qqqqq

I am driving myself crazy with

qqq

and

qqqqq

no, its not some secret code but a letter I don't use that often. Neither is it sticking because of the mad kitten's (aka lady chubsalot) gummy paws.

But, it is what I am using in the new mobile site editor to tell me where a line ends and where a new stanza begins. Its just one of the quirks of the host that it will not retain layout when I paste things in. I am...radically expanding the mobile site, it should be basically done by tomorrow but it will have the workshops in spanish and english, the sunday radio transcripts, the entire collection of my poems (the Feast of Bones) and spanish collection (el corazon avarro), some of the ones that have been translated into french, the audio books (Chesterton and one I am getting ready to start shortly) and get this...video. It also finally has a contact form directly on the site.

I was looking at things and realized that the majority of people in the world were alot like me - more and more are using the mobile web over their regular connections so I am slowly focusing more on that. I will still maintain my regular site, but the majority of my material will be on loveandwords.mobi only (and note, the address finally lost that silly "m" at the beginning).

But it is tedious. I am verbose and 12 years has produced a fair amount of finished material.

This is a crunch and focus week for me. I have six projects colliding and some other things going on so I have drawn the wagons 'round and am drinking waaaaaayyyy too much coffee and working in intense bursts. A lot of what my winter will be like depends on what gets done this week. Nothing new, but all the things I have been picking at are coming to their end.

And
I am trying to ignore the news.

You know....

the mosque thing

it is ridiculous
and it also seems ridiculous to be crying "how stupid do they think we are?" when it would appear that they majority of people drumming along against the mosque are quite comfortable that if not stupid we are willfully ignorant and will do nothing to change that fact.

It is...the ultimate in self absorbtion, ignorance, lack of compassion and just plain ugliness to assume that everyone who died in the towers on 9/11 was the-same-politics-as-you-and-born-again-in-your-brand-of-christianity person. What makes terrorism so awful is it is conducted by small groups of extremists who believe that if you are not part of their little group you are nothing. Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Athiests and more died that day.

Yet some people think they have the right to blame one religion.

The Islamaphobia in this country, which is not as bad as it appears to be, is disgusting. The fact that people who profess to be Christian promote hate is horrifying to me.

The fact that they want to use fear and hate to win the next election is...telling.

Because the 2012 presidential election process has started already.

Let me point out one thing. There are more current militant hate groups in the US that target the US then their are potential extremist cells of Islam on a Jihad. The majority of these groups follow a kind of militant Christianity. And...the highest concentration of them per capita is in the oh-so-liberal Northeast.

High unemployment, high poverty, and high income disparity between classes draw people to groups that promise to resolve their problems through the easy road of violence fueled by hate.

Come on.

Small groups of people, whether they be extremist of religion or not, should not be allowed to run and ruin the lives of the majority through fear. Whether their tactics be crashing planes, fertilizer bombs or the rhetoric of fear - the rest of us are responsible if we let them take control of our actions.

Not all Muslims, in fact, very few could be considered terrorists.
Not all Christians, in fact, very few could be considered terrorists.
But we both have our share.

ugh...
ok...
I am off to see if I can still get a pair of flourescent orange shoes.

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