Remembering 9/11

Today is 9/11. There are tons of memorials, tributes, cleverly created memes, etc. They all say "Never Forget" or similar. That's terrific. I'm glad people are spreading the sentiment that we should not forget what happened that day.

However.

It has become a trite little catchphrase now. "Never Forget, Never Forget, Never Forget." But it seems we *have* forgotten. We've forgotten the significance of the attacks that were carried out that day. We've forgotten who was behind them, and we've decided that political correctness trumps 3000 innocent lives, and countless more that would have been lost if it weren't for the incredibly brave actions of a few passengers on an airplane. We've forgotten who the enemy is.

We elected one of the enemy in 2008, and we did it with our eyes wide open. He TOLD US he was on the side of the criminals who attacked us. He TOLD US he would stand with them if push came to shove. We KNEW what his background was. We KNEW what his philosophy was. We KNEW, and we allowed ourselves to be blinded by the color of his skin, and ignored the content of his character.

Push has come to shove in Syria. If we attack Syria, the only possible result will be a massive world war, and we won't be fighting cowards hiding in caves anymore. We'll be fighting the entire Middle East, Russia, China, possibly North Korea if that little punk decides he wants a piece of us. And we have no assurances from our allies that they will stand with us. We'll effectively be in it alone. And it will be OUR FAULT.

Are you happy, all you Sheeple who elected this? Are you satisfied? Have you achieved the goal you were looking for? I think not. I think you were wooed by forked-tongue promises of lower mortgage payments and free health care. I think you thought you were doing a good thing, electing a snake in the grass. But he *is* a snake, and he's creeping around in *your* grass. Is it worth it? We are seeing the loss of our most precious freedoms, increased poverty, the deliberate creation of more racial tension than this country has seen since the 60's, the destruction of our economy, a flood of foreign criminals slithering in under amnesty, and our most dangerous enemy gaining a foothold in our own government. If you still think this was a good choice you made, then you are complicit in whatever the results are, and the irony is, most of you who stand by this would be the first ones under the sword if Islam had its way.

It's not too late. It's not too late to wake up, open your eyes, and see what your bad choices have done. It's not too late to regret it. And it's not too late to redeem yourselves by helping to stop it.

That's the best way to "Never Forget." To truly REMEMBER, and use that memory to stem the tide of evil that is rapidly gaining strength. It's not too late, but we all need to be in it together. Every one of us must use the brains we were blessed with and FIGHT. It's not enough to "Never Forget," if the memory does nothing but stagnate. We have to truly keep that memory alive by preventing a repeat of the tragedy of 9/11.

It's not too late.

Thus it is writ.

I have been admonished that I need to blog. I must blog. I should never not be blogging. So I am resurrecting this poor sad neglected blog to discuss shitstains.

So the Charmin bears, right? I have always hated them. It's inane, and they're constantly going on and on about their toilet habits, specifically their wiping rituals. It's a true case of "lowest common denominator," in my opinion. The creators of this nightmare need to be medicated at the very least, and possibly institutionalized. "Disturbing" doesn't even come close to describing this entire campaign.

I thought it was bad when the mother bear started checking her descendants' backsides for dingleberries. I thought, OK, this is horrific, there's really no way to go any lower then this. I was wrong.

Along came the little bear sitting on the washing machine and trumpeting, "This is one way to keep your underwear clean. Charmin is another!" So, we're using shitstains to sell products now? That's what we're doing? OK. Well, I said to myself, *that* has got to be as low as they're willing to go.

I was wrong.

Their latest effort has the bears being "interviewed" about whether they enjoy going to the bathroom. Mom thinks it's "me time." Little Sister brings a book. And Big Dopey Dad - God help us all - loves to text from the toilet. But even after all that, the ad people manged to save the very worst for last. Dad struts proudly offscreen, proclaiming. "I'm gonna get some Charmin and go right now!"

If I looked into a camera and told the world, "Imma go take a dump now! And I am exorbitantly pleased with myself about it!" I'd be locked away. But somehow when it's animated, Popsicle-colored bears extolling the virtues of Charmin, it's socially acceptable to announce our intentions, bowel-wise.

I'm aware that there are many bad ads out there. (The giant King head from the Burger King horror stories a couple of years back creeps stealthily to mind, much as the King himself did to that guy in his bedroom in the middle of the night.) And Quilted Northern hit back with their own campaign where actual people discuss their toilet-paper requirements. ("It has to be soft, but it has to keep my hands clean too!") But people: We're talking about shitstains. Shit. STAINS. On TV. When people's mothers are watching. There's just something so not right about that, and it's not that I'm uptight about private matters either, but that's just it: Those things are PRIVATE. Bathroom doors have locks FOR A REASON. If the average person finds himself (or herself, we're an equal-opportunity blog here) with a shitstain, he (or she) will go to heroic lengths to conceal the fact from the world. They don't announce their intention to switch to Charmin in the hopes of easing the burden on their washing machine. The Charmin commercials are a symptom of a greater illness, and I just think TV people can maybe try taking things back up a notch from the bottom of the barrel. Maybe if we all strove to be just a little bit better than shitstains, we'd all have a lot less problems.

When Reason Reigns

The vicious acts of terrorism perpetrated on 9/11/01 were and are far too close to home for me to reflect too long upon, but I have to say this. We were attacked that day ten years ago. Our freedom, the very soul that makes this country what it is, was threatened by those who would destroy and enslave us. If we wish to remember the fallen heroes of that day, and we should, without a doubt, then we as a country must remain vigilant to the many evils that continue to threaten that freedom. There will come a day when reason and peace and harmony reign and we can all hold hands and sing Kumbaya, but this is not that day. For now we must remain strong and defend our freedom from those who would end it. When reason defeats violence, violence will have no place. But where reason is rejected, strength is needed to defend it. Pray for the day when reason reigns, but exterminate evil without prejudice while violence rules the day. We relax our guard at our peril, and if we lose our freedom those heroes will have fallen in vain.

We done a good thing.

So, last week, I had dinner with my dear friend Gina Ardito. We went to Carrabba's Italian Grill in Smithtown, NY. We love Carrabba's. The food is excellent, service is always top-notch, and they don't ream you on the price. So there we were, gorging ourselves on lobster ravioli and peach sangria, when we were asked if we would like to take part in a raffle they were holding. It turns out, one of the Navy SEALS who was shot down in Afghanistan was from the area, and his wife and little boy are now without a husband and a father. The raffle was to raise some money for the family. A highly excellent cause, and we of course bought lots of tickets.

Well. You can't lay a good cause in front of Gina without some gears grinding into action. She said, saaaayyy, we know romance authors who write Navy SEAL romances, why don't we see if we can get them to donate some signed books, and we'll make up a nice basket and give it to Carrabba's to raffle off? She immediately thought of Suzanne Brockmann, who she has been stalking at conferences forever, and I immediately thought of JoAnn Ross, who I regularly distract from writing by singing Disney tunes and being a goofball over on Facebook and Twitter. We asked the waitress about it, and she said she'd get someone to come talk to us.

The JVP of Carrabba's Northeast Region, Skip Jackson, happened to be in that restaurant that day, and when the waitress went to him to tell him about these two crazy ladies at Table 14 (or whatever table we were at - I had to make something up), he came to sit with us and talk about Carrabba's long-standing commitment to military personnel and families. We told him our idea, and he was thrilled to have us take part in it. He personally has done a vast deal of good things for military causes, including a trip to the Middle East to feed the troops some fantastic Italian food. He's a peach, that Skip! Plus he has a droolworthy motorcycle. Just sayin'.

We raced home to contact those two lovely, lovely ladies, and on the way I thought of some others who might be interested. I got word to Melanie Jackson and Virginia Kantra, who both jumped on the idea. Ms. Ross contacted some author friends of hers - Gennita Low, Stephanie Tyler, and Marliss Melton, who were all right on board as well.

Right now, we are awaiting the arrival of the books these wonderful women are donating, and once they're here we'll be able to coordinate with Skip to put the baskets together and set up the raffle. He wants to add in candles, wine, and all sorts of things to make them really girlie, romantic gifts, which I think shows a terrific tender side of a very manly man.

I'll post again as he situation develops. We're looking to make kind of a big deal out of it, but we have to get with Skip first and see what's what. It's all very exciting! Stay tuned for pictures and stuff!

Shiny Newness!

I got my own printer yesterday! Before, I had to go upstairs to use Hairyman's computer to print anything out, which as a writer was cramping my style a little. Plus his computer has gotten pretty spastic and goes really, reeeaaaallllyyyy slow. I mean it's SSSSSSSLLLLLOOOOOOOOWWWWWW. You click on something, and literally like a full minute later something happens. But now I have a shiny new Kodak wireless printer of my very own! I totally heart it muchly!! I got a new keyboard too. I don't heart it as much, but I just have to get used to its curvyness. Some of the buttons are big and some are small, because it's supposed to be"ergonomic." And I guess it is. It has many cool buttons like volume control and email, and it has Ctrl keys for cut/copy/paste and bold/underline/Italic. Very cool! OK, the keyboard can stay.

Grandpa is a whoreson.

Ohio is home to something called "Grandpa's Cheese Barn." On our way home from COFW, we wanted to stop at this wonderland and purchase some of the meats, cheese, gifts, and fudge touted on Grandpa's many, many billboards.

Well, Grandpa's was closed when we got there. We can only assume he was spending his typical Sunday morning passed out in a 1972 VW microbus in front of the Showtime Gentlemens' Club with a 54-year-old stripper and an assortment of empty Ohio wine bottles.

See if Grandpa gets a Christmas card this year.

I don't care what anybody says, Ohio is pretty nice.

So I have spent the weekend at the Central Ohio Fiction Writers conference in Worthington, Ohio with my chapter president, Gina Ardito. Many wondrous things have happened, including Facebook-fighting, text-torturing our vice president, who could not attend (BWAHAHAHAHA!!), and assorted shmoozing. The conference was informative and fun, the people we've met (*cough cough Virginia Kantra cough cough*) have been absolutely fabulous, and we gained some insight into how to put together our own conference, which we hope to make reality in 2012. We're tired, but it's a good kind of tired. We're hoping it will still be the good kind of tired AFTER the ten-hour drive home tomorrow, but Gina knows when to keep her mouth shut, so I foresee easy traveling.

Poodle in Tiara

Here's a picture of my poodle, Cookie, in a pink tiara.

So last night my RWA chapter, who are awesome, gave a talk at a local library discussing romance novels and why it's so terrific to be a person who writes them. One of the members made a comment before the talk, in the course of asking what to wear, that tiaras were probably out. Well, needless to say, our president, Gina Ardito, to whom we owe most of our awesomeness, ran with this. She picked up six little pink tiaras for all of us to wear at the talk. And we did. There will be pictures later today on the Facebook page as evidence.

As soon as I got home, the first thing I did was snag my poor sleeping poodle and stick the tiara into her little poodley head and get my husband to take a picture. She sort of looks like she isn't quite sure what's going on, but she never is, so she always looks like that. At least now she's clueless and FABULOUS!!

My new favorite bakery.

MUST give a plug for my new favorite bakery: Otterbein's in Baltimore. I grabbed a bag of their chocolate chips at a gas station in Pennsylvania last week, and OMG. I polished off the whole bag in three days, went online, and ordered a bag of every one of their five flavors. These cookies are heavenly. They just arrived, and I've already been in the chocolate chips again!! Thery're not fancy frou-frou cookies, just simple basic sugars, gingers, lemons, and oatmeal raisins - but they're the best simple cookies ever! Their order processing is super fast too, and they've been around forever, so they know what they're doing. And at $4 a bag, they're an affordable little treat!

Too good not to steal!

A Facebook friend just posted this link to a Livejournal page of weird Halloween candies. I had to steal it. They're absolutely priceless!!

http://benjikane.livejournal.com/10396.html

I actually went and found the gummi zits and ordered them for certain women of my acquaintance who enjoy watching zit-popping videos on YouTube. One of them for sure is going to wet herself when I give them to her.