The following post is by MYRLN, a non-blogger who is Kalilily Time’s guest writer every Monday.
POOR GUY
Dear G.W., Prez of US of A,
You must be feeling really bad about the way these veterans are acting towards you and your administration. Saying nasty things and all, after all you’ve done for them, too. Ungrateful don’t quite cover it, does it? Closer to being treasoners is maybe more like it, like that old pro, Chaney, says, no?
I mean, look at how you tried to help’em, making their lives better and all when most of them didn’t have a pot to pee in before and nothing that would let’em throw back their shoulders and be proud about what they were doing for once in their lives. Here you go and start 2 wars for them and get them signed up to go to Iraq and that other place (which I’m not writing the name of cuz the guys here in the bar — many of’em vets — bet you can’t spell the name of the other place and are gonna get Meet the Press or something to challenge you to spell it, so I don’t wanna make it seem like I give you the spelling or anything. You’ll show’em. Just remember there’s a “H” after the “G” just like in the word “right” like in your politics.).
Anyways, so you give them the chance to risk life and limb for the good old USA and to be seen as heroes (all the things you never had the good luck to do or be back in the ‘Nam days), and what’s their reaction? Well, ingrates they are, they bitch and moan that they ain’t getting enough care from the VA for their missing arms or legs or both or that PTSD, whatever that is, maybe some Islamo-fascist code. Instead of holding up their stumps proudly and saluting you with them, all they do is whine, “They ain’t helping us enough.”
And then there’s that bunch that got big sign-up bonuses, some as much as 25-30 grand. Then they go and get hurt or killed over there in the war and can’t serve no more after only 2-3 weeks in action. And they or their families have the nerve to bitch and moan when you ask’em to give back the bonuses cuz they didn’t complete the contractual agreement they made. It’s probably enough to make you puke up your breakfast in the nice warm White House dining room with Laura and your dog.
Maybe what you oughta do, Mr. Prez, is toss all them ungrateful whiners down into Guantanamo and let’em rot there as traitors to you and your country which has done nothing but give them 2 good wars to fight in, like I said. I mean, what more could anybody ask of you? That’s a helluva legacy you’ll leave behind when you say, “Mission accomplished,” for the last time in ’09.
In the meantime, you just hang in there, Mr. B., and keep your wars cooking so as to keep ALL of us safe from terror. Except them damned veterans, of course. Looks like nothing could satisfy them.
Sincerely yours,
Jonathan Swift-boot

It’s the day before Thanksgiving, and they sit on the floor of his sunny bedroom and build Lego towers. He’s got parents who play with him. I don’t remember my parents ever doing that with me.
He helps them set the Thanksgiving table for the nine people who will gather for the family dinner. He wants to add something of his own at each place setting. What a great idea, they tell him.

I don’t think I would have been allowed.
He’s a lucky kid.
Now, I’m sitting here blogging while my mother is sleeping. I dressed her, fed her, cut and filed her fingernails, and that was about all she could take.
Her nails are dry and brittle, and they crumble when I cut them. She sleeps a lot. Eats little. She’s always stroking something — my arm, her knee. She needs to touch. Keep in touch. She’s afraid. We all know what she’s afraid of.
This is not play. This is not fun.
I try to make her smile. I try.

The following post is by MYRLN, a non-blogger who is Kalilily Time’s guest writer every Monday.
MAYBE THE REAL NEWS
Dysfunction isn’t limited to our government. The news media — tv, radio, and print alike — share the ailment in spades. In large measure, it’s become a matter of news entities trying to match or exceed the popularity of supermarket tabloids with their sole goal of rampant sensationalism. Fiction passed off as news.
Radio and local t.v. news is practically non-existent, consisting mostly of one-sentence sound bites promising fuller, more amazing coverage later on sometime. In showmanlike segments they then give us longer bits of weather and sports info. All of it’s wrapped in extended numbers and lengths of commercials and self-promotion telling us how great they are at what they do. Meaning mostly nothing. About that, we can’t argue.
Major national t.v. news entities, both broadcast and cable, do a better job but not by a whole lot. Much of the time, they ride their particular hobby horses. MSNBC, for example, has become deeply enamored of crime stories and features of prison life. CNN moves between hopscotching the world for variety and a maddening, eternal focus on illegal immigration. CBS is hopelessly focused on Katie Couric. But at least the majors make serious noises about real news.
Still, there’s the attention by all the majors to stories and/or slants that border on the unbelievable. This past week, for example, nearly every news organization covered a story out of our drought-stricken southeastern states. Residents there gathered to offer prayers asking for rain, an event dutifully covered as real news. In the next day or two, rainy weather (some severe and damaging) did indeed arrive. Well, the news jumped all over it, relating it to the prayer sessions as if were indeed a matter of cause and effect (as those who prayed proclaimed). If it were truly cause and effect, then we’ve stumbled on the solution to humankind’s problems, all of them. Prez Dumbya can lead the nation in mass prayer sessions asking for peace in the world, for all the best for everyone — Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and every other religion. And within days, paradise would be achieved (except for atheists and agnostics for whom prayer to an Almighty likely wouldn’t work). And all of it would be covered by the news media with a straight face.
Then there’s some of the print news, like the New York Post which typifies what’s wrong with ALL of our news media. It has a daily gossip column called “Page Six” which except by occasional accident is never on page 6. And on Sundays, it’s a separately-printed, glossy page, full-scale magazine.
You see, for the news folks, reality is not so much what actually IS in the world but what they choose to CALL reality and hence news. The truth is left to fend for itself.
This is Walter Cronkite signing off. Truly. Honest.
Direct from The Horse’s Mouth news organization. (Or maybe the other end of the horse.)

From here:

The following post is by MYRLN, a non-blogger who is Kalilily Time’s guest writer every Monday.
WRITE AND WRONG
WRITE:
The Writers Guild of America is on strike, trying to get a fair share of the huge profits companies and producers make off materials like dvd’s and the newly-tapped internet downloading. You see, film and tv companies and their big-shot producers are notoriously greedy and egocentric. They believe they’re the heart of the entertainment industry cuz they front the bucks. Their importance in the process can’t be denied, but they, like many of us, forget that without the writer providing the words, there is nothing. Well…except so-called “reality” shows. In scripted creative endeavors, however, “in the beginning was the word.” (John, I.1)
But writers more often than not get shoved somewhere at the back of the line. Take a look at the opening credits of a movie or tv drama or sitcom or late night show. You’ll see much attention to a host of studio bigs and companies and actors but only a momentary glimpse of who the writers are.
So a strike is a welcome event with the secondary benefit of driving home a very basic point: without writers, there are no words (meaning scripts).
Without words, the big shots have no shows or films. No matter how much money they have.
And that’s right. Write?
WRONG:
Then there is our government. Loosely speaking.
Like Dick Cheney who identified Hugo Chavez as the leader of Peru , not the Venezuela he actually runs. How’s that for pure (but unsurprising) stupidity out of our second in command?
Like G.W. Bush who threatens Congress that if they don’t approve his Attorney General, he’ll leave the post vacant. Like it wasn’t so with Gonzalez in there.
Like Congress which gutlessly folds and gives him what he wants.
Like Prez hopeful, the Senator Hypocrita Clinton who screws up in a recent debate then complains they ganged up on her and lets her campaign claim it was a guys against the girl thing. Yeah, go down that road. That’d qualify you for Prez. And then this week in Iowa, after a supposedly impromptu Q. and A. session, it was discovered that at least one question/questioner was a plant by her campaign. So…how’s she then any different from the current administration?
And the supposed question of waterboarding as torture so ponderously puzzling our elected and appointed pundits. What’s to ask? Wanna know if it is or isn’t, or wanna flat-out insist it isn’t? Then first you must undergo the process and then come back and tell us with a straight face it isn’t. (That especially means you, Senators Feinstein and Schumer and new A.G. Mukasey. No sense adding Dumbya and Darth to the list since they’d lie about having undergone it.)
This government — the Founding Fathers would love to see it in action. Right?
WRONG! They’d have a collective heart attack upon learning how the WORDS they WROTE have been perverted. Or maybe they’d go on strike and start a new country.

While Prince (the artist formerly known as) proceeds to alienate his fans (those who made him what he is, whatever he is) by threatening to sue several of his fan web sites for copyright infringement, fans of much less prickly creatives are joining together to support those whose work they admire and share with relish.
Writers are striking and their fans are rallying. Yes, writers have fans, too.
It pretty much started with those formidable Josh Whedon fans (you know, the ones who, each year, raise all that money for Equality Now), who (in L.A. for their annual Serenity fan bash) dropped off some pizzas for their favorite strike-walking writers.
And, in their usual energetically creative fashion, the Whedon warriors launched a new campaign to get fans of popular (and even unpopular) television series to become vocal about the rights of writers in this new digital age.
Josh Whedon, a poetic, prolific, and passionate writer in his own right, blogged it well:

We’re talking about story-telling, the most basic human need. Food? That’s an animal need. Shelter? That’s a luxury item that leads to social grouping, which leads directly to fancy scarves. But human awareness is all about story-telling. The selective narrative of your memory. The story of why the Sky Bully throws lightning at you. From the first, stories, even unspoken, separated us from the other, cooler beasts. And now we’re talking about the stories that define our nation’s popular culture – a huge part of its identity. These are the people that think those up. Working writers.

None of the writers – or anyone – I’ve spoken to have ever heard of fans organizing and supporting a strike the way you guys have. Supporting our right not to entertain you. Seriously, that’s rare. When I showed my wife the banner that went with the pizza scheme, she just said, “These people are gonna be running the world.” Man, I hope she’s right.

I found out from b!X post about fans like this one who are creating graphics that bloggers and other Netizens can display to show their support for the writer’s strike.
I watch an awful lot of television, so I’m thinking if I were to line up my picket placards, they would begin like this:

Although, on second thought, I should just go with this one:

The server I’m on was down since Friday. That happened when b!X, whose server I’m on, was up in a plane heading for L.A.
The temperature is down, the heat is up.
My stress level is up, my energy is down.
My mother was up on Saturday because we had a visit from my cousin and her husband. Soon after they left, she went down into one of her “episodes.”
My mom is up and down all night long.
I’m sure up for a turn down day.

She had a good day, yesterday. No crying or moaning or fright because she didn’t know where she was or what was happening to her. I managed to give her a shower and wash her hair. It was such a beautifully warm day, that later, we went for a walk all the way down the driveway, out into the road, and back. She took a long nap after that.
Dementia is such a roller coaster. That’s why it’s so hard to know if the meds are working. It could be just a day her brain decides to give her a break.
Today, we’re back to the usual, with her waking up afraid and crying because nothing looks familiar.
Yesterday, the good day, she even tried to play a little on her Lowry organ. Sometimes when she plays, I sing along to help her remember the tune.
This morning, as she cried because she was afraid, I sang yesterday’s song for her, again.
Whistle a Happy Tune
Whenever I feel afraid
I hold my head erect
And whistle a happy tune
So no one will suspect
I’m afraid.
While shivering in my shoes
I strike a careless pose
And whistle a happy tune
And no one ever knows
I’m afraid.
The result of this deception
Is very strange to tell
For when I fool the people
I fear I fool myself as well!
I whistle a happy tune
And ev’ry single time
The happiness in the tune
Convinces me that I’m not afraid.
Make believe you’re brave
And the trick will take you far.
You may be as brave
As you make believe you are
You may be as brave
As you make believe you are
While shivering in my shoes
I strike a careless pose
And whistle a happy tune
And no one ever knows,
I’m afraid.
The result of this deception
Is very strange to tell
For when I fool the people
I fear I fool myself as well!
I whistle a happy tune
And ev’ry single time
The happiness in the tune
Convinces me that I’m not afraid.
Make believe you’re brave
And the trick will take you far.
You may be as brave
As you make believe you are….

She’s taking a nap, now. I should be making adjustments in the fleece pants I bought for her, now that it’s getting cold up here on the mountain. I guess I’ll do that now.

I’m wondering.
Suppose I had an hour to get me and my mother out of here. Maybe there’s wildfire coming, or maybe some heartless marauders.
In addition to underwear, socks, shoes, and basic clothing, what are the important things that I would gather up in that short period of time I had before the disaster strikes.
Our medications.
Our eyeglasses.
My CPU, since everything important is on there. I never have time to back up stuff on disks, and I can always buy a keyboard and monitor.
My cell phone.
My cat.
My charge cards and our medical cards.
The family photo collage that my mother has hanging on her wall and that she looks at every day.
My mother’s rosary.
The family photo albums.
I would mourn the loss of my books, my bins of yarn and craft supplies, the rest of my clothes, the boxes of memorabilia. But some of that can be replaced, and I can live without the rest.
It’s interesting to me that it’s my CPU that’s most important. It holds just about all the links to the essentials of my life. If there were no electricity to be had, I would be truly lost.
What would you take?

The following post is by MYRLN, a non-blogger who is Kalilily Time’s guest writer every Monday.
SHORT AND SOUR
“Great job, Brownie.” With those immortal words from Prez Dumbya to FEMA’s then director, the whole fiasco about the agency’s ineptitude around hurricane Katrina came to light. Since then, many changes have been made. Great Job guy is gone. FEMA’s under Homeland Security.
With the huge outbreak of wildfires in California, attention partly turned to FEMA to see if anything had changed. For the most part, things seemed better, good and effective cooperation between Federal and State governments. So last Tuesday, FEMA held a press conference. Its Deputy Director fielded questions and supplied answers that put FEMA in an overall excellent light. “I’m very happy with FEMA’s response,” he said.
Only one problem with the whole thing: there were no reporters there. The questions all came from FEMA employees posing as reporters. In other words, it was staged. It was all a lie. There was no news conference. Afterwards, when the “great job, Brownie” moment ultimately came and the sham revealed, the White House said FEMA was guilty of an “error in judgment.”
Right…the error being they got caught doing what this administration and its minions do most and best: lying. When will the entire country finally see that the only commitment the Bush administration has had from its inception is to lying? It lied about Iraq, its Attorney Generals, its Defense Secretary, its State Department, its legal advisors. In short, about its EVERY DAMNED WORD OUT OF ITS DAMNED LYING MOUTH! The only pertinent qualification for getting hired by the Bushies is the answer to this question: How well can you lie?
Those who support the Liars Club should understand: their support makes them as guilty as Dumbya and Friends for the serious undermining of this nation’s Constitution and moral underpinnings. You can’t escape that. Your support of liars makes you one, too. All the righteous posturing in the world about “hard truths” and “compassionate conservatism” and the other claptrap you mouth won’t change the heart of the matter which is this: You support Bush? Then you are also a liar. Nothing you say can be trusted or believed. You live on lies.
Get it?