Comments for Suburban Guerrilla

Comment on Why Criminalizing Drug Use Is So Crazy by Maddie

Maddie — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 00:41:11 +0000

While I believe that something has to be done about the drug trade, I also know how devastating drugs can be to young people.

I would say not to criminalize drug use but I would also have to add that there be treatment for those addicted. Addiction is a complex brain reaction and is not just abusing drugs. Most of us just grow up around 30 and say enough as we have more important things to do than to drink all night or snort coke or shoot up. However, there are those that have more difficult time walking away.

I am not sure that it is wise to leave addicts make their own decisions about buying clean needles or buying only so much from pharmacy.

Comment on Up in Smoke by agave

agave — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 22:59:02 +0000

As tena once said, “Can’t you just let us (smokers) kill ourselves in peace?”

Comment on Up in Smoke by Izquierdo

Izquierdo — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 21:41:19 +0000

So Obama thinks that the only way to get a tobacco bill is to concoct one that is toothless in protecting the public.
Why bother at all?

Comment on My Far-Flung Empire by Amaliada

Amaliada — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 18:36:55 +0000

I read you in Amalias (or Amaliada), Greece - but generally through Google Reader. When you track over 80 blogs, you can’t move through your bookmarks fast enough!

Love your writing!

Comment on Up in Smoke by John

John — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 18:12:23 +0000

One thing I’m unable to understand is how anti-abortion supporters (certainly not all, but there is definitely a pattern there) can be anti-abortion while also lacking support for health care access for all. If anyone has an explanation on the logic behind those seemingly opposing views, I’m listening.

Comment on Psycho TV by A

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:58:34 +0000

Most of the comments I saw concerned the pair being ungrateful and rude while receiving a free 100k makeover for their house.

Astrology reference books? Please read some James Randi.

Comment on American Tune by wobbly

wobbly — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:52:24 +0000

Well, I was taking my son for a stroll in Fort Tryon Park after going through the Cloisters…

We were discussing his “sophomore slump”, his grades, his depression….

When we suddenly noticed a plaque half hidden by greenery.

It was dedicated to the many who died defending this precious piece of land from an assault by British hireling Hessian troops…

Or so I thought until I actually read the thing.

It was placed there by the Daughters of the American Revolution (those bitches!) to remind people that one Margaret Corbin, having seen her husband killed at his post, took no thought about him nor her…

She just stepped over her husband’s dead body, took control of his cannon, and fired away.

Before the day was done, Margaret had multiple wounds. She was shot in the arm, in the jaw, the chest….

She was a cripple to the end of her life, which came when she was
forty eight years

Between the day she got shot on the banks of the Hudson, and the day she finally died, the United States of America paid all of her bills.

The USA was solvent in those days, apparently.

Comment on Psycho TV by Susie

Susie — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 14:18:16 +0000

Yeah, I thought the comments were creepy, too.

Comment on Oh Noes Again! by Susie

Susie — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 14:10:41 +0000

At our local urban farm.

http://www.greensgrow.org/

Besides, they haven’t found it in Pennsylvania or New Jersey.

Comment on Why Criminalizing Drug Use Is So Crazy by k

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 14:00:46 +0000

I had to take a personality profile test to get my stupid job as a janitor. I think that perhaps there might be some way to intercept people prone to doing criminally stupid things before they get put in positions like this. Yes, drug laws need to be reformed. So do societal obsessions with guilt and blame. And perhaps taking away the money gravity well out of the medical field would help a little. And maybe it would help if the medical field weren’t the only growing job market left. I suspect that people with less than altruistic motives get sucked up in it.
Or maybe everybody should just find Jesus and get it over with.

Comment on Psycho TV by k

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 12:48:42 +0000

Wow. Reading the comments was kind of icky. All those people saying how evil the mother and daughter were for being such pigs, and how ungrateful the mother was for resenting having someone come into her home and throw her shit out.
Glad I don’t have tv.

Comment on Oh Noes Again! by k

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 12:38:33 +0000

Where did your neighbors get their plants?

Comment on Psycho TV by Lori

Lori — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 07:26:49 +0000

I worked for a couple like this. They had good income and everyday the wife would spend $50 or more at a thrift shop. Every. Single. Day. Her husband wound up in the hospital and couldn’t walk and had to spend 2 years in care facilities because the clutter in the house left him unable to navigate his own home. And when I say clutter, well, that doesn’t cover it. There weren’t even paths between the piles of stuff anymore. Just huge stacks of stuff that you had to climb over. They owned the apartment building I lived in, and they had filled up one apartment, and one garage. They moved into another apartment and promptly filled that up as well. The bedroom above mine had a mountain of clothing that filled the 12 x 12 room to almost the ceiling. I couldn’t believe it. Even though they ate all their meals in restaurants, their kitchen was crammed to the tottering with stuff. She once gave me food out of her freezer when we were broke, and all of it - every single bite - was stale and bad.

When the husband died, I wound up sorting through all the stuff and making sure his stuff went to his family, and her stuff to hers. This was a well off couple who traveled extensively. I’m a vintage clothing freak and I thought surely something cool was in there somewhere. But everything thing they owned - save the cook books and one massively fabulous turntable - was horrible. Everything was ugly. Everything was broken. Everything was cheap junk. What an experience that was.

Comment on Why Criminalizing Drug Use Is So Crazy by cripes

cripes — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 06:45:44 +0000

Yeah. The first thing I thought when I read about this is: would this happen in a society where addicts can access their drugs without resorting to black market or illegal means to acquire them?
Hell, the women might well have been in treatment, in an environment that doesn’t criminalize, ostracise, and threaten to deprive addicts of liberty and the means to support themselves.

Comment on Resigning by John

John — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 02:17:02 +0000

The only way it can be a positive is if the economy in Alaska really tanks at least a year from now. That amount of time would give her cover from charges it was her policies that caused the downturn.

The negatives starting with the on-going and pending investigations are huge. Also one of the big charges against her in the campaign last year was lack of experience and this does nothing to help it.

Looks like talk radio needs another hero for 2012.

Comment on Psycho TV by Izquierdo

Izquierdo — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 02:09:05 +0000

All this makes me feel a little better about myself.

Comment on I Am A Patriot by self exile

self exile — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 01:32:26 +0000

Sorry I can’t kick in this month. A woman on another blog I follow thinks she has cancer. I stripped myself to the minimums so she would fly to Costa Rica and have enough money to be tested and if necessary treated.

Now my translator’s young brother has to have major surgery. I will probably have to take an 19 hour bus ride to Lima and hit my emergency stash of Euros in a safe deposit box. I’ll try to double down at the end of the month.

I was a patriot once. Now I am a self exile. Thank you for the blog. You are great.

Comment on Resigning by Historiann

Historiann — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 01:23:01 +0000

Well, it’s a better move than flying to Argentina under the radar for a tryst, and then confessing it all in embarassing detail in a press conference. So by the standards of other governors in the news, and other Republicans in the news, it looks okey-dokey.

Comment on Eww by smartalek

smartalek — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 01:21:46 +0000

I dunno.
I’ve got pretty close to the world’s worst case of acrophobia. I am literally unable to even keep my eyes open during the scene early in the 1st Matrix in which Neo has to walk out onto the sill of the office window… and drops the cellphone Morpheus has sent him. Ditto for the part of The Devil’s Advocate where Pacino and Keanu (what is it about that guy and heights in movies?) walk around on a skyscraper rooftop with no wall or fence, just open air and a sheer drop of 30+ stories.
But I think it’s at least possible that I might be able to handle being on the glass floor of that little cubicle — but only because (as #1, Maya, pointed out) it’s enclosed, and apparently solidly so. (If the side walls weren’t there, and the ledge were open to the air, I wouldn’t even be able to get near it.)
I mean, think people — haven’t you been to the top of something like, say, the Empire State Building, and been able to go up to the wall at the very edge of the observation deck — because the wall and the secure fencing are right there?
Then again, I could be completely full of it. And I’m not eager to test it.

Comment on Eww by phein

phein — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 01:19:32 +0000

Have to tell ya:

I’ve been up in the Sears Tower, on that platform. It’s the highest point you can be in any building, anywhere in the world. Sure, there are taller “buildings”, but only because they have spires or communication towers that add to their height. Want to see something unique, go for it.

I was an Army paratrooper in a younger life, but now heights scare the daylights out of me (”where’s the parachute?”). But this, this would be something you’d have to do, as long as you’re up there.

Comment on Resigning by Izquierdo

Izquierdo — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 22:32:22 +0000

I wonder if she had a choice. The abruptness of this move, the lack of content and logic in her announcement, and the timing (late Friday on a 3-day weekend) all suggest that some very big scandal is about to break.

Is one of the ethics investigations about to produce an indictment?
Did someone threaten to reveal major dirt if she didn’t step down?
Is there an even more damaging Vanity Fair-type expose about to come out?
Was she having an affair with Putin?
With Mark Stanford?
With Arlen Specter?
With DickCheney?
Was Michael Jackson Trig’s father?
Did Obama beat her in a marathon by 40 minutes while smoking unfiltered Camels?

Or does she have a sudden need to raise big money?

Comment on Psycho TV by bartkid

bartkid — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 22:26:01 +0000

>Sisyphus shrugged, and left the building.
I’ve said it before, and I will say it again:
Sisyphus had it easy.

Comment on Psycho TV by merciless

merciless — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 22:25:15 +0000

Thanks for the good words, Susie and Baba (and the great Lambert, for being on the same thread! I’m blushing…)

And terrific that Mr. Baba is actually trying some de-cluttering! Every little bit helps.

Comment on If I Had A Gun by Suzie

Suzie — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:55:37 +0000

Thanks for linking to this. Now if I could only get the song out of my head.

Comment on Resigning by Mike J.

Mike J. — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:31:49 +0000

Good move. If Obama’s policies will not work (as seems likely), political outsiders will be in demand, and nobody can deliver the “I told you so!” line of attack better.

Comment on Psycho TV by Babba

Babba — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 20:02:21 +0000

My husband is a packrat. He’s also a dumpster diver. Granted, he has come home with some things we actually need, but not normally. We live in a small house and have a storage shed. The only room that is clutter-free is the living room, where I spend most of my time since my computer and TV is in there, and the kitchen. We’ll be moving in Sept and I’ve asked him to go through stuff and get rid of what he doesn’t actually need. He’s made a couple of trips to the dump and the Thrift Store. I’m proud of him. But he’s still got plenty more to go through. So I can sympathize, merciless.

Comment on Link by Anna Granfors

Anna Granfors — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:52:42 +0000

Well, good on ‘em, I guess, but you’ll note that it’s “excerpts” from the story, albeit with video from Taibbi to kind of introduce the piece. (I haven’t compared the two to see what’s left out yet, though.) And it came as a surprise to me, when I finally searched Google Video, that Morning Joe (!) had Taibbi on, on June 26, to talk about the piece. And they actuallly had the sense to let him have his say, without any of their usual inane interruptions. (You have to go to the Morning Joe page to see the video, and I *hates* doing that…)

What’s curious to me is why Paul Krugman hasn’t had anything (that I’ve seen, anyway) about any of this…

Comment on Eww by Tucker

Tucker — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:19:02 +0000

Egad, someone please tell me how to get my testes to drop back down after looking at that picture.

Comment on Eww by Lavocat

Lavocat — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:14:06 +0000

Oh yeah: FUCK THAT!

Comment on Psycho TV by lambert strether

lambert strether — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 18:04:24 +0000

“Normal clutter” is a great metaphor for our economy, and our culture. “Go shopping!”