John Prine said, "Blow up your TV..." Someone decided to abandon their's outside. After being king of the living room for years, it looks a little lonely in the snow.

Watching television is sometimes a problem, if one does too much of it. It is always a problem, if someone confuses what appears on television with reality. Television is designed to entertain and create corporate profit. Any appearance of reality is an illusion; any claim to being real should be considered false advertising. I've ranted about faux news and the fools who believe it more than once, and I won't go into that again, at this time.

I've got something else on my mind. Has anyone noticed my flickr archive now has only 200 photos instead of 6000? 200 is the normal limit on free flickr accounts, which is why I paid $24.95 a year ago to purchase a Pro account with unlimited storage. I recently received an email notice that it was time to renew, and I have attempted many times to do just that. Yahoo, who owns flickr, says there is a problem with my card and would I please use another. My bank says there is nothing wrong with my card. In fact, a nice young woman at my bank showed me on screen where Yahoo attempted to dun my account, but because they didn't have an amount on the transaction, nothing happened. She and I spent 90 minutes on the phone with someone at flickr's 866 number, and that person spent the last 20 minutes of the conversation repeating, "I can't help you."

Maybe this is the universe telling me to start using Picasa. Maybe I should develop my own site. Maybe flickr could become a monthly summary of Zootown music events. My head is full of maybes...

A Few Words About a Few Things

There's a new version of Windows coming, and I don't expect it to break the pattern Microsoft has established of releasing rushed, half-baked products full of glitches and security holes. Other writers have kindly understated that some users had problems with Vista. Some problems?! Vista is the biggest whore Bill Gates ever pimped, and that's saying something, because Millennium and 2000 weren't worth a shit either. I hope I never have to buy another version of Windows; I hope I can buy an Apple next time and tell Microsoft to kiss my ass.

In the meantime, I work with two computers, one with XP and the other with Vista. When I first purchased the XP model, I deleted the Microsoft word processor and spreadsheet that came with it and installed WordPerfect and Quattro. The Vista machine came with Microsoft Office, which I deleted and replaced with Star Office. I quit using Internet Explorer, as soon as I learned about Firefox, and have since switched to Google Chrome (thanks to a comment someone made on this blog).

"Stupid is a condition; ignorance is a choice," is a line from Non-Sequitur by Wiley Miller.

A critic of Max Blumenthal's book, Republican Gomorrah, summed up the concept as ..."fear of freedom propels people into authoritarian settings."

Fear is a common tool used by the neo-cons to shape public opinion in this country. If you aren't aware of this shadowy group of would be fascists, do some research, because they have been a major force in our nation for some time, and had almost complete control during the reign of George II. They are the ones whipping up fear and hate towards immigrants, gays, members of other religions and anyone else they can blame for the world's problems, in order to turn people to their own views.

Fascists understand the power of faith and work to bury knowledge, while teaching people belief is more important. They sweep climate change under the rug, along with evolution, facts, reasonable arguments, and reason altogether to promote belief systems, which the masses are too willing swallow.

Our military enterprises are supposedly to protect us and to spread democracy. Actually, they are merely acts to spread and maintain the most powerful empire the earth has ever seen. They also serve to make the war-makers more powerful and wealthy. Their lackeys can't see reality through the massive propaganda raining down from the media sources they control.

Be independent. Go beyond questioning authority to questioning everything. Search for reliable sources, rather than just accepting what the corporate media pumps out. Those same corporations manufacture the weapons used to kill "them" around the world. Promoting war is part of their advertising campaign.

Don't believe their us and them campaigns. We are all humans, and that fact is more important than all those trumpeted differences. Make peace where you can. Help everyone any way you can.

Since I'm trying to keep my rants brief these days, I will stop there, with just one footnote.

Been there, done that long ago, haven't done it since, won't do it again.