Some back ground:
One day in February 2007, an A-list blogger¹ decided that his blogroll was unfair to the little blogger folk². Back in those days, oh-so long ago, linkage was web capital. You got linked by a big blog and it wasn’t so much traffic from their link that helped, but the Google rep from their link that helped you. Alas, the A-listers decided to “reform” their rolls and off came the little dudes. Mostly they just linked to themselves at that point³.

The little bloggers struck back. “Oh, yeah? Well, we’ll show you.” And Blogroll Amnesty Day was born.

According to Blue Gal and skippy, one must link to blogs with less traffic than you and one must not whine that they have the less traffic of all.

I’m going to be different only so far as I’m just going to link to folks who answered my Twitter call. They obviously would like the link and so I shall give them a link (though their PR is probably higher than mine and probably their traffic⁴. I’m also going to link to blogs that are on my blogroll, whether they want it or not.

William K. Wolfrum is hilarious. I don’t even know how I found him on Twitter, but somehow he ended up in my feed. He insists that smaller blogs shouldn’t be allowed to serve in the military or get married. Can you imagine the kind of insanity either of those would cause? It’d be the end of blogging as we know it!

I started following David during the early part of the health care reform debate because his is an interesting story. He’s frustrated because his son needs this reform, so David is fighting for him. He is, honorably, trying to take down the teabaggers one at a time. I wish him luck with that as these folks, emboldened by the firebaggers, are a tough bunch to crack. Perhaps he should offer them a free buffet lunch?

El Presidente– who I follow on Twitter as notsotrue– forwarded this very thoughtful and lengthy post onto me. He (or she!) wrote a very good counter to the President’s state of the union address. It’s exceptionally well written, if I do say so myself⁵.

Now, Floyd used to post mainly about politics and I started reading his blog way back when I had my blogger blog⁶. He’s mostly doing blog techy stuff now, which I find totally awesome as I too love that stuff, so I don’t know if this technically falls within the rules of B.A.D.. I don’t care, though.

I’ve been reading Kvatch and co. for some years too (since the old blog). He’s one funny frog. They have a news service that is downright hysterical.

These are my 5 selections for Blogroll Amnesty Day. If you feel I forgot you and you’d like to see yourself there, well, leave me a comment and tell me why. Otherwise, I’ll try to catch up with more next week. Yes, I think I’ll do more “Stumblin’ My Roll” posts as those were always fun and I’d forgotten how to have fun in blogtopia (y!sctp!).

1. Atrios
2. Not the A-list
3. They pretended not to know why linkage was important and pushed the meme that it was traffic from their rolls. They knew that.
4. Stop it! PR 5 blogs are generally wider read. Just sayin’.
5. Moreso than a lot of tripe you see on the A-list blogs– or their “commuity diaries”…heh.
6. He’ll probably remember “Gratis”

Related posts:

1. Sunday Stumblin’
2. Conservative Amnesty Carries On
3. Sunday’s PSA

In other news, it’s snowing. A lot– though the Ohio valley isn’t getting as much as, say, Vermont. Still, it’s enough to shut down my town and enough for my boss to call and say:
“You’re scheduled to work lunch?”
“Yes.”
“Not any more you’re not. Stay safe!”

Awesome! Now I have all day to build snowmen do housekeeping and drink hot chocolate school work.

Without further ado I give you pictures!

1. Nevermind.
2. If you’ve got an account here (you know who you are) you can safely log in and see for yourself.

Related posts:

1. I’m switching.

Finally, I managed to get to sleep (don’t remember how and don’t really care). In the morning the pain was gone, but there was blood on my pillow. Enough to freak me the fuck out. I immediately got on the Google and did the medical research– which a person should never do when they discover they’re bleeding out of their ear. After initially thinking I had some flesh-eating brain disease which would leave me with only a few minutes to live, I went to a reputable medical site and voila! I was just experiencing a ruptured ear drum, probably from the damned sinus infection. Whew! Talk about a relief.

So, I stuffed some cotton in my ear to catch the blood and went about my day. Sure, I whined about it on Twitter and tried to get some sympathy from my co-workers, but I was pretty much going to live and I knew that. I used it as a reason not to have to pay a whole lot of attention to people that get on my last available nerve² which was ok.

Then the bleeding/draining stopped, I took out the cotton and discovered that my hearing really was fuckered up. That kind of sucked, but I found that silver lining again and used it to my advantage. It sucked donkey balls at work, however, because the noise was intense and I couldn’t discern one clang from the other. My co-workers then decided to have fun with me and tormented me endlessly³. A week later it seemed to be clearing up, but I was due for a doctor’s appointment so I thought I’d have him check it.

He declared that my ear canal was full of blood and he needed to refer me to a specialist forthwith! Ok, he actually said (I’m not kidding here):
“There’s blood in your ear. What’s wrong with it?”
To which I said (I’m not kidding about this either):
“I don’t know. You’re the doctor. I’m the patient. You tell me.”

So he sent me to the ENT guy. Meh. Figures.

Now, the ENT is seriously teh hawt. Not going to lie. I just wanted to lick him right then and there. Of course, I couldn’t as that would be improper and, hello!, we had serious business to attend to. That didn’t stop me from thinking about it though.

So, he uses that thing with the light that every doctor uses to look inside the ear. Then he gets out a tuning fork and starts putting it all over my head. “Is it louder here or here.” Do you know that I couldn’t tell no matter where he put that damned thing? I say “Doc, should I be able to hear a difference?” and he laughs. So much for the licking, huh? He finally puts it in the middle of my forehead and asks which side is loudest. I say “It’s in surround sound” and he says “Good. That’s normal.” There ya go then, huh?

So, now it’s time to go into another room where he puts me in a dental chair⁴ and sticks something else in my ear. Pretty soon he sticks some peroxide in my ear canal and then starts suctioning it out. I’m pretty sure that he was explaining what he was doing, but I couldn’t flippin’ hear him. Hello! There’s bubbles popping and being suctioned out of that ear. Very, very noisy. I’m also pretty sure he knew this and just kept talking anyway.

Then he tells me there’s a couple of scabs in my ear canal. Woo-hoo! That’s not the least bit disgusting. He throws some more crap in there and then starts using some kind of tool to get the gunk out. Well, pretty soon he’s got that tool right up against my ear drum and, holy shitballs, that hurt. I mean, imagine your worst ear ache of your life as something poked the shit out of your ear drum. Yeah. He tells me he’s trying to pull a scab off my ear drum.

Oh really.

Now imagine pulling a scab off your arm before it’s ready to come off. Except it’s in your ear and it’s sharp and feels like someone’s tugging on your brain. So, he’s torturing me with whatever the hell he’s got in my ear and, oh you’re going to love this, he tells me “Do. Not. Move. At all.” Don’t move? What the hell is this guy smoking? Has he never experienced the horrific pain of having someone tugging a scab off of his ear drum? Apparently not.

Can I just say that I’ve had the roots of my teeth scaled sans anesthesia and that shit didn’t hurt as much as the pulling of the ear drum scab. No lie. It took every ounce of my labor techniques for me not to move too much. I was focusing and huffing like I was pushing out a baby. And, yes, I did stop thinking about licking the doctor.

So after thirty years, er, 5 minutes of doing this to my poor ear, he finally stops. Well, he tells me, looks like we’ll have to wait until it dissolves on it’s own. Apparently, he couldn’t rip the thing off properly. No shit. I then wondered⁵ if he was one of those children who loved to pull scabs. You know the ones I’m talking about. They get scraped up in the school yard and spend weeks yanking off the scabs because it’s oh-so cool. This was my doctor as a small child. I have no doubt of this.

Finally we’re done in the torture chamber and he informs me he wants me back in a month but if my hearing doesn’t return to normal in a couple of weeks I’m to call him. Woo-hoo! Should I go back sooner for more fun and interesting scab pulling? Oh, the conundrum. Bless his heart, but I think I’ll wait.

So, here I sit. My ear still hurts a bit and is still full of gunk⁶, but I hear a little better. I can tell one sound from the other. I can still hear some crazy junk moving whenever I move my jaw, but it’s not creating a ginormous problem. I’m pretty sure it has something to do with that damned scab. I did find out why Q-tips are bad and why ears pop at high altitudes. I don’t really think much more was accomplished except for the doctor having fun making me squirm.

But I can’t stop thinking about that damned scab. On my ear drum. Right now. Honestly, I could’ve done without him telling me about that because I’m pretty sure I want to pick the damned thing myself. Ugh.

1. I was alone so I was allowed. Don’t judge.
2. “What? I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. I’m deaf in this ear. WHAT?”
3. They really are a bunch of fuckers.
4. That’s what it looked like to me and that’s what I’m calling it.
5. Maybe to myself, but I can’t guarantee it.
6. I can feel it, people.

Related posts:

1. A Biopsy

I’m done with my maths. Did I mention I passed Trig? Oh, yes. But now that I’m done with those courses, I don’t get to see Professor SexyPants anymore. This is sad, but we must all move on. We can’t dwell on the negative, people! Buck up and all that jazz.

Now I’m working on the final 6 courses for my AAB–which I’ll finally have next December¹. This semester is going to be interesting because I get to break work on Windows Servers and cool ass websites (again!!). I’m also taking College Writing as my cake course this semester. Hahaha! Or so I thought.

Want to hear a funny? We were having a discussion on cultural stereotypes and how advertising drives those. The one ad we were critiquing had a dude in outdoorsie clothes, in the woods, getting ready to board a hydroplane. The ad said “Are you ready for Adventure?” Now, my first thought was that it was either very homoerotic (considering the adventure wording and the dude’s facial expression) or it was a dude getting ready to do some kickass adventure stuff in his plane. Apparently I’m stupid, because I was way off (according to my professor– who is very odd and not at all sexy).

Most of the class decided that the ad was aimed at wealthy men or women because dude had a compass on his watch. Apparently these are very expensive. I dunno. He also was walking toward this plane. The ad mentioned “lemon zest” and “sparkling grapefruit” so I’m thinking dude is in Florida and getting ready to take some folks on a jaunt to the Caribbean². But the rest of the class thought it was an elitist ad, mostly because that’s the way the professor led them.

The problem for me came when I tried to explain my train of thought. If you ever experience fibrofog, don’t ever do this. Ever. I had the worst case of tip-of-the-tongue I have ever had. I couldn’t find the right words to save my life. Someone in the back laughed at me³ and the professor just kind of cocked an eyebrow in my general direction. But did I stop? Hell to the no. Of course mortal humiliation isn’t going to shut me up.

So, I tried to explain why I thought Adventure Dude was going to hop down to the islands for some fun in the sun. That reinforced their idea that he’s elitist. I couldn’t articulate that I thought drug running was actually the way he made his moolah. I mean, seriously? They couldn’t see that? Don’t these people watch “Burn Notice” or old episodes of “Miami Vice”? Sheesh.

Then we’re discussing another ad. This one is stark white, with black lettering that says “YourSpace”. There’s a vehicle of some sort pictured (it’s green) and some shit at the bottom. What stood out to me about the ad was the text at the bottom which included “when a homepage just isn’t enough”. Hello! Not only did they play on “MySpace”⁴ but they added to that internet based language. Did anyone pick up on that? No. And the professor, God bless him, insisted that the “YourSpace” meant that there was enough space in the vehicle to have an enjoyable ride.

Of course I tried to explain to him that maybe parents would be interested in getting their kids off of MySpace or FaceBook and their texting paraphernalia, but he didn’t get it. Did he miss the age of the Intertoobs? Apparently. I bet if I brought up Ceiling Cat he’d look at me like I had a big old booger hanging from my nose. Of course, ye old T.o.t.T struck again and I looked like a complete and utter idiot. That didn’t stop me though. I’m pretty sure my new Prof hates my brain-damaged guts. I guess I wouldn’t blame him. I mean, I did sound like I’d been hitting the tequila way too hard.

Now for a little whine: it’s fucking frustrating to be want to participate in the conversation and explain why his outdated ideas are all kinds of fuckered up but not be able to do that. I wanted to come home and just sew my own damned lips shut. Humiliation is not a strong enough word for what I felt when I left that class. What’s the point of having a brain but not being able to use it. I’d live with 100x the pain of this god-forsaken disease if I could just get rid of the fucking fog. Fibrofog may not seem serious to anyone else, but it’s pretty much driving me over the edge.

I’ll have to remind myself to shut the fuck up on Tuesday. Really. I mean, the man did say to let someone else talk for a while. I don’t blame him. I’d kick my ass out of the class if I was him.

And so ends my first school sucks post of the semester.

Peace, love and lollipops.

1. I’d have that motherfucker this May if it weren’t for some dude cheating on my ass, but that’s water under the bridge, yes?
2. For some killer smoke, of course, but I didn’t bring that up.
3. Which caused me to glare at them as a mother would at her disrespectful child.
4. Double fucking Dur

Related posts:

1. English As A Second Language
2. And Now I Whine About School
3. Bill sucks and Kirk is a Pagan

What’s a “firebagger”, you ask? It was originally coined by someone at Daily Kos ( in reference to FireDogLake’s new love affair with Grover Norquist and the teabaggers². Of course, Jane Hamsher lost her fucking mind and thought “Well, shit, if they oppose all things Obama and I oppose all things Obama then we’re peas in a pod!” And that’s how the two names became forever entwined.

Now, a few months later, the termed as become to mean something a little broader. Instead of just referring to those on FDL (who love to hate all things Obama) it’s defining other Progressives who would as soon join with the teabaggers as stand against them. These folks decry the term “teabagger” as offensive and insist that they be referred to as “Tea Party Activists”. They see no reason to stand against them and think progressives should reach out and bring them into our fold. They say things like “They’re just like us– except uninformed!” Suddenly instead of being what they’ve proven themselves to be– against Obama at all costs, birthers, racists, cry-babies, anti-union, anti-Progressive and general idiots– the teabaggers are “populists” just like liberals.

Huh-wha?

I was listening to Thom Hartmann’s radio program today and I just couldn’t take it anymore. He was spouting this bullshit about the teabaggers³ being on the same side of us and how they’re just regular folks who don’t know and blah blah blah. The more he yammered, the more irritated I became. I was, for a while, a fan. I haven’t listened in a couple of weeks because I had other things to do. I wasn’t prepared for the teabagger lovefest. And he became just another firebagger to me.

Teabaggers are anti-union. They believe that unions are the bane of the American business. They don’t believe that workers should have the right to organize. They think that auto-workers make too much money and don’t do enough work. They’re happy for the corporations that send their manufacturing overseas (and get tax credits for it).

Teabaggers don’t believe in global warming or environmental protections. They believe global warming is a hoax perpetuated by unions and liberals to further their “anti-business” agenda. They believe that environmental laws inhibit business and cost too much money. They think that Wal-Mart should be able to put a store any damned where they please. They see nothing wrong with logging the rain forest.

Teabaggers are against any kind of regulations on businesses. They think that the banks should be further deregulated, as should the insurance companies. They blame programs for the poor for the financial meltdown. They think the solution to the nation’s health care woes is to completely deregulate the insurance companies– which is their solution to all other problems regarding industry.

Teabaggers want to privatize social security⁴ and do away with most other social programs. Those damned poor people are just leeches, welfare queens and free loaders. Make them all get jobs, but don’t give them minimum wage because that’s too hurtful to businesses.

Where do the teabaggers and Progressives agree? Where? Well, firebaggers join with them when they’re busy opposing specific Obama policy– which is pretty much every Obama policy. Firebaggers have decided that since the teabaggers seem so organized then they must be on the side of good– or would be if they were just “informed”. Bullshit.

Teabaggers aren’t uninformed. If anything, they’re willfully ignorant. They were happy with government waste when a Republican was running it, but as soon as that black Democrat with the funny name was elected they decided they were pissed. Mostly they were pissed because that guy won, but they found so many other reasons to be suddenly overwrought with anger at government spending. Especially the spending that would help other people (social programs and/or HCR).

Teabaggers deny Obama’s very citizenship. They ask for “proof” of his birth– even after seeing that proof. They applaud those brave citizens who legally challenge Obama’s legitimacy. They doubt his parents’ marriage was legal. They call him “the Anti-Christ”, “Manchurian Candidate” and “affirmative action candidate”.

Firebaggers are just pissed because Obama hasn’t invited them into the Whitehouse and/or isn’t the Great Liberal Savior they thought he was going to be (depending on the firebagger doing the bitching). Anyone who doesn’t declare Obama a sellout or Rahm puppet is declared a sellout, Obama-worshipper⁵ and/or paid shill for [insert name of evil government lobby]. They say that we shouldn’t call them “teabaggers” because they’ve got good intentions and ignore the signs that teabaggers carry to their rallies (Obama as a witch doctor anyone?). And since teabaggers are against the same person they are against, they ally themselves with them. They’ve even taken to airing attack ads and doing negative polling against Obama.

Disgusting and pitiful. I believe that the majority of firebaggers are just PUMAs remade. I firmly believe that they would have opposed Obama no matter what stance he would have taken on anything. And I believe their leader(s) is(are) using them in the same way that the teabagger leaders are using the teabaggers. They want power and prestige and donations and are willing to tear down anyone that gets in their way. They are using the anger and disillusionment of some Dems⁶ to their financial advantage. I mean, they didn’t write “Crashing the Gates”, so they had to get on the teevee somehow. Right?

1. Because some people take offense at the term “firebagger” I will use it as much as I can. Pfft.
2. A name which firebaggers now consider “offensive”. What the fuck ever. They named themselves.
3. They named themselves.
4. Except theirs.
5. Straight from the PUMA playbook, by the way.
6. The ones that weren’t fucking paying attention during the campaign.

Related posts:

1. Video of the Speech
2. I Have Way Too Much Time
3. Disenchanted