Lester Barry Speaks Out

November is National Novel Writing Month. I am participating in NaNoWriMo, a monthlong writing contest in which we must write 50K words by November 30. My story is called "Lester Barry Speaks Out." The story is about Lester Barry, a senior in a very fundamentalist Christian high school in a very fundamentalist Christian town. If you are a fundamentalist Christian, you may not like this story, for it makes fun of the excesses of the people whom I like to call "Christian crackheads." They are so cracked out on God that they have no sense of rationality, much like a drug addict, hence the term "crackhead." Now, mind you, this is not an anti-Christian story. In fact, it may turn out to be very spiritual. Who knows where the characters will take us?

Lester rebels against the stringent social restraints placed on him, taking some friends with him and losing some in the process. It is a story of awakening, loyalty, betrayal, and identity formation.

I am posting my story over at Daedalus' Notebook. If you have some time, I would appreciate some comments, critiques, criticisms, and whatever else you would like to say.

Stand up!

As I look out my office window at the police cars, news crews, and gawkers below, I think about the hoopla that has surrounded the death of Rosa Parks. I watched as they brought her body to the church around the corner from where I work with busloads of people following her, and I can hear a choir singing in the church, whose back I can see from my desk.

When I contemplate the meaning of this woman's life and the events taking place in DC today, I recall reading the stories about her in primary school. I never really understood the significance of her action as a child. I suppose that is because I couldn't fathom a world where people were legally kicked out of their bus seats because of their race. Rosa Parks did that. She gave me and all future generations the luxury of never knowing such legal bigotry. She isn't just a figure in a text book, she was a real person, and what she did ended one of the most heinous and shameful chapters of American history and in world history. (Al Sharpton is speaking now, I can nearly hear every word from his boisterous voice.)

As us human beings struggle to promote and protect human rights on this lonely, single planet we all must share, Rosa Parks is a shining example of what us common folk can do to change the world. She was the spark that set the flame. Those of us who sit complacently while continuing to let human rights abuses go on are the ones who should be sitting in the back of the bus. We need to be out there condemning the hatred of the Moldy Footballs folks, those wingnuts who would sit comfortably while legal discrimination went on and who advocate the death of entire ethnic groups. It is only when the last shred of bigotry and hatred are wiped from the face of this small globe that we will be truly free.

"When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

If Fox News Had Been Around Throughout History

More here.

Scalito's Way

Bush Selects Alito for Supreme Court

President Bush today named appeals court Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the U.S. Supreme Court. Alito, 55, serves on the Philadelphia-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, where his record on abortion rights and church-state issues has been widely applauded by conservatives and criticized by liberals.

Sounds like were heading for a bitter fight.

Remember these? Planned Parenthood vs Casey, ACLU vs Schundler

Mind your Qs and Ws

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) - A Turkish court fined 20 people for using the letters Q and W on placards at a Kurdish new year celebration, under a law banning characters not used in the Turkish alphabet, rights campaigners said Tuesday.

The court in the southeastern city of Siirt fined each of the 20 people 100 new lira for holding up the placards, written in Kurdish, at the event last year. The letters Q and W do not exist in the Turkish alphabet, but are used in Kurdish.

Under pressure from the European Union, Turkey lifted bans on teaching and broadcasting in Kurdish in 2002, but bureaucratic resistance has delayed implementing the reforms. State television and radio began limited broadcasts in Kurdish last year, but local television channels have yet to receive permission to start programs in Kurdish.

The 1928 Law on the Adoption and Application of Turkish Letters changed the Turkish alphabet from the Arabic script to a modified Latin script and required all signs, advertising, newspapers and official documents to only use Turkish letters.

Many shops and companies in Turkey have names, signs and advertising using the letters Q, W and X which are not used in Turkish, in apparent violation of the 1928 law, but have not been prosecuted.

Well, that's a bit of creative oppression for you. Pressure from the EU to actually respect human rights? Enforce archaic laws as a means to continue to oppress your minority groups in your country!

W is a bad letter anyway.

Stupid design

School board member didn't investigate "intelligent design"

Heather Geesey, a Dover Area School Board member, said she came to believe intelligent design was a scientific theory based on the recommendations of Alan Bonsell and William Buckingham- both members of the board's curriculum committee.

"They said it was a scientific thing," said Geesey, who added that "it wasn't my job" to learn more about intelligent design because she didn't serve on the curriculum committee.

Apparently, there was no intelligence involved in the creation of her. She hasn't quite evolved, either.

Where is the common sense?

Q: If it is illegal to sell beer to minors, then why would a company market a beer to minors?

A: It doesn't market the beer to minors, stupid state of Connecticut.


Connecticut Wants to Ban Beer With Elf Label

A constitutional battle is brewing over a holiday beer that state officials are trying to ban because they say its label might entice children to drink.

The nanny state strikes again. The evil ACLU is on the case, because, you know, they're commies who don't believe in free speech.

Please buy Seriously Bad Elf if you see it to support freedom. (A beer that is 9.0% alcohol can't be bad.)

Fun with legal reform

From the Smoking Gun:

Lenny Kravitz's leaky toilet has sprung another lawsuit. The rocker is being sued, for the second time, in connection with an overflow incident last August in his swanky Manhattan penthouse. In a New York State Supreme Court complaint filed Monday, Allstate Insurance contends that Kravitz owes it $9387, the amount the firm paid to policyholder Daniel Pelson for damage to his 4164 square-foot, third-floor loft (purchased in 2001 for about $2.5 million, Pelson's apartment sits a few floors below the star's Soho penthouse). Allstate charges that Kravitz is guilty of "negligence and carelessness" for allowing the loo to become "blocked, clogged, and congested." Last October, the Kravitz commode triggered a lawsuit by an insurer that paid a $333,849 water damage claim from businessman Joel Disend, whose fourth-floor apartment is directly above Pelson's pad. That six-figure complaint is pending.

What did we hear last year during the campaigns about legal reform? It was all tortreform, tortreform, tortreform, triallawyers very bad, John Edwards ambulance chaser, tortreform, tortreform. These "tortreform" efforts were spearheaded by the [organization I technically work for that is the largest business lobby in the country] and by the Bushie cronies who are trying to institute a corporatocracy in this country. Yet, where is the outrage at corporate lawsuits like this one? These people don't want to give citizens the right to sue corporations for faulty products and negligence, but corporations are allowed to sue citizens for overflowing toilets? Come on.

The [organization I technically work for that is the largest business lobby in the country] has partial ownership in a newspaper on tortreform in Illinois that you can read at wwwdotmadisonrecorddotcom. The [organization I technically work for that is the largest business lobby in the country] does not have its name anywhere on the paper. See this for more info.

Yes, we need serious legal reform in this country. One only has to look at the Stella Awards for evidence. But! Legal reform must not benefit only one side or the other. Allstate is suing Kravitz for an overflowing toilet. That is as ridiculous as it would be for Kravitz to sue the manufacturer of the toilet for its overflow.

Merry Fitzmas everyone!

A Fitzmas thought...



God bless us, everyone.

A revealing poll

Poll shows Iraqis back attacks on UK, US forces

LONDON (Reuters) - Forty-five percent of Iraqis believe attacks on U.S. and British troops are justified, according to a secret poll said to have been commissioned by British defense leaders and cited by The Sunday Telegraph.

Less than 1 percent of those polled believed that the forces were responsible for any improvement in security, according to poll figures.

Eighty-two percent of those polled said they were "strongly opposed" to the presence of the troops.

The paper said the poll, conducted in August by an Iraqi university research team, was commissioned by the Ministry of Defense.

Britain has more than 8,000 troops stationed in the south of Iraq, and has had 97 soldiers killed, the most recent the victim of a roadside bomb on Tuesday night.

Nearly half say the violence is justified against us, yet we will "stay the course." Doesn't this administration say this war is for "democracy" in Iraq? I know the rationale has changed so many times that it's difficult to keep track, but I have this vague recollection of purple fingers and ballot boxes. If that's the case, why aren't the people, of whom an overwhelming majority want us out, getting their wishes?

Democracy- from the Greek "demos" meaning "people" and "cracy" meaning "on crack." At least, that's the way the bushies act around it.

HT: Zach