This is totally swiped from Tumblr, though I would have added “Are we safer?” to the list.

so troops can come home now? 

are gas prices going down?

is airport security gonna stop cavity searching on the regular? 

is the war over?

yea, didn’t think so.

Sorry chiquita, I couldn’t embed the weird official video version.

And we need a better name for nightly videos if this is going to continue.

There was a time when this news would have made me happy. But 10 years of war in Afghanistan where we average to kill one “bad guy” for every 30 people and drone attacks in Pakistan and I don’t fucking care. That’s 10 years that Bin Laden got to strengthen his networks and use our atrocious wars as propaganda to gather more followers.

And pardon me, but I can’t help but think of how desperately Obama needs a bump in the polls and a distraction while he works with Republifuckers to complete the robbing of the Aemrican populace for spoils to give to the wealthy reduce the deficit. And I wonder how the Pakistan government feels. Did they authorize us sending a team into their country? Will we stop bombing them now? How long will we remain in the clusterfuck that is Afghanistan? The answer to these questions I fear will not be positive.

ETA: Is it just me, or are the crowds of cheering gleeful celebrants making Bin Ladens’ death a bit nauseating. Was the dude a murderer and terrorist- hell yes. Is it still gross to party over his dead body. Hell yes.

Abagond has in interesting post up about how to write a blog post.

Uhm, that’s way more organized than I write. WAY more. Even the long posts. Even the good posts. Even the many linked posts.

Here’s how I write a post.

Read. Read more. Read again. Read blogs. Read newspapers. Read books. Read the back of a cereal box.

Begin to have the glimmer of an idea. Nurture this by furiously chewing and snapping gum. Blow occasional bubble. (Gum has replaced my old pace and chain smoke routine, what with the not smoking. Dear gawd I miss smoking.)

Try not to be to distracted by thoughts of how much I miss smoking. Or that laundry needs to be done, but do i want to spend my last 5 to wash stuff. Can washing wait till more money comes in.

Read more.

Read.

Watch a movie on Netflix. Watch an entire television series on Netflix.Wish for visine because I have been up all night watching Netflix and my eyeballs hurt.

Vomit post onto screen. No really that’s how it feels. Thoughts that have been churning in my head like PBRs and street hot dogs eventually come back out in one stream of typing.

If I am feeling particularly efficient, read post through to catch typos, etc. (Obviously, I feel efficient very very rarely).

And that is how I write a post.

Read this quote:

….’endless training courses for jobs that the agencies and the trainees know don’t exist. It’s a charade in which applicants have to think up ways to convince prospective employers of their motivation for the most menial of cleaning jobs. “Needing work” is not considered satisfactory’
Bolds mine.

That could be the description of any participant in the grand failure of Welfare reform known as Workfirst. But it’s not. It’s about the working class French.

Did you know, by the way, that Workfirst has just a 50% success rate at getting Welfare recipients into jobs, and most of those jobs are of such low pay that the (mostly) women who get them will still need to rely on the state for Medicaid, food stamps and child care.

You know what is really fucking frustrating? Right now on craigslist free section there is the PERFECT sofa and love seat and a mattress set that would be a drastic improvement over air mattress and sitting on the floor. But I don’t know anyone with a truck (shit, should have been nicer to the stable boys that drove them)

I’m going to go pout as my dream sofa gets picked up by someone else. Pouty pout pout.

I am anxiously awaiting the delivery of paint to finish these two pieces and to get to work on a few more that I have in mind. But I thought I’d share what I’ve got so far.

First, the bedroom Buddha. This is painted over an old garden print. It’s about 24 by 36 for the painted area and larger for the mat area. A happy accident happened in that you can see the garden painting behind my paint. It’s also MUCH redder in real life than the pics show. It’s a thin layer of crimson. Think nail polish red.When I get the white to finish it, Buddha will have a face and be giving the hard side eye. Think of someone closing their eyes to pray in church and then opening one to peer around and see if anyone else is peeking.

Now my little (not so little, it’s 30 by 40) Zapatista (ha, spell check wants Zapatista to be seperatist!) travel picture. This is being done in the style of vintage travel ads, but instead of hot vacation spots I’m going to do revolutions instead. When finished this will have Chiapas in chrome yellow across the bottom. I all ready have ideas and sketches for the recent Iran protests and the self-immolation in Tunisia. If you all have suggestions/ideas for others I should do, leave em in comments.

Also, these are painted on other pictures, prints, things that aren’t traditional canvas. I actually prefer painting on foamcore (no need to prime the canvas first and you get a super smooth surface). The Zapatista painting is done on the backing board of a cheap Ikea poster frame. If you have old, larger sized prints that you want to get rid of, shoot me an email. I will recycle them.

I think that even though we have done everything possible to pretend like May 1st isn’t an important marker (like changing it to labor day, a long weekend in early September to devoid of pro-worker sentiment) we need it.

We need to remember that people like us have changed things in the past and can change things again. People were brave enough to risk their lives for things like an 8 hour workday.