I was working on my RSS feeds, switching over the many blogs I follow daily to my email reader so they’d show up when there was something new, so I wouldn’t have to open up all these different blogs every day. For some reason, when I was doing the The Erin O’Brien Owners Manual For Human Beings instead of the most recent 20 or so posts, I ended up with this gem from November of 2005. I’ve read it all and I’ve decided you must too.

Crystals in Petrie Dish of Erin’s Mind
1. The window of the bank with respect to the location of the Mini is somehow in flux.
2. The bank is not moving.
3. You (owner and primary operator of Mini) are not in said Mini.

Equation Resulting from Crystals in the Petrie Dish of Erin’s Mind
1. 2,600 pounds of Mini Cooper + four percent gradient of parking lot + the earth’s inescapable force of gravity + manual transmission left out of gear + idiotic owner of Mini forgetting to engage parking brake = motion.

“SHIT!” I bark.

Excitement ensues.

Read the whole thing here.

I love Pachelbel’s Canon in D. We played it at our wedding. But this ex-cello player (Hi, Caroline!) doesn’t.

Click the pic.

Updated below.

This is a difficult post for me to write.

We have arrived at another tragic Memorial Day. Nearly a thousand U.S. soldiers have died since Memorial Day, 2006. Many more have been gravely injured, and Iraqi deaths number in the hundred thousands, in a war that has already lasted longer than World War II: a war Bush and Cheney masterminded (if you can call it that). A war ill-conceived and badly executed.

In our grief and rage after 9-11, we as a nation acquiesced to Bush’s desire to go to war against a nation that had no weapons of mass destruction and had nothing to do with the attacks of 9-11. Now our young men and women stand in the crossfire between warring factions. The Iraqis themselves have suffered horrific losses. Iraq is now a prime recruiting ground for Al Qaeda. A large majority of Americans want us out of Iraq, but our Congress lacks the political will to cut the president’s purse strings and force his hand.

Today we stand in solidarity with the soldiers and their families, who have dedicated themselves to serving their country. Our soldiers in Iraq are doing their best to honor their pledge in a difficult situation. We honor the fallen. We look to the newly elected Democratic leadership in Congress, who promised to stand up to Bush and end this war—we look to principled Republicans and Democratic hawks, who have admitted that this war was a grave error—to find a way of ending this insanity. Bring our soldiers home.

Jimmy Carter once said, war is an evil. Sometimes it is a necessary evil, but it is always evil. War inevitably results in horrors, and should never be engaged in except as a last resort. I mourn for those who have died, who have been injured, tortured, lost loved ones, or been displaced by this war.

I honor the fallen. I urge our leaders: stop this madness. Bring our soldiers home.

Read More »

Erin had this image over on her blog.

“They’ll never know what hit them!”