Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

So I'm not surprised that yet another Republican sex scandal is in the news. Nor am I surprised that the White House says he's just “naughty” and that Clinton had done worse. Nor am I surprised that the Republicans have blocked investigation, or that pages were warning each other about Foley since 1995 and that the Republican staff has known about him for at least five years — after all, that's what a giant bribe buys you. I'm not surprised that Newt Gingrich is saying that the Republicans didn't take action because they thought it would look like it was “gay bashing, or that Rush Limbaugh says this is all a fraudulent “Democrat setup” and that Democrats in general support pedophiles, nor am I surprised that the Religious Right has said this should be blamed on “tolerance and diversity“.

I'm not even particularly surprised that Foley is a Scientologist or that the Repubicans are exploiting children to avoid “adult” questions. I'm not surprised that FOX News and other agencies knew about the story a year ago and chose to cover it up… But I have to admit that I was a little surprised that FOX would have the balls to spend a while actually calling Foley a Democrat.

I guess it distracts from tensions with a real nuclear nation (and I don't mean the most likely fake one), or that European airlines are potentially being banned from entering the US, or that the US recently slipped through a bill that includes text making it punishable by torture and permanent imprisonment without trial if you write negatively about the US government… Or even of the fact that the majority of Americans now believe that Bush is one of the most prolific mass murderers of his countrymen in US history (and he vows not to stop killing Americans).

Or does that only apply to reptiles?

So I've been doing a not-entirely-on-purpose experiment with my “garden” (a bunch of planters on the porch)… Because I'm pretty terrible at reliably watering or otherwise caring for the plants, I've been learning which plants are bullet proof and which aren't… Celery and strawberries for example appear to be unkillable, heh.

I feel like when I comment on this, I'm either preaching to the choir, or talking to people who won't see it until it's far too late, but I think we could be within twenty years — maybe less, maybe more… but not much more — of a complete environmental collapse. I would be very, very shocked if within the next hundred years we don't see the world's population drop (without our “consent”) to ten percent of what it is now through a combination of megaplague and environmental changes that make much of the planet both unlivable and incapable of continuing to produce resources for humans.

Other than that, I've been asked to be on a gameshow where different groups of people are pitted against each other in various IQ-related tests. I want to do it, but at the same time, I'm terrified of looking stupid on TV. I don't mind looking weird on TV (been there, done that), but I definitely don't want to look dumb.