Take Care Not to Cut Your Fingers

How to Make a Thaumatrope

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Thaumatrope

A use for the leftover box from your Kraft Imitation Cheese from...where?

Look! A Baby Hippo!

I've got so much homework... this is all you get today.

"I think it's time to LEAVE."

Wow; it's like spring out there this morning. I mean, birds everywhere making noise, not just winter birds; warm enough to run without a full-on cold-induced asthma attack; just feels like spring. For years I've celebrated quietly Imbolc or Candlemas, which most of us know as Groundhog Day, and is the midway point between winter solstice and spring equinox. But even though the day reminds me that the sun is on its return path, I still have considered right up until March pretty much the Dead of Winter. Then, in Soil Basics class at the beginning of this month our prof talked about how little signs of life will begin to show, even in February, if a person is paying attention: skunks come out, prairie dogs, animals we normally don't associate with winter. And now that I'm paying attention, it's not just the warmer weather we're getting, but life is returning. Nice!

Just had to say that pretty little bit before getting into the hard stuff.

Once my FFL Tammy and I, while undergrads, were dressed as Renuzit Doozits for Halloween. We were having a really good time, so good that we were late for late night at Lambda Chi, and when we showed up the brothers were shooing people out the door. Since we weren't allowed in the door, T and I decided to climb in the windows. I don't remember who bagged us as we were crawling in, but he told us that even we couldn't stay. Tammy looked at me and said in her high-pitched little voice with the Texas twang, "I think it's time to leave."

From that night on, whenever we were out and got a little too buzzed or it got late and we were tired or bored, we would seek each other out and say, "I think it's time to leave."

I don't know about being buzzed or bored, but I suspect there are plenty of people in Iraq, American soldiers, who are tired. Tired of the whole shebang. And after yesterday, I would like to say adamantly, that I THINK IT'S TIME TO LEAVE. I mean, just haul ass out. Sorry, peeps; I know we started this mess to some degree- or at least our friends in the Bush Administration- but why do we have to stick around and let "known rogue police" officers kill our men and women? What? Do those guys in Mosul think they're in LA or Detroit or something?

Let's get the hell out. NOW. Everyone.

I'm a Deadbeat!

It sounds pretty creepy, like those deadbeat dads who walk away from their share of the responsibility for a child (even in Indiana) and leave the whole deal to the mom and then the law gets involved and tries to bleed at least some money out of the bastards once they're found, but no, this is different.

Nobody is trying to squeeze moola from me, but to get rid of me because I don't make them money. That's what the FFM informed me a little while ago when he called from work to harrass me about calling him, when I wasn't the one who called. I don't know why he doesn't believe me.

But, anyway, this is what he learned: that people such as myself, who are being told that our credit card interest rates are going to increase, are being told this because we have good credit ratings and therefore do not make the banks any money. Crap, people, if I had an AmEx card, according to the FFM, I'd be offered 300 bucks to cease and desist! This is a ludicrous prospect to me! I mean, OK, I don't need the banks and their credit cards any more than they need me, so I am happy to sever all our ties; however, here is the part that does not make sense whatsoever: the fact that the people they hold onto, who will pay abhorrently high interest rates and never pay their debt down and will be enslaved to these bastards forever... these people do make money for the banks, but what do the banks do with that money? Squander it, waste it, drive their big organizations into the ground.

Here is what I don't understand: Why the government would give any more time or attention or MONEY or breaks to these giant jackasses instead of providing incentives to little banks and credit unions (like the one I've belonged to since moving to Laramie and that has always treated me right and has been accountable to me and all the other shareholders.)

I believe it is a grave mistake to say that banks or other large institutions that command so much money and power are too big to fail. They have failed. Screw them like they have screwed the people. I mean, seriously, we the people have already been screwed, right? So what does that matter?

Is there an economist in the house who can help me out with this?