I must stop.

I allowed myself to get drawn into the KR political discussions again, and even started one relating to the VT tragedy by linking to this. It blows my mind that these people have Faithful Listeners nodding along with the hateful things they say, and I think we have to drag this garbage out into the light of day and let reasonable people see how toxic they are. But what blew my mind again was that someone on KR took their side, sort of, saying that they were introducing reasonable questions. (Yeah, that's right: "The VT shooting victims: cowards, or just wussies?") That's a valid and necessary component to this topic. When I responded to her she folded, but not graciously.

And I love it when women argue online, with the snotty little digs masked as politeness, because some of them start doing the girly thing, addressing the other party as "Hon," or 'Sweetie," or "Dearie," and you know it's code for Bitch. It's just such a girl thing.

Just like the Good Christians who say "Bless you," inappropriately, when they are angry - it's their way of saying Fuck You and both sides know it.

So I'm pulling back from those discussions. (See, Dr. SL, I'm trying to be less...ME. I am getting all serene and Zen, and knowing when to hold 'em, and when to fold 'em. Breathe, breathe....)

I was on the treadmill at the gym and CNN was in front of my face so I listened to it - they stopped the Parade of the Pseudo Experts about VT and covered the Gonzales hearing for a while. They switched to it right as Arlen Spector was flaying Gonzales alive, Gonzales sounded like a dumb 9 year old caught in a lie, and I thought, "Hoo, this could be fun!" So much fun that I turned on C-SPAN when I came home, and listened to it while doing other things. Gonzales' answer to everything, apparently, is that he has no idea what is going on at Justice, he delegates stuff to other people, he can't be expected to know everything, and if his name is on it he doesn't recall it, and if he made a phone call he can't remember that either. (In other words, he's the ideal Bush Administration Official.)

Orrin Hatch helped him with this - that was the other funny part. Hatch tossed these gentle softballs of talking points to Gonzales, trying to get him to wax dramatic about how hard his job is and how many people he has to supervise and how he can't be expected to know everything what the hell is going on. And Gonzales is such a lox, he fumbled every one of Uncle Orrin's gentle tosses. I guess he'd been stammering and making excuses for so many hours, he didn't recognize an opening to explain that he has too many responsibilities running the Justice Department to know what's happening in the Justice Department he allegedly runs. Priceless.

Changing the subject - hold on, don't fall off - I spent part of the afternoon opening boxes that had been in the attic for ten years. I'm not done yet. I found more books, a collection of Girlchild's stuffed animals in excellent shape, a nice lamp, two not nice lamps, a few more decorator things, and a load of Christmas stuff, because my mother kept passing her stuff to me when she got tired of putting it up. I have Santa's Effing Workshop in boxes in the garage. There may be elves in one of the boxes, I thought I heard muffled cursing - or maybe that was just me. This is going to be a big garage sale. I'm trying to figure out who I can draft for backup sales help. I hate garage sales, but it's worth it when I have this much Stuff to offload.

Boy went canoeing. He didn't come here just to toil for mom, and he certainly earned it. Tomorrow we will pull the hard drives from the PCs and do other air conditioned things, and Saturday will be another garage session, and he leaves Sunday. And I will continue to organize, and when it is done, it will be so much better.