I'm so very, very weak...

Who knew?

But so what? Life goes on. Thanks to all who kept checking in to see if anything was happening here, even the ones who think I'm an idiot but for some reason were compelled to check here every day anyway. (I check FD daily, so why not.)

I've got a new location I've been experimenting with and I'm not sure if it's ready for Prime Time (in fact, I'm pretty sure it's not) but that's the way it goes. So for good or bad or ugly, here it is.

I lied

I know I said the chorus of exploding right-wingnut heads would be enough to keep me amused for awhile, but really, uh... I lied. It's not enough. I'm tired. For good or ill, this koolade drinker is riding off on her sparkly pink Unicorn of Hope & Change and JoyJoyJoy. Thanks for reading...

Slow blogggging

For the first time in months I get an entire weekend off, a LONG weekend no less, and I was looking forward to it. I was daydreaming about it at work yesterday, when someone came up to the checkout and sneezed harshly and wetly, straight into my face, one of those vicious, ugly sneezes that sounds like "Ah-Phhwomphff!" Gah! I was assaulted by a shit-mist of slime-ridden spittle.

Predictably, today I was struck down in the prime of my long weekend with a savage cold that's impaired my ability to think or blog in a way that makes any sense. So until medication arrives, it might be slow going around here for a day or so.

ELECTION UPDATE: Fasten your seatbelts...

On bullshit and breaks

In marathoning it's called "hitting the wall". I don't know if there's a blogging equivalent, but after 10 days of frenzied blogging in the wake of Dr. M's OC appointment and the barrage of batshit bullshit that followed, I was suddenly exhausted. I couldn't stand to read or even think about one more word of the steaming loads of bullshit being dumped by the "busload" on blogs and in the media over this topic and the tangential abortion issue. I was tired, man.

Normally bullshit is great incentive to blog -- it shouldn't be ignored because there's a chance that some unsuspecting person out there might believe it. Bullshit should be shot down whenever and wherever it's found and its sanctimonious, stupid and self-righteous propagators ridiculed with gusto. But these people are first and foremost propaganda-bots who never budge from their script, even in the face of evidence that contradicts them. In advertising we used to call it "Wearing down their resistance with repetition". The same kind of psychology is at work with anti-abortion propagandists -- knowing full well that the numbers aren't on their side, their only hope is to wear down resistance with an endless loop of lies. To literally exhaust people into seeing things their way.

But it wasn't just the hysterical jabbering of fetus fetishists that was getting to me, it was the entire media circus that played up the "controversy" and "outrage" and the media's distinct anti-choice bias. It wasn't my paranoid imagination -- a perusal of the story through Google shows a 2 to 1 anti-choice bias in the MSM (that obviously doesn't include dubious sources like lifesite and other right-wing nuthouses, or published "letters to the editor"). The Ottawa Citizen's David Warren alone generated numerous shrieking screeds on the topic, culminating with yesterday's hysterical pronouncement that the world is collapsing under the weight of moral decay, and it's all the fault of Dr. Morgentaler and his "gliberal" supporters. Because "moral order is easy to tear down, hard to build":

"While I unburdened myself last week of my contempt for Canada's governess-general, her chief justice, her prime minister and other, undesignated officials -- in the affair of what I have come to call the "Order of Morgentaler" -- I'm not sure the people of Canada have yet been sufficiently condemned, and I will devote this week's column to rectifying that oversight."

Well, you go girl!

Anyway, the break is over and my energy is renewed. I'll mop the floor with Warren later, after I fuel up with caffeine and outrage. Then...

Bring it!

6th foot a hoax

The 6th foot that was supposedly found floating around in some Lower Mainland swamp turned out to be a hoax:

"What was believed to be the sixth human foot to wash up on the shores of British Columbia in recent months proved to be a fake, authorities said Thursday.

A "skeletonized animal paw" had been placed in a sock and athletic shoe that was packed with dried seaweed, the British Columbia Coroners Service announced."

So now the tally is back to five feet found floating. Since these things seem to turn up every couple of months or so, that leaves plenty of time for some soleful satire.

Gentlemen, start your thesauruses...

Monday March 31 is Civility in Progressive Blogging Day.

Progressive bloggers are often scolded (there's just no other word) by our conservative counterparts for playing fast and loose with language, specifically the *liberal* use of profanity. We do it because sometimes all the words in Webster's are insufficient to express our response to the ongoing stupidity that oozes out of Wingnuttia on a daily basis. A judiciously-employed curse here and there helps to get the point across with feeling, but ultimately leads to pants-pissingly shrill accusations that progressives are potty-mouths who swear because they lack the syntactic finesse to express themselves any other way.

That's fucking ridiculous: our use of profanity is no reflection on our deft semantic skills. We can be civil, we just don't want to. And we'll prove it: CC throws down the gauntlet:

"Canada's Retard-o-sphere (aka The Blogging Tories) are constantly pissing and moaning about how we leftists ... well, we progressives ... well, OK, me and my two co-bloggers ... are terrible, horrible, no good, very bad people because we use the kind of language normally reserved for late-night porn or private sessions between Father Murphy and little Billy in the confession booth long after the parishioners have fled the building.

Conversely, we on this side of the sanity line constantly accuse the BTs of being pig-ignorant hypocrites or just flat-out lying douchebags. Hence, this challenge, in which I want the members of Canada's progressive blogging commmunity to be calm, cool and collected for a whole 24-hour stretch, while everyone over there in the Wank-o-sphere tries to be honest for the same period."

CC's challenge is kind of a double-edged sword. For our part, all we have to do is cut out the swearing and gratuitous insults for a day. It might be the first day in over a year that I don't type the word "nitwit" at some point -- unless, of course, I'm pointing out that it would be incivil to call so-and-so a "nitwit". But never mind that -- Wingnuttia faces a far more rigorous task: be honest. That means:

No posts claiming that fetuses are slaves, and feminists are today's white supremacists;

No posts claiming snow is proof that Global Warming is a hoax;

No posts about how Hitler was a "leftist";

No posts deriding lie-beral libtard leftard moonbats.

Etc.

ACR is in, so is TGB. We can do this -- can they? Speaking of Global Warming, the expression "a snowball's chance in hell" comes to mind.

Nuts about the Net

Attention fellow bloggers, message board posters, gamers, haxxors, trolls and other miscellaneous internet denizens: we may be getting our own mental health illness, recognized by the DSM-V:

"Internet addiction appears to be a common disorder that merits inclusion in DSM-V. Conceptually, the diagnosis is a compulsive-impulsive spectrum disorder that involves online and/or offline computer usage (1, 2) and consists of at least three subtypes: excessive gaming, sexual preoccupations, and e-mail/text messaging (3). All of the variants share the following four components: 1) excessive use, often associated with a loss of sense of time or a neglect of basic drives, 2) withdrawal, including feelings of anger, tension, and/or depression when the computer is inaccessible, 3) tolerance, including the need for better computer equipment, more software, or more hours of use, and 4) negative repercussions, including arguments, lying, poor achievement, social isolation, and fatigue."

Sound like anyone you know?

On the upside, I notice the article doesn't mention blogging specifically, as it does gaming, messaging and "sexual preoccupations". However, the SoCon Blogs with their feverish preoccupation with all things gay might well fall into the third category.

They're coming to take you away, SoCons, they're coming to take you away.

Most Americans don't read blogs

It looks like the average non-blogging person out there just isn't that into us. According to a new Harris poll, most Americans (and it's safe to assume similar numbers of Canadians) never read political blogs -- only one in five reads them "regularly":

"Despite the attention given to political blogs, only one in five Americans read them regularly, a research firm said Monday.

In fact, 56% of Americans say they never read blogs that discuss politics, and just under a quarter say they read them several times a year, Harris Interactive found in a survey of more than 2,300 U.S. adults."

And I didn't see this one coming:

Surprisingly, those who read blogs are less likely to be young adults. Some 19% of adults aged 18 to 31 read political blogs regularly, defined as several times a month or more; and only 17 % of people aged 32 to 43 say the same."

Among older adults, more than a quarter aged 63 and older read political blogs regularly, along with 23% of adults aged 44 to 62, Harris found."

Hello, sad middle-aged housecoat-clad cheeto-chomping Loserguy. (As opposed to my own vision of loveliness, suited up as I am in track pants, an oversized gray hoodie and a red baseball cap... and, yes Bruce... Crocs. Red ones.)

The Harris poll also revealed something borderline alarming: conservatives read blogs more than liberals, and have more faith in what they read. That wouldn't be the end of the world if they were reading liberal or non-partisan blogs, but they're reading LGF and Michelle Malkin, and on this side of the border, SDA... unquestionably frightening, the only variable is degree. Still, it's encouraging to hear that it's only 1 in 5.

Oh well, so ends my anxiety over font size.

The Anonymity Factor

Every 6 months or so there's a furious little blogospheric dust-up over "anonymity" and the outing of a blogger's real identity as "punishment" for some real or perceived insult. Interestingly, it's almost always right-wing bloggers doing the outing, authoritarian pricks that they are -- I think last time out it was Werner Patels. This time the guy doing the outing is one "Mike Brock", who exposed not only the real name, but the place of employment of a commenter I'd describe as "mildly offensive". Sensitive!

I don't have time to say much other than "It sucks, and people who do it suck", but I'll have more to say when I get home later. Meanwhile, Red Tory has an entertaining take on this thing, go read.

New blog for AZ

Toronto Star columnist Antonia Zerbisias has a new blog, "Broadsides", where she'll be blogging about feminism, fitness, and probably a lot of other F's. Check it out. And welcome back to Blogistan, AZ!