Neighbor A has a horse stable and spreads manure on their field. Neighbor B dislikes the scent and wants it to stop, regardless of how this would affect neighbor A’s life, buisness, and livelihood.

Why does this interest me? Well, the story is from my old hometown newspaper, which I check up on online now and then ’cause I miss living there. Why am I writing this? ‘Cause I lived for 13 years next to a field that had manure spread on it every spring and you know what? If you wanna live out in the country, there are some things you just gotta deal with. You can’t have all the happy, picturesque, lovin’ the nature vibes without dealing with the reality that you live near actual, functional, down and dirty *farms*.

Personally, I think farms are wonderfull and beautiful. They are also a lot of hard work and yup – they got odors. If neighbor B is unwilling to deal wih this, they should look around for a place which is more picturesque and less real. Why am I so upset? Because in the last 20 years real, functional farms in Sussex county have been going the way of the dodo. Farmers die and the kids don’t want to continue the buisness, bad economy forces some to fold, selling off acerage for subdivisions is more profitable… etc….

I have watched fields and pastures turned into surburban tracts and it shreds my heart every time I go home. And then the middle class twanks who move in want their nature *sanitized*?

Angry now.

It’s snowing again – which I find is damn hypnotic. Must not look at windows….. must work and look productive. Grrr….

I am working on christmas eve. Half the office isn’t even here, and my brains are dripping out my ears from the boredom. I should have actually partied during the office party on friday, but I was my geek self and worked through most of it. All I really want to do is get in the car and drive out to my family for Big Family Dinner time. (Which I will be doing in about two or three hours.)

In spite of the fact that I get to leave early today, I want to go *now*. I just get homesick sometimes. Ok, I’m 26 and my apartment really is my home, but the house where I was raised (and *born* fer chrissakes) is where part of my heart will always be. Mmrf.

And in spite of everything, I’m guilting myself for not doing more in the gift department. Aarg. I never used to worry about these things. Christmas was about more than just who got what and who gave what and how many boxes you brought. And now I’ve been infected with this sense of inadequacy because I didn’t get something for *everyone*, in spite of the fact that we aren’t *supposed* to go overboard like that with my family.

Jesus Christ – as if there wasn’t enough rampant stupidity in the universe. Man goes out hunting one early morning. he takes his young kid with him. The kid wanders out of the truck to find dad, gets lost, and freezes to death. Father is brought up on charges of negligence. The day after he appears in court, the brain damaged sperm donor commits suicide. But that’s not the kicker.

The family of the dad and kid are now *SUING* the people who searched the mountain for six days before finding the kid.

Stop the planet everyone. I need to get off.

Huge crock of shit essay Here about how men are the ones truly fit to write software, work with computers, and determine the future of the tech world. Dori Smith and Megnut both counter the argument effectively. However, I have to take execption with one line.

“Until a few hundred years ago (maybe just a few decades, maybe no time at all), men fought and hunted and gathered, while women built civilization. Men are the artists of our species, women are the infrastructure. Art and war are almost the same thing, btw.”

Excuse me? Every frelling female in my whole damm family is an artist! All but two earn their *livngs* that way. This guy needs to go out and actually *meet* some people in the artistic community.