What an Evening Flock Call from an Umbrella Cockatoo sounds like.

We do this twice a day, usually for under 2 minutes. The rest of the day there are usually 3-4 quick "hey, where are you," shouts... For a male,wild caught, sexually mature, HUGE Umbrella, He's VERY quiet.

Alas, Pablo is Agoraphobic. Notice how he doesn't leave the cage...

I love my bisexual son.

Who, himself, comes from the union of two bisexuals, and has a bisexual girlfriend, who is exgirlfriends with his exgirlfriend.

Heck. @Road_marks is the only one here who isn't bisexual, and even she's a 5 on that there Kinsey scale...

I am disgusted with the fact that many gay kids experience parents who attack their orientation as if it's a NORMAL part of life.

Hating your kid for their sexual orientation is NOT NORMAL.

[Hating your kid for sucking all the fun out of your life is....no, I kid, I kid...]

Turn Left: How a strong military force in Afghanistan is the right thing for liberals to support.

In August of 2001, several months after the Taliban destroyed the "Big Buddhas of Bamiyan," I had the untenable position of being a hard core liberal arguing that we needed to go to war ('we' preferably being UN Peacekeepers) in Afghanistan, to liberate the women, save history and stop a regime that, if it didn't shun such 'Western' ideas as the assembly line and blasting tunnels through mountains, would be as deadly, percentage-wise, as the Nazis. They basically are the Nazis, only stupid. Imagine how much easier WWII would've been with stupid Nazis?

I actually backed this up with statistics at the time, and was largely shunned about my view that the type of terrorism the Taliban would do to its own land was nothing compared to what they'd like to do to others... they have this view, and did in August of 2001, that any great works not done for god were destruction worthy. I offered the destruction of the Buddhas and several other archaeological sites as evidence, as well as the wanton destruction of some buildings we built for them back in the cold war... perfectly serviceable fortifications that the Taliban shunned. It was better, in their eyes, that their citizen-slaves live in hovels and caves than live in structures built with our godless technologies.

Imagine the early Luddites (the real ones, not those who dislike technology today) burning down mills and the like...imagine the battle at Burton's Mill..now imagine it increasing exponentially...only instead of some hand-loomers protesting factories, it was some hypocritical religious fundamentalists protesting everything they viewed as being not derived from God, unless, of course, they could put it to use.

These were the type of people, I argued, that would gladly take a train we'd build for them and crash it into a hospital we built for them, full of people we were curing for them, because the train, hospital and the technologies behind them were, to them, a threat to their standing with God.

Those who followed my conversations about this, especially on Beliefnet, know how this ended. The rest of you can surmise: My demand in the summer of 2001 that we go to war in Afghanistan to put down the Taliban like the rabid dogs they are ended on September 11th, when the rest of you got a clue.

[I know, I know, those of you who follow my religious writings know exactly what I was thinking at the time, something along the line of "When did I kick my Patron god out of my bed?" and "Look, guys, that horse, it's full of Greeks...." But I digress...]

Bush got us into a war in Iraq that was pointless and stupid, and we are done there....get the hell out and be done with it...

But, we need to put the whole of our foreign military might, plus that of every country in the UN that can get to help, on the ground in Afghanistan.

The problem we've been having is simple. When you are dealing with guerrillas and terrorism from a small group in broken country, you can't fight them man-to-man. You can't even fight them 2:1. A guy with a sniper rifle in a bunker halfway up a mountain can do a great deal of damage to a unit in conventional body armor. He can do far less damage to a tank. He can do virtually no damage to a tank, unless he has anti-tank missiles, and unless he has a constant supply of them, he's not going to take out that many tanks...and he can't do diddly squat to a bomber plane with them.

These are men that beat women for sport. These are men that beat other men for sport. These are men that preach the complete destruction of everything good. They throw acid on little girls on the way to school. These are not people who we can negotiate with or make a deal with....seriously... This isn't stupid "these are evil dooers" rhetoric, these are things they have done, and will do in the future.

Sometimes, the way to protect life is to take the life of rabid animals. If you think people who'd throw acid on girls to keep them out of school aren't worthy of correction, I can't...well, no, I can't imagine that...

The Taliban, a series of earthquakes and the half-assed war itself have made life difficult for the tribal leaders in these mountainous areas... So, you start to make them deals. Move your people over 1/2 a mile and we'll build you a city- earthquake resistant houses, schools, water treatment facilities, immunizations for your goats. We'll send in mine detection equipment to make sure your family doesn't lose arms and legs from cold war leftovers, we'll blast tunnels through the mountains and connect your towns by rail. We'll build terraces for your crops and wind turbines for your electricity... Just move over 1/2 mile, because we're going to blow up that mountain there, and place a dam here so your crops can have water. Oops, did some Taliban drown when their tunnels flooded? Oops. How could that have happened?

We'll spend real money, yes, but the result will be actual stabilization of a country that is currently destroying its neighbors by attrition and harboring people whose only goal is our deaths.

Okay, so maybe you disagree with everything I've written above. Maybe you think that rebuilding the homes of people made homeless by mother nature and war is something we shouldn't do, and that by making them houses that are earthquake resistant we're doing some sort of cultural imperialism thing (nevermind that, ideally, these homes would be designed by Afghanis, either trained in engineering or with the help of engineers.) I can respect that. I disagree, but I can respect it...

But let me say this: There is MORE reason to go into Afghanistan guns blazing than there was to go into Kosovo.
More war crimes, more terrorism, and a government unable (not, as some think, unwilling) to keep the rabid dogs at bay.

Phoe and I have been saying we need to go into Afghanistan since before 9/11. Darfur and Tibet may be fashionable to complain about, but there are not enough boots on the ground in Afghanistan to do anything but get our men wasted by those snipers... A stupid, stupid loss of life that could be prevented if we got up off our asses and realized that fighting a JUST WAR is what nations involved in JUSTICE do.

The Fabulous Lie

Since my son was a young child, we've played a game where if you can explain something with a truly fabulous lie, a lie so obvious that everyone knows it's a lie, but at the same time it sounds completely plausible and contains at least a little truth, you "win."

The other form of this is to ask a question, especially a question that you're uncomfortable with asking, in the form of a very silly question, the answer of which will answer your real question, without leaving you feeling judged or stupid. Not that I judge my son or consider him stupid...

So, when 17-year old Lablad, the Q in GLBTQ, or the O in GLBTQO, or the A in GLBTQA, or whatever, the Hetero-Flexible Kinsey 1-2, who says he'd do a guy "if the guy, was, like, totally hot, or had great boobs," wanted to ask about Harvey Milk, a name he knew but didn't know about, his silly question was "Do we put milk on our cereal because of Harvey Milk?"

Now, understand, this is delivered in a deadpan, high pitched, blond surfer voice, a sort of Jack Johnson meets Gay rights Barbie, he's not asking me seriously, he wants to know the story, but doesn't want to feel judged about it, especially since we'd had a long conversation about Harvey Milk High School, just a few days before.

Recognizing this as an opportunity for a fabulous lie, I told him that, although I could get in trouble with the Gay Mafia for telling him this, it was completely true...I cannot tell you how proud I am that I pulled this out of my butt in under 5 seconds...

Labgrrl: "You see, before 1977, almost everyone in the United States put orange juice on their cereal. Then there was this woman, a singer and right wing wackjob named Anita Bryant, who was used in the advertising of Florida Citrus. She went out in public and criticized gay people as immoral and whatever else, you know, and rational people stopped drinking orange juice altogether.
This left us needing something to put on our cereal. Water was too thin, and soda was just gross, and baby formula was for babies...and there was an oil crisis, so Harvey Milk and the people at Stone Wall Dairy started a put milk on your cereal campaign. So, to this day, when the radical republicans eat their breakfast, they are doing something right for gay rights."

After we had a giggle, I told him the real stories....

If I could've kept a straight face I was going to go into a thing about the Stone Wall Dairy riots in Pittsburgh being put down by the Pinkerton guards, and something about Code Pink, but we were laughing too hard, and one must keep a straight face...

We've got autumn rhubarb

*A LOT* of autumn rhubarb, to boot, because of the damp, wet, cool summer.
I think I shall make a rhubarb pie tomorrow.

Giving a Puppy.

Dear Chilrens:

In the old days of teh interwebs, before the youtubes and atwitters, in teh chat of yahoo there was mandatory censorship.

One such censorship was the replacement of the phrase 'blow job' with the word puppy... and, strangely enough, the replacement of the phrase blow jobs with 'puppies.'

So when your thirtysomething mom says she gave your thirtysomething dad a puppy last night, you're not getting a dog.

LabLad's plan to graduate before he's 20 (shrug)

LabLad came in a few minutes ago to announce that, now that he's in 11th grade (he should be in 12th) he can graduate only one year late, instead of two years late, if he puts his mind to it.

Sometimes, it can be hard to be a supportive parent when the only way the kid can come up with a good idea is if you say it to him long enough for him to decide he thought it all along.

Also, parents: A tip. Even though it is true, don't tell your kids that community colleges will accept anyone with a pulse, and then you transfer to a real school.