By now, most have heard about the video of U.S. marine throwing puppy off a cliff in Iraq. This sort of behaviour isn't new to war. There was a Vietnam veteran in Cahill 3 with me. He told me a story that seems now eerily similar to this.

The guys in his unit called the orangutans "rock apes", because they would catch rocks you threw at them and then throw the rocks back. They had fun playing catch with the orangutans until one day one of the guys in the unit decided to pull a pin out of a grenade and throw it at an orangutan . Of course the orangutan caught the grenade and was blown to pieces. That ended the fun they had with the orangutans. The difference is that they didn't have camera phones then.

Should we be surprised by this sort of behaviour? These soldiers have been sent to kill people. Most humans view other animals as less than human. If they're killing people left and right, what's the odd puppy or orangutan ? Who is more evil then: the marine that killed the puppy or the politicians sent him over there to kill?

I took this picture in the fall. I haven't posted it until now because I've been so nervous about the amount of drama potential of posting it. Fear of being shouted down and demonized for a simple picture. I'm not pro-life, just thought this shot was interesting and had turned out well — but that I am required to explain myself and my reasoning for posting a photograph says something to me about the political climate and what it says isn't good.

From the The Universal Household Assistant or What Every One Should Know (1884):

Worms — treatment of. — Some members of the profession still cling with bull-dog tenacity to the opinion that worms do not affect the health of children, and that they are natural to them. The latter may or may not be true, but when they accumulate in the intestines, they produce the same disturbance that any foreign, indigestible substance would do. We find the picking of the nose, swollen lower eye-lids, restlessness in sleep, groaning, gritting teeth, starting, and lastly, spasms.    Worms kill more children than teething*; and when you find the above symptoms with a strawberry tongue and a fever, which will attack several times daily, going off as frequently in cold sweats, you can swear that you have a case of worms, and had as well prepare and attack them.    Now as to the best means of getting rid of them. I use the fluid extract of senna and spigelia in teaspoon doses for patients of eight or ten years of age, and less in proportion, night and morning, for three nights and days, following this up each morning with a good dose of castor oil, provided the senna and spigelia does not act. Then wait three days, and again institute the same proceedings, and for the same length of time.    This treatment is for the lumbricoid. For the oxyuris, or "thread worm," I see any bitter infusion by enema, sulph, quinine, followed by an enema of common salt and milk-warm water half an hour afterward, which will destroy and expel them.    The symptoms of the presence of the worm are the same as the scratching of the anus. If every practitioner will use these he will be gratified by the restoration to immediate health of many a little sufferer, who would otherwise linger in sickness for many months and perhaps eventually die.    Worms in Horses — to cure. — A remedy for worms in a horse which has never failed of a cure is to take half a cup of pure, hard wood ashes, finely sifted and mixed dry with the mash or food. If one dose should not prove sufficient, repeat it after a day or two.    Worm Lozenges. — Powdered lump sugar, ten ounces; starch, five ounces; mix with mucilage; and to every ounce add twelve grains of calomel; divide into twenty grain lozenges. Dose, two to six.    Worm Medicines. — 1. Two tablespoonfuls of pumpkin seeds peeled and pulverized, or given to a child who will chew fine. The seed does not kill, but stupefies the worm. The next day give castor oil or any other cathartic, and if the worms are present in the system they will pass off.    2. Make an infusion in the proportion of one pint of boiling water to one ounce of dried hyssop flowers; let it stand ten minutes; pour it off into a wine bottle, and take a wine-glass, or rather less, according to age, two or three times a day.

* Teething was thought to be a common cause infant mortality in the 19^th century, however most "teething deaths" were actually caused by opium poising from the opium and morphine teething infants were treated with.

Last week, purpleglitter and I found that the landlord at her old place had murdered a nest of starlings, ripping apart the nest and throwing the babies down to the ground like they were worthless. Just getting their down in, eyes never opened. They never saw the sun. We buried them in the back.

Today, the tree cutters came to the back yard here. Supposedly just to cut the branches overhanging the neighbor's, they instead cut main branches which may have had one or two subbranches overhanging the neighbor's yard, but most of which were not over the fence at all. Renting, I have no real control over any of this.

I don't understand the reason people need heavily nitrogenated death-yards. "Kill everything but grass. A dandelion! Kill it! Kill it! No flowers here! Nature is just weeds. Throw on more chemicals on... pesticides, herbicides, fertilizer... everything! It surely won't run off anywhere. Must have that perfect patch of stale green nothing, because lord knows if anything wild and free grows it'll be anarchy! Nature is ugly and must be controlled, but oh yeah, save the rain forests — nature is only ugly if it's where I can see it."

I just saw the birds that have their nest in the closet, and they are in fact european starling and not house sparrow. By seeing them enter, I know they are in fact in the wall and not under the floorboards. Baby starlings make me happy, too.

The right closet of my bedroom is filled with the squeaking of baby birds. There's a nest under the floorboards, which is where the roof meets the side of the house. The parents must be entering in a hole right above or below the gutter. By the frequency that I see house sparrow out front, most likely that's what's in there. Little birdies growing up right under my feet. It makes me happy, it's spring.

video from existentialista:



Emmie Rose died yesterday before her hearing could take place. Essentially, the hospital ethics committee decided the "ethical" course of action was to starve a baby to death. The state of Michigan will happily imprison the likes of Dr. Kevorkian, who assisted the suicides of people who wanted to die. However, a doctor deliberately killing a baby who's parents' want her to live is somehow legal? It is abhorrent.

I've had some interesting dreams recently. The night before last, I dreamed I was on a holodeck. I kept switching through setting, but I was changing more than my environment. I was not only trying on different clothing, but different bodies. However, at some point I stopped changing and the room began changing more like a standard Star Trek holodeck. The finally room I was in was filled with shallow wooden boxes with large amounts of baby budgies. They were all blue and just getting their feathers in. They were pulling themselves from box to box, in the baby-budgie head-first method of locomotion. I was in a happy place.

Last night, I dreamed I was in a maze of a house. There was a strange man in whiteface who was running the place. The house was so large that it had a lake and a hill with cars. It was almost a village in a house. There was something wrong, a sinister air. I felt compelled to investigate what that wrong was. I followed these streams of crusty liquid up the hill and found an old stationwagon that had rusted with the years. purpleglitter was with me then and at that point had been with me on my explorations in the house even though she hadn't been with me earlier in the dream. We got in the car and I was able to start it. There was a road at the top of the hill; and after driving a short distance, we realized we were on the outskirts of Moscow. We drove back to the hilltop and looked down. There was the house and all it's trapping that we had departed. I concluded that there was some sort of portal to Moscow at the top of the hill. purpleglitter and I decided to drive around and explore the outskirts of Moscow. purpleglitter's cell phone miraculously worked and we called zarthon who told us we ought not be traveling around through portals willy-nilly and should head back at once. But we ignored him. Who was driving kept switching seamlessly in the dream, sometimes it was purpleglitter sometimes it was me. The controls on the car ended up locking up and we skidded into a ditch. It faded out after that.

Somewhere in last nights dreams purpleglitter and I were in a bank trying to stop a $2500 transaction from her account to a con artist. The bank was entirely bureaucratic and unhelpful, and we felt as if we were fighting against time. They kept asking invasive questions that had nothing to do with banking. Odd randomness. Why must bureaucracy even invade my dreams?

The [rhythm] method relies on abstinence during the most fertile period of a woman's menstrual cycle. For a woman who has regular 28 day cycles, this is around days 10 to 17 of the cycle. It is the only method of birth control condoned by the Catholic Church, because it doesn't interfere with conception, so allowing nature to take its course. It is believed that the method works because it prevents conception from occurring. But says Professor Bovens, it may owe much of its success to the fact that embryos conceived on the fringes of the fertile period are less viable than those conceived towards the middle. We don't know how much lower embryo viability is outside this fertile period, contends Professor Bovens, but we can calculate that two to three embryos will have died every time the rhythm method results in a pregnancy. ... Professor Bovens cites Randy Alcorn, a US pro-life campaigner, who has equated global oral contraceptive use to chemical abortion that is responsible for tens of thousands of deaths of embryos, or unborn children, every year. ... Regular condom users, whose choice of contraception is deemed to be 95% effective in preventing pregnancy, would "cause less embryonic deaths than the rhythm method," he says. full article

This is more to do with the anti-contraception movement than it does with the pro-life movement, as there are plenty of pro-contraception pro-lifers. But this really does make the anti-contraception camp, and especially the Catholic Church, look a bit more ridiculous (as if that really needed to be done anyway).

Of course, we all know that the best form of birth control is homosexuality.

I went down to Spy Pond to do my meditations, but couldn't really get in the mindplace. I don't think I'm going to end up doing anything on Project Schedule today. It has been suggested to me that I cut back on Project Schedule as it really doesn't seem to be happening.

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Much of the park on the shore of Spy Pond has been blocked off for over a year, and still is. Why? Because the "Friends of Spy Pond" succeeded in getting the city of Arlington to finance their anti-goose renovations. The two cornerstones of this plan have been the building of an fence between the pond and the park to keep the geese out of the park and the planting of species of grass that the geese supposedly won't eat.

The main reason the majority of the park has been blocked off for so long is that the anti-goose grass takes much longer to grow than standard species do. However, the geese don't seem to be waiting to chow down on it. They love it and seem to think of the "grass the geese won't eat" is the best grass they've ever tasted. I've never seen them packing the grass down at such a rate before.

The anti-goose fence doesn't seem to be doing a very good job keeping the geese away from the anti-goose grass. I can see two obvious reasons that fence does not work: 1) The geese can walk through the gap in the fence that allows boats to get to the water. 2) It's a fence and geese can fly.

What the "Friends of Spy Pond" have really accomplished is wasting a bunch of tax payer money and blocking off access to the park for over a year. The improvements that were included with the anti-geese measures have been minor and on their own would not have required blocking off access to the park for so long, if at all.

I imagine they'll be back to addling eggs and griping about people feeding the geese. Yet, they themselves have provided the best evidence that the geese are not attracted to Spy Pond by the people feeding them, as they are still flocking to the fenced off section even though no one is allowed in, much less people "illegally" feeding the geese. Furthermore their years of egg addling have only served to keep Spy Pond free of goslings. The number of adult geese around the pond has actually increased slightly over the years. The "Friends of Spy Pond" would be much happier if they'd just relax and watch the beautiful birds.

Last week, I heard several squirrels screaming their mating calls. This is definitely not their mating season, but this winter has been more spring in many ways and I think that has confused them. We had an actual taste of winter over the weekend, but the springlike weather has returned.

With the lack of any prolonged freeze this winter, there will likely be an imbalance this spring and summer. Inevitably, some species who's numbers are normally decimated during the winter will instead survive and multiply into a deluge. What will it be? Slugs? Frogs? Some sort of insect? Who knows? There may even be an boom echo when whatever feeds on the first wave themselves explode in population.

Personally, I'm hoping for salamanders.

It appears that while my grandma is physically okay, she isn't doing so well mentally. According her MRI this stroke didn't damage any part of her brain that the last one had damaged already. However, after this stroke her speech has become nonsensical. She says things like "There goes my legs out the window again" and is convinced that yesterday she got pregnant and today she gave birth to a son. I don't know if the stroke directly caused this or if she's had some sort of psychotic break brought on by the stress of it all.

zarthon took purpleglitter and I to the Franklin Park Zoo on Sunday for purpleglitter's "second birthday". I saw ostriches poop and perform their impressive mating dance. Those things are big, but they looked friendly. purpleglitter wouldn't let me step over the little fence to get to the big fence which one of the ostriches was trying to stick it's head through. I think it wanted to be pet, but purpleglitter was probably right and that would have been a bad idea.

I also saw a baby gorilla, a lion, some tamarins and lemurs, lounging kangaroos, black swans, Brazilian giant cockroaches, fruit bats climbing around, zebras, peacocks, a capybara, and many many other interesting animals. I wish purpleglitter had brought her camera, we could have had many awsome pictures to post. Alas, a lack, and I can only post my words.

stolen from kyrene

I am the girl kicked out of her home because I confided in my mother that I am a lesbian. I am the prostitute working the streets because nobody will hire a transsexual woman. I am the sister who holds her gay brother tight through the painful, tear-filled nights. We are the parents who buried our daughter long before her time. I am the man who died alone in the hospital because they would not let my partner of twenty-seven years into the room. I am the foster child who wakes up with nightmares of being taken away from the two fathers who are the only loving family I have ever had. I wish they could adopt me. I am one of the lucky ones, I guess. I survived the attack that left me in a coma for three weeks, and in another year I will probably be able to walk again. I am not one of the lucky ones. I killed myself just weeks before graduating high school. It was simply too much to bear. We are the couple who had the realtor hang up on us when she found out we wanted to rent a one-bedroom for two men. I am the person who never knows which bathroom I should use if I want to avoid getting the management called on me. I am the mother who is not allowed to even visit the children I bore, nursed, and raised. The court says I am an unfit mother because I now live with another woman. I am the domestic-violence survivor who found the support system grow suddenly cold and distant when they found out my abusive partner is also a woman. I am the domestic-violence survivor who has no support system to turn to because I am male. I am the father who has never hugged his son because I grew up afraid to show affection to other men. I am the home-economics teacher who always wanted to teach gym until someone told me that only lesbians do that. I am the man who died when the paramedics stopped treating me as soon as they realized I was transsexual. I am the person who feels guilty because I think I could be a much better person if I didn’t have to always deal with society hating me. I am the man who stopped attending church, not because I don't believe, but because they closed their doors to my kind. I am the person who has to hide what this world needs most, love. Repost this if you want to.