Is Beating Children Really Illegal, Or Just Frowned Upon?

And if it IS Illegal, is it a felony or just a misdemeanor?

Ok, the reason I ask is I have a 12 year old son. Need I say more?

Yeah, he's testing the limits at every opportunity. It's a good thing I like the kid, that's all I'm gonna say.

Reminds me of his Uncle Kev.


God Disembodied Telic Entity help me.

I Must Be Free

I was on the verge of infinity when I said that,
And the eyes of a passionate woman who I loved very much
filled with the tears of a broken heart.

L.
11/28/2006

Muscle Relaxers

Are a wonderful thing...


It's rainy here, stormy really. Lots of wind advisories and surf advisories and flood warnings and such.

Which helps explain the intense pain I've been feeling today. Of course, it's been building to a crescendo for several days now, so it's not ALL due to the weather. The weather just aggravates it.

A couple of 10mg Flexerils has muted it a bit.

-----

Janie's started a little something with a crazy religious woman named Meg Logan. This will be interesting to watch.

Matt started it.

----

Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars needs a little video help. I've offered my services and linked to Channel UDoJ on YouTube for samples.

Could be fun!

A Hardee's Christmas

'Twas the night before Christmas,
And all through the store,
Not a creature was stirring,
Not even a whore.

The crew was all gone,
All snug in their beds,
While visions of Hardee's
Danced in their heads.

And Missy on vacation,
And I closing out,
Had just settled down,
To whimper and pout.

When out in lobby,
There arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my office chair,
To see what was the matter.

Away to the counter,
I flew like a flash,
Kicked Mark in the ankle,
And Cecelia in the ass.

The shine of the polish,
On the freshly waxed floor,
Gleamed like a mirror,
Or the chrome on the door.

When what to my wondering,
Eyes should appear,
But a drunken truck driver,
Who'd had too much cheer.

That little truck driver,
Was so lively and quick,
I held onto my wallet,
I knew he was slick.

He had a little red mouth,
His breath smelled like brandy,
And stuck to his chin,
Was a red piece of candy.

His droll little mouth,
Was drawn up in a bow,
And his teeth were the color,
Of dog-peed-on snow.

His eyes, how they swelled,
His stagger how merry,
His cheeks were like sand paper,
His nose like a cherry.

He had a cute hat,
With sleigh bells and red,
But his clothes were all missing,
We had something to dread.

He went straight to his order,
He ordered roast beef,
And fries and a beer,
And tea with a leaf.

Then sticking his finger,
Inside of his nose,
He farted and belched,
And bent over - we froze.

Then up on the counter,
The driver he came,
And he whistled and shouted,
And called us by name.

"Now Missy, now Janie,
Now 'Celia, and Mark,
On Lucy, on Johnny,
Why is it so dark?

To the cab of the truck,
To the last parking spot,"
Then he ran through the door,
And passed out in the lot.

L.
12/24/96

This was based on an actual incident.

Just so y'know.

And Again, The Muse

I hear no voice but hers.
She calls me silently.
It is dead of night,
but still I come.
Out of bed to answer her midnight summons.
Bleary eyes and tired bones,
Awaken reluctantly to bend to her service.
A mistress cruelly kind,
ever in need
to be heard.
Her soft whisper
a lover's request
silent in my ear,
Her gentle caress
but a passing breeze
across my bare shoulders.
Infrequently at best,
does she darken my door,
or rap upon my window.
But when she appears,
when she graces my heart
with her rapturous presence,
I cannot
I will not
I desire not
to continue whatever I was previously at.
And I stop.
Time and Space,
Matter and Energy,
Stop.
And I make my way
to my keyboard,
And I write what my ephemeral lover tells me.

L.
1/24/96

I am a Thief

You said no,
I haven't done so,
You say I never will.
But you wouldn't bet me,
I didn't fail to notice.
I only smiled inwardly,
knowing,
I am a thief,
one you're just beginning to know.
The whisper in your ear at night,
The warmth in your dreaming heart,
The gentle breeze across your breast,
is me.
I am a thief,
one you're just beginning to know,
and I am stealing your heart.

L.
11/14/96

My Religion

(Entropic Myopia)

After much thought,
much consideration,
not for naught,
my deliberation,

Twenty eight years,
of life on Earth,
pain and tears,
laughter, mirth,

Watching sorrow,
hatred, war,
every morrow,
only more,

Joy with this,
coincided,
my religion,
I've decided.

Monday is my
day to be,
a follower of,
Scientology.

Tuesday comes,
and quickly too,
so I choose,
to use voodoo.

On Wednesday morn,
I turn agnostic,
by Thursday noon,
of course I'm Gnostic.

Friday's fluid,
I think I'll say,
I'll be a Druid,
(and on Arbor Day).

On Saturday,
I won't be chicken,
and on the Sabbaths,
I'll be Wiccan.

On Sundays I'll be
Irish Catholic,
Because they have such
cool churches and stuff.

(Yeah, well YOU make the damned thing rhyme!)

L.
3/21/96

The Muse

I am drained,
My brain is a deserted street,
Empty but for the billowing scraps of paper.
The Muse has left,
And there are no more words to write.
Exhausted am I.
She is a ghostly mistress,
Coming like lighning,
Escaping like the wind,
Leaving only dust.

L.
4/5/95

Home

On the windward side
of the Horsehead Nebula,
Beyond the great red giant star,
Within reach of a comet's tail,
Beside a stunning gaseous planet,
with water clear as crystal,

Alongside a station,
where strange new people live,
Close aboard a ship of light,
A day away from nowhere known,
Is where I'll find my home.

L.
10/4/95

Complete Works of L.

I was thinking about Kristine's poetry thread.

Back in the mid '90s I wrote a crap-load of poetry. Most of it was bad, looking back, but some of it may have had some literary merit.

I once compiled into a little book, took it to kinkos, and had a hard bound copy made. I loaned it to a fella I knew who never gave it back (I think his name was Todd), but I still have an unbound copy in a folder.

I think I may start posting it here, just for my own gratification. Even the bad ones.

The title was

The Complete
(for the moment)

Illustrated
(in your mind)

Unedited
(Don't you dare!)

Works
(uh-huh)

of L.
(that's me.)

Thanks for the Tweak

Matt, from Pooflingers, just sent me the tweak to remove the "Read the rest of my thought" link from posts that don't actually have a "rest of my thought".

Just wanted to thank him. It had been a minor nusance at UDoJ for quite some time.

An Essay on Freedom

Ex-pastor, ex-wife, ex-christian


Theresa Frasch writes a wonderful essay on her journey from Catholic child, to fundy young adult, to freedom from religion.

I was a pastor’s wife. I lived a Christian life. I did the Christian things. I believed the Christian doctrine. I did it all. I believed it all. Now I am not a pastor’s wife. I do not lead a Christian life. I do not believe the Christian doctrine. This is my journey.

Funny how this story resonates with me. A closely parallel journey to my own. Theresa's essay is worth the several minutes it will take you to read and savor.

I was afraid of what people will say if I threw it all away. I was afraid to admit to myself that I wanted to throw it all away. I called it god but with little letters. I didn't use it for anything; I never took it out of my pocket. If somebody questioned me I said I've still got it. I chose to hang on to that part for awhile. I chose to believe in god for a little longer. But certainly not the GOD of before, the GOD of rules and regulations, the nosy one, the all involved one, the one who makes men weak.


I chose to believe in a force outside of myself that kept things in motion from afar, one who set up the rules of the universe and lets us play them out. But then I saw that yarn hanging out of my pocket and I pulled out the last bit.


It is a wonderful place to be, free from the guilt and burdens of Christianity. I live my life fully and without question, enjoying the process of becoming who I am.

When that string, that last little thread, is finally gone from your pocket, the feeling of freedom is strong enough to make you cry with happiness. Nearly everyday I look back and wonder how I wound up in those chains, and I am ecstatic that they are gone.

The Laptop Battery

has pretty much given up the ghost. That's a bad thing for me.


Worst Pain of the Moment: Right lower back, right leg.
Current Mood: Bored

I can't sit in one place for very long, so I have to get up, move, adjust position, lie down, etc.

I'm getting about 1/2 hour out of the battery on full charge these days. Guess I should get another one. Two this time.

I keep the charger at my desk, and it's all plugged in way in the back, so it's sort of a permanently fixed charger.

I had another charger, that used the wall AC, or the car, or a couple other means of charging, but Shakespeare decided that the cord was worth chewing on.

So I'm tied to the desk to do my surfing. That means computer time gets limited quite a bit. And that really sucks, since there isn't much else I can do to entertain myself.

Batteries ain't cheap, either, which means I can either get a battery or feed the kids. How long can a teenager go without eating, anyone know?

Here's Something Interesting

Before I can even get this blog set up...

Did you know I was mentioned in Nature? Well, sort of.

I was looking at the numbers for UDoJ a few minutes ago, and noticed a bit of a spike on November 3^rd. So, just curious as to which posts in particular caused that spike, I discovered that we had been bookmarked by Declan Butler, Senior Reporter for Nature. How did this happen, you ask? I'll take you through it.



First, I looked at the posts for the day of the spike, and saw that the one that seemed to have drawn the attention was Operation Yellow Elephant.

One of the commenters to that post was Tribune7, a fella with which Janie had had a bit of a row a while back. As can be seen from the comments, I had looked him up, and discovered that he was a mod or admin or something over at the FreeRepublic. (It's a fundy right wing nut job site.) So Trib was a Freeper.

Well today, while reviewing the thread, I wondered what may have been said over there, if anything. So I did a Google search for "udreamofjanie" "freerepublic".

Hmm... A site named Connotea has a user named Declan, in whose bookmarks we appear for the Tripoli Six. (Here's the post that was bookmarked, The Tripoli Six Need Your Voice.)

Clicking that link, I found Declan Butler's bookmarks for the Tripoli Six story. UDoJ is way down the page, amongst a ton of bookmarks. But it's there.

Well, of course I wondered "Who the hell is Declan Butler?", so I clicked his user name.

That took me to Declan Butler's Connotea Profile which indicated that Mr. Butler is in fact a Senior Reporter for Nature. Yes, THAT Nature. Wow.

A link there took me to Declan Butler's website, and a link there took me to Declan Butler's blog where I found his blog entry on the Tripoli Six.

It mentions that he wrote an article in Nature about bloggers on the subject.

And finally, Declan Butler, of Nature writes a piece on the Tripoli Six on Sept. 25.

And that is how the simple son of a carpenter very indirectly, and in a very round-a-bout way, wound up influencing an article in one of the premier scientific journals in the world, just a little bit.

So his article, when you see the "s" at the end of the word "bloggers", you know he's referring to me.

That's too freakin' cool.

About This Blog

Sometimes there are things I want to address, but outside the context of UDoJ. I've been thinking about setting up a separate blog for that.

Here it is.

I suppose instead of just writing this damned post out, I'll let it evolve. (I'm a highly skilled procrastinator.)

About me...

First of all, I was going to say that I'm the author of UDoJ. But the truth is the girls have taken on such a life of their own that I'm really just the secretary that takes dictation.

In the meatoverse, I'm disabled. I wrecked my neck in a fall at work back a few years ago, and I've been a fairly useless lump since then.

I've got a lovely second wife (who also happens to be my first wife). She's the lucky lady who gets to listen to me snore, gets kicked out of bed because I can't sleep well and I toss and turn, and puts up with all my whining about my neck, back, arms, and legs that never work the way they're supposed to.

We were married the first time back in the late '80s. We were way too young to be goin' around all married and crap. We wound up divorced in the mid '90s, though we remained best friends. Fortunately for me, sometime around the turn of the millenium she realized the error of her ways, and knew she just couldn't live without me. So we reunited, and after much begging, I agreed to marry her again.

(Alright, this is MY blog and I can remember things any way I want, reality be damned.)

Two great kids from the first time we were married. Their idea of a good time is trying to see who can make me insane the fastest. They're rather accomplished in that regard.

My aging but active Pop lives with us, and shares coffee and conversation with me in the mornings. Then he goes off and does whatever it is old farts do.

We've got a fairly recent addition to our little family who seems to have a foot fetish. Shakespeare is his name, and chewing any type of footwear is his game. Born in mid-July, he's a Golden Retriever, and he's a handful to keep up with. It's like having a toddler in the house again. Pain in my butt. Good thing I like him.

About this blog...

Like this post, I suppose I'll just let the blog evolve. I'm kinda shootin' for a more mellow tone here than at UDoJ, but we'll see what happens.

Cheers.