Atomictumor

Well boys and girls, past few days I’ve just been too friggin busy with ACES stuff, and workin, and keepin it real to do a lot of posting. I was hoping that you people would have things hopping around here, but apparently it just doesnt’ happen. Yes, I’m abusing my readers. I know you like it.

Still, something has to be done. Content must be provided, or heads roll. So, I’m going to ramble, because I’ve had triple the normal dose of coffee today, and my hands aren’t twitching yet.

Willowbrook had a “doughnuts for dads” thing this mornin, and MastaG and I made out like bandits. The beauty of it is that they had decent coffee (Starbucks, which is great if you don’t pay for it, but tastes kinda bitter after paying 4 bucks for a cup) and some tasty doughnuts that came from who knows where. It was a good time, and I appreciated the chance to do it. Particularly because I raised G’s ire last year for bowing out due to work requirements. Ooops!

Then at lunch, while hammering out some last minute work, I had another cup, and a few bites of spaghetti, and now here I am. Gibbering mad, high on coffee and work, eye twitching, and ranting about things like speghetti.

Good stuff.

Problem is, I haven’t had a chance to pay attention to all of my sources. I normally like to hit Netmom’s and AT2’s pages for the skinny, then run down the links on our sites (all quality pages, chosen for the springtime freshness and large bribery skills), and then I like to lurk out the OR forums, because its better to read now than its been for a while.
If maybe a bit one sided…

Still, I’ve been paying more attention to the forum than I have in the past, probably because it seems to be paying attention to me. We’ve gotten a few nods in the past few days, which is weird for me to view my dumb little site as a public thing. I mean, obviously its a public thing, but in the year (almost) its been around, we’ve gotten into a lot of people in Oak Ridge, which is totally more than I could have hoped for. Beyond that, I’ve gotten to meet some of the coolest people I’ve met by doing it.

Yep, the ol’ Tumor’s been good to me. But I’m digressing.

What the hell was my point? I’m starting to come down, and thats never a good thing.

Right, the Oak Ridger forums. See, I love the forums. I think its the coolest thing to have public participation on a neutral website. Thing is, a lot of people don’t know how to come off their best in an online discourse, and thats where some of the difficulties come up on the forums. I don’t think its a good idea to throw the baby out with the bathwater, as Daco feels, but then again I stopped regularly posting on the forums over a year ago, so that tells you something, I guess. I think an involved moderation staff would help tremendously, if Oak Ridger wants to do this thing, by god lets get the Oak Ridger editors and staff in there every once in a while to keep things straight, and apply some direction to the forums.

But, my forums fell flat, so I can’t really say much, can I?

Tell you what, since you’ve gone through and read so much of this, I’ll go ahead and share this with you… I was going to make a big thing out of this Atomictumor for office thing, but the ACES gig is too important to overshadow with this foolishness, so check out the campaign page I’ve been promising forever.

Just for you.

So the Oak Ridger and AnotherThing2 have popped up with news that the exiting trustee may have been involved in the swindling of damn near $20,000, and the coverup of the same.

The alleged criminal, Patsy Stair-Lomeli’s granddaughter Deputy Trustee Katie P. Davis reportedly did the stealing to work off a king hell addiction to pain pills. Patsy gave her the choice of paying back the green with interest, or criminal charges.

Thats right, the Stair family, which has long been Trustee of Anderson County, and just missed continuing that legacy, is responsible for ripping off your taxes and operating, apparently, as a bank.

Everybody seems to be saying they hate to see Patsy involved. Hell with that. I say charge both of them, Katie with the harshest theft charge you can throw down, Patsy with criminal conspiracy if it turns out that she did indeed cover up criminal misuse of tax dollars, and run em both out on a rail. Taking advantage of family to get a cushy government job is bad enough, but to go further into stealing from my taxes, well thats pretty deplorable.

Norway has recovered Munch’s painting, The Scream, after being stolen in an armed art gallery robbery(?)!  Woot!

Lugnut had his first day at Nursery School today, and evidently did quite well. While a few of the other kids had trouble transitioning to being away from home, Lug was content with the array of new toys to play with. I’m not sure if I should take his ease of transition as a compliment or an insult, but in any case I’m pleased that he was happy.

A few years back, we had some bad experiences at a day care in town, and I vowed to never again put young kids into child care. But after about 2 years at home with Lug, it’s clear that he’s ready for some new experiences (and I will greatly appreciate a whopping 6 hours a week to myself). His Nursery School is leagues apart from the bad day care, and I think things will work out just fine.

“I prefer peace/Wouldn’t have to have one bloody possession/But essentially I’m an animal/So just what do I do with all the aggression?”
-Gnarls Barkley

I was driving back to work today, listening to music, when I had what alchoholics refer to as ‘a moment of clarity’…

I’ve been listening to a good deal of G.B., and I think I’ll be listening to more for the next little while. Yes, I’m the last person on Earth to do so, and this is because of my ingrained punk rock notion that whatever is popular (and make no mistake, this junk is popular) sucks.
Yes, sometimes I feel the ghost of the ol’ mohawk up there as I have these reactions. Oi.

However, after hearing that the Raconteurs did a good cover of ‘Crazy’, and seeing Of Montreal do an AMAZING encore rendition of it in Chattanooga last weekend, I figured I’d have to give the record a whirl. I had borrowed the CD a few weeks ago, but never got past the first song. I stuck it on the machine at work, and have been listening to it in a working, half paying attention fashion, but had it in the car today, when I heard that line about aggression, everything clicked, and I froze.

What do we do with the aggression?

Does the human creature, by simple nature of its perceived superiority (spiritual, intellectual, take your pick) move out of that animal aggression class? Or is that stuff still in there, working itself out either in our dealings with other people (like, on online forums, where its easy to vent aggression on strangers, at the price of looking like an anonymous jerk), or our children and loved ones, or in our worldviews, leading to wars, indifference to suffering, and other bad news.

See, sometimes I forget that we’re dealing with a good few million years of mammallian evolution (and this is not the place for an evolutionary debate, we’re all going to assume that the Pastafarians are wrong, and our great x grandparents were amoeba). We have tried and true aggressive instincts baked right in, and 10,000 years of walking upright and wearing furs doesn’t completely wipe it out.

Could that be the big drive behind the immigration thing? Not to reopen that can of worms, because we’d have to buy a new one after our discussion yesterday, but what if the real, deep down problem with immigration isn’t racism, like myself and my bleeding hearted comrades intimate, but territorialism? Lord knows I’m as territorial as the next guy. I glare at new neighbors, I chase stray cats off my lawn. I don’t even like peeing in a urinal next to another guy (now you’re thinking of me peeing at a urinal, aren’t you?).

It most certainly is the drive behind the whole middle east thing, where you have borders that probably were originally set by people in furs marking them with urine that people today, in the enlightened 21st century, still kill each other over.

I think once you remind yourself this, and really reflect on it, you start seeing things differently.

So, OK, we’ve got the aggression.  What do we do with it?  Can we get that peace that we aspire to?  Is that the human condition, to constantly try to overcome the hereditary obstacles (that were created originally to be beneficial, keep in mind) to gain a peace and happiness?

If so, thats weak.

The rest of the song is great too, but in another vein.  Maybe that’ll be a post one day.