Really I do. I know that slavery was not a good thing, and that blacks negroes African-Americans were oppressed for a very long time at the merciless hands of rich white men. But I don’t know any slaves and I am not a rich white man, so I was a little aggravated when I read that the House wants to issue an a blanket apology for slavery and Jim Crow. But only to black people. No mention is made of those whites who can trace their ancestry back to slaves.

These parts particularly gripe me:

“African-Americans continue to suffer from the consequences of slavery and Jim Crow — long after both systems were formally abolished — through enormous damage and loss, both tangible and intangible, including the loss of human dignity and liberty, the frustration of careers and professional lives, and the long-term loss of income and opportunity,” the resolution states.

The resolution does not address the controversial issue of reparations. Some members of the African-American community have called on lawmakers to give cash payments or other financial benefits to descendents of slaves as compensation for the suffering caused by slavery.

The past is the past. Money can’t change it, the best we can do is learn from it and move on. White men have been punished enough for things they had no part of; every time a qualified white man is passed over so a marginally qualified woman or African-American can have the job, he’s being punished for what his great-grand-daddy might have done.

Also, where is my cash payment for being born to a working class white family? I really should have had more opportunities, don’t you think? Surely, someone somewhere owes me because my parents were working hard to put food on the table and pay taxes and couldn’t afford band and dance lessons.

Oh, but I have opened the whole bucket of worms, now, haven’t I? Yeah, go get a cup of coffee, I’ll wait. Got it? Ok. Let’s chat. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I am pro-life. Nor is it a surprise that I believe life begins at conception. And just to further clarify, that means when the sperm meets the egg, not at implantation. Even in a dish, the co-joined cell is life. Not potential life. Life.

Did you know that adult stem cells have yielded for greater results as far as curing illness than fetal cells? And yet the clamor rises for funding for fetal stem cell research. I’ve never understood that. Well, that’s not true. I have understood it: it’s a great platform to promote abortion on demand, that’s what it is.

You know, I was appalled after Ronald Reagan died to hear Nancy and Ron, Jr. begging for the Bush administration to fund fetal stem cells. Ronald Reagan was staunchly pro-life, and he lived to a ripe old age. I can just see him spinning in his grave over the spin his family dished out after his death.

Man, I guess I got off on a tangent. What got me started on the subject, though, is that scientists have found another way to collect stem cells that doesn’t cause someone to DIE. Why hasn’t this been all over the news? Surely, in a country where we advertise herpes drugs in prime time, we aren’t still offended by menstruation! If you are, you can get over it by watching this Celle Client Testimonial. Then read on to find out more about how menstrual blood may be the panacea that fetal stem cells could never be:

Taking Control: Future Therapies for a Host of Serious Diseases May Be Found in Women’s Menstrual Blood

July 07, 2008: 01:28 PM EST

OLDSMAR, Fla., July 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — With today’s hectic lifestyle, where most women are juggling careers, family, relationships, and a host of activities, the idea of possibly facing a serious illness in the future is not something that readily comes to mind — especially when a woman is in the prime of her life. But what most women don’t know, is that the key to treating a number of possibly life-threatening diseases that she, a parent, a sibling or even her children may face in later years, such as osteoporosis, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, may be found within her own body — in vital stem cells, which can now be harvested from her own menstrual blood.

Now, thanks to the revolutionary research and technology of C’elle, a service dedicated to providing women with a safe and easy method of collecting and preserving stem cells found in her menstrual fluid each month, even the busiest woman can take control of her future, right in the privacy of her own home. With C’elle’s non-invasive collection process, menstrual cells are processed and cryo-preserved (stored at a very low temperature) for potential cellular therapies that may be used in the future. These self-renewing cells one day may even be used for sports medicine or cosmeceutical treatments, such as anti-aging therapies.

“C’elle enables and empowers a woman to take control of her future health, and possibly of those genetically closest to her, in a fast, painless and stress free way,” said Michelle Kay, Marketing and Sales Manager for C’elle. “We live in exciting times, as science and technology are discovering how extremely valuable menstrual blood stem cells really are, and the enormous treatment potential they represent for future therapies. C’elle’s ongoing research is supporting these promising findings.”

For more information about C’elle, please call 1-877-892-3553 or visit www.celle.com.

That’s what it is, time to blog. After all, a girl can’t stay away on vakay forever, now can she? No, she cannot. You’ll notice that I said part one up there in the title. I don’t know how far I will get tonight, but I though I might begin to tell ya’ll where I have been. Before I do that, I want to take a minute to mention a fairly local business.

We have a lot of what I like to call local celebrities around here. I’m sure you know exactly what I mean–folks or businesses that all the folks you normally associate with IRL know, but that if you step outside your comfort zone may not be so well known. Around here, we have Paul’s Place for hot dogs (known for at least 50 miles in every direction) and we have the two men who were mayor of the two cities I spend my time in for more years than I can count, but who were recently “replaced” by those of a more northern persuasion (insert eye roll).

And then we have businesses that are aiming to make a name for themselves far beyond the immediate area. Bruce Cavenaugh is one such entity, and I say entity, because that name belongs to both a person and business. Bruce Cavenaugh (the business) wants to be known as the place to go for used cars Wilmington, NC. With the price of gas these days, and the need many people have to move into smaller vehicles, it can actually make sense to travel a couple of hundred miles to get a sweet deal on a good used car. And that’s a fine reason to come see Bruce and his cars, but there’s another one that’s maybe even more compelling to me lately: in a day when I can hardly drive from point a to point b without running over 48-11 yankees, Bruce Cavenaugh (the person) has one major advantage over the competition. He’s a native, and he still sounds like it. Just click the link to hear a short clip and hear for yourself.

Okay, it’s time to get started with the updates, but I will let that be another post. I think we can safely go back to the 11th-ish of June and go from there. Relax, it won’t be a post per day, LOL!

Guess what I did last Friday? That’s right!

Before:

During:

After:

Today:

All in all, I am satisfied. The color costs less than $5, and so I saved myself at least 55 bucks over having my hairdresser do it for me. It didn’t smell bad, and the after conditioner was incredible. And I had half a bottle of the solution left when I was done. No hat you can do anything with that except throw it away, since it doesn’t keep once it’s mixed. I think I will keep doing it myself a least for now.

I also had a hair cut on Saturday, with a different stylist, and that was a disaster of incredible proportions. The cut was fine, but the woman knew nothing of curly hair. She turned her blow dryer up as hot and as hard as it would go, and she blew my hair dry (say that like the bog bad wolf blowing on the pigs’ houses.) She burned my scalp, ya’ll. And I ended up looking like Broom Hilda. On a bad day. When she was done, I had her put me back in the bowl and re-wash it. Then I styled it myself. And then, when I was checking out, she asked me “Would you like to add anything to that, Cassie?” So I added five bucks, and that five dollar tip was her severance pay. I despise to be called Cassie, truly I do. Not to mention the truly horrible hair she gave me.

A year ago, give or take a couple of weeks, I signed up with a certain company. They promised to never make me link to porn or questionable sites, and I agreed to link to whatever assignments they gave. For the most part, this isn’t a problem, but sometimes, it feels like I am in bed with the devil! See, the agreement means that they don’t really have to pay much attention to which blogs they pass which assignments, too. Like this week, for instance: I had a life insurance link for this blog which I managed to work into a post in what I considered to be a reasonably effective yet unobtrusive way, only to look down my list and see this: life insurance quotes, from a different sponsor. Yes, I just made a sentence with two colons. I have mad English Skillz, I tells ya. My point is, umm, duh! I have five blogs with them, and could they not possibly have spread those two links out? How do you advertisers feel about that? Do you think you are getting your money’s worth?

And over at their forum, which they have, but we aren’t allowed to quote it OR link to it, if you mention something like this, you are accused of trying to weasel out of your assignments, people volunteer to take your work, and the thread is locked and/or deleted. And yet there are still people going on and on about the wonderfulness of the company. Now, don’t get me wrong, the company is run by a nice group of people, and for the most part, I enjoy the work I do for them. But it would be nice to be able to express a concern or ask a question without the saccharin crowd coming after me with pitchforks.

Speaking of saccharin crowds, it’s interesting that all of them apparently hate the one paid blogging company that does take feedback from it’s users and also allows (no, encourages) it’s bloggers to pick and choose relevant topics. But, hey, I at least got the link in, right?

Now let’s discuss that one where they want me to create a logo and a business card, screenshot it, crop it, post it and tell how easy it all was for $7.50. Hahahahhahahahah, yeah right.

Man, am I just a little bit aggravated here. I guess it never occurred to DH that when I quit using the checking account, I could no longer do any shopping unless he gave me cash. Which he did not bring me any of. On the weekend before Christmas. Whatever. I’m just a little frustrated that whatever doesn’t get done will be laid squarely at my feet, not necessarily by him, but certainly by everyone else.

I worked my tail off today to get the last of the house cleaned so we could finally put up the tree, sat down in the recliner, not to relax but rather to work and plan what I needed to pick up this weekend, only to find out that I can stop planning my shopping right this instant. Umm, yay. I guess. Also, to get fussed at for not discussing things with him. In all the time that I was home I guess, because the date for Christmas fluctuates from year to year, and so it has to be ironed out afresh each December. Ummm-hmmm.

Well, at least my hair dresser can take paypal. I’m finally getting my hair cut that I desperately needed last week. As for the shopping, DH says Monday is soon enough to get that handled. I’ll let you all know how that works out for him.

Yet another not-so-boring article on the Google shenanigans

Let me ask you something. Before the rankspank, how did a site get PR? In general, it was assumed that the way to build PR was to get sites that had PR to link to you. I say assumed, because the algorithm that computes page rank is guarded more closely than the vaults at Fort Knox. So, anyway, and whatever. Previously observed examples of page rank attainment indicated that having people link to you would increase your page rank, particularly if their pr was higher than yours.

Now, since the rankspank, people have been asking questions about the implications of it, what it all means, where we go from here and offering all sorts of theories about protecting ourselves from further harm, and accusations that PPP is responsible for Google’s actions, and it’s just been a real wild ride around the internet. As you know if you’ve been reading here, I am taking a more relaxed attitude toward the whole debacle, using the benefit of my great age and wisdom (HA) to remind myself that these things typically work themselves out in the end, and that panic is rarely justified.

Of course, it helps that I’ve been paying attention to some of the sites of people I have blogged for in the past. Colleen and others are asking about the middle men who procure our ads for us, but I am going another layer deep and looking to the advertiser’s themselves. The folks I have blogged about still have their PR. Let me repeat that: the advertisers that bought buzz and reviews via paid blogging companies and that listed links via link sellers are still reaping the benefit of having done so. This rankspank is a farce, it’s purely cosmetic and as unreal as the basket of Maybelline I keep on my dresser. If the bloggers who made money from their blogs were truly ranked at 0 now, then all those advertisers would be left holding a page rank of…yeah, 0. Maybe 1, just for the sheer number of links involved.

The next thing people are saying is that Google will de-index us if we continue on running our little blog businesses. I don’t think so. Google is primarily a search engine, and they are at the top because they are the best. For now. But they are not the only engine in town, and if they de-index bloggers on any kind of massive scale, and people can’t find the information they are looking for, they will turn to those other engines. I’m seeing it already in fact, with more searches from Ask and Yahoo in my referrals. Google has hacked off more than just paid bloggers with their high handed tactics, and no matter what else comes if it, people still don’t like a bully, and that’s all this really is. Of course, if no one ever find this article, I’ll know that I was wrong. J/K

Let me wrap up by saying that this PR0 is quite the ego stroke for me. Google considers my business model such a threat to their business model that they had to give me a cosmetic rankspank. A rankspank that did not reduce my actual advertising value at all.

Realizing yesterday that I was leaving town again tomorrow, because I am just quick like that, I called Virgin Mobile to order a cell phone and service from them. The customer service rep assured me that the camera on the Slider Sonic was comparable to the one on the Wildcard, so I chose that one, even thought that QWERTY keyboard made me drool. I’d rather have good pictures, because I am a photoblogger, after all. I looked that over a bit more carefully after the kids were settled last night, and I can only conclude that Virgin Mobile lies. The cameras are so not comparable, with the Wildcard being the better one by several orders of magnitude.

When I ordered the phone, it was 10am on the west coast, so there was plenty of time to have the phone shipped out overnight, so I could get it today and activate, charge and program it in time for my trip. I paid extra for that overnight shipping. I was assured when I called back late last night to change my order to the Wildcard that my phone was on the way, and so my order could not be changed. When my phone was not here at 1:30 today, I called to check again, and my phone has not only NOT SHIPPED, it’s still marked as pending. So, Virgin Mobile not only lies, but they also steal.

At this point I was just about mad, and so I told the supervisor that I wanted a refund. Oh, no, they can’t possibly do that. Not even when they lie, not even when they steal, because Virgin Mobile is also a big fat hairy cheat. So, let’s recap: Virgin Mobile will lie, cheat and steal to get your money. They’ll tell you anything to get you to fork over your dough. And since I have had to call at least 4 times and spend a couple hours on the phone wading through their customer unservice, I’m gonna also say Virgin Mobile sucks.

FTR, I did warn that supervisor that I planned to let at least 300 people know how I felt about them, and I am pretty sure that I can go well over that with StumbleUpon and Digg. Will you help a girl out? Click it for me, wouldja? I need to go find a real phone. Grrrrrrrrr