So comprehensive, I suppose it is everything I wanted to know. Thanks.

Update: Ah, but he doesn’t mention that it sure helps to be or know someone from Minnesota.

Islamic Influence Runs Deep in American Culture -

Cowboys, food, architecture, language carry Islamic markings

(Tip o’ the Swiffer: LGF)

This is the same government that would oversee my curriculum choices, given half a chance.

There is nothing quite so sweet as getting cut off in traffic by a fifty thousand dollar SUV with a Kerry sticker on the back. Keep it up, buddy! Go tick off some swing voters!

(As opposed to a car still sporting a Kucinich sticker. That’s just comic relief.)

Here’s a way we can skip all the bitter ugliness between now and the election: Get all the wealthy LLL who think there should be more sharing of assets and line them up with the liberal leeches who want more of everyone else’s stuff. One can just hand it over directly to the other, and leave those of us in the middle completely out of it. If there can be an internet dating service for every proclivity on earth, can’t someone come up with the technology for this?

Okay, no Billie Joe McGuffrey moments, so it was a good first day. Piano practice, math, grammar, spelling, and history. We’ll get started in science this afternoon if there’s time. She’s just so relieved to get going again. She’s gotten into a seatwork kick lately, anyhow, so we’ll strike while the iron’s hot.

And the recipe of the day? Why, it’s pantry pasta salad!

1 box rotini pasta, boiled and drained

drained and diced sun-dried tomatoes in oil

sliced olives

drained and large-diced marinated artichoke hearts

drained and diced roasted red bell peppers

Toss it all with some Newman’s Own Italian, top with Parmesan cheese, and serve. Mmmm.

It was a beautiful day today. High seventies, a skiff of clouds. Perfect mowing weather. I have a longing to control the chaos in my life, and the grass is a good place to start. But my princess objects.

“I haven’t had a chance to pick all the dandelions!” she protests. There are at least a bajillion dandelions in the backyard. She sees my attempts at lawn care the same way the Sierra Club sees the Bush administration. I am threatening a habitat, here. (Or at least, depriving the neighborhood rabbits of dinner.) She mourns every bloom, every curl of cast off madrona bark.

Her backyard is for picnics of plums and blueberries. It’s for sneaking up on garter snakes and throwing the ball for our lazy dog who won’t fetch. It’s for t-ball practice, leaf gathering, rock stacking, and picking bouquets for Mama.

I just want to tame my patchy grass to an even depth.

I admire those folks who laud the push mower. Great workout, no emissions, no bags. Perhaps that kind of thing works for someone in Arizona who has a postage stamp condo yard. But this is the northwest. Flora thrives out here. In the spring and fall, if you don’t mow twice a week you’re liable to lose your toddler to the turf. And the damp will have you sharpening and oiling a push mower after every use. I’ve got to get the job done during nap time, and that’s going to take an engine.

In the end, we both get what we want. I mow almost everywhere, but leave a patch for picking. The weed whacker is broken, so the buttercup patch by the oil tank still stands. And I definitely don’t mow under the plum trees, or the drunken wasps will attack me for cutting in on their party. (What’s scarier than a drunken, angry frat boy? A drunken, angry yellowjacket. Or twenty.) Mama’s happy, kid’s happy, and the baby was kind enough to sleep through the whole thing. A good day.

A couple of weeks ago Joel Belz wrote a great article about election results reflect the culture more than the political process.

Because the political process is so visible and dramatic, we tend to get swept away with a sense that politics controls culture. But it’s the other way around. Why else do politicians spend such huge sums to keep up with the polls? If politics seems rotten, it’s because the culture that supports the political system is rotten itself. It’s the people who have lost all sense of supernatural standards, of transcendent values, and of lasting commitments. Politicians, eager to reflect the people, end up just as empty.

But this stood out sharply and got my attention:

I’ve noticed three typical responses among Christian voters: (1) When election results aren’t what we want, we act as if civilization is going down the tubes. (2) When results are what we want, we soon discover that things are almost as bad as if they’d gone the other way. (3) Either way, and chafing at how little appreciated we just were, we always serve notice how much of a force we’re going to be next time around.

I think it’s pretty true of any group with a deeply vested interest in “their side” winning the election. With this in mind, and with the crazed amphetamonkeys taking over the left, I propose that Kerry winning could – in the long term – be a good thing.

If the left gets its wish and Kerry is elected, he could very well bring the US to the brink of ruin. His winning would give the culture what it wants and then give it a mirror. He could be just the man to tank the democrats for good. The country could then unite in damage control.

Bill O’Reilly twice last night referred to Kerry’s Cambodia piffle, saying the senator “misspoke.” Misspoke! How you can misspeak about something seared into your memory, long and in detail, is beyond me. There was noise about this as recently as 2003 (Tip o’ the swiffer: Hugh). Chalk it all up to a verbal gaffe!

It’s absurd, the amount of fawning attention that the release of Mary Kay Letourneau has generated. Most news outlets have the good sense to refer to her as a rapist, pedophile, and child abuser. But too many (and I think more than, oh, zero would be too many) are calling him her lover, or her actions an “affair.” Labeling her a suductress is to give her mystique that is grossly misplaced.

The sexism of this point of view is also being ignored. If this was a middle-aged man who had sex with a 12-year-old little girl, the populace would be gathering with torches and pitchforks. (And rightly so.) But this woman is written off as a nut, not a pervert.

blahg-zos’-chen (n.) State of extreme fatigue after cruising too many web logs. Brought on most severely by political punditry.

It just doesn’t seem possible that it’s still 3 months until the election. I think we may see some talking heads just explode as we get closer to the big day. One day in October, we’ll turn on the TV to see Peter Jennings crouching on top of his desk clucking like a chicken and brooding over his nest of polls. Or Charles at LGF will go stark raving and start posting thumbnails of his nostrils.

Last night on FOX news (was it Greta? I think so. I was brushing my teeth and not really paying close attention…) a bloodhound expert was bemoaning the use of cadaver dogs at the land fill in Utah to find Lori Hacking. (And, in retrospect, isn’t that an unfortunate name?) He said the reek of the landfill could not only cause untold diseases for the dogs, but that items such as dirty diapers throw the dogs off the trail for the body. So it took an expert to confirm what many mamas have already suspected: A loaded diaper smells like death.