NewscomaGot A Two-Pack Habit And A Motel Tan

Charles Manson and his followers still hold an odd fixation for me. So does Son of Sam.

It’s my age, I have no doubt but I’m thinking that one of the first books, after “In Cold Blood” by Truman Capote which was first, that I read as a very young and peculiar child was “Helter Skelter.” I begged my mom to read it. Being it was the 70s and people weren’t so nuts back then, she thought I was reading and as long as I was doing that, she had no problem giving me the book. She read it first though.

Susan Atkins, a terminally ill former Charles Manson follower, has been denied a compassionate release from prison, the California Board of Parole Hearings said Tuesday on its Web site.

Atkins, 60, has been diagnosed with brain cancer and has had a leg amputated, her attorney said. In June, she requested the release, available to terminally ill inmates with less than six months to live.

The board’s decision came after a public hearing on Atkins’ request. It means the request will not be forwarded to the Los Angeles Superior Court that sentenced Atkins.

The court would have had the final say on Atkins’ release.

Known within the Manson Family as Sadie Mae Glutz, Atkins and four others were convicted in connection with the deaths of five people, including the actress Sharon Tate, in August 1969.

If you were wondering, Atkins is the one that stabbed Sharon Tate in the stomach. She’s going to remain in jail.

UPDATE: To reply to some of the comments left, I’m not advocating for her to be released at ALL. I want her to spend her days in the slammer. I was relaying my fascination with the case as a child because it scared the bejesus out of me at that age.

I ran into an old friend yesterday at the doctor’s office. I know, that’s where we go to socialize. Shut up.

Anyway, I haven’t seen him in about 2 1/2 years and he said he was visiting. I asked where he was these days.

“Baghdad,” he replied.

I didn’t say anything. I honestly didn’t know what to say.

He informed me he was working in the private sector. Then he started to tell Squirrel Queen and I about the Iraqi people.

“Never compliment them on anything because they will give it to you,” he said. “I’ve had this happen several times and they always give me whatever it is I comment about. You have to be careful about that.”

He went on to talk about that it was dangerous and about that many of the Iraqi people he has met thought, due to Saddam Hussein’s reign, that Iraq had been victorious during the Gulf War.

He talked for a long time. I had my foot propped up due to Igor the mean-assed spider biting it and just listened to what he had to say. He also cited that he didn’t think American Main Stream media was getting all of the stories right. I asked what he meant and he said that they only got CNN, Fox and Al Jazeera where he lived. A lot of the soldiers there as well as those living, as he is, in the private sector, thinks there needs to be more educational programming about the tribal factors in the area. He also said that Iraqis were lovely people.

When he left, he said it was a brisk 114 degrees.

I really have no comment on this conversation from a political perspective. It was a private thing between old friends. I do think there is always going to be things that we don’t know or we don’t understand. Cultures are different. I’ll be honest, I was shocked to hear he had taken this path. I just didn’t expect it.

And I also had a moment of blinding jealousy. I would give anything to start a new adventure into areas that I’m desperately afraid of. I know, “Newscoma, DAMMIT, you don’t want to go to Iraq!?!!”

No, not really. I don’t but in a way I do.

My envy came from him talking about the culture, the way people survive despite terrible odds and obstacles. The way that life continues in despair. How he felt he was making a difference?

Yes, for a moment, that’s something I wanted to be swimming in.

Could I make a difference?

First of all, my dear readers who have sent me such kind emails, tweets and have asked me some great questions, let me take a moment to navel gaze and tell you of the Spider Bite tragedy. At least I think it’s a tragedy.

My vote is the only one that counts.

I didn’t see the spider but the bite isn’t as big as this picture that I found online. It’s on the top of my foot and looks more bruised than this one but remember we got to the doctor quick. He told me what I’d been bit by because I had no idea. I thought I might have bruised my foot or something. I’m not a medical professional. I did have a little experience with this before due to Killa who suffered much more than I have when she was bit last year. I think it is inadvertently because of her, seeing her go through hell last year, that made me get to the clinic pronto.

I just knew I was feeling weird and my foot swelled up like a golf ball and my leg started cramping about an hour in. And I felt weird. Thus far, I’ve only had abdominal and leg cramps. We caught this in time before it did any real damage although Day 2 has been much rougher than Day One.

So I went to the doc who told me “That’s nasty” and then gave me some scrips and promptly went home to get nauseous. Ahh, nausea how I adore thee. (The Summer of 2008 will go down in Newscoma’s life as the one where I burned out due to excessive overload. I’m going to be as gray as Phil Donahue by the Fall.)

The only thing I can tell you is my experience as I don’t know yours.

A.) I’m glad it wasn’t a brown recluse. Those bites rot your skin.

B.) It feels like someone has hammered a railroad stake into the bottom of my right leg where the point has settled in my hip.

C.) The cramps are from this suck. Truly a big old cup of suckage.

I wish to apologize to the Gods. I must have been a bad girl with Steve Austin, strep throat, my chief staff writer out this summer, the black widow bite, the canceled vacation and other various things.

The GOOD NEWS: As terrified as I am of spiders, I can say that this didn’t kill me and I didn’t completely freak out. Good does come out of bad things. And, to be honest, it could have been much worse.

NavelGazing Coma. That’s my middle name today.

The Internet is a fun place.

I’ve established that I though Count Chocula lived in the toilet, and that I would scurry past that bathroom at any passing. Avoiding it as much as possible.

Read the whole thing at Big Stupid Tommy’s.

I haven’t weighed in on the New Yorker cover that caused such a stir yesterday. I don’t know, spiders were eating on my foot and I was a bit distracted.

My first thought was pretty much what Joe Lance wrote about. I thought of the Tennessee GOP and how Bill Hobbs’ recent actions have formed some of this. Did I see the satire? Yes I did. Did I think it was funny?

No, not really. Lucille Ball also doesn’t make me laugh. And I hated the Titanic movie. Just saying.

With that said, Joe said this:

The Tennessee Republican Party has created no small stir with its less-than-ironic attempts to paint Senator Obama and his wife as terrorist-connected America-haters. I thought of the TNGOP immediately when I saw the New Yorker cover. I wonder if the artist had them in mind.

A sad part to this story is that those targeted truly won’t get that they are the butt of the joke, and will fail to see themselves as the asses they have been, despite this clever mirror that has been held before them.

I don’t think people being upset is wrong at all. I also know that political satire can turn on a dime. I can’t help but think that Jeffraham made a good point.

The one thing about offering change is reacting differently that what is expected. I’m not discounting that the cover was offensive but let’s remember that the same artist, Brian Blitt, did these covers. That’s was political cartoonists do. In news, at least, if you have everyone hating on you, you did your job well.

Images from The Huffington Post

We are still living in the world of weapons of mass distraction. For Tennesseans, we can see the stamp of the Tennessee GOP’s smear campaign working here. The deep wounds that have been created by some of the GOP’s antics have hit a national audience. I don’t like it but it is what it is.

But less remember that the GOP is working on untrue stereotypes of Barack Obama. Which is no different that being Captain Obvious and saying that John McCain is old.

Let’s move on and get back to the issues of $4 bucks for a gallon of gas, Iraq and health care.

This election has become like the television show “Big Brother” and it shouldn’t be. Creating drama where this isn’t any. We have too much at stake in this country.

Whedon geeks, it’s on. Dr. Horrible Sing -ALong Blog starts today.

From Wired:

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, a direct-to-the-web musical from Joss Whedon, tells the story of an evil wannabe villain who vlogs, bungles experiments and takes regular lessons from a voice coach to finesse his evil cackle. Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly and Dollhouse, came up with the idea for the internet musical during the Hollywood writers’ strike earlier this year.

Shot over six days on a shoestring budget, Dr. Horrible will stream online starting Tuesday in three short segments through July 20. After that, fans can pay to download through a service like iTunes and purchase a DVD jampacked with extras.

Of course Squirrel Queen and I have been anticipating this for days.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXI3obHfwgU]

I love Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion.

This should be fun.

Do you ever get to that point in your blogging, non-virtual world where you run out of ideas?

Yeah, me too.

I sometimes struggle thinking whether or not I should post about my mindthink on politics (remember, I’ve become a conspiracy theorist, heh) and then sometimes I’ll post things that interest me.

Other times I navel gaze and talk about Homer (who is in Gatlingburg and got caught in the toxic spill on I-40. She had no idea what was going on other than she was stuck in traffic. If I know her hubby, Squeegee Monkey well at all, he refused to turn Fred off of XM which might have helped them understand their predicament.) The people who she is with are making her go to Dixie Stampede. I’ve heard of Dixie Stampede but I’m unsure if this is Homer’s thing. I don’t know if watching buffaloes run while eating will entice her. Then again, she might love it. One never knows.

We could start a Zombie Stampede restaurant. (Write this down in Newscoma’s brilliant ideas that never reach fruition.)

I’ve always thought the best thing to do is just blog about what you want to. There is also a new blogging age going on, in my humble opinion, where bloggers are going to go to their niche. I sometimes read new media strategists and think “Man, that’s cool. What the hell are they talking about?” I also read some mommy bloggers who are clever and think “I love my nieces but, man, that is a lot of responsibility.”

I tend to like the disc jockey approach to blogging but that’s just me. The days of BG being at the old Nashville is Talking is over. And with blogs monetizing (which I plan to do as well. Call me a sell out and also, if you know how to do technically groovy things, let me know) things are changing.

We create our own brand. True story, an A-Lister that will remain unnamed told me I was too all over the place. I thought about that because if an A-Lister said it, it has to be true. Right?

Well, wrong actually.

I thought about it and finally determined that for me, I like being all over the place. I’m okay with that. As long as I do this as a hobby, I will do what I want to. If I get paid, I’ll blog about whatever the entities paying me want me to write about. Until that time, you are stuck with liberal politics, Bigfoot, Zombies, goofy pictures and life in Hoots.

As for the black widow bitch of a spider that chomped on my foot. Well, my leg this morning does feel like it’s going to fall off but I don’t have the big gaping wound that some folks get. Last year, Killa got bit on her upper thigh and let it go several hours. Bless her heart, that girl was illing and I was worried about her. After seeing her and her hubby struggle with it all (he got bit too), I decided to go in to the doctor immediately. I think I’m going to have a luckier time but it hurts more today than yesterday. Back to drug therapy as this is a bit more painful than I had imagined.

Did I mention I hate spiders?

I did. Well, I’m repeating myself.

Blogging is about being a modern day pamphleteer making your ideas flow. Be it a discipline to communication or writing, promoting yourself or banging the drum for your cause.

You aren’t going to please everyone but if you please yourself, you win. And it it moves to another level, then that, my friends, is of the good.

Now, go see Bobblehead George in Greece. My gift to you.

You can get this lovely shirt at Threadless.

H/T Boing Boing