At this year’s Christmas, I’m happy to associate myself with my colleague, the good John Gideon of VotersUnite.org who offered these well-writ holiday thoughts at the top of last night’s DVN:
As well, I share the following from a moving note sent to me by another colleague today, one who happens to be a great, longtime civil rights champion. I believe his thoughts, and thanks, are due to all of those who have helped to support our work here at The BRAD BLOG and have made us a regular stop on an increasingly busy super highway, over the past year and more…
I want to say an official thank you from the civil rights community for all you have done to protect the right to vote and help knock down the numerous administrative barriers that still exist.
Please take his kind words sent to me, as my sincere thoughts sent to you, in hopes we can all celebrate someday — and perhaps even for a few hours this Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever holiday you enjoy — what we all continue to strive for, in our long, strange journey together…
Back to the struggle for truth !
Happy Nekomimi Day! (or other holiday of your choice 🙂 )
Next up: Hpw about getting the Feds off of the Election Industrial Complex “treadmill to nowhere”…?
…—… us fix it! You get the added benefit of love.
Hey, Santa forgot my lump of coal this year! 😛
Merry Christmas everyone!
Hi everyone! From the heart of Europe, all my very best wishes for the coming year. May we finally witness the end of war, that’s my wish. And, 99, when I was a little boy I hoped for switches and coal, thinking (hoping) I might get an electric train set to go with them 😉
I was wishing for the lump of coal, hoping I might get my wealthy socialist gentleman to go with it. Alas, neither was forthcoming.
Guess I’ll just keep dreaming. 😛
Wealthy socialists are a pretty rare commodity, I fear – any socialist who is wealthy is by definition corrupted. I see it here every day. Perhaps a wealthy old hippy would be more to your liking…
Yes, yes, indeed. He will THINK he’s a socialist, and that’s good enough for me. 8)
There you go, 99 – find someone who actually thinks – the rest will work itself out. In the event, as the Brits might say, smoke a couple of tokes of salvia divinorum – that will reverse the poles in your universe, and it’s still legal. I encountered the Green Goddess almost 4 years ago, one time, and she changed how I comprehend my fellos beings. Just make sure you have a “sitter”! It made DMT seem like a kiddy ride in an amusement park. Remarkable! And, all you admin folks, it’s perfectly legal almost everywhere!!! Go for it – this isn’t like smoking banana peels or hydrangia leaves!
Love and Peace in the New Year from the fat old, balding Yippie in Prague
I’ve looked up this wondrous substance and it seems I would need that rich hippie/yippie to stay mellow on it!
I wish everyone all that love and peace stuff, too, only, er, I have a bad feeling we ain’t any of us going to be getting much of either for a while. Maybe the love, but not enough peace to do the loving….
Hard to wish a happy new year with so much loss tumbling down on everyone now.
My 55-year-old brother-in-law parts manager for a car dealership won’t have a company to work at as of 1/1/09.
Gonna be like that everywhere this year. 🙁
I feel great sympathy for your brother-in-law, and for the legions of others in similar straits. I’m very fortunate to have found a (so far, knock on wood) safe niche. It’ll never get me rich, but the vast gulf, nay, abyss, between Czech and English makes fine translators essential, especially as the Czech Republic takes over the presidency of the EU for the next six months (that’s a very scary prospect – the Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, feels that Maggie Thatcher and Ronnie Reagan were the two greatest political figures and economic geniuses in history, and that environmentalism is nothing but one more religion), so it would seem that I may weather this perfect storm, which was of course brought on by Republican hubris, greed, and plain old evil. Just in case, though, I’m refreshing my Russian and my French. There has to be work out there for polyglots.
Brad, 99, Czaragorn, et al,
I wish you, & the rest of the fine folks here, the “peace of the season”…god, how I wish I believed it were possible in this god-forsaken madhouse of a world.
Gee, both my great-grandparents hail from the Czech Republic…I’d love to visit it before the human species blows itself to smithereens.
I just read Marty Kaplan’s ‘Center-Right Hype vs. Center-Left Data”. Wish I had an email for the man so I could thank him for the effort, but even the results he cites miss the mark, in my humble opinion. Seems to me (just fuckin me, no polls…I should believe polls, too? Nah.) that this infamous 1% who grip the puppet-strings of the world in their greedy little finely-manicured hands are darker & more soul-less than a hellful of satans, may god forgive them. That is, if he ever wakes the hell up from whatever oblivion he’s been in.
Where are you, little cartoon guys with those milk-bottles full of sunshine?? The world needs you badly, goddammit.
So with these cheerful thoughts I raise a glass of metaphorical & heavily rum-laced nog to ya, with more thanks than I can express, for keeping me relatively sane through this twisted carnival.
And I’d settle for one of those wealthy socialist hippies right about now, too. As long as he picked up his own socks.
Amor y Paz.
Oh, hell, yes, Joan! Definitely has to pick up his own socks. xoxoxox
You know if you find roaches in your car or bedroom, you can always send them in! And to those of you who have already sent in your roaches from our Kitchen Cleaning show, I thank you!
What kind of roaches, Phil? 🙂
Czaragorn, #10.
I think they are about to, or already have, made salvia divinorum illegal in the US. I think it is a bit intense for most people (myself included). Think about the whole 3d world flattening into a plane, and your head is detached from your body. You feel pressure on the back of your legs, and you realize you are sitting down. And there is an odd (mild) sensation like the needles and pins you get from your feet falling asleep over your whole body.
Do they really have to make everything illegal. Sheesh. Why, for instance, did they make Qat (or Khat) illegal here. That one makes me mad, not that any cop would even know what it looks like, or how it is consumed, or what (actual) effects it has. There is little or no known abuse in the US. Drugs don’t cause crime, making them illegal does. Look at Mexico.
The same percentage of the population uses drugs irregardless of their legality (see Amsterdam). Yes, “irregardless” is in the dictionary, so it is a word, albeit hanging under a cloud of confusion from so many people claiming you can only say “regardless,” and that the alternative is not proper. Phooey.
Wow, what a rambling comment. Merry Christmas, Hanukkah, etc.
cnn has stopped the ap scroll?
It’s time for the civilized world to turn its back on the pariah state Israel for its continuing, continuous crimes against the Palestinians.
Boycott Israel, boycott Israel.
#17 Chris,
I liked your rant, being a confirmed ranter myself. So phooey indeed, irregardless.
Your first paragraph reminded me of an incident from my “wild youth” (which was really pretty tame, all things considered).
1972..I was 25. We were on a road trip to Mexico, fleeing our plain-vanilla life in New Jersey, some friends & I traveling in a camper, many adventures along the way.
(including a stop in Mobile, Alabama where I got “baptized” in a big tank of water at Brother Terrell’s Revival…a story in itself, but anyway..)
We stopped in Atlanta at a friend’s house. It being 1972, weed was as normal as morning coffee, so..Emily making dinner..music on the stereo. ..Pete & I talking..all pleasantly high..a nice, normal summer evening.
Only at some point I want to reply to Pete but I can’t feel my mouth. The music fades, my vision goes spotty..I realize ‘Gee, I can’t feel my body. In fact…ALL my senses are gone. I have consciousness–of a sort–but no contact with my physical body.
A little bit of panic…I mean, I was thinking ‘Am I still on the stool? Maybe I’ve fallen over, can’t tell. Maybe I’m slumped on the counter, drooling..eew, embarrassing….are they concerned?..maybe they think I’m dead..oh shit! Maybe I AM dead! How do ya know?!’
I was fretting for a while (translation: scared shitless) about how to get back in contact with my senses..I kinda missed them. It was sort of like being lost in the dark in an unfamiliar neighborhood without a map. Well, more like floating bodyless in an unfamiliar neighborhood, I guess..who knew WHAT the hell was lurking out there? I do remember thinking ‘Why didn’t I pay more attention to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, goddammit?’
There’s no grand ending to this I’m afraid. Heh, sorry to lead you on. Just one of those pointless, aging-hippie stories. (oh man, I’m probably sounding like Grandpa on The Simpsons). If God or whomever revealed any great secrets like the Meaning of Life he snatched it right back, the fucker.
At some point I told myself ‘Calm down Joan, it’s just the weed, it’ll pass..or not..maybe you’re dead but..too late! Nothing you can do about it now but let yourself go & if you’re lucky maybe it’ll flow along like a nice gentle baby ride at the county fair.’
I know I had some kind of “Epic, Timeless Experience” after that (come on, admit it, you guys of my generation, you know what I mean) ..but all I actually remembered of it was the sensation of being catapulted through space at a great speed through a tunnel (don’t recall any light at the end of it, though). Yeah, I know..”near-death experience”. Maybe..I dunno. Obviously I came back, not dead, still upright on the stool. Pete said he figured I just wanted to be alone with my thoughts. The odd thing is, from NJ to GA: pleasant but uneventful. This was the only time I sailed into Neverland for some reason.
One of my more epic hippie-days experiences (to me at least). But ha! Gad, I was so thankful I didn’t drool.
Jesus, sorry that was so damn long.
Happy Holidays, all you commie, pinko, tree-hugging, queer-loving, tin-foil-hat-wearing, dear-to-my-heart misfits. I loves ya.
Hey, Joan, that was not damn long: it was great, and I oughta know, I oughta know, dear.
I think you had to have gotten something, somehow, a little stronger than just pot there…. I come from Mendocino, land of the killer dope, and it doesn’t get that far out….
Agent 86 once shot me with ketamine, and, whoa, I shot into inner space so far I was a speck inside my own heart. That sort of stuff can be frightening to the ordinary walking around mind, but, no matter how much fear attends it, it ends up being something so spiritually instructive you don’t want to trade the experience.
Sheesh. That was almost twenty years ago, and I remember each part of a second as if it were still happening right now.
——————-
And, bilb, I can so totally hang with your sentiment, there, friend. I was in town at the local hospital today for a blood test, and none of the people waiting for the ER or the lab had heard Thing One about the slaughter in Gaza that is going on right this very now, and nobody working in the lab had either. It was terrifying to me.
I’m in my house, blogging my brains out about it, and go out to find the rest of the world around me is clueless.
Shit. 🙁
Goddammit, Joan! [@ 22] I resemble that remark!
Wilburrr… ~ Obviously the Hamasholes know nothing of peace now the chickens have come home to roost.
Re #23..
“That was almost twenty years ago, and I remember each part of a second as if it were still happening right now”
Okay, you’re making me jealous now. I only remember crumbs from what I know was a feast of innerspace. No fair. Nicely said, though.
But yeah, goddamn, those were the daze, hahaha…and I wouldn’t trade a minute of it either 🙂
99 said
“and go out to find the rest of the world around me is clueless.”
Sorry …not the rest of the world ,we saw it coming …
and Bamboo are you certain it was started by “Hamasholes” ?
make love not war …were have all the hippies gone?
Bamboo not to mention ,imagine its 1948 and Israel is established … in say Florida … how would you be with that ?
‘By Way Of Deception, Thou Shalt Do War’
Fake rocket attack
Questions answered, answers questioned.
And does shit like this make you feel safe …
Israel Warns America Yet Again”“There’s “Hell To Pay” For Not Attacking Iran
Why the hell would Iran nuke an American city …how many Iranian were arrested after 911 …how many had cameras set up before the first plane hit …how many Iranians run security company at airports used on 911…how many Iranians had “put options” on airlines on 911…
Cui bono …Iranians ?
Mick, I meant the world right around me, the world in close proximity, Rednecksville, California, the United States. The rest of the whole world around me, clearly is not this dirt ignorant of this travesty.
hope the new year bring change 99 …
peace
A late Merry Christmas and early Happy New year to all.
Unfortunately that beautiful banner, floating high over the earth at the top of the column, has been shot down, desecrated and ripped to shreds!
“Unfortunate” isn’t even close to what it is, but I just can’t find the right word – it probably would take a book!
I think the new year will only bring change, mick, if we make it, and I don’t think we’re going to do that. Everyone lays back in favor of politicians doing what we don’t have the heart or balls to do ourselves. Notwithstanding whole lives full of this dim expectation never being fulfilled, too many still seem to think it’s going to happen… and then just gripe their fool heads off when it doesn’t.
I guess that’s kind of my add-on to BB2’s sentiment above, too. 🙁
I just got back from some shopping. There were some luscious-looking, ripe ‘n’ ready avocadoes, and as I was reaching for one I noticed the “Produce of Israel” sticker on it. Too bad! I’ll have avocadoes some other time, from some other place. I’ll have to settle for shrimp cocktail for an appetizer tonight. I know it won’t make any difference, except to me, but one has to start somewhere. Hey BB2! Happy trails in the new year to you and all you other lovely Bradvillians!
Remember that “Peace” bit comes with the conditions, “with whom God is pleased.”
My father on Christmas eve always read the Christmas story from Luke, You know the one; “And a decree went out…” and he always ended it with the words from the angels bring glad tidings of …”Peace on Earth Good will toward men…”
One day it was my turn to read the story to a man in the hospital and I came to the tidings and realized that he had censored the rest of the sentence, which reads:
Peace on earth, good will toward man, with whom God is pleased.”
Let us hope that he is pleased with all of us.
“Peace on Earth, purity of essence” – Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb 1964
sorry, I couldn’t resist, Merry Christmas everyone and happy New Years!!!