If government was acting in the public -- and not the corporate -- interest, Occupy wouldn't be necessary.
If journalists were adversaries to the rich and powerful -- instead of their stenographers -- Wikileaks wouldn't be necessary.
It's pretty unbelievable to me that a group of people who covered up pedophile priests for decades has any moral authority at all.
I keep hearing conservatives complaining about government intruding on their religious freedoms. It's hard to take them seriously when they're doing everything they can to impose their narrow beliefs on the rest of us.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Geek
It was afternoon PE in fifth grade, and I was terrified. I ran and jumped and ducked, surrounded by a cheering crowd of my classmates. The PE teacher did nothing to stop the attack, and in fact encouraged it.
"Get him!" Someone yelled, as I fell to the asphalt, small rocks digging into my palms. I breathed hard, and through my adrenaline-fueled flight-or-fight response, the world slowed, the cheering faded, and I wondered to myself why our playground was just a parking lot, and why we had to wear corduroy pants in the middle of a Southern California heatwave. Before I could offer any answers, a clear and loud voice spoke from within my head. "Hey," it said. "You'd better get up and move, or you're dead."
I nodded my head, and looked up in time to see the red playground ball, spinning in slow motion, as the word "Voit" rotated into view. Pain exploded across my face and a mighty cheer erupted from the crowd. The PE teacher blew her whistle.
If I do say so myself, it's a pretty neat thing, and I think some of you may be glad you read it.
If you're interested, leave me a note here and I'll get you the details.
I wrote it down, then wrote a little more and a little more. Right around the time I realized I had no idea how it ended, the ending tapped me on the shoulder and said "boo!" The whole process, from idea to publishing it was a little less than two hours.
I've never done this before, but I thought it would be cool to publish it here without the usual editorial and rewrites I do on everything, because the idea of conceiving, writing, and releasing a short story in just a couple of hours is intriguing to me.
If you're interested in the result, you can head on over to my blog and see something that I hope 12 year-old me would enjoy...
It's only 1200 words, and here are some of them:
There is a monster in my closet. It’s standing in there behind my clothes, and it wants to come out. I don’t know where it came from, I don’t know how it got in there, but I know that it’s been there for a long time, waiting.
Mum and dad don’t believe in monsters (and until yesterday, neither did I), but during dinner tonight, I had to tell them.
I am literally playing the Dead Meemaw Card so you'll watch me on The Big Bang Theory tonight.
Ladies and gentlemen, I now turn the mic over to my wife, Anne Wheaton, so she can tell you about something that's incredibly important to both of us:
"We did our first Wiggle Waggle Walk weeks after losing our dog Ferris to cancer in 2009. Ferris was a rescue dog (I found her abandoned at a bus stop, and rescued her myself) so we felt doing the walk to help other rescued animals was a great way to honor her memory.
"People we never met, from all over the world, joined our friends and family to sponsor our team. In less than ten days, we surpassed our goal by thousands of dollars, and ended up being one of the top three individual fundraisers for the Pasadena Humane Society. To thank us for our fundraising and to help raise adoption awareness, the PHS asked us to walk one of their shelter dogs. Of course we said yes, and we walked an amazing seven month old puppy. We choked back tears the entire walk -- we missed Ferris terribly -- and though we weren't sure we were ready to adopt a new dog, about halfway thought the walk, we'd both fallen in love with the little guy. Wil took the "adopt me" bandana off of him, and one week later, Seamus joined our family.
"Our home has 4 rescue pets. Every time I feed them, snuggle them, and play with them, I think of what their life would have been like if a shelter didn't care for them and help find them a good home. It's a daily reminder that these shelters need help from all of us so they can take care of pets who need food, medical care and a chance to live in a loving home. Everyone we know (and millions of people on the Internet) hears stories from us about our awesome pets and how we adopted them. This can happen for other families and pets because of the Pasadena Humane Society, and the generous support of people like you.
"Right now, there's a dog like our Seamus or Riley, or a cat like our Watson or Luna, who is waiting to find a family to love them and care for them. Please join us and help the Pasadena Humane Society -- or your local Humane Society -- make it possible for them to find each other."
Hi, Wil again. If you can help us at all, it will add up to a HUGE difference. I figure that I reach about two million individual people every day, so if just 1% of you sponsored our team for five dollars ... well, math is hard, but you get the idea.
I never ask people to share posts, but please share this post on Facebook and G+, put it on Tumblr, and RT it on the Tweety Box. We're about 1/4 of the way to our $15,000 goal, and I know we can do it five bucks at a time if enough people know about it. Thanks!
