For the past couple weeks I’ve been regaling The Partner with my desires to grow fungi for the pure awesomeness of their mycelium.

Did you know mushrooms could save the world?

… when I see a store with notebooks for sale, I always stop. I examine. I flip the pages and figure out if there is anything new. I do this regardless of current company, country, or convenience. I am a social introvert, but will stop a complete stranger on the street if they’re sporting an unknown notebook.

Rands In Repose: Sweet Decay

Will you resent me for this website? Absolutely. And I have spent hours and days and months of my life considering this, weighing your resentment against the good that can come from being open and honest about what it’s like to be your mother, the good for you, the good for me, and the good for other women who read what I write here and walk away feeling less alone. And I have every reason to believe that one day you will look at the thousands of pages I have written about my love for you, the thousands of pages other women have written about their own children, and you’re going to be so proud that we were brave enough to do this. We are an army of educated mothers who have finally stood up and said pay attention, this is important work, this is hard, frustrating work and we’re not going to sit around on our hands waiting for permission to do so. We have declared that our voices matter.

These are the stories of our lives as women….

dooce.com

Artist Robert Shetterly has painted portraits of over 100 individuals who have impacted the US political scene throughout history up to the present day. The website features an image of each portrait along with a short biographical sketch of the person. The portraits and biographies have been made into a book while the portraits themselves remain as a group in a traveling exhibit.

Individuals represented include Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King, Jr., Amy Goodman, Shirley Chisholm, and Dennis Kucinich, among many others.

AmericansWhoTellTheTruth.org

Goodbye to the double standard . . .
[...]
Goodbye to the toxic viciousness . . .
Carl Bernstein’s disgust at Hillary’s “thick ankles.” Nixon-trickster Roger Stone’s new Hillary-hating 527 group, “Citizens United Not Timid” (check the capital letters). John McCain answering “How do we beat the bitch?” with “Excellent question!” Would he have dared reply similarly to “How do we beat the black bastard?” For shame.

Goodbye to the HRC nutcracker with metal spikes between splayed thighs. If it was a tap-dancing blackface doll, we would be righteously outraged—and they would not be selling it in airports. Shame.

Goodbye to the most intimately violent T-shirts in election history, including one with the murderous slogan “If Only Hillary had married O.J. Instead!” Shame.

Goodbye to Comedy Central’s “Southpark” featuring a storyline in which terrorists secrete a bomb in HRC’s vagina. I refuse to wrench my brain down into the gutter far enough to find a race-based comparison. For shame.

Goodbye to the sick, malicious idea that this is funny. This is not “Clinton hating,” not “Hillary hating.” This is sociopathic woman-hating. If it were about Jews, we would recognize it instantly as anti-Semitic propaganda; if about race, as KKK poison. [...] (All emphasis in original.)

If you’ve got the time, read it in full.

From the beginning, I was in favor of Kucinich. Then I heard Gravel speak and I was torn between the two as they were the only candidates to so closely align with my own politics. Now, Kucinich is out and I’m not so sure about Gravel’s future. Being left with only two choices doesn’t feel like much of a choice.

Indiana’s primary election isn’t until May, but if I’m stuck with either Clinton or Obama, my vote will go to Clinton because when compared, Obama is woefully inexperienced and we’ve got some major fucking problems.

[via Pea]

Of course I’ll be the first to pull the lever for Clinton if it’s Hillary v. Rudy in the general election. Standing on principle is noble, but Giuliani eats power for breakfast and shits crazy in the afternoon. [Defective Yeti]

Just popping in to say, No, I still have not uploaded any of the shots from the drag show two weeks ago. I’ve got about 4GB of hard disk space left, and with Windows selectively choosing not to recognize the DVD burner so I can get more space and get the shots off the camera disk, it takes time. Soon, I promise.

la·bor /láybər/ n. & v. (Brit. labour) · n. 1 a physical or mental work; exertion. b such work considered as supplying the needs of a community. 2 workers, esp. manual, considered as a class or political force.

As both a class and political force laborers fought for the eight hour work day, the two-day weekend, minimum wages, paid holidays, the end of child labor*, the right of collective bargaining and the right to form unions.

Labor Day in the US

Labour Day around the world

ALF-CIO’s 2007 Executive PayWatch

*In some countries; other countries are still struggling.

The first time I repeated a row I shouldn’t have and was not too far along so I just ripped out and started again. Second time I screwed up the k2tog but leave on needle and knit another stitch thing and ended up with a huge hole and for the life of me I just could not get it corrected. I ripped back to my screw up and tried to go from there, but it wasn’t happening. I’ll be glad when I finish this square and can move on to a new stitch pattern because I’m getting a bit tired of ribbing. Part of the problem is that I’m a thrower not a picker, but attempting to learn the faster way (which also feels more comfortable for me) during a project isn’t a great idea.

Here’s a visual of what I’m talking about:

I really need to practice continental knitting.

On to the music!

This week’s FRT is via Pandora Radio. I put in Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and here’s what came up:

1. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy — I See A Darkness
2. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds — Black Betty
3. The Magic Numbers — Wheels On Fire
4. Devendra Banhart — Autumn’s Child
5. Refrigerator — Sara Carter
6. Ruckus — Same In Any Language
7. Dinosaur Jr. — Quick Sand
8. The Decemberists — The Crane Wife 3
9. Amy Millan — Baby I
10. Tall Firs — Don’t Complain

Old age is a good time to get to know your parents. They’re stuck in a hospital bed and you’re stuck in a vinyl chair next to the hospital bed and there’s nothing much to do but reach closure with the past. Nobody feels judgmental, at least my dad doesn’t during the cogent hours, so you can talk without filters or fear.

I asked him why he and Mom never gave my [sic] grief about being a fiction writer. I mean, I turned 35 living in a tent, illegally squatting, on Forest Service land, working as a gardener for the Rockefellers three days a week and washing dishes in an Italian restaurant three days a week to make enough money so I could move indoors and write all winter. If my daughter is still homeless by choice at 35 I will personally drag her by the ear into an employment agency. I’ll say, “Grow up, for Chrissake. It’s time to get real.”

“Why didn’t you and Mom tell me that,” I asked Dad. “You must have thought it.”

“You still had a dream,” Dad said. “We couldn’t tell you that was wrong.”

Only now, when he has to be fed by hand and he craps himself daily, did I get around to thanking him. Or even realizing what he and Mom did. It’s too late to thank Mom.

[Read more]

PG was founded in 1971 by Michael Hart with the mission of “encouraging the creation and distribution of ebooks”. The goals are to create a digital library of electronic texts that are (relatively [there are operating costs]) free, easily accessible via various formats, and are readable, searchable, and quotable. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3) organization that operates on a reasonable budget–the bulk of funds going to servers and other tech fees.

There are lots of ways to volunteer, but I chose to be a proofreader (and sometimes monetary donator) because that’s where I’m able to make the most impact. I found Plucker, a program which enables offline viewing of HTML documents and ebooks on my PDA, and have been using PG more. Plus, I’m one of those anal folks who will read a book and find an error and it will drive me crazy that the editor didn’t catch it.

Proofreading for PG is done through Distributed Proofreaders, which breaks up the process of turning a paper book into an ebook into various stages. I’m a newbie, so I’m a level-1 proofreader. If I decide to continue with the project, I’ll move into level-2 proofreading and from there can move into the formatting levels. For the geek in me, it’s fun work.

If you find yourself with free time and you have a love for books, you might give proofreading for PG a try.