http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/greyhounds.asp Alert warns that dogs not adopted after the closure of the Dairyland Greyhound Park will be euthanized.
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Thanksgiving day was a wonderful time...filled with family, friends, loads of great food, laughs and delightful conversations. Silliness abounded. 15 of us gathered closed.
Yesterday was a total regroup from such a full people day. Spent a little time with a friend in what is quickly becoming my new favorite public living room. We shared intense conversation while settled into a large comfortable leather couch and enjoyed good lattes.
Today, I finally returned to the studio after a week of being sick. Rusty, but I began with painting on paper. From there I worked a few paintings on canvas. Tentative, but it's alright. Hopefully, this is the beginning of a long spell of working that won't again get disrupted by becoming ill.
And tonight...I'm looking forward to dinner with good friends and then an evening with the Seattle Men's Chorus with featured guest Betty Buckley.
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Since the end of the year is so very close, I find myself thinking back to the books I've read this year, and trying to develop a rough list of what I want to read next year. I've also been looking through some "Best of 2009" lists, and for some reason, I'm filled with regret and shame. I haven't read any of those books! What have I been wasting my time on? Why is there never enough time to read everything that catches my interests??
But then I take a deep breath and tell myself to relax. I'll never be able to read each and every book. And really, all this means is that there will always be something out there for me to read. I'll never be book-less again!
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Hello Kiddies,
While I have a rather large music collection, I actually am very picky about what I listen to esp. on a daily basis. Most of my stuff is on the 'classic' (read: old) side as most new artists don't really impress me. Every once in a great while though, there is one that comes on my radar that just blows me away. Right now it's these guys.
I discovered them while surfing on Blabbermouth, and their CD got great reviews. But, as Billy Joel said, you can't get the music from the story in a magazine. So I let my fingers do the walking and discovered this little clip.
Oh. My. Fucking. GAWD! Aside from the fact that lead singer Lzzy Hale is downright MFING HOT (and she has a FLYING V for God's sake!), this band really has it together. Great hooks, killer riffs, and good SONGS! I got the album and was impressed with the 'Motley Crue meets Joan Jett' vibe. While invariably these guys may be compared to Evanescence, the fact is they are much more together, and don't have the goth melodrama dragging them down. So my fellow Rockers and Metal Mavens, go out and buy/download this now. I give it four horns up!
Speaking of horns, I recently heard the news of one of the original Metal Gods, Ronnie James Dio having fallen ill. Ronnie was diagnosed with the early stages of stomach cancer and it is believed that it was caught early enough to be very treatable. Of course we wish RJD our thoughts and prayers for a full recovery very soon.
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I love being a dad. I love being a husband.
I started late at all this, and was worried that maybe I wouldn't be very good at it, or that I had blown it all up to be something better than it is, or over-romanticized it. The frustration, chaos, the unknown everything that comes with a child, with marriage, with changing your whole life to a partnership, all these things coming into my life when I'm just entering middle-age.
( cuteness )
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They kinda write their own rules, which may seem contrary to your version of a 'common sense' arrangement. This is where we had our family Thanksgiving. The area, I mean. We didn't dine at The Double Shot. That would be crazy.
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Further and better particulars on the Roman Catholic Church's 40 year cover-up of systematic and pervasive child abuse on the part of the Archdiocese of Dublin. The Times (London) has the quick summary: The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland connived with the authorities in a cover-up spanning decades to shield paedophile priests from prosecution, an official report concluded yesterday. Hundreds of crimes against children were not reported as the four archbishops of the Archdiocese of Dublin remained wedded to the “maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church and the preservation of its assets”. Instead, the church hierarchy shuffled the sex offenders from parish to parish, allowing them to continue to prey on victims. In some cases paedophile priests were even promoted. The 750-page report by the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse on the Dublin archdiocese — the second significant inquiry this year to expose appalling levels of sexual abuse of minors in Ireland under the aegis of the Roman Catholic Church — said that it had uncovered a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy throughout the period that it investigated between 1975 and 2004. It said that the State had helped to create the culture of cover-up and that senior police officers regarded priests as “outside their remit”. “The State authorities facilitated that cover-up by not fulfilling their responsibilities to ensure that the law was applied equally to all and allowing the Church institutions to be beyond the reach of the normal law enforcement processes,” it concluded.
When considered in conjunction with the evidence of Vatican condoning of such cover-ups even in papal statements on the issue from John XXIII to Benedict XVI (pre-papacy for him), one must ask finally, what does this tell us about the Roman Catholic Church? This, I think: That its ecclesiology is fundamentally flawed in it's agoraphobically top-down model, one which prizes the interests of the institution so highly, and which cannot ever admit error or failure--individuals fail the Church, the Church itself cannot err. By identifying itself completely with the Body of Christ, the Church heavily disincentivizes itself from acknowledging systemic problems--the "rogue priest" model is the only one that the Church can bear to recognize, because to do otherwise sets up a cognitive dissonance between its theological claims and its behavior. That gap, perceived outside the Church as the rankest hypocrisy, is in fact denial of the most psychologically necessary kind. To believe it, one must shift the topic from the cover up to the offense itself, perpetrated by a number of priests not much greater than that percentage of abusers in society at large, a defense the Church has made at the highest levels. But it is, of course, the concerted cover up over decades by men widely deemed holy and even heroic within Christendom--John XXIII, a hero to liberal Catholics, and John Paul II, a hero to conservatives, to name but two. Or, one can, as did British MP Ann Widdicombe in the Intelligence Squared Debate I linked previously, de-emphasize the cover up, and the sex abuse, and spin it as overly authoritarian discipline typical of the time, and even (as did Widdicombe) accuse Church critics of a double standard, by unfairly demanding that the RCC know better than the times. (This of course set her up for the deadly riposte of Stephen Fry: if the Church cannot be expected to better than secular institutions, he asked, his voice rising for the first time in the debate, then "What are you for?"). The fact is, having one man, and a small circle of princes, responsible for the preservation of a 2,000 year institution which it believes to be the true incarnation if Christ's Body on Earth is to put an insupportable burden on that man and that circle of men. It cannot be maintained, because it attributes perfection to the necessarily imperfect. And that leads to covering up the gap between the Heavenly Image and the Earthly Reality.
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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SusieBrightsJournal/~3/g5Cw26SYSc0/claudette-colvin-not-rosa-parks-was-the-first-to-claim-her-seat.html “My mother told me to be quiet about what I did,” Ms. Colvin recalled. “She told me: ‘Let Rosa be the one. White people aren’t going to bother Rosa — her skin is lighter than yours and they like her.’ ” via www.nytimes.com The author of this story "courted" Ms.... 
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http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/charity/pinkglove.asp Is Medline donating money to breast cancer-related charities in conjunction with a 'Pink Glove' promotion?
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Hello Kiddies,
I love you. Yes you. The one who's reading this journal. You are the one that comments all the time and makes me smile, or you never comment but always find a way to show me your care. You gave me a hug when I needed it. Bought me dinner. Let me buy you dinner. Had a long talk with me on the phone or IM. You send a wonderful text message, sometimes even with a picture. You took me to the movies, to a show, or took me to bed (mine or yours). You have been reading this from the beginning, or you just started reading now. You are my friends, lovers, countrymen (and women), confidantes, peeps, and chosen family. Thank you for walking with me on this journey through life. My life is better for it, and I hope yours is too.
I have been bitching about shit for a while, and when you do that sometimes you don't appreciate what is truly there. Me and my damn charmed life. I have health, employment, support from family and friends, and a ridiculous amount of fortune. I'm going to try my best not to forget that.
Have a wonderful day folks, however you spend it and enjoy your Bolivian Chicken! :)
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I'm not in the mood to go off on politics today, nor to be sententious--so I'll just wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving, West Wing style. With seconds.
(And, among the many things for which I am grateful, you lot rank pretty high. Thanks for the pleasure of your company--even when we squabble debate!)
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Remember abundance.
To put it mildly, the last few years have been challenging. One thing I've continued to do to keep me stable was to list off the many things in my life that I was/am thankful for. And it's not only in an "I'm happy to have this" but it's actually an "I'm still in awe that this is a part of my life" kind of list.
Nothing is perfect including these , but still...
Kickass apartment in a perfect part of town.
Kickass studio space in a seriously groovy building
Kickass job that I've been at over 10 years
Kickass coworkers who still blow me away
Kickass best friend who mutually shares their dark, bloodied spaces
Kickass shrink
Kickass friends & play partners
Kickass family
There are a few places in my life where I feel a huge tangible hole. Deep longing. But it'll all come together. It's all coming together. And in the moments when despair and pain feel insurmountable, diving right into the blackness without shame gets me through and then...mentally and sometimes obsessively checking this list offers balance.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
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dilbertdaily
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cheerful
