There's a big difference with storing useful materials, and in an orderly manner...as opposed to just keeping EVERYTHING under the sun. I could understand keeping all of your electronic components in the garage or workshop...but Aycharaych, do you serious keep EVERYTHING and throw away nothing?

No, and I don't think the LW does either.

One person's junk is another person's treasure.. I trade a lot of stuff on craiglist.. I get rid of stuff I don't want, get stuff I do want and both parties walk away thinking they got the best end of the deal.

Just like hoarding, neatness can be taken to an extreme. A lot of neatfreaks are just that, OCDs with a tidiness fetish.

I remember reading once a comment by a child molestation investigator that some of the neatest and cleanest homes she had been in were those of molesters. And also that some of the messiest houses had loving healthy families in them.

Not to imply that all neat people are molesters, or to imply that no slobs are molesters. As the case of Susan Smith vividly pointed out, molestation knows no class lines.

Rather I'm claiming that neatness or slovenliness do not necessarily imply either a superior character or a lack of character.

If you are driving down the road and your car has a flat tire, who is more likely to stop and help you change it? The casually dressed and dirty construction worker in a ratty work truck or the new Bimmer driver in a three piece suit with an impeccable manicure?

When Dan Savage says "I would rather DIE than eat pussy. Seriously." No once calls him a gynophobe or misogynist.

Wanna bet?

He is obviously both.. And probably doesn't get much (if any) pussy either.

Savage wouldn't have a clue how to pleasure a woman, all you have to do is listen to his self obsessed bloviating for ten minutes to figure that out.

Spoken as a cunning linguist who gets all the pussy he wants.

You have to have one or you can't post.

He's just ashamed to use it.

Wait for it....

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The beginning of 2001

What happened in late 2000 and early 2001?

A "business friendly" Republican took the White House.

Things that make you go "Hmmmm", eh?

http://goldprice.org/bob/uploaded_images/gold10yr-741805.jpg

Slowly but surely, he's learning how wonderfully peace-inducing it is to be organized, partially from my example and patience, and partially from my simply teaching him what he wasn't taught as a child.

*Being* organized may be peace inducing, but for many of us *getting* organized and staying that way is anything but.

To continually fight your own nature is not a peace inducing thing. I find that neat people are like outgoing people in that they have no clue what it is like to be not neat, just like outgoing people have no clue what it is like to be shy.

"Just put everything away and be organized" is as useless an exhortation to the not neat person as "Just open up to people" is to the shy person.

As we all know, corporations now have a hand in more human activity than ever before, and telecoms in particular have the nearly singular ability to meddle in our rights to private conversation.

Given that we do have ownership of our own bodies then why should we be privileged to have communications that go unmonitored?

Do we have ownership of our bodies?

I maintain that we do not..

Downing antibiotics and anti-virals at the least sign of a cold, obsessively scrubbing ourselves with anti-bacterial concoctions, and freaking out at any bit of dirt has given us monster bacilli and viruses that mow down everything in their path.

Just go over and take a peek at Cary Tennis' column, there are lots of people on that one freaked out by a little clutter, let alone dirt.

We do not own our bodies..

If we did then why would the government force employers to test our very biochemistry to make sure that we are not apostates of the de facto state religion?

I'm deadly serious.

What is more private than your own body?

SCOTUS had to force the government into recognizing a right of bodily privacy for women in the case of abortion.

There are powerful forces trying to overturn that now and given the makeup of the current SCOTUS they might just succeed.

All it will take is one more "conservative" president, say Huckabee.

I'm pretty sure that "IF Stone was a commie" was sarcasm.

The problem with sarcasm, parody and satire today is it is almost impossible to distinguish from reality.

His Royal Highness.

At least you have the fortitude to put your name to your insults, I'll give you that.

What have I done to you to deserve such?

So why aren't the conservatives raging about overincarceration in America?

I have a better question, why aren't the liberals raging about overincarceration in America?

We figure The US as You Have Known It was over about six years ago and that The Powers That Be are being really slow about notifying us.

It's been considerably longer than that.

John Kay wrote _Monster_ in 1969 and things have slid much further down hill since then.

Arne: Someone else has already spotted where my nom de keyboard comes from.. Although I'm distantly related to two presidents and HD Thoreau I certainly don't think of myself as royalty.

So if you average 1961 with 1981 you get 1971, which is probably close enough to 1969.

The only reason I chose 1969 was because that's about the time I started paying serious attention to politics.

Things were already pretty dire back in 1933 when Smedley Butler foiled a plot to overthrow Roosevelt.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot