geographically challenged

I can't go anywhere without missing at least one turn in the directions, or going the wrong way, and I never, ever know which way is north, south, east or west. But! Big Brother has launched satellites, and Santa has given me a magic box, and now Big Brother and the magic box know where I am, how fast I am going, and how to get where I want to go! This is both genius and slightly terrifying, or at least paranoia-inducing.

I look forward to never being lost again. Truly.

Happy Holidays, yo!

outrageous

Just, I'm sputtering, this is so outrageous.



There is one organization fighting for women's reproductive health in Mississippi, and they are in need of an instant cash infusion. Please help if you can:

Planned Parenthood of Alabama (which also serves Mississippi)

Unearthed the sewing machine

...to make Morsbags, reusable shopping bags, which will serve as gift bags this xmas. My sewing skills, being unused for lo these many years, mean each bag takes more like an hour than 20 minutes, but mainly because every time I try to make a bobbin or thread the machine, it's like I'm reinventing the fucking wheel. Why can I not remember how to do it from one time to the next? I hope to bring down construction time with each new iteration. Perhaps one day, I will cross stitch witty sayings or initials or skulls-and-crossbones upon them, but for now, I'm lucky to turn 4 pieces of fabric and a mile of thread into something that holds other somethings. I'm also fortunate in that I inherited my Grandma's sewing supplies - ALL OF THEM - so not only do I have every sewing tool one could possibly need, I have at least three of them. Plus several bins of fabric. Take that, expensive gift bag industry! HaHA!

Herewith, Morsbag 1:



and Morsbag 2:

Bushco's Ugly Legacy

Part Eleventy Six Thousand:


From Black Mesa to the Western Shoshone's Mount Tenabo, the Bush extended corporation of thieves is seizing Indigenous lands in the final hours.

Upgrading the apparatus

People, I have made what I suspect is a life-changing home appliance purchase. First, the background. PoopMaster Ferris, the 9-year-old Siamese thug, has recently been diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome. As one might imagine, the weeks leading up to a diagnosis of feline IBS were fragrant in the extreme. Frankly, as a person not much inclined to cleaning, I was doing a lousy job of attending to the task at hand. Plus, my gag reflex is sensitive. Anyway. The recent regimen of antibiotics and steroids seemed to be working, until midday yesterday, when something apparently distressed his delicate GI system. This weekend's "pet messes" (as the cleaning industry so delicately refers to puddles of wretched stinking poop on my oriental rug) were absolutely soaked into the fibers. I dredged from my memory the recollection of an advertisement featuring a smiling blonde hausfrau in neatly pressed khakis (aren't they always?) happily toting around a Little Green Machine which appeared to suck up huge and horrific messes in an instant.

My friends, I hied myself to the Walmart, as I live in Buttcrack, Mississippi, and the only place one can find a vacuuming or cleaning device of any sort on a Sunday is the WalMart. I was determined to spend any amount of money up to and including the $200 currently in my checking account in order to avoid spending the evening on my knees trying to clean cat poop out of the carpet. I took a deep breath, plunged in, and purchased two - TWO - kinds of cat food in an effort to find one that does not cause the Beast's Bowel to be Irritable, and then I went to the vacuum aisle. Yes! Victory! A Bissell Little Green Machine, alleged to be "Green" as in eco-friendly, even. A bottle of pet-specific Bissell fluid was $20, but did I hesitate? I did not. The self-checkout revealed the $99.98 machine to, in fact, be on sale for $79.98, which I consider a sign that this, indeed, was the appliance for me.

I will pass over in silence the tedious details of cleaning, because, dear MAUDE, cleaning is boring, but I will summarize thus: in a short amount of time, with almost no effort on my part, my task was completed. The machine sits in the utility room, locked and loaded, ready for its next task. And I, my friends, will sleep a little easier tonight.

I love this barn.

Every time I drive past it, it cheers me up. Except for that one time, when it had a Haley Barbour sign on it. But then they took the sign down, and it is, again, a cheerful red barn.

thanks

thanks for the smallpox. thanks for the whiskey and the res. thanks for the boarding schools and the haircuts. thanks for forced relocations, the christianity, the dead languages. thanks for mount rushmore. thanks for the invisibility and the silence. thanks for erasing our grandmothers' names. thanks for the murder, rape, arson, and robbery. thanks for the lies. thanks for the genocide.