From the tasering file

[pan]

http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/103-11032007-1434893.html

FBI reviewing Tasering of sleeping man; no charges file

The Associated Press

NORTH BRADDOCK, Pa. - Two North Braddock police officers won't face criminal charges for Tasering a man who was asleep at home. But the FBI will review the incident for possible civil rights violations.

Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala Jr. says county police determined Officers Gerard Kraly and Lukas Laeuricia (loo-REE'-see-uh) didn't commit a crime when they Tasered Shawn Hicks, who was sleeping on his couch.

Police came to Hicks home because they were alerted by a silent security alarm at his home about 2 a.m.

Hicks says the officers Tasered him again after he woke up and showed them ID to prove he lived at the home. Hicks' attorney says he will pursue civil action.

[littleoldme]

Papers please. Show me your papers please.

[pan]

Bride and Groom tased at wedding reception, spend night in jail.

[Mouse]

There's a cull coming here in this land of the switched-off.
All the freaks and weirdos are going to get it.
Should I say more?
Nobody will miss us, except the people we helped.

[Mouse]

It says there's some-one I know online, not naming any names. Any name.
How long does it take here before a message gets through?

[Mouse]

It seems impossible to tell the truth.
So many messages to keep quiet. If only I could write fast enough to tell you before hopelessness sets in and I wipe it all out again.

[waldopaper]

Here's what I learned from the Vietnam era: there was a divide among the "new left" between the lure-the-proles-into-a-massacre-and-start-a-revolution camp and the "selective assassination" camp. I was definitely in the latter... and our faction lost... which led to Kent State and other things.

The message I favored was: "STOP the war or we will kill you." Such a message was slightly illegal then... it is EXTREMELY illegal now. It is "terrorism." You can't change things through "intimidation." You have to work through "the system," which has been rigged and fixed in the US.

Either way, we are hosed.

[Mouse]

There is no party on the side of workers and the poor here in England, that stands the remotest chance of gaining power.
There is a new situation comedy on BBC radio 4 about an arms dealer, and I just heard the writer talking about it today, insisting that it is not satirical, just funny.
Not satire. What? Arms dealer?
That's the old nub, the betrayal of the smith at his anvil.

In the United Kingdom of Great Britain one is usually surrounded by arms dealers, arms manufacturers and other mechanics of death and torture. They are part of the woodwork. I live in a warren of the death dealers, a part of the country soaked in red stuff and very rich. Except that of course much of it is secret.

A few years ago I was sitting on the steps of the local church talking to the vicar, a descendant of Charles Dickens. I was perturbed by the barefoot children who talked so cruelly and he said that the kind of problems that were troubling me in the street where I live, were often solved by a good war.

That was the class of person he was and I am not. He stopped talking to me when I started to inquire into the terms of the bequest that had left a substantial building nearby for the good of the poor of the parish. I believe it had been connected with education initially. For many years now it has been a private drinking establishment frequented by the very families whose problems he thought were best solved by war.

He had a marketing background.

Last week both major parties have agreed to axe incapacity benefit and income support, and make claimants work doing community service (like convicted criminals) for their dole. Now the politicians have all gone on holiday for the summer.

I fell apart at the beginning of the week and spent a whole day crying because I was thinking I'm not going to make it after all. After surviving last year and beginning to feel safer at last, enough to plan a decade of new perspectives, planing the great oceans of the sky, a gap sobbed at my feet. Three years I thought, I've only got three years.

And it seemed we were done for. My selves and I. So I cried and tried to explain. If we have gifts - we use them don't we, isn't that a duty? Why is it such a great fault to be an artist? But then, when I say artist I mean something of breadth that shines when you've gone, that shines when the lights are out. That leads me on, having seen the thread in the heavens.

That is precisely the sort of thing one should never say. If only it didn't seem so odd.

I can't understand how people don't seem to know that we're here to be our best and brightest. Now so many of the bright lights are illuminating the crass, the senseless, cheap and degrading.

People ignore the news that their clothes are manufactured by child labour, and the better the deal the more likely the sewing machine operator was chained to the machine. (Cambodia beats the others on price).

[Mouse]

Sorry I haven't been straight with you my friends, I'm actually a CIA stooge..... oh what a thought. No. That's not it. But some would think what I'm going to say is much worse.

I'm a scrounger, a useless mouth, a mad old bat living on handouts. Yes, that's why I think that time is running out for me here in the UK. The change in policy does feel like a death sentence to me. I can't imagine being able to bear the level of contact with people that's coming. It's bad enough walking down the street when I have to.

When we moved to this house 20 years ago we used an old silver cross pram to carry everything, it took a few trips and the wheel fell off! I had had a mental breakdown it seemed, or not, having been 'very odd' all my life.

I recently tried to communicate with members of a local vegetable growing group and was told my offer of help 'caused some alarm to several members of the group'. That kind of thing upsets me for weeks, and I just lose the daring to have another go. Years and years of being totally out of kilter with everyone else is so disturbing.

I take my bearings from the heavens and the earth.

When I spoke of a cull of weirdos and freaks I am entirely serious. But we will probably do the job ourselves. Not being wanted at all is deeply painful. I would imagine that some will go out with a creative gesture of some sort. Perhaps it will become a new art form. No. The art of it must be in removing distress from other people. Somehow.

Perhaps you could tell me if you think I am right in the suspicion that this is something I should write about. It is also a very sensitive area. That's why I kept quiet about my financial circumstances. Having no kind of insurance at all to pay. Fuel is more than a quarter of my outgoings (for heating, lighting and cooking). More than half my income goes on food. With the merest smidgin of a social life keeping the computing and telecom side going is vital.

I still hope to be useful.

[pan]

Mouse,

Keep writing. What you have to say is important if it reaches a single person.

There are a bunch of us outliers here that fall outside of the statistical norm so we are disregarded and discarded. I, after teaching, dancing and choreographing for 30 years, find myself able to get the interview but never land the job. Waldo, a teacher and a writer, had his department standardize the curriculum so he could no longer teach what he passionately believes and then suffer a stroke where he lost the ability to read.

Most of us are aliens in some way or another, especially those of us who have been drawn to the arts. This is why your writing, your art can touch someone - because there are so many others who feel the way we do.

[littleoldme]

Exactly, We are a different lot.
My answer to those who will not accept Mouse for who she is, a pox on them.
It is definately their loss.

[Cal]

Well Mouse - you haven't offered me any assistance with my vegetable gardening so I potter on blissfully unalarmed -:) Pray tell what it was about your offer of help that caused the alarm? Can't help being interested ....
I have recently (the last 6 weeks) had to open up my home & garden to strangers to "view" as I wanted to sell it and buy another house in the new town I have to move to. I could tell with most of them that they thought I ought to drop my price on account of the state of the garden. I could tell that most of them just thought it was a total mess. I couldn't begin to explain about the health of the soil, the indigenous plant and bird life ... the whole permaculture thing ... and that to me it is a completely beautiful garden to have the privilege of owning. I decided last week to take it off the market and fate stepped in & I bumped into the young couple renting next door & now they are going to be my tenants here when I move. They love all the right things about the house and garden ... all the things the 'viewers' were obviously put out by. So do not despair Mouse - you are not alone ... and fate often has a way of stepping in to prove that when you least expect it.
Even the small things you do, like your bean sprouting are works of art (compared to my sprouts which get dumped unceremoniously in a sieve) - those that cannot see & share the beauty are poorer for it.
I have been lucky enough to stay employed so far, but I am always aware that may change especially when the next restructuring kicks in and people around age 55 are politely invited to retire early & I have the threat of the return of cancer hanging over me just to keep me acknowledging the small happinesses of each and every day.
You asked if you should write about it ... I think you should. What you are coping with is what a lot of us end up having to cope with in one form or another or at one stage or another of our lives.
By the way ... if the UK gets too much for you you can always think of emigrating to Africa and volunteering to take care of my garden & hounds when I'm away on business trips -:)

[hannah j]

I chime in here, too, we all need to write about ourselves and our environs. Heaven knows our 'kind' gets distorted coverage. I just heard about the socalled woodstock museum this morning. If they had just stuck to covering woodstock, and not made it pg13, then it would of been okay. But it was horrid.

They always forget about mentioning the change in the way we lived, the food we ate, the hippie ethic, the environmental movement we helped to build. Just so much that we wanted to change from the times before. 'I was framed, I tell ya, framed' that's the way I feel when I hear these shirts talking about my 'generation' (not age related)

The 'others' have been trying to recreate not the mythical fifties again, but I swear they are going after Versailles-light. Their McMansions surrounding every amerikan city and large town, their close-cropped lawns, with cheesy prefab fountains, god, it makes me want to vomit.

Here is a picture of a friend of mine's home, built to be moved if the authorities make her, she would fit right in here except she doesn't do the internets.

Sharing and taking care of her people, she lives a remarkably honest life, finances mostly humble, but landed in a pot of jam with her fantastic community oriented hardcore coffee business. she has been supporting her family and the pot of jam is pretty scraped out now, but she is philosophical.

Keeping funk alive on the prairie, you're welcome here.
Hannah

me at friend's place
she has no plumbing in house, has a bathhouse with a shower/tub, a composting terlet, and a cast iron kitchen sink in her yard with a hose.