Busy Busy Busy....

We're having a(nother) yard sale tomorrow, trying to sell off five years (or more) of accumulated STUFF. (George Carlin intrudes from beyond the grave: "Y'ever notice how other people's stuff is shit and your shit is...stuff?")

This one's bigger than the last one, on account of there's about two wardrobes of clothing being put out for sale. And that on account of my wife having lost almost forty pounds over the last three months. One of the side effects to the new drug she's on is appetite suppression, and wait until the diet industry gets hold of that info. In any case, Eva's feeling great, and clothing that used to be tight on her won't even stay on her any more.

There are also a number of books going bye-bye that I never thought I'd part with. I'm finding as I age that I'm less and less inclined to read the same books over and over. With certain authorial exceptions, I'd rather read something new. (Those exceptions, if you're interested: Gary Jennings; Spider Robinson; Guy Gavriel Kay; Peter F. Hamilton; and Greg Iles.

After the yard sale, I have a wedding to go to: my friend and colleague Nicole is tying the knot.

Busy summer this has been. The blog has kind of fallen by the wayside. There doesn't seem like there's much to blog about, you know? I can only write about Stephen Harper being Stephen Harper so many times before I upchuck. I've avoided writing about the mosque "at" Ground Zero because I'm not sure I can keep it civil. About the mildest thing I was going to say was that America's been creating Ground Zeros next to how many Iraqi mosques over the past eight years?

Look, I've written before--several times, in fact--about the clash of civilizations and the uncomfortable truth that Islam seeks to subjugate anything that is other. Putting an Islamic community center in Manhattan will neither advance nor hinder their operation.

I'd allow that community center to be built under one very simple condition: that its services...every last one of them...be integrated, not gender-segregated as is the norm in Islamic countries. If they're willing to bring their religion into the twentieth century, hey, build away. If not, to hell with them.

Interestingly, I read the other day of a pilot project in Saudi Arabia: women cashiers in supermarkets. One chain is testing this out, and so far they're quite pleased. "Women," they say, "work much harder than men". This is but a tiny, tiny step for women in the Kingdom: it's also one I quite frankly never expected to see them be allowed to take.

That's enough writing for now. I will get back to this blog sometime this week, workload permitting.