I'll tell you what's messed up--the fact (which I just found out now) that even though there's a library not one mile from my apartment, my "home" library is actually the one three miles down the road. Oh, well, it just means that I have to get my official card first before I can go to the nearer one and be entered into their system.

In semi-topical news, the job my DH just accepted is with the Oneida Indian Nation. (Upstate New York, for those playing along at home.)

Did I mention yet another bigwig in the IT group resigned this week?

Hey, go get his monitor!

Is that the reason WHY it has not been changed?

ah, yes! thank you Cindy! I don't know if it's an homage so much that a name change would confuse people, I think.

Got it.

Wonkette photo essay on the Rayburn House Office Building situation: [link]

This caption cracked me up:

“This guy’s name is John Turley, apparently he was one of the first let out of the building, other than that, he doesn’t know shit.”

eta:

So what caused this whole ruckus? According to CNN, the “suspected sounds of gunshots heard in a House office building were made by a mechanic using a pneumatic hammer on an elevator.”

I think the problem is that all the words are fraught with trying to group all Native North Americans in one group, when they identify with their own specific communities.

I'd think since I can be black and Jamaican and West Indian that it's not a huge deal to be identified with different terms--some of which encompass each others, and some that just overlap.

I use the term "American Indian", because locally any other term - Native American, First Ones, First Nations - gets an angry response from American Indians. That does not apply to Canadians of course.

And prior to the invasion of course that ethnicity did not exist. But one of the ways an ethnicity is formed is shared oppression; so all the various nations of this part of the continent did end up with a pretty horrible shared experience; they were maltreated as one people, and in response developed a shared identity.

Women Accused Of Stealing Yarn

“She hasn’t made a decision on whether she wants to press charges against these subjects or not,” says Lt. Will Merrill with the Woodstock Police.

Ms. Light is perhaps indecisive, because the husband of one of the accused thieves invited her to his home to recover her yarn.

“We came back with 12 great big, huge garbage bags full of yarn,” says Light.

“We thought, maybe, you know, a couple of thousand, but we totaled it up and Debi and I both just went white,” says shop manager Caryn Southwick.

Shocked because the total was almost $13,000!

And prior to the invasion of course that ethnicity did not exist.

No? There was no concept of "those of us on this land"? I'm not saying it was a strong concept that implied lots of shared values, but you don't need an invasion to spark the concept of "us."