Mood.

I think I’m in a little bit of a mood today. Actually, I know I’m in a mood today. And it’s rather foul.

I try not to be foul. I try to be the happy, go-lucky, awwww shucks, swell type but sometimes there’s just a rant stirring inside of me that must be unleashed. For the first time ever I found work to be somewhat irritating and I’m sick of counting calories and fat grams so I’m going to let myself just enjoy my supper tonight and not obsess about what I am eating. Add the fact that Earl was out of town last night so I had to sleep without my favorite teddy bear and I’m finding myself rather snappish.

So BEAR with me but there’s some things going on in the world that I must get off my chest.

First of all, “ha ha ha ha ha Bush Lite!” Bin Laden made another tape and released it to the world, complete with threats of death and destruction. The man is a monster (Bin Laden, not Bush, the latter being somewhat debatable) and is damn near a perfect picture of Evil with a capital “E”, but the Bush administration wants us to forget about him and the fact that he’s still running loose in the world and concentrate on the people of Iraq instead as we introduce them to our (proper?) version of the Messiah. “Don’t look at the lunatic behind the curtain! He’s not important! It was Iraq! It was Iraq!”

Secondly, because of said activities in Iraq, there is a reporter from the Christian Science Monitor being held hostage with a mortal deadline of tomorrow. That just sickens me. I may not agree with the Christian Science Monitor, I don’t agree with the Iraqi war. I may think that it’s somewhat foolish to try to “get the scoop” in a war zone, but to hold someone’s life in the balance like that is very sickening. May the Universe save her.

Then we have municipalities here in Upstate New York looking to form their own utility companies, instead of relying on corporations like National Grid (which recently took over Niagara Mohawk), simply because utility bills are skyrocketing at an unprecedented rate this winter, and it’s not even cold outside! There are senior citizens living on their social security checks alone and finding that their energy bills are more than their entire monthly income! Now that’s showing respect to our elders if I’ve ever seen it before. Big corporations = big profits for corporations = begging and starving elderly! Beautiful.

While I’m on the topic of energy, I am officially boycotting a local oil company because they are artificially inflating the prices in the local market. They routinely raise their prices 3 or 4 cents above surrounding gas stations. The dumb folks around here still go to them, because after all, they are the most prevalent in the area, and then the other gas stations say “if they can raise the price 3 or 4 cents and still get business, them I’m going to also!” so then the price of gas goes higher for everyone involved. You can drive 20 miles in any direction from here and find the price of gas drop 10 to 20 cents per gallon. It’s horrible.

And lastly, it has been reported that the government wants access to logs of user’s searches on Google, in an effort to curb pornography on the internet away from children. HELLO! I don’t know about you, but I do not want Condocranky Rice browsing through logs of what I searched for on the internet, even if all I do is find answers to my Unix questions. (That’s what we all use Google for, right? Pornography? Why, I never even thought of that!) When did it become the responsibility of our government to raise our children? Funny, I always thought that it was the responsibility of the parents to raise the children. If you don’t know what your children are doing on the internet, you can’t figure out to know what your children are doing and you can’t do anything about it, then you shouldn’t have a computer in your house in the first place. If you can’t run the damn thing, then stay the hell away from it or learn how to surf responsibly and safely. This scenario is like expecting the government to keep track of the fact that you subscribe to Cinesleaze on the cable network, ignore the parental controls built into your cable box and then have a fit when your kid stumbles across a man, two women and a collection of bare breasts on the screen. Rumor has it that they’d also like to track how much anti-Bush Administration stuff there’s out there on the internet, but as I say, that’s just a rumor.

I feel a little better after getting all that off my chest. Thanks for listening.