It’s almost shirt sleeve weather in the evenings now.  A light jacket is enough to keep me comfortable when I take a casual stroll through the neighborhood.  I’ve been a walker ever since I can remember, always taking long meandering strolls through my territory whenever I had something on my mind, or, as mom used to say, I got "ants in my pants".  Four feet of snow or a torrent of rain are about the only things that’ll keep me from taking my walks, and even then it’s a near thing.  I do my best thinking while walking.  I devise software algorithms, write lines of code, compose cartoons, stories, email, blog posts (like this one), and ponder over various household chores and the Big Questions in life.  Sometimes the only way I can get a clear head about something is to take a walk and think it over.  I really look forward as winter recedes, to not having to bundle up whenever I get the urge to get out of the house and walk about for a bit. 

My neighborhood has several corner gas stations scattered around, and nowadays more then ever I’m always taking note of the price whenever I walk by one.  Regrettably it always seems to start rising again, whenever I start thinking about a road trip.  Tonight I noticed that the price had gone up ten cents a gallon in just the last few days.

Well my retirement fund isn’t giving me returns like that.  Maybe instead of buying savings bonds, I should just buy myself a gallon of gasoline and put it in a safety deposit vault somewhere.  By the time I’m old and gray I might be able to retire on that gallon of gasoline.

Richard Cohen visits the Clue Boutique: 

I would not go so far as to say that Bush wanted war from Day One in the White House, but there was plenty of evidence he had Saddam on his mind and in his sights from the very moment he got the news of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. We have it from Richard Clarke, formerly the White House’s chief anti-terrorism official, that within a day of the attacks Bush was inquiring if Saddam might have had a hand in them. When told no — "But, Mr. President, al-Qaeda did this," Clarke told him — it became instantly clear that this was not the answer Bush wanted. "’Look into Iraq, Saddam,’ the president said testily," Clarke writes in his book, "Against All Enemies."

Well thank you for stating what’s been staringly obvious for, oh, about a couple years Richard.  Only…what’s missing from this picture…

If there was an “I’m sorry for being so stupid” embedded in Cohen’s column I didn’t spot it.

This is the man who, on Feb. 6, 2003, after Secretary of State Colin Powell’s deeply-flawed testimony in New York, wrote: “The evidence he presented to the United Nations — some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail — had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn’t accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool — or possibly a Frenchman — could conclude otherwise.”

In France right now they’re probably raising a toast now to the fact that Richard Cohen isn’t one of them.

Hey…Richard…  The next time some serious threat to world peace raises its head, and I mean a Real threat, not a let’s go start a splendid little war to prove we have bigger balls then everyone else and demagogue the democrats into political submission threat…and the U.S. needs to prove its case to the rest of the world…before you get that urge to tell the world it had better listen to us…Just Shut The Fuck Up!  k?

• Waking up to birds singing
• Walking to work in shirt sleeve weather, and watching your neighborhood wake up around you as you go.
• Sitting on the front porch with a glass of ice tea, reading or drawing, in the weeks before the mosquitoes take it over (swear to God I’m gonna screen it in one of these years…).
• Being able to keep all the windows in the house open because its nether too cold nor to hot outside.
• You can stand still at night without freezing while looking up at the stars
• Time for another road trip…

That far-right Catholic web site that theocrat Richard Neuhaus leaned on for his claim that 50 or 60 percent of children raised by male homosexuals turn out to be homosexual or bisexual, and suffer many times the norm in incidence of child sexual abuse, has taken its own a peek at Michael Calace’s "Rape Of The Soul.  Unaccountably, they seem somewhat appalled…

"The Rape of the Soul" is a fear-mongering, small-minded, and pathetically smutty polemic about art and the Roman Catholic Church. Presented as a documentary by filmmaker and self-described devout Catholic Michael A. Calace, the film seeks to discredit "predatory artists" from da Vinci and Botticelli to anonymous designers of contemporary greeting cards.

Ooooh.  Self described devout Catholic is it?  But look on the bright side.  He doesn’t described himself as a recovering Catholic.  Or an Ex-Catholic. 

Kinda gets your goat when people read all kinds of filth into even the simplest expressions of beauty and joy in your world, let alone satanic influences, does it?  Kinda pisses you off when people ascribe sinister motives to even the smallest commonplaces of your everyday life does it?  "Predatory artists", did they say?  Why…how unfair…how terribly, terribly unfair it must seem.  But what Calace does he does out of love for the church…not hate.  I’m sure many who are Catholic may view exposing the disordered subliminal sex messages and satanism in everything from Catholic art to Catholic children’s song books as a personal attack but it is not…any more then saying cancer or a closer parallel perhaps, alcoholism is a disorder.

Or…not.  After Andrew Sullivan posted about the gutter Neuhaus gets his facts on homosexuality from, the gutter replied that Paul Cameron is being smeared by the "gay lobby", Neuhaus only said it was a claim, Cameron isn’t his only source, and in any case homosexuals just don’t want to address the fact that they are "psychologically malformed".  But it would "keep trying to find ways to say so in as charitable manner as possible."  Or at any rate, as charitable a manner as possible while spitting in people’s faces and simultaneously twisting a knife in their heart.  And you best believe charity like that doesn’t come along every day.

Like here, for instance… 

Now if I were to call homosexual pedophilia an affective disorder and an activist from NAMBLA (North American Man-Boy Love Association) accused me of bigotry most people would see that this was clearly an attempt to change the subject from a discussion of the issue at hand. However, in part, because the MSM has conditioned us to think of SSA as an alternative life style it is not so clear that the same logical fallacy is at play in discussing the “gay” issue.

Charity starts with the standard issue comparison of homosexuals to pedophiles.  "SSA" in case you’re wondering, is Same Sex Attraction, "MSM" is Main Stream Media, and "gay" is always in quotes because it’s always better to invent acronyms that dehumanize people, then allow them to speak for themselves.  Charity.  I wonder if Calace invented any good acronyms for all the penises and satanism he found in Catholic art?  And in children’s song books no less…

Now if I were to call homosexual pedophilia an affective disorder and an activist from NAMBLA (North American Man-Boy Love Association) accused me of bigotry most people would see that this was clearly an attempt to change the subject from a discussion of the issue at hand. However, in part, because the MSM has conditioned us to think of Catholicism as an alternative life style it is not so clear that the same logical fallacy is at play in discussing the “left-footers” issue.

Yeah…something like that.  With lots of references to how they put pictures of cocks into school children’s books.  And remember, it’s a devout Catholic saying so.

Or perhaps my own charity is a tad lacking.  But I tried…I swear I tried…and it’s just too goddamn hard to extend the benefit of good faith to the braying jackass who wrote this, right before he compared gay people to child molesters:

The response to the statements that ’same sex attraction is a disorder’ is never an argument for why it is clearly a part of human nature (I suppose because there is none). Rather, the responses include the accusations of bigotry, “homophobia” (I’ve never figured this out, is that the fear of sameness or the fear of human beings???)…

Get me started… You know David, you’re right.  You’re Absolutely Right.  The word "phobia" means "an intense, abnormal, or illogical fear of a specified thing".  It doesn’t mean "hate".  It doesn’t mean "avoidance".  It doesn’t mean "prejudiced".  You’re Absolutely Right David.  The word "phobia" does not have that meaning.  But The Suffix Can!  Look Up The Motherfucking Suffix!  

Tell your chemistry teacher that the word "hydrophobe" is something you can’t figure out (Is that fearful water?  How can water be afraid?).  Then tell your biology teacher that "photosynthesis" is something you can’t figure out, because plants don’t synthesize light, they synthesize sugars.  It’ll be fun.

Many who are personally affected by SSA might see this as a personal attack. It is not. In fact, the very reason for this series is to show why calling SSA a disorder cannot be viewed as a personal attack any more than is saying cancer, or a closer parallel perhaps, alcoholism is a disorder. Let me know what you think…

What I think: Jack Chick is worse then you deserve.  "Rape of the Soul" on the other hand, is about right.  Charity.

Via Slashdot…this revealing little dustup between the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association and the Gaston County Police Department in North Carolina…

AOPA has prompted the FAA to keep an unregulated unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) operation out of navigable airspace above one North Carolina community.

"Safety is paramount, and current airspace users must be assured that a reasonable level of safety can be maintained," said Melissa Rudinger, AOPA vice president of regulatory affairs. "The prospect of small UAVs flitting around in the same airspace we use is frightening. We know what kind of damage a 5-pound bird can do to a GA aircraft. Imagine what would happen if you hit a 14-pound UAV?"

The issue came to head when AOPA learned that the Gaston County Police Department in North Carolina had bought a "CyberBUG" UAV from Cyber Defense Systems. The company sells the small radio-controlled drones as cheap helicopter substitutes for police, military, and news gathering uses.

The company says the 14-pound UAV cruises at 29 mph at 1,300 feet agl, which puts it easily into navigable airspace and creates a potential midair collision hazard.

"What do you think your chances are of seeing this thing before you hit it?" said Rudinger. "And it can’t sense you or get out of the way."

Oh tut, tut…  Your local police department has better things to worry about.  Like…unruly behavior…

This isn’t the first time law enforcement has flown the CyberBUG. The company claims it was used to watch for "unruly behavior" and "alert authorities about accidents" during the 12th Annual Southern Maryland "Blessing of the Bikes" in La Plata. And the company also sells a much larger 70-pound, turbine-powered drone that cruises at 250 knots.

Maryland.  Great.  Just great.  Next time I’m out enjoying myself at an outdoor gathering I’ll be keeping an eye on the sky like I’m a damn rabbit looking out for hawks.  All together now…My country ’tis, of thee…

Looks like the decent folk in town aren’t taking that "Natural Family" resolution laying down…

(Kanab, Utah) Signs began popping up in store windows this week in Kanab, Utah proclaiming ”Everyone welcome here!” in a desperate move to avoid a threatened gay boycott. Some businesses went so far as putting small rainbow flag stickers on their front doors.

Dozens of business owners in the small southern Utah community are trying all they can to distance themselves from a proclamation by the city council that Kanab supports the "natural family" consisting of a working husband, a stay-at-home wife and a "full quiver of children."

…

The signs and stickers are being distributed by the Kanab Boosters, a business owners group. The Boosters are selling the signs and small stickers for cars for between $2.50 and $4.50. 

The group hopes to raise enough money to take out newspaper ads throughout the state to promote the town as a diverse place to vacation.

…

Kanab is the only Utah governmental entity to pass the resolution, which was sent to cities all over Utah by the Salt Lake City-based Sutherland Institute, a conservative think tank. 

Earlier this week Sutherland President Paul Mero told the AP that studies show community problems such as crime, violence and poverty increase when family structures break down.

I question (as in ironically) the importance Mero places on intact families, so long as he’s busy teaching families to hate their gay and lesbian sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles.  But anyway…

That view was supported by Councilor Terril Honey who voted for the measure. Honey, who also is a local businessman, said it isn’t the council that is discriminatory, its the boosters.

He says that the poster and sticker campaign is likely to drive away families.

You gotta love how the bigot mind works.  Gay people have families too of course, and families have gay people in them.  And that never occurs to a jackass like Honey.  But…never mind…  The Everyone Welcome Here signs are discriminatory, because they will drive away people won’t go anywhere everyone is welcome.

I just have to face it…I’m doomed…

Loneliness Boosts Blood Pressure in Older Adults

TUESDAY, March 28 (HealthDay News) — Loneliness has now joined obesity and lack of exercise as a potential risk factor for hypertension.

New research shows that loneliness can add 30 points to a blood pressure reading for adults over the age of 50.

The study’s results have surprised everyone involved.

"The take-home message is that feelings of loneliness are a health risk, in that the lonelier you are, the higher your blood pressure. And we know that high blood pressure has all kinds of negative consequences," said lead researcher Louise Hawkley, a research scientist at the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago.

Her team published its findings in the April issue of Psychology and Aging.

Thing is…my blood pressure is just fine.  If anything it’s on the low side of just fine.  But then, they always take my blood pressure reading after I’ve spent about a half hour to an hour quietly zoning out in the waiting room. I hate sitting around waiting, and when it’s an inevitable thing I’ll just stare off into space and zone out.  It’s either that or climb the walls.  When I finally get called in to see the doctor I’m actually in a very mellow state.  But that’s not typically me. 

I had a long AIM conversation with a certain someone a few weeks ago…that might have been a good time to take my blood pressure reading…

All books can be indecent books
Though recent books are bolder,
For filth (I’m glad to say) is in
the mind of the beholder.
When correctly viewed,
Everything is lewd.
(I could tell you things about Peter Pan,
And the Wizard of Oz, there’s a dirty old man!)

-Tom Lehrer, "Smut" 

Okay…these people are nuts.  All this time I thought they were just a bunch of uptight prudes who think people shouldn’t actually enjoy sex because people shouldn’t actually enjoy anything.  But…no.  (Warning…link goes to WorldNetDaily) They really are crazy… 

‘Satanic’ art in Catholic Church exposed
Documentary links clergy sex abuse with occult imagery

Could the Roman Catholic Church’s sex abuse crisis be tied to embedded Satanic and occultic imagery in its artwork – some of it hundreds of years old?

That is the seemingly incredible thesis of a new documentary, "Rape of the Soul," made not by anti-Catholic bigots, but by devout followers of the Church.

Judith Reisman being one of them apparently.  This is the same lady who says that pornography produces erototoxins in the brain…

According to Dr Judith Reisman, pornography affects the physical structure of your brain turning you into a porno-zombie. Porn, she says, is an "erototoxin ", producing an addictive "drug cocktail " of testosterone, oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin with a measurable organic effect on the brain.

Erototoxins.   Erototoxins.  Well…somebody’s got brain damage that’s for sure…

The film, which is being released by Silver Sword International, contends a major cause of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church could be due to prolonged exposure to sexual and satanic images being incorporated into the religious art.

EEEK!

Experts are featured in the film to offer detailed accounts of the subconscious programming effects of the sex and occult images on the human brain and how it promotes sex, Satanism and the occult. Religious education materials, songbooks, children’s story books, devotionals and the Sunday Missals all have been found to contain embedded imagery.

EEEK! 

"These images, unrecognized by the untrained eye, can be a ticking time-bomb to an individual who is unaware of their presence, especially someone who is already predisposed to deviant sexual behavior," said Reisman.

EEEK!  EEEK!!

"Artists from DaVinci to Botticelli have embedded subliminal images into their art for centuries," said Calace. "In this case we found penises on crucifixes, anarchy symbols, swastikas, demonic faces and in modern works even the word ’sex’ encrypted into the images. The works in question include modern artists’ work currently on the covers of missalettes and hymnals that at this very moment sit in the pews of churches throughout the U.S. and on children’s religious teaching aids."

EEEK!  EEEK!!  EEEK!!!

Calace said, "’Rape of the Soul’ was created to heal the many that have suffered from these uninvited violations."

Therapy for victims of art museums, and grocery store fruit and vegitable counters will be forthcoming in a later program. 

Sex addiction.  Man…that’s some powerful stuff isn’t it?  Penises on crucifixes.  Demonic faces.  Anarchy symbols!  Ms. Reisman and Mr. Calace should get help.  How addicted to sex do you have to be to look at a crucifix and see a dick?

[Edited a Tad...]

My last apartment in Cockeysville had a real nice balcony, with an amazing view looking out over Hunt Valley.  I loved sitting out on it.  But since it was a second floor apartment, and the balcony right beside the entrance to the building, it didn’t have as much privacy as I’d have liked.  So one year I planted marigold and moon flower vines along the rails, which produced a lot of screening, but not quite enough, particularly in the fall and winter.  So I bought a big tacky plastic office plant, I think at Staples (yeah…they had that) and put it on the side of the balcony by the entrance.  It came in its own fake pot, with a little Spanish moss around the base of the plant to hide the fact that its trunk was nailed and hot glued to a piece of plywood.

The following spring, I noticed that the Spanish moss was disappearing.  At first I thought it was the march winds blowing some of it away.  But one morning I spied a little tufted titmouse struggling to free a piece of it and then I knew what was going on.  It was nest building time.  For the rest of that spring I watched while a variety of small birds methodically removed every last bit of Spanish moss from the pot of my plastic office plant.  The stuff doesn’t grow up here in Maryland, and the local birds seemed to think it was a rare find.  They got every last shred of it, like a bunch of wood workers picking over a stack of mahogany.  I watched tiny little birds ferociously struggling with the last few threads of it that were held fast by the hot glue at the base.  Finally I took a pair of scissors and cut the last bits of it free and within an hour it was gone.

I was dating Keith then, and the next time I went to visit him on Hilton Head I brought back a trash bag full of Spanish moss.  The next spring I kept my office plant stocked with it and the birds took every last bit of it I had.  Now I knew another way to attract birds to my front windows. 

It’s that time of year again, and nowadays I not only have front windows, I have a front yard, and I can be a bit more creative about attracting birds. One of the pure joys of owning a house is how much more connected to the nature around me I feel.  In most apartments I’ve lived in, bird feeding was just not allowed.  They do make a mess and you do have to stay on top of it or things will start looking trashy pretty quickly.  But it’s no chore to those of us who just like watching birds. 

Nowadays I buy a bag of Spanish moss from a local craft shop.  I put it out in a couple of old vases in my front yard by the tree.  The city birds aren’t quite as impressed by it, but it gets pretty well picked over by the time summer comes along.  And last year I added another product to my shelves.  My Japanese maple drops tons of little dead twigs every fall, which I’ve just bagged and put out with the leafs.  But last year I kept a few and when spring came around, broke them into slightly smaller twigs, about three to four inches, and put them into another vase beside the Spanish moss.  It got a little attention last year, but not as much as I’d hoped.  But it takes time to build a business.

I’ve had more activity from my feeders this winter then usual so maybe this nesting season my building supplies offering will get picked over a bit more.  I’m thinking about buying a nice hanging bird bath for the Spanish moss, and maybe the twigs.

Signs that spring is on the way…

• Robins singing outside my window at dawn…
• The magnolia trees on campus, and the plumb trees in my neighborhood are starting to blossom…
• The male goldfinches that come to my thistle seed feeders are starting to get their bright yellow spring and summer feathers…

I’ll know its spring when the swallows come back to the Institute parking deck.

A teenager has been murdered in Florida, apparently because he was mistaken by the killer for his gay friend, who was the real target…

NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla., March 24 — In what the authorities described as a possible Nazi hate crime, a man wearing a gas mask broke into a woman’s mobile home in this Tampa suburb early Thursday morning, slashed her face and arms, and fatally wounded a friend of her son by stabbing him in the neck.

The 45-year-old woman, Patricia Wells, who is white, told officers that she had been attacked because she dates a black man, the police said. A small compound occupied by neo-Nazis is next door to Ms. Wells’s home, and she said members of the group had previously threatened to kill her and her boyfriend.

A former member of the group, David Dirolf, 21, said in an interview that he had heard members threaten Ms. Wells and her son on several occasions. Ms. Wells’s son was a target because he is gay, Mr. Dirolf said, adding that he thought the 17-year-old boy who was stabbed had been mistaken for the son, who was not home.

Just got it into his mind one sunny day to go kill himself a gay teenager.  So he puts on his gas mask and breaks into the home where the kid lives, slashes his mother’s face and then stabs the kid he finds inside.  Only it was the wrong one.  Somehow, I doubt he’s loosing any sleep over that fact.  Just where do these guys get this notion that gay people are easy and fair game?  It wouldn’t be from crap like this by any chance would it…

GOP warned Welker in ‘03

A Loveland lawmaker under fire for sending a racially charged e-mail about black Hurricane Katrina victims was warned in 2003 by his own party about forwarding offensive material.

The admonition from the House speaker came after Rep. Jim Welker, R-Loveland, sent an e-mail quoting a conservative study that discussed lifestyles of gays and lesbians.

The article Welker forwarded claimed that gay men regularly ingest the urine and feces of their partners, leading to massive outbreaks of various diseases. It questioned why gays and lesbians were allowed to work with children, the elderly and in the food industry.

"The homosexual and lesbian behavior is not a healthy lifestyle and can even result in early death," Welker wrote after quoting the study.

"Our society worries about people wearing seat belts, losing weight, smoking, taking drugs and abusing alcohol. Where is our consistency?"

Welker said Friday that the e-mail the public received in November 2003 was not the one he wrote.

"Somebody changed it," he said, but added he could provide no details as it happened nearly three years ago.

However, the e-mail is nearly identical to a column Welker published in the Northern Colorado Courier two weeks later.

Homosexuals regularly ingest urine and feces, cause massive outbreaks of all kinds of diseases, and probably shoudn’t be allowed to work with children and old people, or in the food industry.  But y’all don’t go killing any of ‘em now…ya hear?