Around the blogroll and elsewhere

...because I'm feeling uninspired today. I've got a bad case of spring fever, I'm tired all the time, I'm sick of prying up floor tiles in the basement, I still have tons of crap to move out of there before the floor guys come next week, and somewhere I have to find a way in the midst of setting up four studies to take yet another day off so the plumber can come and finally replace the upstairs toilet and vanity. Not that I'm complaining; being swamped with work means having a job, and that's a GOOD thing. But my brain has too much buzzing around to write anything coherent, so while I make MP3 files out of old cassette tapes of the long-lost American Radio Company (which was the short-lived, New York-based, edgier version of A Prairie Home Companion and featured the fabulous Ivy Austin), why not take a spin around the outskirts of Blogtopia (® Skippy), where the air is cleaner, there's less traffic, and fewer assholes on the road?

In the wake of the disgusting smears by a United States military officer against Pat Tillman's family, ShakesSis writes about "clean-slate Christianity" and points us to this terrific post at The Thinkery (who joins our blogroll today) about fundamentalism and contempt for life.

Mad Kane has some thoughts on Laura Bush's assertion that no one -- not the Iraqis whose country has been blown to smithereens for no reasons, not the families of those soldiers who have died, not the returning soldiers looking ahead to lives without limbs, without eyesight, and with permanent nightmares -- suffers more than she and Captain Codpiece do about the Iraq war.

The much-missed Sam Seder has an appalling video by someone who fancies herself a Serious Conservative Thinker.

Melina, who can string together seemingly unrelated topics better than anyone else in the known universe, writes about the Loss of the Bees -- and about the New York Times' self-styled Queen Bee. And also about parrots.

Tata gets metaphysical.

And while we're in the realm of bees and the metaphysical, Lynn puts it all together.

Read about the link between homophobia and school shooters at The Republic of T here and here.

ShortWoman has had quite enough of Washington Mutual, thank you very much.

This may not be of interest to anyone outside of New Jersey's Fifth District, but Matt Fretz has a must-read post for anyone still cleaning out the basement about the incongruity between Rep. Ernie Scott Garrett visiting people in his district promising flood help while he has consistently voted against projects that might have helped prevent this very kind of flooding that we saw a week and a half ago. (And just as an aside, it doesn't look like George Bush plans to declare the flood-ravaged areas as disaster areas, so all those good loyal Republican voters in NJ-5 might want to think about a government that will screw over a district to punish its residents for not voting for them).

The other Jill, at Feministe, has a post you must read on the "women as mere vessel" mindset of the Christofascist Zombie Brigade.