Blog Phaseout

Please note: This blog has been replaced by Nonfiction in a Fictional Style, also known as niafs.blogspot.com. Please click either link to view all the blog posts and comments that were previously located here, as well as all newer posts. For a decade, I used the name e-tabitha.com, but that name has also been phased out. Tabitha was the name of my now deceased pet Balinese cat and the name of my earliest websites. The name is still in use on many previously distributed marketing items. Thank you from The Curmudgeon.

Santa Rosa Island

One of my favorite spots in all of America is Santa Rosa Island, aka Pensacola Beach aka The Redneck Riviera. This small barrier island off the coast of Pensacola FL has some of the whitest sand in the world. The sugary white stuff is only sixteen feet above sea level, and when the bad hurricanes hit, the Gulf waters wash over the island into the Santa Rosa Sound on the north side. Hurricanes have periodically been delaying or altering wonderfully affordable vacations for ordinary middle class Americans for many decades. The consistency of the hurricane damage has always kept the development from exploding: SRI has maintained a small permanent population of a couple of thousand. Mix a large quantity of oil into a hurricane and you get a little more than temporarily delayed vacations, though.

My wife and I made a vacation trip to Santa Rosa Island back in 2000. She had never been there before. Like many native Texans, she was familiar with that state's own coastal areas, but the only time she had been to Florida was when we flew to Miami to catch a cruise ship for our honeymoon. Growing up in Mississippi, my family members were some of the rednecks who enjoyed the hot beaches and recreational pursuits of the island. I am so glad that my Texas wife got to experience the area while it was still pristine. In fact, we stayed in a lovely little Clarion Suites village with its own quiet beach area and romantic, two-story suites. Hurricane Ivan destroyed that quaint little resort in 2004. When I first visited the island in the very early '60's, there was only one high-rise hotel there. Little one-story motels lined both sides of the highway, particularly on The Sound side, where it was cheaper and quieter. Over the past years, I suppose building technology has developed to a point at which expensive high-rise hotels can withstand the force of the surging waves. When we were there in 2000, the place we stayed was one of the few quiet, small hotels. The high-rises lined the beach, with the prerequisite crowds on the white beach area within each hotel's parameters.

After renting jet skis in The Santa Rosa Sound, Miss Pamela took a high-flying parasail ride over the same area. The seafood was cheap and plentiful and so was the shopping and sightseeing. Just as in the '60's, The Redneck Riviera was alive, well, and affordable. After a few days on the island, we cruised eastward in our new Mustang Convertible, pausing briefly to visit the planned village community of Seaside, where The Truman Show had been filmed a few years earlier. We were going to Panama City, where we had made some special reservations weeks ahead of time. Shell Island is another small barrier island off the Florida coast, but its distinction is not beach tourism. The water near Shell Island is home to the largest colony of Bottlenose Dolphins in the world. Flipper was a Bottlenose, so you know the species. Rented boats and special tours of all sorts leave Panama City daily with tourists wanting to see and swim with the dolphins. You can have a close encounter with Flipper from a jet ski to a large cruise boat full of tourists. We researched the situation on the net far ahead of time and booked a reservation on a boat that took out only six people or less. The experienced tour guides took us to just the right spot to spend a lot of time in the water with the dolphins.

Seeing the news reports on TV about the relentless oil spill in The Gulf is one thing, but the loss of The Redneck Riviera is quite another. Of course the millions of environmentally aware Americans realize that the loss of the Louisiana wetlands and its horrific effect on wildlife will damage us all in the future in ways we cannot now imagine, but the loss of a favorite tourist playground is in your face in a manner even the uninformed rednecks will not be able to ignore.

The Babygate Game

1. How many ears are involved?
(a) Two (b) Four (c) Six (d) Eight

2. What is a Mother Duck?
(a) Mother (b) Sister (c) Babysitter (d) All of them

3. Who was an unplanned father?
(a) Curtis, Jr. (b) Brad Hanson (c) Todd (d) Levi
(e) Johnny Chandler (f) Chuck Heath (g) Keith Johnston

4. Which of these is much worse than a teenage prank?
(a) Pulling a dormitory false fire alarm
(b) Cutting brake lines on a fleet of school buses
(c) Taking a small child to a burglary
(d) Breaking, entering, and vandalizing a house
(e) Guessing someone's e-mail password

5. Some of the babies involved are:
(a) Brothers (b) Unrelated (c) Legally Adopted (d) Secretly adopted

6. Medical records should always be kept from the press to conceal:
(a) Abortions (b) Vasectomies (c) Hysterectomies (d) Birthdays (e) FAS
(f) Drug Addictions

7. A baby should always be carried facing forward because:
(a) He needs to see his adoring fans and show off your anti-abortion credentials
(b) He might drool on the expensive clothes the RNC bought for you
(c) Your mother always carried you like a sack of potatoes
(d) You don't care much for a baby you were forced to adopt
(e) You want to make sure Todd gets the message that you don't approve of his affairs

8. What's the best TV show to watch to get new ideas for political schemes?
(a) Seinfeld (b) Sex and the City (c) Desperate Housewives (d) The West Wing

9. What's the best way to keep a co-conspirator quiet after the fact?
(a) Bribery (b) Blackmail (c) An accident (d) Depends on the situation

10. How does such a slick political scam begin?
(a) Boost your doctor's career and set her up
(b) Develop connections with The Christian Mafia and they will help you
(c) It was all my brilliant idea from the start
(d) Let your kids go wild with booze, drugs, sex, and general delinquency
(e) Elbow your way to the top and don't let anyone get in your way!

Palin Babygate

I want to especially thank Kellygirl, LisaBeth, and the others from Palingates and The Immoral Minority for responding to my rallying cry in But Seriously, Folks.... I have been working for several months on a detailed timeline of Babygate and some of SP's related shenanigans. This timeline is posted in a private blog entitled Palin Babygate. Much of the material in this timeline is inflammatory and unsubstantiated. That is why I have kept it private. Until now, only Palingates and my wife have had access to it, but the time has come to release the hounds a bit.

The creation of this timeline has several purposes, but the most important one is to allow a forum in which all the anti-Palin tribe can participate in a somewhat different manner. Right now the blog contains only one very long post. Anyone who has more accurate information, or even somewhat speculative information, can comment on the many details contained in the timeline. Whenever comments are shown to be relevant, and at least more accurate than what has been noted, I can update the timeline with the new information.

The purpose of the blog is to expose SP as the fraudulent candidate and celebrity that she is, in all her incarnations. Like many others, I have felt for nearly two years now that Babygate is the string that will unravel the Plastic Public Palin Persona. Of course I would like to think that the proprietors of Palingates are correct, and that they will become the Woodward & Bernstein of this millennium, but I have my doubts. They are, after all, across the pond, while I live in the heart of Palin Country. For all the people who want to wave the racist flag at the Tea Baggers, I lived very close to the hot spots of the Civil Rights movement of the '60's, so I am familiar with that scenario as well. The foundation of how an attractive American can rise to an unforeseen level of sociopolitical power was described in my third book, so I have been studying this angle for a long time, too.

I am not sure what my next move with the Palin Babygate blog will be yet, but for now, I am opening it up to public access for two hours only. It will be returned to its private access at midnight tonight. You may comment only with a Blogger username (Google account) on any of my blogs. If I use my real name, you can at least make up an alias. Anyone who wants to study this material at length is encouraged to copy and paste the current status of the timeline into a Word document. As I said, I am uncertain what the future of this project holds. Thank you.

The Backward People

The so-called intelligent left wingers of America long ago should have ceased herding cats and organized effectively in the same manner of their red-bloodied foes. The stupid villains keep winning The Second Civil War, mostly because (a) they control the media and (b) they know how to control the message. I have denigrated the intelligence of the lefties with my tongue in cheek. There is no doubt whatsoever that the left wing is considerably more sane, intelligent, thoughtful, compassionate, educated, and rational than the pack of violent, blood-thirsty Neanderthals on the right. The main difference is that the wolf pack always sticks to its story and the Democratic cats never stop discussing the issues long enough to make up a story.

Well, I am here to help. Here is my official suggestion for exactly what the story that is to be stuck to for the foreseeable future should be. From now on, they should be referred to as The Backward People. Whereas they always somewhat effectively say, Tax and Spend, we are going to call them The Backward People. That is, after all, exactly what they are, is it not? They want more than anything in the world to take the USA back to an earlier time. They want to go back to a time when rich, attractive, white Americans controlled not only all other Americans, but the world. Control to The Backward People means control of everything in the society, from laws to money to social behavior. They want absolutely no forward, progressive change to occur. They want no one but people exactly like themselves to have any control over his or her own life.

Do not misconstrue this backwardness with nostalgia. The former has a lot in common with the Salem Witch Trials. The latter is what I write books and blogs about. Backwardness means oppression and harassment of others, and a lunatic fear of anything new, different, or unfamiliar. Nostalgia is light entertainment with a deeply emotional overtone sometimes attached. Backwardness is just an excuse for the mistreatment of others.

Who are The Backward People? They go by many monikers, but here are a few of them: Christians, Republicans, conservatives, Palinbots, Teabaggers, and the ever-popular favorite, real Americans. What do The Backward People want? The answer could be presented in a long, convoluted form, but the short version is that they want something that has never before existed in the history of our world. They want to hide all references to sex and birth control under the covers, but they simultaneously want the human population not to be exploding. They want the unlimited ability to earn money, but they want the wretched excess at the top to police themselves. They want to live in The Fifties with microwaves and cell phones. They want to halt all government spending without limiting the military industrial complex. They want to throw back every Mexican that crosses the border, but they want to pay the cheapest wages possible. They want to govern as if most Americans live in small towns and the Southern, urban, and suburban migrations of the past sixty years never happened. They want to quote The Bible with every favorite issue of murder and procreation while ignoring any mention of kindness to the poor or the control of explicit greed.

America has become a nation divided by a civil war between the intelligent, educated, compassionate people and those who mentally reside in a '50's war zone full of 2010 electronic conveniences. The first group lives in a new reality with a lot of problems that need to be addressed, and soon. The other side lives in a Hillbilly Twilight Zone. This should be your new meme from this day forward, intelligent people. Every media interview should include our new motto: they are The Backward People. Do you really want to be known as one of The Backward People? Do you really want The Backward People in charge of your country ever again? The phrase, The Party of No, has been a good start, but it lacks the long-range punch of The Backward People. Let's turn our cat herd into a fighting wolf pack. We have the knowledge and the power. Let's spell it out - every chance we get. They are The Backward People. Do you really want to support them or be one of them?

NIAFS

Four blogs were just one too many for a curmudgeon to manage while I worked on my next big book project, so this older blog of Floyd M. Orr is being phased out until next year for a newer model. Please click this NIAFS link to go to the newer Nonfiction in a Fictional Style blog. The Floyd M. Orr blog will remain online and many links from the newer blog will bring you back to posts here, but no further posts will be added to this blog until 2010. Thank you.

Save the Wolf Pups

Sarah Palin is the cruelest enemy of Alaskan wildlife that the United States has ever known. I read Jack London's White Fang for the first time a couple of years ago, and the story was a bit hard to handle, even for a sixty-year-old like me. Believe me when I say the Disney movie version was cleaned up quite a bit from the cruelties recanted in the original book. The half-wolf of the book was orphaned with just enough age and experience to survive after finding adoptive humans, even careless, cruel ones. The innocent little baby pups sleeping in their dens that Sarah Palin and her redneck cronies want to mercilessly murder in the name of predator control will not have it so good. These babies will never venture out into the new spring sunshine to chase butterflies or tussle with their litter mates. Ruthless infanticide will follow the killing of their parents. Governor Palin has relentlessly stuffed the Alaskan Department of Game with big game hunters and profiteers while shoving aside those proffering a scientific view of proper conservation of Alaska's rarer species.

I have been one of America's biggest fans of werewolves for the past fifty years. I revel in the intelligent works of screenwriter John Sayles. His version of The Howling presents werewolves in a more complete, human style of psychodrama than anyone in movie or literary history. But even as a kid watching the previews of the little-known, 1956 movie The Werewolf, I knew it was all just a fantasy, a game of how to pump up the adrenaline. Sarah Palin is the real monster. She has no compassion whatsoever for the baby wolves or bear cubs she is so hell-bent on destroying for profit. Her plans for Alaskan wildlife are nothing less than monstrous, and she must be stopped. The only way to do that is to discredit her, to expose the beast she really is to the voting public at large in both Alaska and the U. S. in general.

There are many things we can do to stop this slaughter of babies by this monster in a skirt and expensive eyeglasses. We can support the Wolf Song of Alaska with our hearts and our donations of time and money. The Alaska Dispatch has covered this travesty in far more complete and accurate detail than I can from my warm environment down here in Texas. The Sarah Palin Truth Squad has done their part to publicize this wildlife conservation nightmare. Alaskan wilderness author Bill Sherwonit has done his part, too. His Living with Wilderness will take you places you may not have realized existed. Palin has placed a bloody $150 bounty on the forepaws of wolves and the hunting of wolves from aircraft has been consistently supported by this bloodthirsty governor.

The Mudflats posted an excellent article on the subject last week. The story was even sent to The Huffington Post, who so graciously placed it in an obscure position away from the site's home page. This fit of wolf pup and bear cub compassion was effected after 3 p.m. last Friday, at which time a tremendous horde of animal lovers read this important story. Ashley Judd needs to know about the great white hunter's chickenshit gassing of wolf dens and the cruel snaring of bear paws. Remember the baby seal hunts that the American public once thought was so delightful? Well, these cub and pup killings must be just as much fun to watch because the Alaskan supporters of this lovely sport are encouraging the participation of all their young offspring. They want ten-year-olds to get in on the fun, too! It worked out well for the Heaths and Palins; why not for the latest generation of Alaskan youth? Teach your kids well: unnecessary killing and slaughter is fun for the whole family!

The Wicked Witch of Wasilla and her bloodthirsty family must be stopped. Don't hold your breath for Arianna Huffington to do it. She wants this abomination of a politician on her news pages. The witch is nothing but a cash cow to The Huffington Post and the rest of the mainstream media. Haven't you noticed how little they present stories that will actually stop the bitch in her bloody, political tracks? Sure, they will milk any benign piece of caribou crap that the witch slings their way, as long as it never actually causes the voting public to wake up to the travesty. Sarah Palin is nothing more than Anna Nicole Smith without the big boobs or Lindsay Lohan without the talent. I pick on Arianna only because she is supposedly on the side of logic and compassion. We already know what CNN and the Fox Holier Than Thou Hens are up to, but it's high time we faced the power and greed of Arianna, too. Americans hate animal cruelty more than anything this side of child molesters and missing attractive white kids, especially that involving cute, cuddly mammals (whether they are, in actuality, cuddly or not). We must all work diligently to somehow keep this story in the news. Nothing else has the obvious potential to stop the raging witch more effectively and permanently. Is Jon Stewart the last real American patriot left on the boob tube? It sure looks that way.

Things You Can Do to Help the Wolf Pups & Other Alaskan Wildlife
Stop Alaska's Aerial Wolf Killing Program