The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

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Swimming across the Mediterranean Sea ...

By MrSmith1 on Mon, 08/29/2011 - 7:58am |

I have written before about Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS), the chronic, degenerative inflammatory arthritic disease which I was diagnosed as having back in 1985.  According to new figures from the CDC, there are as many as 1.4 million people with AS in North America, and possibly as many as 2.4 million. AS affects more people than Multiple Sclerosis, Cystic Fibrosis and Lou Gehrig's disease combined.  According to the new CDC figures, it also now affects more people than are affected by Rheumatoid Arthritis.

AS is a devastating, often painful and debilitating disease which can fuse the neck and spine and cause a variety of other problems.  My neck and spine have been totally fused since 1989.

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More haikus for another Friday afternoon

By MrSmith1 on Fri, 08/19/2011 - 2:20pm |

Here are some of my haikus from the past week:

 

haiku: "Minds that only yearn,
Never taste the fruit of life,
Merely chew the rind."

haiku: "Down on the bayou,
nobody asks hominy grits,
catfish eat pralines."

haiku: "Living in the past,
Though not a panacea,
Is still comforting."

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haikus for a friday afternoon ...

By MrSmith1 on Fri, 08/12/2011 - 5:45pm |

 

I think I've shared some of my haikus here before.  I've recently started working with a photographer I know to put some images and haikus together for a book proposal.  

I used to write haikus just as a warm-up exercise for my other writing, now I write at least a couple of haikus a day just to post on twitter and facebook for my friends and my own  amusement.  Almost all of these haikus were all written in the last week or two.

 

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Bringing the jobs back home...

By MrSmith1 on Thu, 08/11/2011 - 4:03pm |

I am sick and tired of hearing about the American workforce losing jobs to countries where the people are willing to work for pennies a day.  Clearly something has to be done, and since, we can't expect American workers to work for pennies a day, the answer is obvious; We must dramatically raise the salaries of all those youngsters in Guatemala that are undercutting our beloved American labor force by working for practically nothing.

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Time to E.A.T. P.E.A.S.

By MrSmith1 on Tue, 08/02/2011 - 12:26pm |

I think it's time to start the Progressive counter-movement to the Tea-party.  

I offer a name for the new movement: E.A.T. P.E.A.S. which stands for Eliminate All Tea-party Politicians and Policies, Escaping Awful Scenarios.  

If that's too long a title, we could just go with E.A.T.Ps - Eliminating All Tea-party Politicians and Policies.  

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Three Simple Solutions

By MrSmith1 on Sun, 06/26/2011 - 11:46am |
I offer three simple solutions to problems which affect our nation ...
 
1) Give Fictional characters the same rights as corporations and 'reality-based' humans.  Character personhood would open up a whole new area for political recruitment and campaign financing.  It would also make it possible to appoint Atticus Finch to the Supreme Court.
 
2)  Starting next month, the bags of money we're giving to the Afghan warlords must come with the provision that they invest at least 48% of that money in the American infrastructure, thus creating jobs he
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Goodwin Liu withdraws nomination ...

By MrSmith1 on Thu, 05/26/2011 - 1:58am |

http://www.slate.com/id/2295572/

A year.  A freaking year.  And no up or down vote.  So these pieces of Republican excrement succeed in getting their way again.  

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