He did ask that I post my comments and opinions regarding surveillance and the telecoms.

I have so many conflicting thoughts on this subject. I hate like hell to take sides on controversial issues, especially on my blog, because it tends to inspire more conflict between us than it does resolution to situations.

The best-case scenario is an agreement to disagree; a worse-case scenario is a bunch of people explaining at the top of their caps-locks why I couldn't be more wrong, misinformed, and ignorant; the worst-case scenario is the ending of a friendship/mutual respect — a loss that could easily have been avoided if I'd just kept my wrong, misinformed, and ignorant viewpoints to myself.

Even that best-case scenario makes me unhappy. But it was so little for him to ask.

In a nutshell, my instinct is to say that I, personally, don't have anything to hide. If the government wants to waste its time listening to me talk smack about my former employers and whine about the fact that my friends are slurping diet cherry limeades when I would have to drive ninety miles to get to the nearest Sonic, they're more in need of a life than I am.

On the other hand, I'm one of the ones paying for that. I give the government my hard-earned money (which is no longer flowing in like it was, oh, this time last week), and they eavesdrop on me. I can think of about five million things I'd rather have them do with that money.

On the other hand, the biggest problem I have with surveillance as it currently stands is that, although the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) used to protect our rights to not be spied upon, that got sort of overridden by the Protect America Act. By dancing around the original language of FISA, a proposed amendment including immunity for the telecoms could leave them more safe from prosecution for invasion of privacy than I think we are from being invaded, period.

In a rather annoying nutshell, it is completely legal for them to tap a citizen's communication media to "keep us safe" (and from what? my pathetic attempts to console E over the death of her husband? oh, yeah, that's the act of a terrorist, innit), and they may do so without holding any sort of judicial review. Just, if they think you're a threat, they can move forward and get their listen on.

How are they making such a call, without a judicial review? Even "trusting a gut instinct" is exercising some sort of judgment ... don't they want to get a second opinion? Wouldn't they want one, if they were the citizens under scrutiny?

How silly of me, to assume personal integrity was going to play a part in this fiasco.

But on the other hand, who's going to pay for the judicial review?

And on the other hand, is it really keeping us safe?

And on the other hand, how can we expect anyone to be honest with us about whether or not our phone sex has evolved into a gang rape, when I personally am not a hundred percent sure anyone's even actually reporting all of the news, and have not been since Peter Jennings started not feeling so well?

How many hands is that? One, two, three, four, five, six.

Ultimately, it comes down to two big problems.

1. I've only got two hands.
2. I'm not qualified to have even one opinion about this at all, and the ones I've already voiced are almost certainly wrong, misinformed, and ignorant.

In short (I know; too late), the whole freaking government, a bunch of people who still have jobs and make more than I ever made before I became a budgetary constraint, can't make up their minds what the best, safest course is in regard to finding out who's got it in for us, and I'm just one person who takes a millenium to pick out a greeting card. Don't be mad that I can't come up with the right answer, is what I'm saying.

Two hands.

For your own edification, here is the left hand:

http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=24935

and here is the right hand:

http://www.gop.com/blog/Read.aspx?GUID=4798169f-61a2-4a2d-ba8a-829eef93f06e

Please feel free to make your own decision, and I wish you luck of it. My brain hurts from trying to figure it out.

And my own left hand doesn't know what my right hand is doing, except that both hands are feeling mighty arthritic, this cold, rainy-arsed day.

I'm still "selling" guest posts. Most of them are not this wrong, misinformed, and ignorant, I assure you.

After seven years of not bitching about my job here, like so many other online writers do with impunity (in fact, I think I've written here more than once about how much I liked my job, and how I was willing to put up with it even when it's frustrating, on the basis that they paid me to take the frustration like a big girl), they still hit me in the face with the ol' "eliminating your position due to budgetary constraints" on Thursday.

What you don't know is that That Man of Mine has been on a fruitless job search for the past several months himself. I didn't talk about it because, while people like you to be honest, most of them don't want you to be that honest. It makes them uncomfortable.

We are well and truly fucked, now. I am ill and I was supporting both of us on my meager salary, and now I don't have that anymore.

I am terrified.

I hate like hell to do this, but I have no marketable skills and all the stuff I own is crap, so I can't sell you anything but myself.

I will write guest blogs for $2 each. I accept Paypal.

That's set at a cap of $2, by the way. I don't want charity — I have to earn that by writing a guest post. So if you keep clicking it, you're going to get a whole lot of guest posts, is what I'm saying.

You can choose the subject, within reason. I'll try to tailor what I write to fit into your blog's everyday format. I'd rather not to have to write or endorse anything I don't believe, but I will try to be fair to your requests, and I will also respect your blog by not writing anything that is in dissent with your opinions and beliefs.

I don't need your password. All I need is your URL (I'll direct what traffic I may to your site) and an email address for me to send the text to. You can copy and paste the text into your blog application's "body" field yourself without compromising your security.

$2. That's how desperate I am.

Oh, and? I got the news a few hours after having gotten the news that my friend E's husband had died suddenly that morning.

People's pets are sick and dying. People's dads are sick and dying. People's husbands? Sick and dying.

All this, after I decided to change my life and reach out to the Universe, to put money back into the financial ecosystem by giving whatever extra I had to charity.

To be positive about everything, all the time, in order to attract positivity to my life.

I can't do that right now. Maybe I can get back to it at some point, but at the moment, it doesn't feel like changing my outward attitude will change what I attract. It feels like pretending I'm happy is making me into a big fat liar.

All those people walking around what used to be my office, whining about their sniffles and the fact that they only had enough money for two pairs of new shoes when they wanted three, they still have jobs.

Me, I smiled all the time. Said "Great!" when people asked how I was. Didn't mention that I haven't bought new shoes in ages because I can't afford them when the bills and the mortgage and the groceries and blah blah expensecakes have to be my first priority.

But I'm the one causing "budgetary constraints."

My former employers, they don't know from budgetary constraints. And at least one of them told one of my former coworkers that they were unaware that That Man was also out of work, which wouldn't make a difference anyway, since the decision was already in place.

Except, he did know.

I had told him a few months ago.

And even if he'd forgotten, I'd mentioned it again, as I was leaving the meeting where they were telling me how truly, truly sorry it had to be this way.

He did know, and he still let it happen, and then he lied about knowing. But I'm the budgetary constraint.

I hope none of them ever sleep a wink again. I hope they lie awake at night, consumed with guilt over the fact that they have destroyed me.

They won't, because I believe they have no souls, but I hope it anyway.

$2.00. Please.

It's less than a gallon of gas.

Certainly less than cigarettes, and by the way, thank gourd I quit five years ago, because if I hadn't, I certainly can't afford to smoke now.

Besides, they're US dollars. They're not worth crap anyway.

(I considered writing to the White House to ask if the President would like me to guest post on his blog, but I didn't want to have to resort to using made-up words like "nucular" and "sublinial" if at all avoidable.)

Please.

I searched for the word "charity", and found an article about the Esther Benjamins Trust, a charity working to rescue trafficked children in Nepal. They are printing Christmas cards for 2007, but, unlike many charities, where only a portion of the sale proceeds goes to the trust, this venture is investing the full 100% of their proceeds into helping these children. If you would like to learn more, please click the link to read the article ... and if you would like to help, please think about buying the cards as your holiday greeting this year.

Congratulations on your mad copy and pasting skills, Daniel.  I'd say you're a good writer, but I'm not sure how much actual writing you do and how much you steal from other people and take credit for yourself.

This is a Golfwidow post, and I ought to know, because I am Golfwidow and I wrote the silly thing.  If you see it at http://daniel67smith.multiply.com/journal, it's 'cos he or whoever is running that site ganked it off of my site.  Hi.

Congratulations on your mad copy and pasting skills, Daniel.  I'd say you're a good writer, but I'm not sure how much actual writing you do and how much you steal from other people and take credit for yourself.

This is a Golfwidow post, and I ought to know, because I am Golfwidow and I wrote the silly thing.  If you see it at http://daniel67smith.multiply.com/journal, it's 'cos he or whoever is running that site ganked it off of my site.  Hi.

• I just got a pretty neutral rejection (they didn't say I suck, but neither did they offer any encouragement) on a bit of writing into which I had put quite a lot of work, not only in ensuring that its content was wonderful, its format was scrupulously correct, and that it met the needs of the company, but also in infusing it with all the positive energy in my power, in accordance with the guidelines from The Secret and A Charmed Life. I'm almost relieved that they didn't want it, in the sense that pushing all that positive "Today you'll be contacting me about how good I am and what my next step is with you to move forward with this project" was as much work as going to my job every day; now that they've told me they are completely not interested, I can cross that item off my several-times-daily-to-do list.
• One of the many people pontificating The Secret at me like they're the the Happiness Experts of All Time is getting a divorce.

I'm keeping this site, at least for now, and I'm going to keep giving to charity as I've been doing. I'll try to drum up some more paying work for in here. But I'm going to do it because it's a worthwhile exercise and it's the only way I can get enough money to give to charity, since I can't afford it on my existing budget.

I will no longer put a lot of faith into the ol' hocus pocus. Either good fortune will come to me or it won't. I'll work toward what I have control over and let go of what I don't.

If an opportunity presents itself, I'll be prepared. But if it doesn't, I won't blame myself. The Universe isn't here to give me everything I want, nor even anything I need. It's just here, and I'm in it.

Yay for that, anyway.

I'm just trying to change tactics, considering that the Universe is continuing to smile on me, much in the manner that sharks smile on smaller fish.

However, I am incredibly thankful for this:

Nicked from The Listener
Mi larsenny. Let me show u it.

It's so weird. I make a conscious effort to attract success and happiness, and people around me are dying, my money is draining away faster than I can put it back into charity, and my friends are losing their jobs.

I don't want to say I'm giving up or have no hope anymore, but I've got to try to approach this differently, because the secret and the charmed life appear to be backfiring mightily.

and people are saying they like it better than the actual award.

3. I got paid for my blogs to profit; ten percent of the payment was less than the minimum accepted by credit card for most online charities, so I donated about half, in memory of my coworker who passed away last week.
4. One of my NYC favorites has invited me to spend a night with her the next time she's homesitting for her employer. I'm incredibly squee at this concept, not only because she's the awesome, but because I will be in New! York! and get to see all the sorts of stuff I don't get to observe shuttling back and forth from work to home (with the occasional side trip to the supermarket) in Connecticut.
5. Our fireworks didn't get rained out.
6. Nor did anyone I know drown over the holiday (at least four people in Connecticut did, that I saw in the news).
7. Also, though we were held up by the bad accident on 95 Thursday, we were neither headed northbound, where it had happened and everything was closed, nor, more importantly, were we involved.

Yeah. I'm okay.

To be positive so as to attract positive things.

Two people of my acquaintance died in the past week, and a sort-of-former-colleague of my mother's was buried on Monday, to boot.

I'm so deep in the hole I can't see daylight, and no, I haven't spent a single nickel on myself in months. Months. I just keep trying to give to charity and, woohoo, more hole.

I put change into the boot every time we passed the fire station for a whopping twenty minutes of fireworks.

Not to mention that Elizabeth is currently making out with Anthony in For Better or For Worse. I want her to be happy, not just to settle for Anthony because she knows him and he's "safe." (I also lost a bit of respect for him when he accompanied her to court, then, knowing she was in emotional and fearful knots, added a little extra stress to her life by asking her to "wait for him." Way to step up and be unselfish, Anthony.)

I'm not sure who the Secret or the Charmed Life is working for, but I think they're getting all my good luck.

However, I am all about giving it a fair shot.

• When our twenty minutes of fireworks had been used up, we did not have to walk a mile to our cars (or try to find a bathroom along the way), then crawl through traffic, using up tons of expensive gasoline in the process, to get home. We just turned around, went back inside and closed the sliding glass doors. Yay balconies with unobstructed vantage points of the sky over Bradley Point.

• I had the following conversation with my husband on Monday, about my mother's sort-of colleague, whom we both knew was terminally ill.

Me: Mom tells me they buried Mr. Attorney today.
Him: Oh, wow; he died?
Me: No, they just buried him. He should be digging himself out any second now. Here's your sign.

• I didn't have to work yesterday or today.

• Carl Sagan is still rocking my world.

Here are the rules:

Tagged players post eight random facts/habits about themselves. At the end of your post, you tag eight more victims suckers newbs  people; they then write their list of eight in their own blogs and post the rules. Be sure to leave comments for your eight patsies losers targets invisible friends.

I don't tag people. I prefer to give anyone who reads the option of doing it themselves, or not. But I do try to fulfill tags if they happen to me, no matter how not crazy about being tagged I am.

Also, I made a rule some time ago that, if anyone has been tagged for the same meme and doesn't want to do it, reading mine all the way through renders them immune.

That said, here are eight random facts/habits about me, but since I've been tagged with variations of this meme over and over for the past few years, I'm going to make this one about sticks, just for a change.

1. My favorite clean joke is, "What do you call a boomerang that doesn't come back?" (Answer: "A stick.")
2. My favorite variation of the above joke was told by an island woman of my acquaintance. Envision the following being told by a tiny woman with a lilting French accent: "And why does the boomerang not come back when he throws it? Because it was a stick!"
3. My second favorite clean joke is, "What's brown and sticky?" (Answer is, again: "A stick.")
4. I like the phrase "More than you can shake a stick at," but nobody knows for sure where it originated. Don't bother looking it up online. I already did. Even World Wide Words had a bunch of theories but didn't know which was right.
5. I like corn dogs, creamsicles, and those gourmet lollipops from Linda's Lollies.
6. I also have rather an unhealthy crush on José Jalapeño.
7. I'm not only always amused when the Mom says, "It's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick," but whenever anyone else says it (I heard actor James Cromwell use it in an interview once, for example) I automatically identify that person forever as one of the Mom's "peeps."
8. The Monty Python episode with Eric Idle asking the RSM (played by John Cleese) about when they will be taught to defend themselves against pointed sticks (instead of against fresh fruit) is adorable no matter how many times I see it.