potter. That's real power."