I Think

Come to me. we'll leave together.

It's my fondest desire to travel as my funds and my health allow. California is high on my list...no pun intended.

:sincere smile while looking down:

I'd love to show you and yours, Rags, my california too, and meet C.I. again, natch. Too bad, lack of proper funds. Did a painting of a photo I took in an antique shop in Gilroy, oh, ten or so years ago. It was across the street from the main garlic purveyor shop (forget the name but busting out with all manner of garlic oriented products). Not buying any of that, I wandered that main street, had a snack and went into the antique shoppe, full of stuff but empty of customers. I forget what time of year this was, let's say spring. The owner was sitting on a rocker with his immense cat, and I asked if I could take his photo. I'd send him the painting at this point, but by now he must be in his nineties and the store sold or taken over by others.

I think since I was there, Gilroy has added a lot of housing.

<wondering if it did rain in northern california in any useful way this weekend, think it was supposed to>

The heavy rains hit north of San Francisco, and we had some some dribbles - not enough to measure. I think our resevoirs ended with less water!

ugh - I was hoping some would get to the reservoirs..

Each time there is a high profile trial, I always feel, at the end, justice has been **** on. But it's an extension of the cultural rift that keeps us all fighting. Nobody can agree on what makes for a smooth operating society. Few there are, it often seems, able to stand and be wholly truthful, without getting slapped down or ignored, or both.

When my brother was murdered, it was open and shut that the killer's actions were deliberate. But, the law told me that the circumstances would make it hard to successfully prosecute. And, so, the killer was ordered to move out of the county. End of story. But, the man had killed my brother and his own wife, who were together in my brother's car. The two had split months earlier and the man was living with his new girlfriend. The woman was sister to two who were married into the family as an aunt and uncle and we had known her for at least a decade. She and my brother met at a bar a number of times and spent those evenings talking. The night they were killed, she acted very nervous and asked him to drive her home. Likely, my brother felt protective and agreed. As they stopped for a red light, he may not have thought much about the three quarter ton truck bearing down on them, possibly expecting it would go around. But the truck hit the little sports car two times, killing them both. In the months that followed, I met more than one person who thought the killing justified. I felt there ought to have been a trial to determine that.

Rocky does not like it when mrs edgarblythe and I have a conversation. He tries to drown our voices with barking.

Working today. Got to put the red stripes for fire zone. I don't love that job, but it's not a hard one.

Got to eat breakfast and hit the road. These days that consists of Cheerios, raw honey, a mix of real and almond milk, half a teaspoonful of Amazon Tonic III, sometimes flax seed and, in a separate dish, four tablespoons of pureed asparagus spears.

Such an interesting and varied diet.

Wait a minute... Red Stripe is a Jamaican beer. Your diet really is very interesting! Do you put the Red Stripe bottles out there in case of fire? Do people drink it and piss out the fire?

I forgot to list the turmeric. A teaspoonful, cooked as per the recipe for golden milk.

I've never heard of Red Stripe. As for striping the parking lot, I got about a third complete.

I have been unfriended by the local newspaper, on facebook. The Tomball Potpourri does not seem to believe in free speech. Instead, they want readers to cheer from the stands. About three times they made political statements on facebook. I commented. The first time, they deleted their post. I looked at their web site and found the same article buried, pretty much, and my comment deleted. The next two times, the same results. And, they no longer appear on my news feed on facebook.

Sorry, that made me laugh, EB, but only funny once, eh?
Does he like her as well as you? He just wants to be part of the conversation?

Pah, re the newspaper.

It's comical when Rocky does that, but it could be a problem if unchecked. He wants to take up with my wife more than she is willing to allow. He is too much underfoot for her. She is worried that he could make her fall. He is still pretty much a puppy and puppies tend to play a little rough. I noticed today that he has learned to lift his leg only about six inches off of the ground and that he is not yet marking territory.

That newspaper ain't hardly the only one in the us of a that doesn't believe in free speech.

"You're either with us or with the terrorists" and the USA shut its collective mouth.

It happens a lot there. It's a sheeple thing.

It's not just your part of the country, Ed. Don't you just love being treated like a baby by your government?

================

The Marvelous World of Freedom of Speech
by William Blum
April 11, 2013

So, the United States and its Western partners have banned Iranian TV from North America and in various European countries. Did you hear about that? Probably not, if you’re not on the mailing list of PressTV, the 24-hour English-Language Iranian news channel. According to PressTV:

The Iranian film channel, iFilm, as well as Iranian radio stations, have also been banned from sensitive Western eyes and ears, all such media having been removed in February from the Galaxy 19 satellite platform serving the United States and Canada.

In December the Spanish satellite company, Hispasat, terminated the broadcast of the Iranian Spanish-language channel Hispan TV. Hispasat is partly owned by Eutelsat, whose French-Israeli CEO is blamed for the recent wave of attacks on Iranian media in Europe.

The American Jewish Committee has welcomed these developments. AJC Executive Director David Harris has acknowledged that the committee had for months been engaged in discussions with the Spaniards over taking Iranian channels off the air.[1]

A careful search of the Lexis-Nexis data base of international media reveals that not one English-language print newspaper, broadcast station, or news agency in the world has reported on the PressTV news story since it appeared February 8. One Internet newspaper, Digital Journal, ran the story on February 10.

The United States, Canada, Spain, and France are thus amongst those countries proudly celebrating their commitment to the time-honored concept of freedom of speech. Other nations of “The Free World” cannot be far behind as Washington continues to turn the screws of Iranian sanctions still tighter.

In his classic 1984, George Orwell defined “doublethink” as “the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” In the United States, the preferred label given by the Ministry of Truth to such hypocrisy is “American exceptionalism”, which manifests itself in the assertion of a divinely ordained mission as well as in the insistence on America’s right to apply double standards in its own favor and reject “moral equivalence”.

The use of sanctions to prevent foreign media from saying things that Washington has decided should not be said is actually a marked improvement over previous American methods. For example, on October 8, 2001, the second day of the US bombing of Afghanistan, the transmitters for the Taliban government’s Radio Shari were bombed and shortly after this the US bombed some 20 regional radio sites. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld defended the targeting of these facilities, saying: “Naturally, they cannot be considered to be free media outlets. They are mouthpieces of the Taliban and those harboring terrorists.”[2] And in Yugoslavia, in 1999, during the infamous 78-day bombing of the Balkan country which posed no threat at all to the United States, state-owned Radio Television Serbia (RTS) was targeted because it was broadcasting things which the United States and NATO did not like (like how much horror the bombing was causing). The bombs took the lives of many of the station’s staff, and both legs of one of the survivors, which had to be amputated to free him from the wreckage.[3]

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2013/04/11/the-marvelous-world-of-freedom-of-speech/

More striping today.

No songs bring me back to the 60s like Phil Ochs, particularly the album, Rehearsals for Retirement.

I almost lost my truck, yesterday. An older guy in a bigger pick up pulled out in front of me. I was sitting sideways in the street, by the time I stopped. He was apologetic, but nothing beats good insurance.

Local Republican politicians are just short of promising to take the Texas National Guard to DC to kick Obama's ass.

I like having Rocky in the yard. People are afraid to come in the yard. He's the closest thing to a watch dog I have ever had. Not that I encourage him to act aggressively. But I better put a beware of sign out there.

The weather is so nice, I have run out of excuses for working at my projects.

The moringa trees suffered severe damage, due to the freezing cold of the past winter. Now that our temperature has moderated in the seventies I can try to coax them back to life. It is said that the more you cut these plants the more they like it. I cut them all to less than three feet. Now it is up to them.

One of the gumball trees may be dead, but its not certain yet. It has been slowly losing out anyway, being squeezed between other trees. I won't miss it.

After reading up on Aspergers Syndrome I see that the description fits my childhood and early adult life to a tee. I had for a long time suspected some form of autism in the equation, but was not able to fit it in the puzzle. So, the piling on by certain people only re-enforced what was already a problem. Accepting this revelation casts everything else in a different light. I should have sought professional help when I left home. But, I was too ignorant and fearful to know.

You seem to be having a lot of trouble with your vehicle/s ed.

I think it stems from your "hit the road" atittude.