Does anyone actually~~~go back into a person’s archives and putz around in there? Like, would any visitor be so enamored of anyone’s old blogs to actually rummage around–like the one kitchen drawer most of us have that’s just full of stuff–looking for a gem? Sometimes I regret deleting a blog on this page ‘cos I think it’s pretty cool. (It’s hard to be humble). But then, old stuff really needs to be taken off the page or it gets moldy after a while.   Perhaps even more revolting than that forgotten cucumber in one’s veggie crisper??—-now THAT is one retching, pukey discovery.  EEeeeeuuuu.

I heard a commercial couple days ago that got me to thinking. Now I do not take “thinking” lightly, this is a pretty big deal for me. Anyway, the ad extolled the virtues of a construction company and at the end, the guy says “And this is a Christian-based company”. What the hell is that supposed to mean?

In other words, can we assume that other companies who do not make this declaration are not as reputable? Should they also say, at the end of the ad, “And this is a Jewish-based company” — “And this is an Wiccan-based company”.  Is a Christian-based company more trustworthy? Anyone out there—-YOO-HOO—-have an
opinion?   Hmmm,  well,  since I have an opinion just about everything,  I certainly have one in this case, also.  I think you may have a clue what I think of that company bozo.   I leave you with this entertaining little placard, sign, whatever one calls these things………………..it reminds me of a certain political party that has lost its way, which is undoubtedly a very good sign for MY party.   hahahahahaha

Ummmm, and so spake this unworthy, disgusting non-believer in fairytales and committed~~~wait for it !!   WAIT FOR

IT!!~~~~~~~Aaaaeeeeeeiiiioo ~~~~~  ATHEIST …..Me! –    

who, according to millions of believers, somebody supposedly dispenses love and a whole lot of Bull$heet about a “hereafter” in an imaginary kingdom called Heaven  (Or Hell, if you are especially naughty).  The world would indeed be a much better place if there were no such thing as *religion* messing with human beings’  heads !!  Ah, but then who–or what–would clueless human beings use as excuses for their rotten behavior towards each other, the gut-wrenching cruelty to innocent animals both wild and domestic……and just about every living thing on this itty-bitty planet that stupid, stupid  homo sapiens  are so determined to destroy?  (Breeding like rabbits and filling up the planet with even more human beings for no reasonable reason…….with the planet’s resources like WATER,  FOOD and even FRESH AIR to breathe, slowly but inexorably fading, fading —GONE!  and other important *things*going belly-up that we will not be able to function without.  Ya think no?   These items are slowly but surely disappearing and once those….admittedly……rather important resources are about kaput, so will the human race be extinguished.   The non-humans, like, say…..animals?….well, they will already be gone, gone  GONE.

But Hey!  Don’t worry, be happy……all Washington D.C.  mentally challenged  “leaders”   will happily help the planet on its inevitable death march by chanting their theme song….**Drill Baby Drill**….. What does it matter if precious Arctic Seas wildlife is eliminated forever,  who cares if~~no, when another horrifying oil drilling catastrophe occurs…..the Arctic oceans are NOT amenable to human beings charging in and totally devastating that fragile,  critical to the whole eco-system up in the frozen tundra  (and we do mean frozen…cold beyond belief) — not to mention what damage could occur in the ANWR, the drilling will be close—too close—to America’s last pure National Wildlife Reserve.   How sad, how pitifully SAD.  America is falling apart!!

My mind, what’s left of it,  feels like it’s filled with cotton balls.  Dumb, useless cotton balls.  But I’ll wake up, I usually do, eventually. Oy. And  that is the goofiest  intro for this, admittedly, useless “blog” that I hope will be of some mild interest to someone, a few adventurous readers….maybe?…   I feel it in my creaky bones, especially in my right knee which is a total mess, but that is another story.

Actually, I could be wrong, but probably not since I am usually right about almost everything,  [it's hard to be humble]  but I don’t remember any totally stinky times during the years I was aware of what was going on in my country.   But then, almost with no warning,  everything today is such an enormous, gigantic MESS !   It is really frightening and a tad scary, also.  Yeah. It really is.   Well, maybe there’s one or two bright spots on the horizon, or whatever, ya think? I admit it.   I waste a lot of time piddling around at this infernal machine.   I “cyber-shop”  (like window shopping “in the olden days”).   I pour a cup of coffee and  putz around sipping on that while messing around reading political Tee-shirts.  One day I wasted more than an hour “reading” cutesy stuff on T-shirts, sweats, whatever……wanna read some of those I read?  and liked? —- Nah.  Probably not.   There’s lots of funny ones, for both sides of the fence.  All ritey then, I believe I am finally awake.

Perhaps I am, after all, stretching my luck…… being an eccentric old crone isn’t very interesting to anyone,  anymore.   Well,  I may just have some rag-tag remnants of  not-too-boring tales of my days as a “wild child”  (T/Sgt L.J. B, USAF)……looking so fine in my impeccably neat Air Force dress uniform, struttin’ down a Wiesbaden downtown strasse in my uniform, and still after all these years — not a clue as to where I was going or what I was going to do that day.

Well anyway,  moving right along here.  Sheesh I really AM deteriorating faster than I thought.   When I started blogging  just about 10 years ago,  it was so darn much FUN.    The kidlet—-(the daughter who is a *grandma* for crying out loud……MY daughter is a grandmother??)   GASP   I think that means I must then be the GREAT-grandma of this one-in-a-million, exceptionally cute, smart and totally ready to run for president in 2045 girlie-girl—- acquired her first domain then and created an entire tutorial website and called it “Full Moon Webs.com”.  It  did very well attracting a bunch of novices to the “net” and inviting them in so they could have a personal blogpage, an e-mail account, and claim it as their very own BLOG!!”

It was an extraordinary achievement, she even provided a wide variety of graphics (her own designs)  and displays for newbies to use.  It was awesome!………In fact it has evolved into a real live business and she has been doing quite well the past few years.   The actual business name is –  http://ink2art.com.  ~~~~Ummm,  not that it matters (except to me of course, Hah)  but my first blogpage was called Ta-Dah!— “The Mousetrap”

I just happen to have a dog-eared copy of a book titled “The Quotable Atheist”  —  it is sooo-o-o-o interesting.  Not just the quotes in it with a gazillion different musings about atheism but the extraordinarily fascinating list………from A to Z……of people (generally famous names and all that) who snapped out such pithy, funny,  (and serious) opinions  about Atheism and mostly recognizable by the writers’  awesome intelligence. —- well, maybe not always that awesome, but more brains than most of us.  I suppose.   Even humans who lived *B.C.*  and *B.C.E*  (what the helk is that?)   had something to say about the invisible entity named whatever was fashionable at the time, and questioned “ITS” existence, just like this 21st century.  Imagine that.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  I’ve been thinking….and boy did that hurt!!….if this so-called deity called   God in many parts of the world and also other names (is it the same deity with different looks & wardrobes in those other countries?)  claim their religion is the only one that their “God” will pay any attention to (no matter how many human beings those weird Arab sects slaughter in *his* name, will that add *Good* points to American politics and force impotent Republicans to stop their manic dream of ruling American women  like the Arabs rule *their* women??

Sheesh, this Tommy Jefferson dude must have had precognition
or somethin’ like dat, eh??  How could he have known?
Easy to see why I love dis guy??

   Just been browsing thru my messy files and spotted this little thingie.  For reasons known only to the invisible force that told me, in no uncertain terms, Hey You Old Bag!!…..Get yer lazy arse over to your WordPress link and put something down in print.   Been a long time since I’ve wandered into this little corner of my ‘puter.   You know how that goes, right?—
Like………*Time flies when you’re having fun*  or so “they” say.

-Well, lemme tell ya, that is one large load of  krapola.  Time does NOT fly when you’re having fun, or in my case, not having any fun at all.    So if I kvetch a little I have every right to do so,  I mean what the heck…..this is MY blog, ain’t it?  — And if I want to moan, groan, kvetch and just generally act like a horse’s patoot,  well,  ……that’s the way it is……..Uh Huh, Uh Huh, I like it….blah blah  (from the song whose words I do not know)

I had a total knee replacement a while ago.   It seems like a very long time since that momentous occasion, but I think the actual dirty deed was done July 2009.   ???   Well, that’s my big news for tonight.   Ain’t nothin’  real exciting to talk about, actually.   What I really want to discuss is  [drumroll please]…….my coming out.   Finally.   I am finally, and for real from this day forward,  a true-blue, dedicated and happy ATHEIST.   Whew, what a load off my back……LOL.    Been feeling that way for years and finally said to myself — “Myself!– Get with it, you know you  do not believe by any stretch of the imagination, in an invisible, never seen, never heard,  big old guy who supposedly *created* this weeny  little planet called Earth and for a couple thousand years homo sapiens have “worshipped” this entity.  Before that, though, hominids quit dragging their knuckles and swinging from a banana tree and finally got up on their two feet and wandered around in search of a warm cave………..”Hey, I think we’re kinda on our own, Barnie Stoneman, got a match so we can make a fire?”  I have no clue how these Neanderthal humans*  discovered fire or even discovered icky-looking critters tasted better cooked than raw??   [note:  y'all know that us speshul mammal-type "humans" share 98.8% of our DNA with the current primates, don'tcha??  They be our brudders and our sistahs, don'tcha know?]  Hahahahaha

*Scientists, for reasons known only to them (I certainly don’t know),  have decided the last of the “caveman”  homo sapiens “Neanderthals”  went kaput only 30,000 years ago, which is a very small drop in the bucket considering it’s known by every brainiac on the planet today that  Earth was probably smashed together approximately 50+ BILLION years ago. Atheism is nothing new but its popularity for millions of people in this 21st century now is good news………means  more and more people  have realized LIFE and LOVE and HAPPINESS,  along with contentment and so on…………has absolutely nothing to do with the myth of a ”being” having been responsible for slapping this  little planet together, complete with flora, fauna and, for starters,   actual HUMANS.    Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Lilith (Adam supposedly turned that gal into dust, though.  Nasty guy!)  I just found out that people who cling to their choice of religion don’t seem to notice, or care?, that even the Christian bible is a confusing mish-mosh of fairy tales and nonsense!  

I watch a soap opera every day.  I have for 30 years (“All My Children”)   But when a fairy tale like the Christian bible declares that EVE was the mother of all, and her sons Cain & Abel married their sisters, and so on, it surpasses any corny soap opera on  television in this century.  The goofy story of Noah’s Ark.  Good Grief!!   For ANY  rational human being to believe such a ridiculous  story leaves me speechless…..Whew!

There are at least half-a-dozen very large, well-organized  Atheist organizations, etc  all over the Internet.   Millions of perfectly normal, sane, obviously thoughtful people reject the notion that planet Earth was *created* by a mysterious entity called God.   I don’t know a doggone thing about other kinds of  “religion”  around the world, but if that’s what makes them happy,  what the heck………..go for it.   Just don’t think that being a *Christian* makes YOU any better a human being than ME.    I believe in ME.   For ME there is NO HIGHER POWER than my own conscience,  my own morality and my own pursuit of happiness.    The only result of your praying to an invisible deity for help or for whatever reason will be solved only by YOU and your own personal moral authority.    

   Putz.  I like Prez JFK’s comment, just need glasses to read it, though.  Bummer. 
He is saying — “I believe in an America where the separation of church and
state is absolute”       —- Gosh I sure did love that man!!
His wife, not so much.   lol 

Hellooo der.   Guess who’s back.  Oh shucks, you guessed, didn’t ya?   I am amazed, every week,  at the “hits” I’m getting of lurkers stopping off at meandthecat while they’re going thru the gallery of WordPress’ Thesis blogsites.  Many even stopped in at a few blogposts.  Cool.  But yeah it’s the loud, squawky, complaining, (aka bitchin’) old crone.   This blogpage operates under the domain of meandthecat.com but although I have been blogging since 2001 I sure couldn’t create a site like I have right now.  Started long ago with Blogger.com, then WordPress came along and it was love at first “site” (so to speak).  Then the WP brought out WordPress Thesis…….and what a platform that is for imaginative blogsite creators to *create*.   Alas, as talented and clever as I am and always have been  [it's hard to be humble] I never could have come up with the astonishing blogpage I have right now!   My kidlet designed this blogpage for me,  she operates under the name kitty@ink2art.com and is a whiz at website design.

Anyway, enough about other people.  I have stuff simmering on the back burner that’s been charred and tossed in the garbage ’cause the “news” I was bringing to this  page got too old to blog about.   Did I mention my home state is, Uh, Wisconsin?  Milwaukee, actually.  Our newly elected Governor decided to make himself the shining example of how a  rightwing thought process would make Gov. Walker a hero in the eyes of private sector workers (by balancing the state’s really stinky budget)………..as opposed to the public workers who did not have to pay one single penny towards their health insurance or their pension benefits.   Thus the power of the [cold shiver down the spine]  Unions.   So  the public workers got a very unpleasant kick in the pants when, much to everyone’s surprise,  the Unions agreed to remove collective bargaining from the rules of warfare between corporations/municipalities and their members. (public workers)

I tried to imagine a scenario where, while in the sweaty, panic-striken mood of being interviewed by a *Human Resources* bunny for a job I really would have liked ………..
Get the preliminary “experience” and “what a wonderful, compassionate, dedicated worker you would be if lucky enuf to be employed by TidyWipe diaper service, right now.
No bickering about “collective bargaining rights”,  you’re offered a salary and if lucky,  a package of decent benefits like health insurance?—-Take it or leave it.  I took it.  Worked out just fine.  Did it all without a Union chief breathing fire down everyone’s neck.  The private sector of business generally doesn’t condone any conflict….they need a worker to do a job, they will pay XXX number of dollars, provide decent health insurance and that’s that. Take it or leave it.

But I gotta say.  I am very, very proud of our citizens…..not only in Wisconsin…..but in all our states.   The protests that went on 24/7 for such a long time (I know I was sick of watching the news, which of course went on and on and on.  Even when there was nothing to say.  The talking heads on our local stations just kept on moving their jaws like cows in a pasture, chewing on a cud since there was usually nothing new or exciting going on most of the time.   *YAWN*    The only tragedy was the mess inside the Capitol building.  The marble and granite surfaces were riddled with “tape” (protest signs) and I can just imagine how the bathrooms and everything else looked and smelled after a whole lot of healthy, robust and bratwurst eating citizenry got thru grazing from their picnic baskets.   EEeeeeuuu.  Oh, and many people slept inside the building, here and there.  Would someone please pass the
Febreze, please?  Yuck

But doggone it, bless all the protesters’ sincere,  dedicated and peaceful demonstrations.  Not a single gunshot was heard.  No fisticuffs from opposing viewpoints of people.  I am and even more so now,  so happy to be an American citizen…..Born in the USA.    Democracy still works, now if we can just find a few REAL people to run for elective office who share the same commitment to our Republic, For Which it Stands……..and make some sane, reasonable and decent concessions from both political parties.

First thing on the agenda, however? — The Republican Party and every one of those hypocritical, nauseatingly righteous, tight-assed beyond belief,  smug.
women-hating  (and quit spitting out nonsense, as one Senator did, that “women should stay home and take care of the kids”)   What a total horse’s tushy!

No more prying into a woman’s totally PRIVATE reproductive life, it is none of ANY backward-thinking politician to inflict THEIR very narrow ideas of how the FEMALES of this country, who, by the way, outnumber the weaker sex, who are stronger than men (mentally, anyway), and are not ruled 24/7 by their tatas as men are obsessed with their gidgets.  Last but not least, for the love of Heaven….Rethuglicans!!! —- Stay out of my doctor’s office  I mean it.

Who are YOU to decide if a woman should have an abortion or not?  Who are YOU to decide whether young or adult females shouldn’t have access to birth control?

Whew. I worked myself into a frenzy, but I think it is just hunger pangs.   I have been so busy ranting and raving I forgot to eat anything since some cereal about eight hours ago.  Well !!  No wonder I am feeling faint with hunger.  I need to correct this situation right now.

So ya, had my knee surgery… yadda yadda…

My Granddaughter got married! yay. I will post pics, but in the meantime if you want to see some of the most gorgeous photography EVER (not too biased or anything), you should check out the slide show of Jennie & Brian’s wedding pics.

The photographers from Our Labor of Love, truly are experts in their field – excellent.

A-N-D, in about 6 mths, I will be a *gasp* Great-Gramma!
(just a little baby-bump)

Stay tuned… gotta get back into this “Word Press” thing-a-ma-bob.