“Today I have delivered a letter to the Speaker of the House informing him of my decision to resign from the U.S. House of Representatives, effective today. I thank the people of Florida’s 16th Congressional District for giving me the opportunity to serve them for the last twelve years; it has been an honor.

“I am deeply sorry and I apologize for letting down my family and the people of Florida I have had the privilege to represent.”
–Mark Foley

Florida Rep. Mark Foley’s resignation came just hours after ABC News questioned the congressman about a series of sexually explicit instant messages involving congressional pages, high school students who are under 18 years of age.

In Congress, Rep. Foley (R-FL) was part of the Republican leadership and the chairman of the House caucus on missing and exploited children.

He crusaded for tough laws against those who used the Internet for sexual exploitation of children.

“They’re sick people; they need mental health counseling,” Foley said.

Speechless.

Congress was pushing on Friday to finish legislation that would boost security at U.S. ports, but at the last minute lawmakers added provisions to prohibit Internet gambling.

This is the stupidity that is the United States government at work. The tying together of completely unrelated legislation in a bid to just get the stuff passed and out the door will be … no … has been our downfall.

A country, a home, a person can own all the firarms and weaponry on the planet, but unless the home base is secure, they are defenseless. A good offense is not always a good defense. Having an Abrams Tank in your living room won’t do you any good, if you live in a house with paper walls and the enemy owns a blowtorch.

Not going to rant. Don’t need to rant. Provided you have more than two brain cells to rub together, there is no denying the ignorance of tying together laws involving port security and internet gambling. One of these things is a major problem right now, and one of these things may or may not be a major problem at some point. I’ll let you guess which one is which.

I made a post over at Livejournal earlier, so it seems only fair I make a quick post here to let you guys know I am alive as well. OK, not totally alive, but I am breathing (mostly), my heart is beating (though oddly), and most of my major body systems seem to be functioning on at least a limited level. I don’t think I’ll be back to posting any real posts until Monday. Sitting upright for longer than a few minutes at a time is still entirely too challenging. Not to mention, the parts of my brain required for spelling and word formation are apparently still in off mode.

Sooooo … spent the week laying down and being sick, sick, sick. Currently, I would describe myself as merely sick, sick. I’m getting better. I’m just getting sick and tired of being sick and tired. If the universe would like to kill me, could it please choose another method, like a speeding train, runaway bus, or stray bullet? Thank, ’cause this getting the same damn horrible crap every month or so is really just sucking the life out of my life.

I’d stick around and whine more, but my body is insisting it wants to go be horizontal again and my brain would very much like to shut down for another few hours. Gods, this sucks.

We walked out to the truck in the rain, not even noticing that we were getting wet. I think we were in shock. We sat in the truck, and neither of us could say anything more than … we just bought a house.

–Orb, September 26, 2003

Shortly after my last post, I went from feeling cranky due to allergies to having a fever and apparently the same damn crap Lin and I had a few weeks ago: slight fever, body aches and pains, headache, and a somewhat icky stomach. What they hell is this, and why do we keep getting it?!

At any rate, I feel decidely terrible.

Lin and Kenny are hanging out in the living room watching Dirty Harry. They are being loud and obnoxious in that testosterone driven way they are. I’m going to retreat to the bedroom, pull the covers up over my head, and hopefully I will fall asleep quickly. Lin can microwave his own damn pot pie for dinner.

Saturday I rode around with Lin while he worked. That’s always sort of fun, and it usually means I get to stop at some stores I want to go to. I finally got that paper-cutter I have been wanting at Hobby Lobby. It’s a cheap one, but it’s going to work well enough and better than me trying to cut straight lines with scissors. Last night I finished up my artist trading cards for this month so I could drop them in the mail today. Now that cutting out the cards isn’t going to be such a huge pain in the butt, I think I’ll start making cards just for the heck of it.

Then we stopped at Petsmart to get the tapeworm tablets. They were, as they always are, out of them. I did notice the sticker on the shelf though stating the damn things cost $25. That’s ridiculous. As soon as we got home, I ordered them online for $13 shipping included. Same medication, totally different prices. Crazy. It used to be the case that ordering things online wasn’t such a deal, because once you added in shipping charges, the prices ended up being exactly the same or more, and then you had to wait for the item to arrive. I’m finding, in most cases, I can order just about anything I want online for much cheaper now, even with shipping charges. So much for shopping at stores.

We ate lunch at McDonald’s, which is something of a treat for me. I know Lin probably eats there far too often for lunch, but I swear I only get my Happy Meal fix about two or three times a year. I got a completely silly toy with my Happy Meal. A huge bracelet with lip gloss in it. I love it, and I am only slightly embarrassed that a bracelet designed for small children fits my wrist. The lip gloss inside is strawberry scented too, which goes well with this new perfume I have been wearing that smells just like freshly picked strawberries. I’ve never been much into fruit scents before, but I think my tastes are changing.

I do have one thing to complain about concerning Happy Meals. I am not at all pleased about having to choose between girl toys and boy toys. It’s so incredibly sexist, I almost can’t stand it. The boy toys (which I generally prefer) are always cool things like cars or robots. The girl toys are always silly things like dolls or grooming supplies. I could have sworn that many ages ago we all realized there are no such things as girl toys and boy toys and that to give children toys that ingrain particular stereotypes of male and female behavior was a bad thing. I guess this is just one more example of American culture marching backwards in time. Girls are supposed to be pretty and boys are supposed to be rough and tumble. For the record, I always want the boy toys. They tend to be far cooler. I lucked out this time and got something I liked, but generally, girl toys suck.

The kittens are getting into everything these days. Two little terrors … that’s what they are. Lucky for them, they are adorable even when they are getting into trouble. I didn’t want to start using the water bottle to train them, but I finally broke it out on Sunday when they started clawing their way through the partition keeping them from getting into the AC closet. These kittens laugh at the water bottle. They are unmoved by water appearing out of nowhere and dousing them. Oh sure, they might stop what they are doing for a half a second and they may let out a little hiss of disapproval, but then they are right back at what they are doing. At least giving them baths might not be too horrible, since they don’t seem to have a major aversion to water, but it’s one less thing in my training arsenal to use to keep them in line. They have been showing some acknowledgment to the word “NO,” though that usually only gives me about two seconds to distract them before they continue with their unauthorized activity. The current dilemma is how to keep them off the dining room table. They are very determined. As much as I would hate to do it, I may have to give in on cats on the table. So far, nothing I have tried works, not even sticky tape. These kittens are fearless.

Continuing on the subject of kittens, they have started seeking us out to lay by us and get lovies, and they are finally taking to Lin as well. Last night I was left kittenless for some hours while they both demanded attention and body warmth from Lin. I was a smidgen jealous. My plan had been two kittens for two laps, but they have other ideas and prefer to double team one person at a time. Oh well. I still get to spend more time with them than Lin does anyway. Of course, most of that time is spent running around after them keeping them out of trouble. Just like human children, they are most precious when they are sleeping.

Other than work, shopping, and kittens, the rest of the weekend was spent laying around the living room playing video games. Of course, as soon as Lin noticed I was playing The Bard’s Tale, he wanted to play too. Now I have to share the Playstation. Bah humbug. Watching Lin play isn’t really so bad. There hasn’t been much of anything on the TV lately, and we don’t have any new DVDs to watch, so at least it’s somewhat entertaining to watch Lin’s character die for the hundredth time in some new and unusual way. If there’s a way to kill off your character, Lin will find it. He’s not nearly as cautious an RPG player as I am. Dude, ranged weapons mean you don’t have to run right into the thick of twenty-five evil druids! Pick ‘em off at a distance, I say!

Fall allergy season is now in full “bloom” … and I didn’t really need a graph to tell me that. Woke up congested and with a massive headache. Whether or not I take any allergy medicine I feel totally unmotivated to do much more than sit in one spot and blow my nose, so I have opted to take the medication. At least I can feel unmotivated comfortably … or fall asleep, which is likely to happen soon. I have oodles of photos I need to crop and correct so I can post them somewhere (still haven’t sorted out what to do about a gallery for my web site), about ten posts still sitting in draft mode I’d like to finish up and post, a folder sitting in my desktop containing hundreds of links I wanted to post at Links of Note, and then there’s the housework which I have been totally ignoring today. But, like I said, I am totally unmotivated to do much of anything. Thus I shall go open a container of yogurt, plant my butt on the couch, and if there’s nothing of interest on TV, I think I’ll take a nap with the kittens. Or play some more Bard’s Tale. Lin started after me, and he’s almost caught up to the point I am at. I want to finish first! No, no … we aren’t competitive at ALL.

“Naturally the common people don’t want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
~ Hermann Goering, President of the Reichstag, Nazi Party, and Luftwaffe Commander in Chief