As usual, I’m late to the latest bloggery brouhaha, which is going on here and here and here.
What I have to say to Kathy Sierra and Ronni is that I have locked horns with Locke myself, and I have blogged about the battle. In this old post I say

You should go to that post and read the comments.
Somewhere in RageBoy’s archives Is a photo of me onto which he photoshopped a paintball/bullet onto the middle of my forehead.
So in this old post I fantasize about an out and out battle. That post includes this image:

I have noticed that Chris loves to instigate and then, when called to own up to the havoc and hurt that his adolescent sense of humor entices from others, he pulls out his back-pocket eloquence and…”sorry… misunderstood… never meant… it wasn’t me….wasn’t my fault…I would never……..”
Early on, it was Lindsay, a young woman who Locke managed to harrass out of the blogosphere. And this I know for sure because she and I were in email contact long after she bowed out of the fray.
Not only does Locke not believe in deleting any obnoxious or threatening comments, he welcomes them. First Amendment, you know.
Locke doesn’t purposely pick on individuals who can be easily intimidated. But, inevitably, some will cross his perverse path and, well, then what we have is a Lindsay or a Kathy.
In case you think I’m just anti-Chris Locke, I also have just as often posted praise for his other talents, such as in this post.
I’m just asking those who apologize (in the sense of apologetics) for Locke do a little research into his history of nastiness and give Kathy her deserved support.
So says this warrior Crone.
ADDENDUM AFTER THIS WAS POSTED:
Notice that I have not mentioned the other people who Kathy, in her bout of fear and loathing, thought might be some of her nasty commenters. I have never known any of those bloggers to be intentionally mean. But they are friends of Locke’s who, at times, enable his hurtful antics, if only by not telling him to stop. Maybe they do tell him to stop and maybe he doesn’t listen., I don’t know.
But I do know that the photoshopped photo in the comments to Kathy’s post and the photoshoped photo Locke did of my “headshot” (heh) seem somehow devised by the same kind of mind. I could be wrong, of course. And, lf I am, I’m sure someone out there will tell me.

Whenever my conservative Dad and I would argue politics, I would tell him: “When the revolution comes, you know what side I’ll be on!”
The following piece in This Week makes me think the we’re even closer to the time when there will be another Civil War in America:

Read the rest to find out how such extravagant wealth is rationalized.
I don’t care how anyone rationalizes the appropriateness of all that wealth being hoarded by those few monumentally wealthy individuals. There has to be a better way to set up an economic system where there is a more fair and humane distribution of what we all need to live safe, healthy, and fundamentally comfortable lives..
And speaking of potentially annihilating strife, the following excerpt is from Is Missile Defense Aimed at Russia? in This Week:

Finally, it’s a

I have loved my Subaru Outback Sedan from the day I bought it six and a half years ago, and until now, it has given me no trouble.
I have tried several places — including my Subaru dealer — in hopes of finding out why the battery is dead after the car sits in the garage for more than two days. It has done that five times already even though I’ve gotten obsessive about making sure that I haven’t left anything turned on.
So, the first thing I did, of course, was have a new battery put in. When that didn’t fix the problem, I took it to a local repair garage, where they “tested” the charging system and couldn’t find anything wrong.
OK,. I figured, I’ll take it to the Subaru place. I told them what was happening and asked them to please check every possible source of the problem. They told me the same thing the other garage did and gave me a copy of a “computer printout” to prove it.
Well, duh. Wrong, again.
It’s a good thing my brother has a battery charger. Meanwhile, I’m trying to remember to start my car every day and run it for a good five minutes.
I”m assuming that there’s a short in some wire somewhere. Now the challenge is to find a garage that will go through the trouble of checking out the wiring in detail.
Of course, I could buy a new car. (I kinda like the Hyundai Tucson). But, for now, I’m still looking for someone who who is persistent enough to track down the loose wire (or whatever).

The hokey news you know you want to know excerpted from here.

As far as the last item is concerned, I have to say that it just sounds like some people are stretching their rationale for trying to get some big and not-necessarily-deserved money. Oh, yes, I assume that what they mean with “pave roads and fill potholes” is that there are some human remains mixed in with all of the debris from that horrific event, and that the whatever has been bulldozed and carted off is being recycled into reconstruction materials.
Seems like an appropriate thing to do, as far as I’m concerned.
After all, we all become dust and debris in the end. Perhaps what better way is there to memorialize those who imploded into what was left of those mighty Towers than to incorporate what miniscule pieces that are left of their structure into the infrastructure of that might City. Just as their memory becomes part of the City’s legacy, so does their matter.
Ever think of that??
Of course, growing up in a funeral home, I have no illusions about dead bodies. Dust. Dirt. Debris. Cremate me and fertiize a calla lily.

Sounds like a comedy team, but that’s not what it is at all.
Marian Van Eyk McCain is a woman of great passion for life. And, at this point in her life she is devoted especially to women determined to age with grace and spunk.
An author of several books, both fiction and non-fiction, she maintains a website at www.elderwoman.org, which includes a periodic newsletter. I found her through Time Goes By, and, when I subscribed to her newsletter, she asked me to write a piece for it about why I blog.
So I did.

A day of intelligent, thoughtful, funny, silly, intimate, non-confrontational discussion and conversation with close women friends, and now I’m back in hell on earth.

Argumentative and malcontented for decades, my brother thinks being such is normal, and so he doesn’t understand the symptomatic convergence of depression and dementia. And she has both. He insists on getting her off her depression medication. I disagree. She is not on medication for dementia for other health reasons.

I no longer have the energy to keep arguing with him over her care. And so I just have to deal with watching her again slip into feeling constantly sad and fearful. At least the anti-depression meds alleviated that a little.

She is becoming increasingly afraid to be alone. She follows me everywhere, keeps asking me whether I’m going out anywhere. “Where are you going? Where are you going? Where are you going? Don’t leave me.”

I try to dance with her every night, since it’s the one thing that seems to relax her anxious mind. She follows intuitively, seems to get into some kind of “zone.”
She gets very agitated when he and I argue, and so I’ve decided to become a rope. “You can’t push a rope.”

I let him go on criticizing me and just ignore the criticism. I just nod my head when he tries to bait me into a row. If he starts shouting, I leave. Go into my room and close the door. I leave him to deal with the my mother’s upset.

This is not how it has to be. But this is how he makes it.
This post is not only my venting. It is documentation.

Well, not restless legs per se, but the medication that’s prescribed for RLS.

My restless legs are the kind that make me want to dance or run away from home, and I don’t need any medication for those. And the only compulsive behavior I have is eating too many carbs.
So, tomorrow my restless legs are taking me out of town for an overnight visit with my women friends for our annual shared birthday dinner. The birthdays of all six of us fall between the end of February and the beginning of April. So we celebrate together in March. And this year I certainly will indulge my carb compulsion.
And, while I’m in the area, I’m going to see if the Subaru dealer from whom I bought my car 6.5 years ago can figure out why, even with a new battery, the electrical system goes kaput if I don’t drive it for four days. So far, no one else has been able to find the drain on the battery.

Well, I finally made it — my first visit to Curves for Women, where I was showed how to use the eight or so machines. I loved the place — energetic disco music blaring, behind which a female voice gave instructions on when to leave one machine and go to another and when to check your heart rate. Two other women, probably a little younger than I, were also there, going through the same routine that I was learning.
In thirty minutes, you work your way around the circle of machines three times, taking your rhythm from the music and the instructional voice. In thirty minutes, I had worked up a good sweat and my heart rate up to 22 beats in 10 seconds. And I felt great.
I was gone from the house for only an hour and fifteen minutes. Theoretically, I should be able to do that at least twice a week.
But that requires cooperation from my sibling, who will need to stay with my mother. We’ll see.

This is one of those things that most internet surfers probably have already seen. But I just found it.
So, if you’re like me and get a kick out of the differences between dogs and cats, go here and read excerpts from the diaries of each.
For some reason, my mom likes to watch the Dog Whisperer. I have to admit that I’m fascinated by how he gets just about any kind of dog to behave and obey its owner.
What kind of person would be able to get cats to do that? A Feline Mind-Melder?

I sat and listened to Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich tell his story on tonight’s 60 Minutes, the story of how in Haditha, Iraq, he and his squad were doing what they had been trained to do: responding to a perceived threat with legitimate force.
The VietNam War, with its various My Lai-type atrocities, made many of us peaceniks so angy that we too easily ignored the fact that both the perpetrators and the murdered were victims. Between now and then, we have learned more about how our soldiers are “brainwashed” into being amoral killing machines.
Apparently, it all began after the World War II, when United States Army lieutenant colonel named S. L. A. Marshall wrote “Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command in Future War.” I got the information about Marshall’s suggestions from a chilling article by Dan Baum that appeared in The New Yorker on July 5, 2004 and appears on the Not In Our Name website. That article includes the follwing:

If you Google “American soldiers trained to kill,” you’ll get lots of additional enlightening articles.
As I’ve said before on this blog, war requires testosterone stirred to the extreme.
I have come to believe that what Sgt. Frank Wuterich needs and deserves is not a court martial, but rather intense deprogramming and compassionate psychotherapy. You might want to listen to this.
Actually, what the major leaders of this country also need and deserve are intense deprogramming and psychotherapy (with or without compassion).