Shella Knows Best: How the Bailout Can Best Help People

Perhaps we can accomplish with the Bailout, that which would never otherwise be accomplished in current American history. Namely, a major investment in the affordable and accessible housing stock.

I present to you, Shella's 10-Point Bailout Plan, in the form of a letter to Barack Obama.

Dear Senator Obama:

I think I have an idea of how your administration can work the bailout to help needy Americans, while being honorable to the new taxpaying owners of defaulted mortgage loans:

1. American taxpayers purchase single-family and multi-family properties presently in default – and are issued a bond-like instrument for the value of their investment including some amount (yet to be defined) of interest per annum;

2. Purchase price to taxpayers is “short-sale” at current market value only (not including accrued and aggragatge missed payments, interest and fees, closing costs, points, property maintenance costs, etc.);

3. In exchange for being bailed out, institutions agree to accept and make a one-time write-off of the dollar amount (gap) between the gross mortgage default figure and the taxpayer short-sale amount. Then it's all rosey for wallstreet again.

4. The feds create a state-by-state portfolio of housing units including protectorates;

5. Each housing unit, at the time of purchase, is deed-restricted to be affordable and accessible housing in perpetuity;

6. Each state applies to the feds to become responsible for the disposition of the affordable and accessible housing according to their state housing plans, further providing a clear and concise oversight and reporting plan;

7. Each county applies to the state for the affordable and accessible units within the cities and unincorporated areas in accordance with their state-approved consolidated plans and housing elements;

8. Local nonprofit housers and housing authorities then apply to each county with a plan for the responsible and reasonable operation, repair, maintenance, and management of one or more housing units for the needy or underserved populations already-identified in their jurisdiction's approved housing element;

9. Local nonprofit housers and housing authorities agree to refinance the housing unit/s under their control at some point before a 15-year term, the then-current market rate being returned to the feds to pay the bonds presented to them by bearers having received same at the time of the bailout investment.

10. Financial institutions or other entities receiving taxpayer bailout accrue Community Reinvestment Act obligations, those credits may be used to perform accessibility modifications or other critical repairs and maintenance which may be necessary for the housing units taxpayers have been forced to invest in.

Revealed: Secrets of the Magic 8 Ball

I must admit it. I've loved the Magic 8 Ball since my childhood. Hours were spent with a girlfriend (her brother owned the mystical fortune telling device) asking every sort of question.

It took ages for us to tire of playing with the Magic 8 Ball, but eventually we moved on. But not before we went through transition every child goes through with the toy. That is the transition from question-asking to curiosity about how the damn thing works!

For those who may never have opened their beloved Magic 8 Ball, I offer the following hunttula.com exhibit showing a Magic 8 Ball Autopsy. (click "continue" at the bottom of each frame)

Museum of Freaky Food

I've found a pretty cool web site, hanttula.com, and they've got some fun exhibits. I am posting two.

The first is hanttula's Museum of Food Anomalies, wherein a viewer gets to see freaky foods. You know, the grilled cheese sandwich with an image of the Virgin Mary. Or, the Happy Face potato chip.

Enjoy!

Funny: But Too Bad It's True

"On Capitol Hill, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales raised his right hand, swore to tell the truth, and then everybody had a good laugh and went back to what they were doing."
---Jay Leno
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"News has just broke that the administration is seeking a high-powered "war czar" to oversee the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. So there you have it folks---five years into the global war on terror the president believes it is now time for someone to be in charge of it."
---Jon Stewart
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"Rudy Giuliani got in trouble because, y'know that presidential question they ask: "What's the price of a gallon of milk?" He didn’t know. That doesn’t bother me, really, if a president doesn’t know. What I want to know [is], does the president know the price of a war with Iraq?"
---Craig Ferguson
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"Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter has filed papers to run for president. But in his official filing, he misspelled the word 'president.' Political experts say it's all part of Hunter's plan to attract Bush supporters."
---Conan O'Brien
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"It was announced that Hooters would open one of its restaurants in Israel this summer. So much for keeping the meat separate from the dairy."
---Amy Poehler
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"In 200 years, we've gone from "We the people," to "Up With People." From "the best and the brightest" to "dumb and dumber." And where better to find people dumb enough to believe in George Bush than Pat Robertson's law school? The problem here in America isn't that the country is being run by "elites." It's that it's being run by a bunch of hayseeds. And, by the way, the lawyer Monica Goodling just hired to keep her ass out of jail...went to a real law school."
---Bill Maher
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Thank you to Bill in Portland Maine for compiling the snark

You Fuck, You Die

The decision handed down by Bush's Supreme Court of the United States represents a very dark day in history for all American women.

I have stolen and posted, wholesale, an important blog post that reflects precisely how I feel. THANK YOU MARYSCOTT O'CONNOR!

A friend of mine said he wanted to start a blog to document and explore the reprehensible act of so-called "honor killings" of women around the world. You know, where the husbands, fathers, and/or brothers of women have given themselves the "right" to literally be judge, jury and executioner of females who they deem to have impinged family honor for any number of minor acts of personal self-determination.

The ban against late term Intact D&E terminations is just that: Five conservative male (Roberts and Alito having lied their way in prior to the 2007 Dem takeover) Supreme Court Justices have just upheld Bush Administration's "ban" on late term terminations with no waiver if the mother's life is in danger. In otherwords, they've legalized the "Honor Killing" of America's women. If you fuck, you die.

Read it and weep. God, give me the strength to survive - and change - what the Christian Jihadists, the GOP, and George W. Bush have done to my fucking country.

--Shella

You F***, You Die
by Maryscott OConnor
Wed Apr 18, 2007 at 12:19:49 PM PDT

Crossposted from MY LEFT WING

It was the day that changed everything


5 Supreme Court Justices, not one possessed of a uterus, cervix, vagina or medical degree among them, have seen fit to pass a death sentence on any woman whose late term pregnancy threatens her life and necessitates a safe procedure to end it.

It hardly seems suitable to say "I told you so," but what the hell...

I TOLD YOU SO.

I, and millions of women and men not blinded by craven obeisance to political "propriety" and the fear of losing a seat of dubious power.

So, to the Alito Nineteen, a collective of putrescent, cowering, rotted remnants of what MIGHT once have been decent human beings, now merely another set of cowards in Democrats's clothing, we say to you, Thanks for killing us.

Make no mistake, that is EXACTLY what the federal ban on late-term abortions is: a death sentence upon any woman whose life depends on a safe medical procedure to end an unviable pregnancy.

I'll say it again:

5 Supreme Court Justices, not one possessed of a uterus, cervix, vagina or medical degree among them, have seen fit to pass a death sentence on any woman whose late term pregnancy threatens her life and necessitates a safe procedure to end it.

I shake with rage and sorrow for every woman in this country who now must fear every step of those last few months of a pregnancy, not only for the health of a baby whose arrival she awaits, but now as well for her own health and life, lest anything go awry with that pregnancy, leaving her with NO choice but to carry the pregnancy to term, be the fetus alive or barely, viable or no.

Of course, there is a way to avoid all this messiness, young ladies -- just don't have sex.

Abstinence -- yeah, that's the solution. Except, of course, we're not really talking about preventing abortions, here, are we?

What those 5 MEN on the Supreme Court have done is not to prevent abortions or premarital sex, not to dissuade such things from happening nor to make illegal anything related to them -- except, of course, should the situation arise in which the sex a woman has had results in a late-term pregnancy that needs to be terminated for her health or to save her life.

No, the perverse sonsofbitches and their Congressional co-conspirators have merely made it illegal for a doctor to treat properly and safely a patient whose pregnancy, taken so long to term that it is obviously a WANTED pregnancy, has become a danger to her.

To what end?

My dear friend shanikka, an attorney and thus far better equipped to translate the language of the Supreme Court decision (pdf), has this to say about it:

Some of the language in the majority opinion is fucking scary. The Scalia/Alito majority are not even trying to hide it: this is about upholding their neanderthal patriarchal views on not only the concept of pregnancy, but on what women are supposed to think and feel about their biological role as potential mothers period (count the number of times some variant of the phrase "a woman feels" or "women feel" appears in Kennedy's majority opinion if you really want to be scared) and the duty of the state to make sure that they are "protected" from those who might act based on feelings inconsistent with that biologically-defined role as joyous vessels of potential human life.


As if any of the five dick-swinging cosigners onto the majority opinion can ever say what women collectively feel. They haven't even pretended to be dispassionately applying law to the factual record below - indeed, as Ginsberg points out, they've largely ignored it and their own precedential language in Casey and Sternberg to boot. All because of what they admit early on is concern about the "morality" of it all.

I referred to it above, but in case anyone has any doubt as to what those 5 men on the Supreme Court have done, what medical procedure they have now outlawed, the fact that it is, in fact, an actual MEDICAL PROCEDURE, performed rarely and virtually ALWAYS when only absolutely necessary, here is a link to an essay I wrote about the procedure itself:

Abortion: Intact Dilation & Extraction

That is the procedure's true name, by the way; if anyone reading this doesn't already know this, that grotesque mockery of a nickname for it, "partial birth abortion" is a complete misnomer, an utter fabrication designed SOLELY to persuade the ignorant that the procedure is some barbaric act wherein a live baby is brought screaming into the world and killed before its mother's eyes. Complete horseshit; the vast majority of fetuses terminated by intact dilation and extraction are so lacking inviability that breathing, let alone screaming, is an impossibility. But don't take my word for it: PLEASE, do the reading, do the research yourtself, instead of taking the word of the lying liars whose sole aim seems to be to cast us all back to the days of back-alley abortions and punishing women for having sex -- or, put more simply, for being born female.

Make no mistake... if they have their way, that is what will happen. And then, then we will be seeing a lot more of this:

Simone's Midnight Art Project: Cool or Creepy?

When I first moved into my house, and at Remarkable Simone's request, I did a quick sketch of her on the white coated cardboard insert from a new set of bed sheets.

It hung around in Simone's room for about four years, she never wanted to get rid of it (God only knows why, I am no Rembrandt).

A day or so ago, around midnight she pulled out her crayons and much to my surprise, colored the sketch. She wouldn't go back to bed until she finished it.

The result is shown here, but my lousy photo does not really do it justice.

Simone's art is actually --- well, remarkable. Her use of vibrant and untraditional color is lovely. And primitive.

I guess the only thing that I can't quite figure out is why she didn't color in her eyes. It gives the art a very odd quality. I can't quite decide if its cool or creepy. Not that it really matters, I am so taken with this that I am going to have it framed.

--Shella

UPDATE: Mr. Fix-It cleaned-up Simone's art. How's this?

Molly: "They Don't Know About Love"

I found this on YouTube. It is sweet and moving to me. It reminds me that the need to express one's creativity is beautiful. The simplicity and transparency speaks to me.

Watch This Clip!!!

This is the kind of passion I want to see. Ted Kennedy, I've been disappointed in you in the past, but goddammit you've redeemed yourself with this righteous rant.

Click This Link: And Watch the entire thing, please.

(link fixed, sorry!)

--Shella

In Vogue: Disapproval of George W. Bush

It's quite in vogue right now to hate George W. Bush. And I find it somewhat disturbing.

It's like all the Johnny-Come-Lately's are tainting the long term legitimate concerns many Americans have had about George W. Bush, his competence, and his administration. It's been evident to some of us from day one.

Everyone is now (finally) against the war in Iraq, and recognizing the lies that were told to get us into it. That's the sole basis for many American's disapproval of the President and his administration.

However, I have been watching this president since he took office, I and others have been tracking his harmful actions, and so this post will be dedicated to informing readers and showing the reasons -- other than Iraq -- that the President and his Administration are worthy of your disapproval.

The following table documents the actions of Bush during the first four months of his "reign" - and prior to September 11, 2001. It's what alerted some of us early that he would be a disaster of a President.

1-22-2001: CNN
Bush defunds international organizations that provide abortions or abortion counseling to poor women. Organizations that provide healthcare to the third world will no longer be allowed to offer abortions or even counseling about options that include abortion if they want to continue to receive federal funding. Either they forego the funding, which could mean they'd have to shut down, or they comply with this directive, which adds to population problems and subjects women to the morality of conservative Americans. Back-alley abortions will likely result in death for many women.

2-7-2001: CNN
Bush almost closes White House AIDS and race offices. In what will become a pattern for the Bush administration, Chief of Staff Andy Card announces that White House will close its offices on AIDS and race relations. After a brief but virulent media firestorm, the administration backtracks, claiming that the person responsible for running the White House "wasn't aware" that the offices were remaining open.

3-3-2001: Washington Post
Bush lies about his tax cut. Contrary to Democratic reports that more than 40 percent of his tax cut goes to the richest 1 percent of Americans, Bush says that only 22 percent will go to them. But his analysis, Bush leaves out the estate tax cut and the last bits of income tax rate reductions--all of which go to the rich. He just picks and chooses the portions he likes in order to come up with the number he wants--and it's still too high.

3-9-2001: CNN
Bush postures over North Korea. Secretary of State Colin Powell announces that he'd like to continue the diplomatic progress the Clinton administration has made with North Korea. A day later, Bush contradicts his chief diplomat, saying he doesn't trust North Korea to honor their agreements. When a reporter later points out that America has only one agreement with North Korea--which the country has honored--the administration's press flacks explain this by saying that referring to the future in the present tense is just the way the president talks. Meanwhile, the world sits in wonder over our Bush's huge diplomatic step backward.

3-13-2001: CNN
Bush reverses stance on CO2 emissions. Despite a campaign pledge to the contrary, Bush decides he won't tell American factories to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, one of the leading causes of the greenhouse effect. He says the energy crisis requires him to delay action in this area, but does nothing to curb U.S. consumption, which would reduce pollution and alleviate the energy crisis.

3-20-2001: CNN
Bush signs ergonomics repeal. Bush signs a bill that repeals Clinton administration rules designed to protect Americans from ergonomic injuries. The rules, 10 years of study by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in the making, are opposed by Bush's friends in the business world, who fear the cost. Of course the long-term cost of dealing with injured workers is much higher.

3-20-2001: CNN
Bush keeps the arsenic levels in drinking water high. Bush delays Clinton administration rules that would have lowered the maximum allowable level of arsenic in drinking water. The standard has remained unchanged since 1942. Who benefits from the higher levels?. The mining companies and other industrial interests that would have to pay more to avoid polluting the water supply. These interests donated generously to Bush's campaign. Anyone surprised?

3-22-2001: CNN
Bush ends ABA's role in selecting federal judges. For 50 years, the American Bar Association has advised the White House on the qualifications of potential nominees for the federal bench. Ever since it gave Reagan Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork a mixed (but mostly positive) review, conservatives have been gunning for the ABA, claiming that the organization has a liberal bias. Bush has given into their demands and seems poised to replace the ABA's advice with that of the Federalist Society, a group of lawyers that makes no bones about its ultraconservative biases.

3-23-2001: Salon.com
Bush cuts programs for children in his budget. Showing the compassionate side of his conservatism, Bush reduces spending on programs that deal with child abuse, preschool education, and training for pediatricians.

3-29-2001: CNN
Bush pulls out of the Kyoto treaty. Prompting an outcry from the international community, Bush says that the United States won't support the Kyoto treaty to reduce global warming because it would hurt the American economy and doesn't hold third-world countries responsible for their pollution. Bush sees no irony in being concerned about the effects of pollution reduction on the world's strongest economy while caring not a whit about the most fragile economies.

3-30-2001 : Washington Post
Bush cuts police budget. One of the reasons for the sharp reductions in crime during the Clinton administration was the increase in community police. Now Bush wants to cut those cops out of the budget to pay for increased security in our schools because, after all, shootings in schools get more media coverage than shootings on the street.

3-30-2001 : Washington Post
Bush makes it easier for criminals to get federal contracts. Our law-and-order conservative president doesn't want to throw the people who run corporations that break worker safety and environmental laws in jail. Bush would rather they get federal contracts, so he suspends Clinton administration rules making it more difficult for companies that broke the law to bid on lucrative federal contracts. Why isn't this simply illegal?

3-31-2001 : Women's Enews
Bush closes White House Office for Women's Initiatives and Outreach. A common campaign theme for Bush was "W Stands for Women." This catchy slogan made it onto thousands of posters, but the message never got through to Bush. One of his first acts as president is to close the White House Office for Women's Initiatives and Outreach, created by President Clinton to give women's groups a greater role in public policy.

4-4-2001 : New York Times
Bush cuts health programs for uninsured. The budget plan Bush sent to Congress includes deep cuts in programs championed by the Clinton administration. The cuts will make it more difficult to provide training to doctors and nurses who want to provide services in underserved areas. The programs he's cutting have also increased the number of minorities in healthcare jobs.

4-4-2001 : USA Today
Bush declares open season on the national parks. Soon visitors to our now-peaceful national parks will be greeted with a dramatic new site: oil and natural gas drills. While I'm not an expert in such manners, it's impossible to imagine a national park remaining unchanged after an oil drilling team gets through with it. National parks are supposed to be preserves, not oil fields, and Bush's insistence on solving energy problems by finding more fuel instead of reducing consumption is doubly bad for the environment.

4-6-2001 : San Francisco Chronicle
Bush removes protections for marine wildlife. Every environmental policy has its opponent in the world of business, and marine wildlife protection zones are no exception. Commercial fishermen resent the zones because it limits the areas that they can catch fish. Given the choice between a U.S. business interest and saving a few hundred species of fish, mammal, and plant, President Bush unsurprisingly looks poised to choose the former.

4-12-2001 : Washington Post
Bush delays release of a report linking dioxin consumption to cancer. While some of us would like the government to keep us fully informed on public health issues, the Bush administration and congressional Republicans are doing the bidding of the chemical and agribusiness industries and delaying a report on that links dioxins--one of which was the active ingredient in Agent Orange--to cancer. The EPA has studied and restudied this issue for years, but it has never released a final report because of industry pressure. Now that Bush is running the EPA, cattlemen and chemical companies aren't worried at all about these results affecting administration policy.

4-12-2001 : Washington Post
Bush tries to cut birth control coverage for federal workers. In what can only be described as an attempt to impose his religious beliefs on all federal workers, Bush is trying to remove birth control coverage from all federal insurance plans. He is, in effect, trying to make sure that women who choose to work for the government--single or married--don't make their own decisions about whether or not they want to have a baby. It's an unprecedented attack on women's freedom to make their own reproductive choices, one that has nothing to do with abortion.

4-12-2001 : Washington Post
Bush makes it harder to put species on the endangered list. The vast majority of animals and plants on the endangered species list get there because of lawsuits. Someone (usually an environmental group) sues a government entity or private company to prevent encroachment on a species' habitat, and a court order places the species on the endangered list. Now Bush wants to take that power out of the courts' hands and give it to Gale Norton--a woman who once wrote that the Endangered Species Act was unconstitutional.

4-13-2001 : CNN
Bush donates cash to the gay-bashing Boy Scouts. Making money off campaign autobiographies is a no-no for politicians. So Bush made sure to find an appropriate charity to donate the proceeds from his ghost-written A Charge to Keep. He split the money evenly among the Boys and Girls Clubs (although the $25,000 they got doesn't do much to make up for the $60 million he cut out of the budget--see item for 14 April above), the Girl Scouts, and the Boy Scouts, which regularly kicks out its members for being gay. It's always nice to know that our leader has no qualms about supporting an organization that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation.

4-13-2001 : Washington Post
Bush relaxes standards on appliance energy efficiency. Faced with an energy crisis, the Bush administration has consistently chosen to plunder the land for more oil rather than try to conserve energy--the better for his cronies in the energy business. Pleasing one more sector of the corporate world--appliance manufacturers--Bush decides to relax Clinton administration rules requiring air conditioners to be more energy efficient.

4-14-2001 : Salon.com
Bush cuts funding to programs he's used as photo ops. The president visits an Atlanta area children's hospital. His wife goes to a library to kick off "The Campaign for America's Libraries." He visits a Boys and Girls Club six times since he started campaigning, always making sure there are plenty of photographers around. But the budget Bush sends to Congress cuts training programs for pediatricians, federal funding for libraries, and money that goes to the Boys and Girls Clubs. Just like in the campaign, where he took credit for Texas laws he had fought, Bush has no problems appearing to support the things he doesn't, as long as it looks good for the voters.

4-17-2001 : USA Today
Bush auctions the rights to offshore Florida oil drilling. The president is a states' rights conservative who often during the campaign refused to tackle difficult questions (such as the one about the Confederate flag flying over the South Carolina statehouse) by saying that issues should be decided by the people of an individual state. But Bush doesn't stick to his principles if it stands in the way of his oil buddies making some cash. Against the wishes of the people of Florida and the state's Republican governor--Bush's brother Jeb--the administration has decided to auction the rights to offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. This is the first time we've seen someone say "fuck you" to the environment, states' rights, and his own brother in one fell swoop.

Check out this comprehensive list of actions and links for more information.

For Posterity's Sake: Madame Speaker Presiding Over Her First SOTU Address

Congrat-ulations, Nancy. It's about damn time.

--Shella

"It is the fundamental principle and unalterable law of this Nation that public servants, agencies, and governmental bodies exist to aid in the conduct of the people’s business. It is critical and central to the Constitution of the United States that the people’s business be conducted openly so that the public may remain informed.

“The people find and declare that it is the intent of law that the actions of public servants – whether appointed or elected – agencies, and governmental bodies be undertaken openly and their deliberations be conducted openly.

“The people of this county do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies or officials that serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know.

“The people insist on remaining informed and with access to all manner of information so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.”

--By: Shella

I think I Still Mourn For Italy...

As you know, my daughter has disabilities. Something happened recently (I don't know yet if I'll post about it) that made we spend some time considering if I've fully come to accept what this means, and whether or not I still have grief about it.

WELCOME TO HOLLAND
by Emily Perl Kingsley


I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy.

You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy." But there's been a change in the flight plan.

You've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there.

And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

Shella's Sick: Sniffle, Cough, Wheeze, Sneeze, Wipe

Remember how I told you that Remarkable Simone was sick?

Remember how I said that I was hoping to escape without getting sick as well?

Remember how I stayed home from work, cleaning and disinfecting every surface and object known to man that she could have possibly touched?

Well, it didn't work. I am officially down for the count.

I just wanted to let you know in case you're expecting a decent post from me. I'll knock your socks off when I get better.

Carry on.

An Unusual New Years Resolution... Crazy or What?

Considering that former President Gerald Ford has passed away and I should probably be blogging something profound about it, the following could be construed as... well... trivial.

However, if you are a woman (or know a woman) who is all wrapped up in her hair (and I do not mean Lady Godiva or Rapunzel), gives a shit about how she looks, and has contemplated what hair represents about self-image, sexuality, society, convention, etc. - you'll know that this topic is not trivial by a long shot.

The new year is almost here. I've been thinking quite a lot about what I'd like to accomplish. For most of my adult life I did not bother making new years resolutions. Why? I don't know.

But now, I am experimenting with ways that I can use the new year's resolution process to my advantage. To do things I should be doing otherwise but have been to.... lazy or preoccupied to get a handle on.

I've written this great long list of resolutions - 10 in all - that run the gammut of exercising frequently again to well... never mind. From what I understand, most people only make one big resolution. However, if you knew me you'd know that one is rarely enough.

I've gotten creative in my resolution-making. The craziest resolution involves my hair. And it's a year-long project.

You can see my picture below. I look normal, no crazy hair style or color. Unfortunately, that's always been the case for me and it's really starting to bug me. I've just started getting grey hairs, and I unless I take drastic action, I may be the only woman in the world who goes from cradle to grave never having done something extreme with her hair. And I can't have that.

So, my crazy hair resolution is this: Spend one year doing wacky hair experimentation.

Below is what I envision:

1. I will find a color specialist to make me a redhead! Woo hoo! I will let my personality be fiery! (I've never been compelled by red hair so I reserve the right to skip straight to #2 - I just picked red as the first step since it's "on the way" to blond.)

2. Then I will go blond. I want my hair to look like my parents are swedish, or finnish, or danish, or icelandic, or norweigan, or.... okay, let's just say scandinavian. I should then be able to speak with some authority about whether blonds actually do have more fun.

3. After that, I am quite sure my abused locks will be completely ruined, straw-like and maybe even breaking off in clumps, so I will begin cut my hair into a series of progressively shorter hair styles. I imagine that with shorter hair, I will be able to finally begin using potentially fun hair products - like pomades, hair glues, straighteners, gels, mousse, spritzers, sprayers, lotions, creams, foams, etc.

4. As I go shorter I will experiment with extreme color. I'll start out with hot pink and when that washes out I will dye my hair candy apple red, then purple, then electric blue, then raven black. You know the colors I am talking about - you've seen them in the comics. (check out this website I found if you're wondering what the hell I am talking about: CrazyHair)

5. Also, I'll be free to try two-tone dyed hair.

6. Finally, after I have done every crazy hair experiment I have ever heard of, I will cut my hair into a pixie cut, removing all the dead hair and color and allow my natural hair (and grey) to re-emerge and get long again.

On the one year anniversary of this blog I will be able to say that I was once a blond, redhead, blackhead, pinkhead, bluehead, purplehead, etc. I think that's pretty cool, and who knows? Perhaps I will find a new self-identity along the way. I might just LOVE being a purplehead. (it could happen - let's just hope I don't end up looking too freakish)

At dinner last night my son Nicholas mentioned that crazy hair might negatively impact my professional life. Business in other words. I will be considering his concerns and will make a final decision about my year-long crazy hair experiment resolution some time soon. Rest assured that should I decide to do this thing I will generate photographic proof blog about it.

I realize this is a very unusual new years resolution - but is it crazy or what? And, do you think that it will negatively impact my credibility and/or business?

--Shella

Okay, okay, I'll give this thing a try!

Hello everyone:

This is me, and I've decided to give this blogging thing a try. It feels risky, so naturally I wanted to really go out on a limb and share the good, the bad and the ugly. Hence the title, "Shella Uncut".

I will post on a variety of topics. You'll get politics, state and federal budget stuff, disability-related posts, affordable housing information, and since I am a gadget geek, you get a lot of that also. Be prepared to read posts that reflect my raw, gut reaction. Some of will be politically incorrect. I will probably curse relatively frequently.

I also read some amazing blogs, and I hope to share some of that with you as well -- both by quote and by link.

In the blog set up, I've allowed anyone to post comments on this blog with me moderating it. I sincerely hope my skin is thick enough. I reserve the right to change this setting if it proves to have been ill-considered.

I have some interesting friends and I hope to get them to contribute and post as well. We'll see how it goes.

I have a lot to share, so I expect after a time you'll see a ton of links on the side bar.

I think that I am about done with my first blog post folks, so let's get this party started!

--Shella