I've got to grind, grind it out

I looked for a video of this, found several. Started it, & thought I should write what I'm thinking; those guitars help; I may not have to have this playing to deal, but it helps.

Grandma is not sitting up to eat. And she's not eating much. Kind of sleeping a lot. She might die in the next week, but we just don't know.

I don't know what I'm going to do after she's gone. Ma and I don't seem to be able to manage decently even together, let alone alone. And I really don't want to live with Ma anyway.

I'm tempted to join an Occupation, but with my skin problems &c. I really can't tolerate not having a bathroom.

I need to change. As I have known for years, and knowing doesn't matter.

What I want to do, however mad it be, is mount a political campaign. Sort of a Screaming Lord Sutch with a purpose. I was reading an article in Rolling Stone where someone with Occupy Oakland is saying that elections don't matter, it's public actions. Well, I guess that's an urban way of looking at it? Of course you have to change people's minds. But just abandoning the political institutions to the careerists and the Movement Conservatives is not the answer.

What I've been thinking of doing for years now, without ever telling anyone, is changing my name and becoming a sort of professional lightning rod. Someone who gets out in public and says what he really thinks. Because biting your tongue and keeping your head down gets you nothing.

Perhaps this is as empty and mad as my old fantasies of suicide. Arguably it's a way for my death wish to manifest, except that I figured out a decade ago that my death wish was all talk. I really want to live more than I want to fight, so I put it off.

I've been watching the tv show In Plain Sight lately. And there's something about WitSec that's both horrifying and attractive. To live in obscurity forever, to give up your old job if it was at all noteworthy, to give up your kin and friends; for many it is an end to their lives, to all that gives meaning. How horrible. And yet I have pulled so far into myself I have almost been that isolated for a while.

In any case, the chance to reinvent is attractive. But to live in obscurity? I can do that after I have a bunch of Ku Kluxers trying to kill me. No, lift me up into those whirling blades, I have to grind it out. I don't know how, but I have to try to learn, to learn to try.

This is totally my campaign song.

(no subject)

http://chronicle.com/article/Who-Gets-to-See-Published/130403/
The battle over public access to federally financed research is heating up again. The basic question is this: When taxpayers help pay for scholarly research, should those taxpayers get to see the results in the form of free access to the resulting journal articles?

[...] U.S. Reps. Darrell E. Issa, a Republican of California, and Carolyn B. Maloney, a Democrat of New York, introduced the Research Works Act (HR 3699) last month. The bill would forbid federal agencies to do anything that would result in the sharing of privately published research—even if that research is done with the help of taxpayer dollars—unless the publisher of the work agrees first. That would spell the end of policies such as the National Institutes of Health's public-access mandate, which requires that the results of federally supported research be made publicly available via its PubMed Central database within 12 months of publication.

This is even a question?

(no subject)

February 4, 2012
Day of Mass Action
to Stop War on Iran

In many ways, the U.S. war on Iran has already begun.

The U.S. government is shaping public opinion to accept military intervention in Iran in the name of “national security.” Fabricated stories that claim evidence of Iran pursuing nuclear weapons is being blasted through mainstream media and repeated by almost every mainstream politician.

The U.S. has authorized harsh economic sanctions that could literally destroy and devastate the lives of millions of Iranian civilians. In addition to the sanctions, there have been targeted assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists and a U.S. surveillance drone was discovered in violation of Iranian sovereignty and airspace.

Stop this bullshit!

As much as I hate Ahmadijenad, the USA is going to make things worse if we invade. My "free Iran" icon is misleading, isn't it?

test for echo

MEME

I'm running a test to see who's reading my posts. So, if you read this, leave me a one-word comment about your day that starts with the third letter of your LJ USERNAME. Only one word please. Then repost so I can leave a word for you. Don't just post a word and not copy - that's not as much fun.

END MEME