sttropezbutlersays

Now that Star has left, I feel I can blog again!

I'm getting there.

You know it isn't so much my jeans...it is integrating my life into another.

Small metaphor for what goes on in the big picture I guess.

My new neighborhood is really different from my old one. Even though I am only 12 miles from Houston and I can still see the taller buildings from the end of my street, I am really miles away from city life.

The area I now live in happened in the the late 50's and early 60's. That's when Houston really happened too. Much of what was "old" Houston proper was torn down in the early 60's and the blue print was drawn for what Houston has become.

The burbs started to happen too. When my family first moved here in the 60's, we lived on the North side of town. We were the last development before you hit nothing. 40 years later that is no longer the case. Now it is all developed.

I now live on the South side of town in an area that is what one would now call transitional. That means we have a mix of everything. It's cool.

Frankly, it is a lot like my blog world. Parallel universes.

Who knew?

See you soon!

"The Republican-controlled Senate smothered a proposed election-year increase in the minimum wage Wednesday, rejecting Democratic claims that it was past time to boost the $5.15 hourly pay floor that has been in effect for nearly a decade."

CNN 6/21/06

Will anyone wake up and vote other than us?

STB

As many of you may have noted, Houston had a weather event Monday. Who knew say I. I was busy under the kitchen sink clearing a blocked drain.

Yes, when I finally decided to make my first meal in my new abode, I managed to clog the kitchen sink. Man was I pissed!

Working really cuts into your "home improvement" time.

Proving again that the old canard is not true, this old dog learned a few new tricks and as my lovely sister said to me yesterday...another plumber is born.

I'm on my way back. I've appreciated all the comments and hope within another week or so I am back to reading and writing and just being here.

I like it here...and I like all of you!

OOPS, that sounds a tad Sally Field!

STB

OK

Crunch time.

The move really happens this week. I'm not sure how long I'll be off line.

Suffice to say...I'm hoping to be back to reading, writing and jiving by the 25th of this month.

In the meantime...

KEEP IT MOIST AND KEEP IT MOVING!

STB

Sorry. This is insanity.

Mr. Montaña put down a 10 percent deposit on a 461-square-foot studio, priced at $299,000. It is one of more than 100 condos that went on sale a few weeks ago at deeply discounted prices at Herald Towers, a former hotel with three 25-story towers and 693 apartments at 50 West 34th Street, diagonally across the street from Macy's. The average price of a studio condominium in Manhattan is nearly $500,000.

By JOSH BARBANEL
Published: June 11, 2006
NY Times

"I think what one has to do is to ask oneself, "Do you want to have agency in your own time?"

If you really believe that it's your place to leave the world a better place than it was when you arrived, then how do you get the power?

In this country, the most powerful country on earth, you get it by voting the right people into power. There are means of getting the power out of the hands of the very rich and the very wicked.

It still flabbergasts me that people didn't see this during the last presidential election. We had had 12 years of Reagan and Bush to prepare us for this outcome. It couldn't have been clearer who we were dealing with. George W. Bush was -- is -- a little robot programmed by his daddy to punish Saddam Hussein and get as much money for the petrochemical bandits.

It's absolutely jaw-dropping that Democrats saw that and decided instead that they wanted to send a message to their own party that they weren't happy with it for some relatively minor offense.

Why didn't we turn out in vast numbers for Gore?

Why did we vote for Ralph Nader or not at all?

We would absolutely not be in Iraq today if we had a Democratic president in the White House, and I don't need to know any more than that."

TONY KUSHNER is a genius.

GOP buttons on their shirts and faith on their sleeves

Republican convention draws religious conservatives

09:51 AM CDT on Sunday, June 4, 2006
By WAYNE SLATER / The Dallas Morning News

SAN ANTONIO – Lt. Col. Brian Birdwell offered a greeting to delegates to the Republican convention. "It's great to be back in the holy land," the Fort Worth native said to the cheers of the party faithful. For the 4,500 delegates at last week's biennial gathering, it was both an expression of conservative philosophy and religious faith, a melding of church and state.

At Saturday morning's prayer meeting, party leader Tina Benkiser assured them that God was watching over the two-day confab.

"He is the chairman of this party," she said against a backdrop of flags and a GOP seal with its red, white and blue logo.

The party platform, adopted Saturday, declares "America is a Christian nation" and affirms that "God is undeniable in our history and is vital to our freedom."

"We pledge to exert our influence toward a return to the original intent of the First Amendment and dispel the myth of the separation of church and state," it says.

Just off the convention floor, among the warren of booths selling buttons and T-shirts denouncing Democrats, the table for WallBuilders – founded by outgoing party vice chairman David Barton – was piled high with books and DVDs extolling religion in government. The Keys to Good Government was one DVD. America's Godly Heritage was another.

John Green, an expert on church-state issues at the University of Akron, said the GOP has defined itself against Democrats by making religion, particularly issues such as abortion and gay marriage, part of its politics.

"This is not a political disagreement. This is a religious disagreement," he said.

Recent studies have found a "religion gap" suggesting church attendance is a good indicator of party affiliation. A survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that among those who attend church more than once a week, two-thirds vote GOP. Among those who seldom or never attend church, two-thirds vote Democratic.

At Saturday morning's prayer meeting, ministers delivered prayers, gospel singers sang, and the Rev. Dale Young, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Laredo, picked up the convention's dominant theme of immigration.

"Lord, your words tell us there's a sign that this nation is under a curse, when the alien who lives among us grows higher and higher and we grow lower and lower," he preached.

The night before, East Texas evangelist Rick Scarborough exhorted Christians at a "values rally" to get involved in elections: "We must do more than pray. We also must put sweat to our tears."

Delegates sought him out, taking snapshots and having him sign his book Liberalism Kills Kids.


Houston activist Bobby Eberle, a candidate for party vice chairman, organized the Friday evening rally. Taking the stage, he took aim at "the ACLU, liberal Hollywood, Democrats and these left-wingers" who have bedeviled the GOP.

"We need to continue to fight, whether for the pro-life movement or for decency in programming," said Mr. Eberle, whose Internet enterprise had its own recent dust-up over decency.

Talon News, a conservative Web site owned by Mr. Eberle, employed Jeff Gannon as a White House correspondent until publicity a year ago over Mr. Gannon's appearance on gay prostitution Web sites.

Mr. Eberle dropped Talon News, Mr. Gannon left the press corps, and the matter did not appear to be an issue in the vice chairman's race, although he lost.

Car bombs.

Reporters killed and maimed.

Senator's office raided.

Tax cuts in war time.

War? What war.

Soldiers killing civilians. Soldiers slaughtering civilians. CHILDREN.

What we need to fear however is two loving people seeking parity with the rest of those who are able to enjoy the benefits of a state sanctioned union.

Yes that and those who might burn the flag. Imagine! How horrifying that someone would desecrate the flag.

So much easier to worry about that then to worry about the armless, legless, blind soldier (perhaps the same soldier whose values are so skewed that they kill unarmed children and men and women?) who returns to his or her country and finds out that there is no safety net.

The "illegal" immigrant who comes to this country and actually, yes really, works. What a concept. Someone who does something for money. And usually only for money. No benefits. No sick days. Work, get paid. Usually it is hard physical labor. No work, no pay. But lets get rid of those people and have America for Americans.

So what do we end up with.

We end of with a bunch of folks who have such a sense of entitlement that little to nothing will get done. We have the worker who comes to work at noon, and perhaps by one o'clock is ready to do just a bit of work, but not at the expense of a personal phone call.

Lets see how many lawns get cut, how many houses get cleaned in the New America. Lets see if anything gets done.

Yes, god forbid we should have workers in this country who know how to work. What a crime against Americans.

The dialogue in this country, if one can even call it a dialogue (cause really don't you just feel like you are talking to yourself 99% of the time) is totally bogus. This country can't deal with a real issue because it's citizens can't deal with a real issue. Hence, a president such as the Shrub. He's just seems like such a nice guy.

What we can deal with is Faux News on the F word network. We can deal with bogus Patriotic speeches from people who never wore a uniform. We can deal with the next deal on the latest handbag or Madge tour. We can lap up the latest news about some bogus celebrity.

We cannot deal with reality in any form.

This is a country where the ability to get along is rewarded.

Forget a vision. Forget an idea. Forget originality. Just get along.

Well fuck that.

Not my style.

STB

I am wondering what is up with my co-worker. She has played me since we started to work together, but that is another issue.

Yesterday she snapped out. She was telling a customer something that wasn't correct. After she was finished I said, BTW, you needed to do xy and z in order to satisfy that situation.

I said it in the best possible way. I wasn't being critical, I was simply saying that here is the way that situation should be handled according to company policy.

You would have thought I was selling her first born. She snapped my head off, told me that wasn't how she was "trained." It was the old "No one ever told me that."

So I backed off.

This is the same person who six weeks ago asked me if I had a dime. I said no, but I have a quarter. She wanted to buy a soda. I gave her the quarter. Two weeks later she asked if I had change for a $5.00. I told her I only had singles. She asked for the a single so she could buy herself a soda. I said, and said it lightly, well that makes it a $1.25 you owe me.

She bought her coke and returned the .40 cents change. She now owed me .85 cents. Two more weeks go by. I say to her at the beginning of the week, hey why don't you buy me a soda and then you'd only owe me a quarter. I said all of this lightly, but also meaning it, as I don't think it is cool to borrow 15 cents or 15,000 dollars and make no effort to pay it back. She is my co-worker not my life partner.

She flipped (sort of) and threw a dollar at me. I gave her back her .15 cents in change.

She was pissed. It was as if how dare I ask her to return the money that she had borrowed from me.

OKAY. Lets see who can be more petty.

WAR has been declared. Let the best man win.

STB