Spun around a bit on CNN seeing if there was something that could piss me off enough to rant about it, but not really. This tried, but eh. So instead let’s talk about tomatoes. Specifically, mine. Debb and I put a garden in our yard, and holy God was that a lot of work. I estimated that I shoveled and moved about 1200 pounds of dirt and rock.

That’s “before”. I say “and rock” because that part of the yard was entirely infused with little rocks—we suspect the original owners who had a huge coal furnace in the basement dumped spent coal out there, or something. And a few years ago, rather than taking it all up, the then-owners covered it with topsoil. You can see the scraggly grass in the parts where I hadn’t dug yet; very little could actually grow in that dirt. Because it was mostly rock. And damn heavy when you move about 24 cubic feet of it.

That’s “after”. Actually, it’s after moving all the dirt out, putting in a new layer of topsoil, putting in the plants, and putting down a drip hose for watering (because tomatoes can’t survive if you touch their leaves with water directly, apparently). The plant in the upper right is basil, just for variety.

Then this is “much after”, like three weeks later I think, but I’m not sure. In the beginning we were kinda not sure that they were going to work, but they’re about the most goddamn spoiled tomatoes in the whole neighborhood, I’m sure. They got fresh topsoil, fertilizer balanced especially for tomatoes, some special Miracle-Gro garden soil, the drip hose to take care of their delicate watering needs, and Debb probably got angels to fly down and kiss them every morning or something, I dunno, goddamn kids get off my lawn mumble grumble.

So we’re gonna have approximately 17,000 tomatoes.

If the US had demonstrated strength, excellent management, and competency in Iraq, do you think Iran or North Korea would be rattling their sabres now?

So say you’re a Fundamentalist, and you sneeze, and a Muslim says “bless you”.

Do you..I dunno, lose points or something? Does the baby jesus vomit? Do you get scored for a venial sin? Lose a small amount of God’s grace to the competing team?

Man do these people make me angry. Liberal ones do too, but not as often. Griping about politics is one of the main reasons I wanted to have this blog, in fact…I just need somewhere to vent. Unfortunately it’s ultimately pointless of me to do it here in a place read by about seven people, but screw it.

In this case I’m talking about a James Dobson article on cnn.com, Media provides cover for assault on traditional marriage. He’s bitching about the failed 49-48 vote to get a Constitutional amendment preserving marriage as guy + chick.

Rarely has there been a greater disconnect between members of the Senate and the American people who put them in power.

Too right, Dobson! Glad to see we agree on oh wait we don’t, do we. Of course he’s saying that the vast majority of Americans think there should be such an amendment, when a recent Gallup poll says that the number of people who think gay marriage is a top priority for lawmakers is statistically next door to zero.
He’s prepared for this, though. And by “prepared” I mean wave wave TACTICAL MISDIRECTION!

Let’s examine the claim that traditional marriage lacks support in the court of public opinion. As it always does when conservative issues are being debated, the liberal press produced a series of trumped-up polls indicating the issue was of no interest nationally. However, there was another “poll” that the media completely ignored. In fact, there were 19 of them. They represented the 19 states in which voters overwhelmingly defined marriage as being between a man and a woman.

Ahhh dig that. I’d sit back and appreciate the art there, if it didn’t fill me with anger. Dig how charged the second sentence is—you can almost hear the John Stossel giiiive-me-a-breaaaak inflections in it. But right there in the first sentence, right out the gate he diverges from the topic at hand. The poll doesn’t show that traditional marriage lacks support in public opinion, the poll shows that public opinion is that Congress has more important shit to be worrying about.

And yeah, Jim, the media completely ignored that. So ignored it that there weren’t ongoing vote counts, big headlines in the papers the day after, and I certainly have no idea what you’re talking about, because the media completely ignored it.

Indeed, on the day before 48 senators bailed on marriage, a 20th state voted on its own constitutional amendment. It was Alabama, which supported traditional marriage by 81 percent to 19 percent! …
CNN and the mainstream televised news networks uttered hardly a peep about the Alabama decision. Why was the issue buried? Because the “poll” in Alabama and 19 other states didn’t match the template put forward by those who wanted the amendment to be crushed. Their bias against the family is breathtaking.

How the fuck do you make the logic leap in that last sentence. Goddamn, whenever I hear people say “liberals want America to fall” or “the media hates the family” or “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” it makes me want to crush something.

And as for Congress being out of touch…a separate poll conducted over the weekend asked specifically whether there should be such an amendment. 45% were for, 54% were against. So on that point, Congress is hardly out of touch, the numbers came up pretty close. They part where they’re out of touch is why are they even wasting their time on this in the first place.

Incidentally, Dobson’s how-it-suits-him math here reminds me of this.

I’ll have an Avengers #12, whatever Alan Scott Green Lanterns you have, and…you have the right to remain silent.

Bonus track: your arteries also have the right to remain silent.

(Closed comments because it was attracting too much spam.)

Two weeks ago Monday, I bought an iced tea maker to bring to work. The idea was, I’ve been buying too many drinks from Starbucks—one in the morning and one at lunch—that I wanted to have something here to drink that would distract me enough that I wouldn’t feel the need.

So far it seems to be working. The depressing part is that the iced tea maker paid for itself by that Thursday.

Got a mail from the person who made that Av1d entry–yeah, he was just joking. It’s kinda a shame because it’d be cool to have a secret contest; though it’s kinda neat for me to see someone doing that, for ego reasons.

Ironically I had an idea for a secret contest recently. I’ll try to get that together.

Someone spotted this on Av1d today. Unfortunately, it wasn’t me.

I don’t know if my old index page is significant, but this is what it was, in case the key is related. I have no idea if it is.

Whoever put that entry, though, I know they’re reading this. Whoever you are, let me know if it’s gibberish made to look like a contest, or if you actually put something somewhere. (email to “spinn” at this domain.)

I can’t recall feeling so bad for someone while simultaneously want to laugh my ass off at someone.

It’s a real shame, but man.

Plus: Maury’s a prick. It’s like: “We wanted to see the extent of Judy’s fear of snakes, so we lowered her into a snake pit.”

I have to write an auto-updater for Scribs, and I’m having the hardest time getting it done. It’s really simple, too, I just need something to enter future comics and have it update at the right times by itself. But for like the last two months I just can’t get this really minor program done.

It’s some dumbass psychological reason, too. I don’t want to make it easier for updating because I feel like I’m running out of ideas, blah blah. Fuckin’ brain.

Nice to see someone’s on the ball: This Is Your Street Mid-Bombing: A Hollywood-budget public service announcement aims at discouraging suicide attacks in Iraq and elsewhere.

“Yo! Kidz! Don’t Suicide Bomb!”
with the lovable mascot Harry, the Non-Exploding Camel
“My hump’s big enough to store several pounds of C-4…but it DOESN’T!”

I’m just not in the mood to get my site back up these days. I know I will eventually, but I’m tired of feeling this internal nagging to do so. Why’s it really matter if I have it up or not? At worst, I want to get A1 back up because that’s kinda a cool thing, but all the rest of it, I can take it or leave it.

I couldn’t lose it entirely, though. Just too much history in there. But in the meantime I feel like doing something, and given that Dreamhost has this handy blog self-installer that made this really easy, I’ll start doing a blog, what the hey.

I needed a name for it, and the first two words that came to mind were Hegemonic Alabaster. Which I think is a great name, but I had to go look up “hegemony” and given it means “authority over others” and “alabaster” is frequently used as a description for “white”, I didn’t want anyone thinking I was running a White Power blog, so.