Wednesday evening, we had a couple of waves of storms pass through. The sky tried, unsuccessfully, to clear between the two cells. When a bank of tall clouds moved in front of the sun, I went inside to get my camera, in hopes of getting in on some crepuscular ray action. It’s subtle, but it’s there in the second and third photos. There is also a nice mix of thin, whispy clouds and tall, dense ones. The first photo is of a neat double arch formation that hovered over my neighbor’s barn.
This is via Ms. Lea, who likes to watch spelling bees.
Come to find out, there’s a word (of course there is!) for the aforementioned parroting of nonsense: psittacism.
Psittacism is speech or writing that appears mechanical or repetitive in the manner of a parrot. More generally it is a pejorative description of the use of words which appear to have been used without regard to their meaning.
Well, then. I seem to be suffering a plague of asschapeaux (yes, that is the correct collective noun for a group of assberets) who are afflicted with this terrible malady. God help me. The only thing that keeps me from completely losing my mind is the knowledge that I am not alone. So, for all of you who are also fighting an unwinnable war with empty platitude-spewing asschapeaux, I give you psittacism. Putting a name to the symptoms doesn’t solve the problem, but it does lessen the pain-in-the-ass somewhat.
If I hear one more person say that the soldiers in Iraq are “fighting for our freedom,” I am going to scream. Iraq was never, ever a threat to the U.S. That it may now pose a threat to us is our own damned fault, but that still doesn’t justify the ignorant parroting, ad nauseum, of the “they’re fighting for our freedom” party line. That’s a big, fat, fucking lie
And don’t get me started on Iran. Why on earth are we ramping ourselves up for another war when we are stretched too thinly as it is? It’s deja vu all over again, and I’m feeling a little nauseated.
In unrelated news from the Things That Make the Baby Shelly Cry file, I noticed that Ford has stopped with the illiterate “less stops at the pump” nonsense. Their newest commercial is grammatically correct. Praise be! Now, if only the “manly men crave greasy slabs o’ meaty meat” trend in food advertising would just go the hell away, I might be able to sleep at night.
Speaking of I Will Survive… I absolutely adore REM’s version.
Edit: This periodically disappears, but it’s back, so I’m updating the post. I wouldn’t have bothered, except I get a ridiculous amount of traffic from people looking for this video. Also, it’s fucking hilarious.
oil on newspaper adhered to 90lb Stonehenge paper
11 1/4 x 15 inches
This is just a base coat, but until it dries, I can’t do much more with it. The background colors will probably end up a little more muted and the bowl shape and color need to be fine-tuned. After it’s completely dry, I’ll add collage bits–probably some sort of planty thing.
The weather yesterday was turbulent. High temperature and lots of atmospheric instability led to an impressive storm system blowing through in the late afternoon. Owen County and Monroe County were both under tornado warnings, so I decided to stay at work until the storms passed. I’m glad I did, because as I drove home, the sky was amazing. As I was heading out of town, I noticed a patch of mammatus clouds. I tried to get a couple of shots from my car, while traffic was stopped, but they didn’t turn out very well. Luckily, the clouds held together until I got to a place where I could safely pull over.
25 May 2006, Curry Pike, Monroe County, Indiana
25 May 2006, Intersection of Ratliff Rd. and Starnes Rd., Monroe County, Indiana
A patch of mammatus clouds had begun to pull apart into elongated forms. The frothy clouds in the lower left made the sky look like a turbulent ocean, reminding me of a nineteenth-century shipwreck painting.
Sunset 25 May 2006
Eastern Sky at Sunset 25 May 2006
The sunset was reflecting off the tops of clouds in the east, and the pink glow showed through the clouds.
Belt of Venus 22 May 2006
A spider has taken up residence outside my bedroom window. I noticed that she’d created an egg sack, so I’ve been keeping an eye on the situation. The babies just hatched out a couple of days ago. The huge black spider was killed yesterday. I wonder if it thought the hatchlings would make a tasty snack? Whatever its reasons for entering the mamma spider’s territory, it was a deadly mistake.
I spent some time this afternoon transcribing and scanning a few more letters. Things have gotten a little testy between Esther and Richard. I really wish there were rough drafts of her replies included in these letters, because I’d love to know what she wrote to him. The letters from Richard stopped soon after, and it would be nice to know why. It’s getting toward the end of the school year for both of them, so I expect that whatever came between them was resolved over the summer break, and that we will never know what happened.
Recently, there seems to be a recurring theme in several of the online fora I read–from blogs to mail lists to newsgroups–wherein someone in possession of unflattering private information about another person decides to share that knowledge publicly. I can only think of one purpose for doing so: it is a form of punishment. It’s a way for the aggressor–and it is an act of aggression–to get back at the aggressee by publicly humiliating her for being noncompliant.
On the surface, it may seem like a small thing–just one person getting a jab in at another’s expense. That’s the insidious beauty of it, though, because what lurks beneath is, I think, pretty heinous. The underlying motivation comes from the aggressor recognizing that he has lost control of the aggressee. Public shaming is then called upon to bring the wayward party to heel. Moreover, the aggressor can do this while presenting himself as the victim. Flawless victory! It’s perfect, because it not only allows the aggressor to bully himself back into a position of control, but it also dehumanizes and devalues the aggressee in the eyes of others.
Except that that’s not always the case. Sometimes, folks see through the ugly little charade, and when they do, the true aggressor and aggressee are pretty easy to identify.
