“Time wounds all heels.” (I’m missing my source for that quote, but it’s not original, in as much as I’d like to claim it. But I can’t.)
All fire signs. All day. So it seemed. Aries and Leo, to be precise. Which is odd, to my mind, given where the planets are today.
I wrote a long “Two-meat Tuesday” piece, but at the last minute, I pulled it. It started out with rant about the way the media was treating certain words, dovetailed off the most recent war reports, and included a quick scan of the Koran.
But between drinking coffee, swimming in the creek and logging some decent mileage on the old trail, my vitriol ran out. Plus, I’ve had my hands full with readings. Just Aries and Leo.
The turning point, such as it was, had to be two-meat dinner, out on the patio. Served by an Aries, with a Leo scratching around.
No, I don’t get it.
I might run part of that rant a little later. But I’ll have to think about in moment of clarity. Which I don’t have at the moment.
Two-meat Tuesday’s digressions
Online news is a weird way to see the world. After the first gulf war, I learned that all news sources are tainted. Before I was awake yesterday morning, I was looking at a headline about Iraq, and how “Insurgents fired a mortar (something something something, number of dead).” So I looked up the word “insurgent,” and here’s what I found: “a person who revolts against civil authority or an established government; especially : a rebel not recognized as a belligerent.”
So I looked up “belligerent,” because, in my limited understanding of the word, that last definition, “a rebel not recognized as a belligerent,” something didn’t ring true to the situation – as I understand it.
See: this is what I don’t understand, if a belligerent is hostile and aggressive, like firing a deadly mortar round into a crowded city street, how can that be fired by an insurgent who is, by definition, a rebel not recognized as a belligerent?
I understand that the meaning of words can change. My favorite example is decimate, which, at one time, owing to its roots and all, originally meant to “reduce by one-tenth.” (Dec = Latin, ten.)
This line of thinking almost sent me back to my copy of the Koran, looking for a passage that tells the followers to attack without mercy, taking out innocent bystanders. Well no wonder I can’t find it – that copy of the Koran seems to be a flawed translation, according to Amazon scholars. By the same token, what would those same scholars say about my King James translation?
I wandered up to Bouldin Caffeine Dealer to meet a client for a reading. Good stuff. Since I was early, I picked up a local newspaper. There’s a reason why I usually mistrust the local paper, and the headline was enough to 1) encourage me to buy a copy, and 2) marvel at the inaccuracies in the copy for that headline story. Sadly, The Austin-American Statesman ran a short article about a local bit of pipeline, and the paper left out a few salient facts.
The funding for the majority of the opposition to the pipeline was from a leading (and probably competing) energy company. That company was a major groundwater & air polluter, according to publicly available EPA documents.
The graphic that accompanied the article showed the pipeline right-of-way, through various south Austin neighborhoods, including the proximity to schools. It failed to mention other pipelines in that right-of-way, or the age of those pipelines, or the current content of the older pipelines, in that right-of-way. At least one of them is currently, unchecked, pumping something far more dangerous than gasoline.
Which is all just sad. I’m heading off to El Paso, where the pipeline ends. Where gas is more expensive. Because some competitor riled up the Austin tree-huggers.
Think there’s a reason not to trust what the media claims is true?
