Forget Yesterday

Some days are just crappy, whatever one does or tries everything just turns out wrong or goes sour. Yesterday I was in a peculiar mood. Not tired, angry or sad or anything seriously bad, just edgy, restless and oversensitive. A remark here or there would just get me me in a foul state.

I avoided Butch all evening because he pissed me off with a remark he made early on - or perhaps didn't make. All the while I was ashamed for doing so because he had every right saying what he did or didn't say.

Another guy made a remark about me at The Grenouille Inn on the Yadkin sim, something to the effect that "Now Bock is going to do his usual faggoty thing", which for some reason totally set me off. So much so that if he had been in the same room I would probably have kicked him in the balls, instead I thought what the hell and put on my red Prestige boots from Bax while dancing on a bar counter for his benefit, forgetting that there are always cameras in SecondLife. When I later saw that Helene had posted pictures of me in my Prestige boots on Facebook, that pissed me off too...

Today I am laughing at it all and wondering to myself what was going on. I'm leaving that behind and will tell you instead what was good about yesterday, although I sadly didn't take any pictures.

The good things yesterday included, but were in no way limited to,

• A concert by the Swedish band KAOS that made its debut is SecondLife. It was a totally WOW-ing experience and I am looking forward to hearing more from them in the future. (For more information about them, videos etc. please visit their website KAOS). 
• Having a long talk with Dej and sensing that we could get along fine despite the fact that we were both in a crabby mood. 
• Visiting Romanum during their ongoing Wine Festival and finding a place to purchase new togas.
• Re-friending Loch Wolfhunter, he has been away for awhile and had been culled from my friends list as one of those lost to first life. Fortunately he was a good sport and did not hold my culling against me.
• Visiting the ongoing Boystown Pride.
• Installing my new Dennis-dances from HUMANOID in my dance-HUD and loving them.

As Nina Simone sings "It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me... and I'm feeling good!"

The Art of Ted Fusby

For more artwork from Ted Fusby please visit his webpage.

My thanks to Torro Spyker of The Bullring for first showing me his work.

Extortion, Not Stalemate

I am still lingering on the shutdown of the American federal government, because I simply cannot wrap my mind around how something like this can occur in a democratic country with a healthy economy.

Time Magazine's cover for October 14, 2013

I think I may have stumbled upon a great article by US Political Commentator Brian Normoyle on Huffington Post's political pages. The article is entitled This Shutdown Is About Extortion, Not Stalemates.

"Those following or reporting on the U.S. government shutdown should refrain from using terms like "impasse" or "stalemate." These words imply two honest parties negotiating in good faith have arrived at a temporary but surmountable deadlock. That's not even remotely the case here.

Instead, two parties--the Senate Democrats and the House Republicans -- each passed divergent budgets earlier this year. The latter, propelled by a very small yet ideologically rigid minority of its members, made the calculated decision from the start not to negotiate.

Democrats made 18 requests since April to go to conference and compromise on a budget bill; Republicans blocked every single one of them. And now they are using a manufactured crisis to extract policy concessions on duly passed legislation they don't like and cannot repeal through the normal democratic processes: elections, legislative votes, and litigation.

Meanwhile, House Republicans continue to insist they're doing the will of the American people despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. While a plurality or small majority of Americans remain confused about or opposed to the Affordable Care Act, a strong majoritywant a budget approved without conditions to repeal, defund, or delay it -- mainly because they see the law as a settled issue.

And so it is. Republicans lost this fight repeatedly:

• in the 2008 election in which this was a primary issue;

• in a year-long debate in the halls of congress, media, and the public square, after which the law was passed by both chambers of congress and signed by the president;

• in the Supreme Court--the final arbiter of the constitutionality of a law;

• in the 2012 presidential election, which 2/3rds of Americans now see as a referendum on Obamacare;

• in the 2012 congressional election, in which the GOP failed to take the Senate, lost seats in the House, and lost the popular vote in that chamber by more than 1,000,000 votes;

• in the 46 House votes to repeal, defund, or delay Obamacare that were dead on arrival in the Senate and had no chance of becoming law.

Most curiously, Republicans now have the votes to end the shutdown immediately by putting a clean resolution on the House floor with no riders or conditions. Such a bill certainly would pass, and 800,000 Americans could return to work tomorrow, but Boehner doesn't do it.

The evidence suggests the GOP intentionally put these workers out of a job by using a historically routine budget resolution to undo the outcome of three lost elections. And they now have the hubris to demand Senate Democrats and President Obama negotiate with that extremist position. As Republicans continually shift the political goal posts ever further to the hard right, negotiating now requires meeting them somewhere between extreme and preposterously irrational. Democrats justifiably have declined to do so here.

This is not an "impasse" or a "stalemate." It's an attempt at extortion that was prevented."

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I believe I finally understand what has happened in the US after reading this article. We have a bunch of lousy losers who cannot accept that they lost and now are trying to shove their point-of-view down everyone else's throats to make them accept it. It's no new tactic, I have seen it before in both my lives, although never on such a dramatic scale.

No Words

Go Germany. Go!

German athletes will wear the above rainbow-hued uniforms at the Sochi Olympics, but officials insist the design is not intended as a commentary on Russia's anti-gay laws.

The German Olympic Sports Confederation insists that the design was finalized "before the Russian protests had even begun."

Please continue reading on Joe.M.God. Germany Unveils Rainbow Olympic Outfits (url)

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I love it and it will look great against the snow too! I can see actually President Vladimir "Little Father" Putin choking on his own vomit when he see's this!

Almost All the Best Asses

This is a amazing picture by the SecondLife master-photographer Kent Laurent (neé Hutchinson). All the greatest asses of Second Life are assembled, well with the obvious exception of one...

"Queue Pool Model" by Kent Hutchinson 

You can see more of Kent's amazing photography on his Flickr page

From Children and Fools...

There is a Swedish saying that goes, "From children and fools you get to hear the truth". I thought of it when I was reading about the United States federal government shutdown today and came across a quote from Michele Bachmann in an interview with World Net Daily (via Joe.My.God.) 

The federal shutdown was brought about by the Republicans in the House of Representatives. Michele Bachmann is an American Republican member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Minnesota's 6th congressional district.

The whole shutdown of the federal government of the greatest democracy in the world is extremely bewildering and totally offsetting for most of us not from the United States. We cannot imagine anyone going to these lengths, and to do so repeatedly is surely not helpful for the image of the United States abroad. 

Today I atleast, thanks to Ms. Bachmann, got an inkling of why the House Republicans were prepared to go so far.

“I think the reason is because President Obama can’t wait to get Americans addicted to the crack cocaine of dependency on more government health care. Because, once they enroll millions of more individual Americans it will be virtually impossible for us to pull these benefits back from people.”

The fact that American Republicans are afraid that the American public will get used to a universal. affordable, efficient and decent health care system, that all the other civilized and democratic countries in the world already offer their citizens, is scary and makes one (i.e. me) wonder why anyone in the world would vote for such people.