Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

places to help, things to view:

we already posted that we have space available to both http://www.hurricanehousing.com AND http://www.shareyourhome.org to see if we can find people to open our doors to. no responses yet, but god only knows what and when we'll find a match through the case workers. we signed up for both yesterday.

seeing trolls attacking texans makes me angry. i wonder if this means i've become texan? i mean we've only lived here a year and a half and we came within a split second decision from moving to nola instead of purchasing this house, but i think that buying the house has made a huge difference in my outlook. meeting all the people coming here to give me price quotes on things we need to have done and so many stories ... i know we have no money and a hell of a lot of debt, but if we can help people (a person?) have a stable safe place for a few weeks, we'll offer it.

and i don't think it's just because i'm some wishy-washy socialist with warped morals that comes from a long history of living in "blue" states. i think it's some human's nature to care and want to help others with less.

** for viewing and hearing **

Nagin speaks his fury (an .mp3)

from the rude pundit: mr bill foresees the future

Poverty rates rise for fourth straight year:

Overall, the nation's poverty rate rose to 12.7 percent of the population last year. Of the 37 million living below the poverty level, close to a third were children.

that really says it all.

my husband and i just purchased our first house. my fibromyalgia has made for a rough move in many ways. but we have much to feel thankful for in the midst of all the depression and desolation in the world around us. and i think we both really know it.

*snark*/
(oh my! an atheist has morals AND can see her place in the world? this can not be!)
/*snark*

fuck this racist, homophobic noise!

...at my sister's party last friday we spoke of how we're moving to manor, pronounced "may-nor" and got into a fairly funny discussion about the way texans pronounce things.

see, they have a street here in austin titled "guadalupe" but they pronounce it "guadaloop" and laugh at you if you try to say it with a mexican accent on the e at the end. there's another street similarly mispronounced. so when we said, sure, but you know texas was part of mexico until we, ummmm, STOLE IT, some cut-up said, yeah, but we won so they have to say it the way WE want them to now.

and that my friends just about sums it up.

trust me, i love the weather, we're making some decent friends finally (very few, but some) and i feel quite happy to buy a house and pronounce the damn town maynor. but some of the racist and close-minded hits have come a little too close to home and it perturbs me.

as a white girl with a german jewish heritage (oh, another joke at the party, somebody said to me "you don't meet many of your types, and my sister and i said at the exact same time "that's because we killed all of us" or something to that effect. we cracked up ... the other few people kind of got that shocked and sorta glazed look on their faces) i don't have a lot to complain about with regard to racism against me. doesn't really happen. can't.

but that doesn't mean i can't hate it when i see it and want to fucking spit. acid. in faces.

you know i know a lot of people of color and a smattering of native americans and they do not want to fucking live in the ghetto or reservation or whatever. they don't deserve pity and they don't deserve white fucking people telling them that they should be happy making minimum wage working at a bk or what have you. a smattering turn to drug selling and use and ghettos become born. they become dangerous because if you can't protect yourself you're fucked. and then some whites end up there due to bad decisions (same as the blacks but generally more stupid since they usually have more fucking choice about these things) they start to get their racism really ingrained in them.

and they think they can say, "well i live here and see this all the time so i can say shit about such-and-such a race."

well fuck you. no you can't. you get stolen from your country and turned into slaves. you get segregated against and spit on and hung from a tree because of the color of your skin. then try to find jobs when all the schools in your area don't have the funding because they don't have the money the better off generally white districts have (because you know, segregation meant you had to live on either this or that side of the track). then see if you don't say fuck this and start shooting up drugs that make you feel like maybe you can cope with it. and you find out you can make more money dealing than you can doing fucking bk.

this explains why we decided against new orleans. i want a multi-cultural group of friends. i want to feel like that shit doesn't matter when we're all hanging out. and there it's very segregated and here it's somewhat. perhaps i should freaking just move back to sf. we probably will when we can afford it.

because this racist, homophobic country has got me down and at least there i can pretend it's not like that.

c'mon, please?

skippy needs a million hits!

i admit i don't read skippy nearly as much as i should ... i find myself more charmed with hullabaloo, jesus' general, the rude pundit, james wolcott, and the like. when i want a quick update on the day i go to atrios, and when i want a girl's eye view i hit dc media girl. but i want in on this action, even if nearly too late and so here the fact i have nobody reading my damn barely updated pages can turn and bite me in the ass.

ha!

can we please just stop the ride NOW?

what's wrong with this picture?

Bali, Istanbul, Madrid and Casablanca have all borne the same hallmarks - multiple bombings indiscriminately targeting civilians in heavily populated areas.

The 2002 attack on night clubs in Bali, claiming 202 lives, was blamed on a Indonesian extremist group Jemaah Islamiah, which is allegedly linked to al-Qaeda.

In November 2003, Istanbul was hit by two co-ordinated attacks in 10 days, the first against synagogues and the second targeting UK interests.

Western Europe was struck in March 2004 with the train bombings in Madrid that left 191 dead.

There have also been multiple attacks in Saudi Arabia, Kenya, and Morocco causing extensive casualties and disruption. Pakistan, Yemen and other Indonesian targets have also been hit.

It has for some time been almost a commonplace to say that Britain was "due" an al-Qaeda strike like that on Madrid. Britain's unflinching support for the Bush administration's foreign policies, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, make it an obvious target for al-Qaeda.

gee, could it be the fact that we have NO reason to know al qaeda did these attacks other than a random web site that could have connnections and says it does? how about the fact that several of those places hit in the above bbc site article have mainly islamic populations?

this assuming attacks were done by middle eastern men with heavy beards has gotten out of control. as out of control as the bombings themselves.

i have friends there. i have friends in london who had friends end up in the hospital. i have a very close and beloved friend who has not let me know he's okay yet (and knowing him it might take a day or two from me to hear from him if he's okay). and i have a ton of acquintances who i see when i go visit who i have no way of knowing if they're okay. i guess i'll have to wait to see the death list when it comes out