Tea anyone?

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I have to voice out on a political topic either people are feeling very passionate about or know nothing about. Personally, this time I wish I were on the latter end of the spectrum.

Right now people are protesting the abuse of federal income tax through these “tea party” protests where they dress like 18th century colonists or Mad Hatters and yell things at big buildings or hold up funny signs. For weeks previous to these rallies people were encouraged to send tea bags to their representatives in Washington to let them know, “Hey, we’re pissed you’re forcibly taking our hard-earned money and putting it towards programs we don’t support, assholes.” Turns out a lot of people in Washington didn’t get the ridiculous memo about the bags of orange pekoe and thought they were being poisoned with anthrax again.

I agree that federal income tax is completely unjust. I believe that the income tax is exploitative and totalitarian, and at this point the Government is doing nothing more than abusing the trust that the people have in a system that is supposed to represent them. Why people trust them to begin with, I don’t know.  I don’t think a lot of people understand that our tax money is what supports a corrupt corporate welfare system, bank bailouts, a useless space program, a dangerous drug war among other things. You know, there was a time in history when it was considered unconstitutional for the Federal Government to take income tax. The Government was a lot smaller and didn’t need to force the people of this nation to fork over their money.  Those were simpler times.

It’s not that I don’t support the intentions on the protesters, or even the protesters. I don’t necessarily think these methods are effective as much as they are…ridiculous. But that is the least of our problems.

The real problem I have with it, is that all of a sudden the Republicans have jumped upon the bandwagon and decided they are pissed about income taxes too. Never mind that their last president used the tax dollars collected from the people’s income to wipe his ass and blow his nose, this was an attack on the current administration and they had to jump in and, frankly, take over. All of a sudden Glenn Beck and the rest of the nutjobs on Fox News are covering the rallies and showing their support, and now it’s become another Republicans vs. Democrats charade. This has always been an issue in opposition to big Government, which whether they admit it or not, modern Republicans are proponents of along with their more liberal counterparts.Yeah, counterparts, not enemies. As far as I am concerned they are the same fucking thing.

Those sons of bitches came in and bogarted a very important Libertarian issue. Was anyone ever aware that these rallies happened in 2007 and 2008? Yeah, there were even more people dressing like 18th century colonists reenacting the Boston tea party, and no one paid any attention. I’m pissed.

On a similar note, I have a love/hate relationship with Glenn Beck. I know everyone thinks he is insane and hateful, and sometimes they are absolutely right. He is a Alex Jones-esque fearmonger, and because of that he fits right in on FoxNews. He is also very supportive of  Libertarian beliefs. He  regularly invites Ron Paul, Penn Jillette, Bob Barr, and other important Libertarians on his show. And then invites Toby Keith on and talks about how people are taking too many medications and drowning out the voice of God.

Ugh.

A sight to wake up to

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Apparently last night while I was sleeping there was a storm, or a large gust, or a swarm of beavers, something that we missed the memo on during our slumber. This is what we woke up to:

This is the view when you first open the front door.

Thank God it missed our van.

So I have no idea if someone is working on fixing this, or has at least put this on their agenda. For all I know Vance was walking out the door for the day and he walked into this mess and decided to take pictures of it and then leave for work. That is entirely possible.

Now for what this post would have been about:

Heather Armstrong of Dooce.com came through Austin last night to sign copies of her new book, and being the internet literary fangirl that I am, I couldn’t miss it.

I had never ever been to a book signing before in my life, so I had no idea what to expect. There were a ton of women there, many with their babies, some with their boyfriends and husbands (poor guys). Heather Armstrong spoke first, told a couple of great stories, and was hilarious the entire time. She graciously answered questions and then we all got into a huge line that snaked around half of the upstairs area of Book People.

She was super friendly and gracious, had no problem chatting with the members of the large group of total strangers. As you know, that is not my strong suit so when it was my turn I looked and felt like a HUGE dork. But at least it was a good experience and I got my book signed. She even personalized it.

By the way, you should totally read her book. It’s hilarious. And much of it is totally true. So ladies,  don’t force it on your husband if you ever want him to impregnate you.

Hand crafted goodness.

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I have no idea where I came up with this title. I don’t have a whole lot to say this time, I just feel really bad for having not updated in a really long time. I have been meaning to, really I have, I just….haven’t fucking felt like it. There’s your excuse. Happy now?

I am pretty much ready for school. My financial aid has been processed and I will be getting more than enough for what I had been originally planning to do. Now I am just wondering if I can handle 3 classes as opposed to just 2. I would be taking 2 of those on campus and one of the classes would be distance learning. Thats because without daycare I am only able to take classes in the evenings and through long distance. My concern with this is that it’s summer, which means the courses are shorter and more intense. Since I haven’t been in school in like 7 years I’m afraid I may not be able to keep up. The last thing I want is to get overwhelmed and fail or have to quit anything.

Also, while I was researching available classes, I looked over the sheet that has the required courses I need to graduate with my degree, and I read through some fine print and found out that in order to apply for the program to study Sonography, I will need to get a Nurses Aid Certification. Seriously? There’s more?

I looked for this certification on the college website, and I am not even sure they offer this certification. I googled it and it looks like a pretty involved process. It’s not nearly as involved as the Sonography program, but it still leaves me wondering if I am going to be able to finish everything in good time. I was sort of looking forward to finishing in 3 years, not 4.

In other news, over the weekend I decided we needed to do some major cleaning, and make money at the same time. We miscalculated our finances and we were pretty much broke. We needed to get rid of the stuff we were no longer using. We posted my bass, our old carseat, some DVDs, and a stroller on Craigslist. The carseat was hard to let go of, I must admit. We had pictures of Deven all loaded up in the carseat the day we brought him home from the hospital, and now some other couple is going to load their new baby in it. On the upside, we made $55 off of it, and a nice young couple was able to find the EXACT carseat they wanted in great condition for $85 less. We also loaded up 4 boxes full of clothes, purses and belts and took it into Goodwill.

Really, we didn’t even leave a dent in the amount of crap we have laying around in here, but we put some effort into it when we could have been wasting our weekend playing video games.

Well, I am going to prepare a cup of Oolong tea and do some Wii Fit.