Kind of sad, really. Here, and then here.

If you ever want to see Gary get pissed off enough that he’s willing to put his fist through freshly installed drywall, the best plan is to call, order 50 plus pizzas, then call back, tell him some shitty corporate shop has a better price, and cancel the order.

The six-hundred dollar order. With a ten percent tip.

The funny thing is, you’d think MCI would be flush with cash, given that they just accepted a buyout from Verizon to the tune of damn-close to seven billion smackers.

In any case, thankfully Robin does not need to come back next Sunday to do more drywall patching. Methinks he woulda been miffed.

At work today, topic of conversation turned to Terri Schiavo - Zap made a great point regarding her parents. “Why don’t they just stuff her and put her on display in their living room?”

And why not? I mean, since it doesn’t seem like they actually give a shit about what’s best for her, and it isn’t like she’s holding conversations with them on a regular basis. Besides, this way they can get some money for their suffering.

Newsweek had an interesting piece on Terri Schiavo this week.

In the early years of her condition, Michael and the Schindlers got along harmoniously, even living together in a house on the Gulf Coast for a while. They ensured that Terri received all variety of therapies, including physical, occupational and recreational. When those didn’t work, Michael flew her out to California, where a doctor implanted platinum electrodes into her brain as part of an experimental procedure that ultimately failed. Back in Florida, Michael enlisted family members to record audiotapes of their voices, which he played for Terri on a Walkman. He was fastidious about Terri’s appearance, spraying her with Picasso perfume and outfitting her in stirrup pants and matching tops from The Limited. At one Florida nursing home, he was so demanding that administrators sought a restraining order against him. But Gloria Centonze, who worked there at the time (and by coincidence later married into the family of Michael’s future girlfriend), recalls a frequent comment among the nurses: “He may be a bastard, but if I was sick like that, I wish he was my husband.” To better care for Terri, Michael even enrolled in nursing school.

They got along? No kidding …

After that, the relationship became steadily more toxic. Michael had begun to resign himself to the prospect that Terri would never improve, according to his court testimony. When she developed a urinary-tract infection in 1994, Michael followed a doctor’s recommendation not to treat it, and entered a “do not resuscitate” order (which he later rescinded after the nursing home and the Schindlers protested). The parents responded with one of many legal attempts—all of them unsuccessful—to remove Michael as Terri’s guardian, accusing him of abuse, neglect and adultery (he had moved in with a girlfriend and eventually had two babies with her). More than a few observers have questioned the timing of Michael’s change of heart, coming so soon after the malpractice award. But Michael has repeatedly insisted that after years of fruitless efforts to revive Terri, he had simply given up hope.

He had good reason to, according to most medical experts. After so many years in a persistent vegetative state, says James Bernat, a Dartmouth neurologist, the chance of recovery is “so close to zero, you might as well call it zero.” Schindler supporters often point to videos posted online that seem to show Terri tracking the movement of a balloon and responding to her parents’ prodding. “But these are random reflex movements,” says William Winslade, a bioethicist at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. “It’s uncanny how the eyes blink and seem to move and follow sounds, but they’re not.” The Schindlers also repeatedly sought permission to try alternative therapies like dilating the blood vessels to pump more blood and oxygen to the brain. Yet that would have been pointless, argues Ronald Cranford, a neurologist who examined Terri in 2002. “Increase the blood flow to dead tissue, and what do you get?” he says. “Dead tissue.”

And then this, on the “what were her wishes?”:

One of the Schindlers’ witnesses, Terri’s childhood friend Diane Meyer, claimed that the topic of life support once came up in a conversation they had about the case of Karen Ann Quinlan, whose feeding tube was removed in 1985. “How did they know she would want this?” Terri allegedly asked Meyer. “How did they know she wouldn’t want to go on?” Testifying for his brother Michael, Scott Schiavo recounted an exchange he had with Terri after seeing Michael’s grandmother hooked up to a ventilator. As Scott recalls it today, “I can still see Terri looking right into my eyes and saying, ‘Not me. No way. I would not want to live like that’.”

There was one bit that really made me sit up and say “You’re fucking kidding me!”:

In a 2000 trial, the Schindlers “made what a court-appointed guardian for Terri deemed ‘horrific’ and ‘gruesome’ comments - that the family would never remove Terri’s feeding tube even if she had asked them to, and that even if she developed gangrene, the family would amputate her limbs to keep her alive.”

What a bunch of selfish little fucks. I know I said earlier I had sympathy for them - nope, not anymore. They don’t give fuck one about what Terri wants, or what would be best for Terri - they want what is best for them. Apparently, both sides have asked for an autopsy - I wonder, when its done, and when they have conclusive scientific proof that she would never recover, would they then say, “We should have let her go in peace?” Of course not. They want a brain dead woman whose hand they can hold, because the alternative would never under any circumstance be acceptable. They want to avoid the pain of their daughter’s death, no matter what it does to their daughter. For all intents and purposes, she’s gone, she’s a breathing corpse and has been for fifteen years. It’s sad, it’s tragic, but she’s gone, and they need to stop running from their pain.

I was right! Lee is back!

It’s not the religious beliefs that scare me, it’s the organized political machine that cares less about my rights as an American than it does promoting a political ideology based upon those religious beliefs. If this makes me hostile to religion then so be it.

I despise extremists. I knew that voting for Bush was voting for evangelical conservatives, but I was okay with that. Living where I live I would hear people talking about how dangerous the Christian right was. “You’re crazy,” I’d say. “When I lived in Texas I knew a ton of devoutly religious people, and they were some of the finest folks you’ll ever want to meet. You’ve got them all wrong.” Well, maybe it was me that was wrong. Because as it stands now, I don’t see the religious right giving a good goddamn about my beliefs. It was, “Thanks for the vote, asshole! Now, stay out of our way!”

Sorry, folks, I’m not going to do that. If I think you’re an asshole I’m going to call you on it, whether you’re on the right or on the left. The doors to the blog will be open for business again tomorrow morning. Come in if you like, stick around as much as you choose. And if you don’t like what I write here, fuck off. Because if you’re tuning in for your daily affirmation of your conservative Republican beliefs you’ve come to the wrong place. I’m done being a Republican. They’re just as big a bunch of corrupt, big-government whores as the Democrats ever were. The distinction here, of course, is that the Democrats never claimed to be a small-government, individual rights, federalist party. The GOP has abandoned me, and I’ve never felt better about it.

Voila. The fracturing of the Republican Party continues.