Tuesday Bag o’ Surveillance

That’s a speed enforcement camera. The reason you can’t see it is because someone put a bag over it. This rebellion against the police state happened in England; click on the photo to learn more. Here in Tucson we have speed enforcement and red light cameras: they’re not yet everywhere but we’re getting there. Just […]

Facebook Common Sense

A friend posted this to Facebook yesterday: Like you, probably, I didn’t recognize the guy in the photo. Is he the head of some teabagger group calling for the impeachment of the President? Out of curiosity I clicked the “See More” link. Turns out the guy’s a respected reporter named Charley Reese. The link takes […]

Tuesday Bag o’ Bleeding Heart

What am I being a big old pussy about today? Trapping. A young nephew in Missouri is a hunter. He also traps coyotes and bobcats and posts photos on Facebook. Photos of living animals in pain. I unfriended him yesterday in order to block those photos. That sounds pathetic and weak, but I don’t know […]

Going Nuclear

After the Newton school shooting I posted a couple of tweets using the hashtag #FuckTheNRA. When I originally set up my Twitter account I foolishly checked the box that allowed other users to contact me by email. I’ve now fixed that, but not before the gun nuts found me. The pro-mass murder emails I’ve been […]

You Can’t Read That!

YCRT! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. Is your child’s teacher thinking about sex? Right this minute? Smutty-minded parents in Ohio clamor for a high school teacher to be fired after she writes a novel with sex in it Same thing (Pennsylvania, last year) Michigan educators stand firm against removing Jeannette Walls’ memoir The Glass […]

Thursday Bag o’ Right-Wing Hatred

I should write about our Christmas with the kids in Las Vegas, but when I think of it I’m happy, and as with most things happy, words are slow to come and inadequate when they do. When I see right-wingers getting up to their old shenanigans, on the other hand, I see red and words […]

Can We Talk About Guns Now?

Sorry for the incoherence, but I just don’t know what can be done about gun violence in America. If some new disease was killing tens of thousands of people each year we’d be doing something about it, just as we do with existing diseases. Traffic accidents kill a horrific number of people but we’ve been […]