| Rayne Today Searching for dharma, in spite of the weather...
Build it and they will come: let’s start a meme! So…Dave Pollard at How to Save the World has been chatting up the mechanics behind the success of successful “stories”; he’s been reading up on The Tipping Point and Shirky’s Power Law, looking at what makes an idea propagate of its own accord. Yeah, we desperately need that kind of information right now if we’re going to get this off the ground, remove the neo-cons from office and take back our country. Let’s try it out, see what works. Wanna’ play, liberal blogger? Real cheap fun -- entry fee is your participation in comments. I'll even chip in a brand new category to get us started: Build-A-Meme Project (Kriselda, chick, you game? Paul, you with me, dude? Christopher, you up for it? Let’s Roll!!) --- Let’s try this out for size – would this light a fire, or would it sink like a stone? FREEDOM 2004 © This country was founded on the proposition that all humans are free. We find we are no longer free under George Bush and a Republican majority; we find that fear and poverty have increased both here and abroad while our national progress reversed during this Administration. In 2004, we demand: FREEDOM – to join and lead the rest of the world as a fully respected partner, through improved relations and consensus building with our global neighbors; FREEDOM – from fear, through leadership's improved openness at home, a commitment to dialogue here and abroad combined with improved effectiveness in national security; FREEDOM – from the threat of war, through increased dialogue and shared solutions to improve global stability, while maintaining a ready military; FREEDOM – to prosper, under a healthy economy, accessible by all Americans; FREEDOM – from national debt, for us, for our children and their children through fiscal discipline and government efficiency; FREEDOM – to demand the same accountability from our government and business leaders that they expect from American taxpayers; FREEDOM – from persecution under excessive protections that minimize our civil rights and increase fear here and abroad; FREEDOM – from violent crime, through support of increased local policing and effective drug abuse prevention; FREEDOM – from white-collar crime, through continuing pursuit of corporate criminals and improved financial monitoring; FREEDOM – from pain and sickness, through a progressive national healthcare program; FREEDOM – to extend help to our most impoverished and sickest world partners, through improved help with AIDS/HIV and international aid; FREEDOM – from poisons in our air, water and foods and environment at large, through effective management and protection of our foods and national resources; FREEDOM – to expect to enjoy in future centuries our American wildlife and wild spaces through active protection of our environment And above all, FREEDOM – from current leadership that denies us the above freedoms as well as those guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution; FREEDOM – to choose a progressive new leadership which will protect these freedoms critical to a successful, thriving Your constructive feedback is welcomed! Feel free, spread it around, see what other constructive feedback you can garner!  comment []
Movies: Memento Damn, don’t leave in the middle of this movie, don’t doze off, don’t get up to get a snack or you’ll have to rewind or reverse to figure out what’s going on. Hell, you’ll have to back up anyhow – dozens of times. Thank goodness I got this through Netflix; I revisited this film several times during the course of a week. I’m still not absolutely convinced of the innocence or guilt of the characters. Nearly every one was manipulated in some way. If you want an absolute black-and-white outcome, you won’t get it here. If this were a bad movie, I’d have mailed it back to Netflix the next day after the first viewing. It’s far from that, worth getting to own. Compelling main character, truly seedy-seemy supporting characters, chewy method of story-telling – it’s a must-watch. No, you won’t fall in love with the characters. But you’ll believe them, particularly Guy Pearce’s role. You find you empathize entirely with his predicament because you’ll suffer along with him. I am SO glad I didn’t catch this at the theatre; I would have stumbled out and gone, “HUH??” Hubby Movie Meter: Hmm, I don’t think he’s seen this through yet, it’s too complex for him to view before bedtime. comment []
RantsCounterRants: DROWNING IN SHITE Yeah, I’m there, up to my ears. I’m exhausted, moving in slow motion as if treading water. I’m tired of feeling like I’m always screaming from under the surface. My television has been turned off for weeks; I got fed up with yelling at that stupid and pompous baboon who parades as President every time his ugly mug showed up in my family room. That taxpayer-funded campaign speech-cum-victory speech from a aircraft carrier was a final assault to my senses. I refused to watch even a second of that illegitimate tripe. Now, with a new barrage of attacks by al Qaeda, it’s obvious this bravado and swagger is just hot air. We are no safer; we never were. Victory, my ass. With an increasing percentage of unemployed and deflation rearing its ugly head, it’s more than apparent that our economy is tanked. Fie on those lousy tax cuts; with so many private and corporate investors deeply in the hole dug by losses over the last two years, companies will be hard pressed to turn any tax savings into capital expenditures. Savings will merely go directly to the books to offset past or continuing losses. We’re flailing away in the middle of the ocean, dog paddling like hell, and no sign of rescue any time soon. It’s imperative I find the intestinal fortitude to muster up another year of strength to fight back. I can’t take this lying down; my personal ethics tell me I must fight unto the death. But my strength is failing me now, after two and half years of crying out against insidious ineptitude and malicious malfeasance. I feel like I’m drowning, going down for the last time. How do I regroup? More importantly, how do WE regroup? I know I’m not alone in this; there are many others who are just as disappointed, disillusioned, fed up, harassed by the chronic attack against our civil rights and our ethics. How do we come together to feed on each other’s energy and become a unified critical mass to bring down this regime with the next election? How do we save each other? Without unity we will not succeed – we cannot survive an assault of a minority that is just shy of half of the population if we fragment. We will have to find firm common ground, compromise, work towards consensus upon which we can build. Our shared point cannot be merely that we want these bastards out of leadership; we must work towards something positive, constructive, cohesive, and inclusive or it will fail. Where do we begin? As best I can tell, one stroke at a time. Keep swimming, keep rowing, float as necessary. Keep watching the horizon for shore birds, signs of land, anything that signals a place of temporary refuge. Don’t expect rescue, don’t expect the mainland. Pace yourself. It’s going to be a long journey home. comment []
MetaBlogging: Death of a Blog How does one take leave of a blog? With an abrupt and sudden departure from posting? With tip of the hat and a flurry of feathers? With a gradual reduction of content or increasingly infrequent posts? And how do we readers and fellow bloggers mark the passing? With frantic bargaining in comments? With statements of denial? With a mere, rather Gallic, shrug of the shoulders? Eh, tant pis… There are no rules, there is no established protocol, for either the death or the grieving of a blog – but that is exactly the nature of blogging. The blogosphere is a wild, lawless place where Mother Nature eats her progeny, where the good frequently die young. It’s the Circle of Life, bay-bee, come ‘round completely. So it is we note the exit of The Raven, leaving us with an abundance of questions and the suggestion of a hole in the order we Salon Bloggers carefully knit for the last 9 or so months. There are no policies to which we can look for guidance in response to this sudden vacancy in our midst. Those of us who’ve structured our days too tightly will no longer wait with bated breath looking for that blog name to appear on the Recently Changed or subscription lists; as time goes by, the link will dim and drop off our blogrolls. New names, faces, content will emerge, as ever before in print, in radio, in television, in the internet. And so it goes. Did you happen to notice it’s been nine and some odd months since The Raven first posted? In fact, nearly the exact period of time equivalent to the average human gestation – almost to the day. I’m saddened, but not grieving. A door closes, a window opens. Nine months gone, and something is born anew. Aren’t you the least bit curious what lies beyond the darkening blog? I am. Intensely. comment []
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