Romney's new housing policy: Offering the Grim Reaper a big helping hand

The other day I went to visit an old friend of mine who I hadn't seen in years -- but now she was dying, truly dying. It was a very sobering experience. Who would have thought that this formerly enthusiastic, vibrant and energetic woman would now be reduced an almost-human shell, a mere skeleton that breathed?

But the Grim Reaper eventually comes for us all. Except, of course, for me.

Having never known a world that existed without me in it, I find it hard to comprehend that such a world might someday exist. It's hard for me to believe that someday even I too will be dead. And so I will probably live forever -- but the rest of you won't.

However, don't despair just yet. Currently, large numbers of doctors and scientists all over the world are working their butts off to make sure that you too will have lives that extend far beyond today's actuary tables. But on the other hand, so many corporate-owned politicians in Washington these days are also happily working their little hearts out to make sure that you don't.

So many corporate-owned politicians in Washington these days seem to be going out of their way to work side by side with the Grim Reaper. They declare unnecessary wars. They tax us (not themselves) right down to the bone. They steal all our safety nets in order to have more money to add to THEIR safety nets. They bust our unions, steal our pension plans, enable Wall Street to invent pyramid schemes that ruin our economy, encourage big health insurance companies to cut us loose just when we need them the most, and allow Monsanto to poison our food, mutilate our seed stock and kill off our bees http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/13459.

In America, death seems to be coming earlier and earlier to those who vote.

And now GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has come up with an even more sure-fire plan to help out his new BFF, the Grim Reaper. Now Romney wants to not only eliminate most U.S. housing subsidies, he wants to eliminate the entire department of Housing and Urban Renewal as well. That will certainly speed up the Grim Reaper's efforts for sure.

According to Forbes magazine, "In a closed-door Florida fundraiser for donors tonight, Mitt Romney offered a rare glimpse into his policy plans if elected President. And, as NBC reports, he got quite trigger-happy." http://www.forbes.com/sites/markbergen/2012/04/15/mitt-romney-says-he-may-ditch-hud/

According to TruthOut, "Romney’s plan to eliminate HUD, assuming he didn’t shuffle its programs to other departments, would bring an end to critical programs like Section 8 housing vouchers and community development block grants. And eliminating housing assistance is even more problematic given the disproportionate percentage of veterans in the homeless population." http://truth-out.org/news/item/8580-mitt-romney-tells-rich-donors-his-secret-plan-to-cut-housing-assistance

But what does Romney's latest brilliant idea actually mean in terms of you and me? It means once again that the rich continue to get richer and live longer while the rest of us just conveniently die off too soon -- because homeless people have a lot shorter life span than folks happily housed in the Hamptons.

You know that senior housing complex in your town where seniors now get a rent break courtesy of HUD? That will be gone. And without HUD, frail and ailing seniors will soon be wandering the streets of your town, dying in alleyways and hogging up all the space in your cemeteries.

You know those low-income "housing projects" on the other side of your town where all the poor people now live? Those will be gone too. Too bad for them. And now desperate poor folks will be wandering around in your part of town, homeless too. And did I already mention that they will be desperate?

And all those homeless vets? There will be a lot more of them now -- also wandering around your city or town.

Remember back in the 1970s when Reagan shut down all those mental institutions and suddenly we had all sorts of crazy people wandering around, hopefully taking their meds but probably not? And if Romney's latest hot new scheme takes hold, even more of them will be back on your streets.

And physically handicapped people will have no place to live either. They too will be wandering around, trying to elude the Grim Reaper.

And the number of homeless children will dramatically increase. A lot more little kids will be living in cars -- if they're lucky.

And all of these homeless people, millions of them, will be pouring into the streets of your city or town, herded in your direction by both corporate-owned politicians in Washington and the Grim Reaper himself -- who also will have a sharp eye out for YOU.

Currently, about the only thing that stands between what America looked like back during the 1930s Great Depression and what America looks like now is the department of Housing and Urban Renewal. HUD.

When we taxpayers give our money to HUD, what we are basically buying is window dressing, the illusion that America is still prosperous, still offers possibilities of advancement to its citizens and is still a First World country. Without HUD's Section 8 vouchers and other forms of help with housing needs, that curtain of illusion will be pulled back and those rose-colored glasses will be unceremoniously jerked off. And America's current dysfunctions will be seen clearly by all. And the Grim Reaper will be set free to wander our streets at will.

But Romney and his friends will never have to worry about the Grim Reaper coming into their homes. Why should they worry -- when the G.R. will find it so much easier to come into ours. If we still have homes, that is.

PS: I truly do not understand why Americans seem so fearful of far-away "terrorists" and are so willing to spend trillions of dollars to protect themselves from this rather small threat -- but won't spend hardly a nickel to protect themselves from the corporatista politicians in Washington who are an infinitely larger threat to our lives.

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Advertizements for myself: In these hard times of brutal (and illegal) corporatist ball-busting socialism-for-the-rich-only, I am doing whatever I can to make a spare dollar. Here are some of my current alternate-economy schemes that never seem to work -- but I keep hoping!

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Need an actor to play an older woman in your movie? Then I'm your man! I can portray all kinds of older women -- from judges, business execs and other insane zombies to bag ladies, cancer patients, kindly grandmothers and dying patients in rest homes. I've played them all. So send me a script and let's do this. Hollywood, here we come!

****
Are you a plaintiffs' attorney who is tired of writing those pesky personal injury settlement briefs all the time? No problem! I can write them for you. Years of experience. And pay me only if you win the case.

****

I recently got my Notary Public commission!

Need a Notary Public? Have seal, will travel. E-mail me at jpstillwater@yahoo.com and I'll stamp your document, make it official and only charge $10. Of course if you live outside of Berkeley, I may have to charge travel expenses -- but am well worth it!

****

Want something good to read? Buy my book! "Bring Your Own Flak Jacket: Helpful Tips for Touring Today's Middle East," available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. http://www.amazon.com/Bring-Your-Own-Flak-Jacket/dp/0978615719/ref=cm_pdp_rev_itm_title_1. It's like if Jack Kerouac, Mark Twain and/or Janet Evanovich went to war.

I also wrote a book about going on Hajj (also included as a chapter in "Bring Your Own Flak Jacket," but this book is cheaper -- but it's worth buying them both!) My book on the Hajj is so outstanding that I bet even Christian fundamentalists will love it! Please buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Mecca-Hajj-Lessons-Islamic-School/dp/0978615700/ref=cm_rdp_product

****

"Imagine a world where EVERY child is wanted, nurtured, protected and loved: World peace in one generation!" You can now buy T-shirts, coffee mugs, tote bags, truckers' caps, baby gear and/or teddy bears with this logo printed on them. They make great gifts, especially for parents and teachers. To purchase, just click here: http://www.cafepress.com/StillTWaters



"Life is a competition. The winners are the ones who do the most good deeds." You can also buy T-shirts, coffee mugs, tote bags, truckers' caps, baby gear and/or teddy bears with this logo printed on them. They make great gifts, especially for those of us who are still idealists in these troubled times. To purchase, just click here: http://www.cafepress.com/StillTWaters

U.S. Supreme Court: A great example of Shariah Law

Currently many Americans hold a rather low opinion of Shariah Law, a system of jurisprudence used in Muslim countries that appears to be rather harsh, especially with regard to the rights of women and the common man. However, this all-encompassing system of laws is not, as many have assumed, based on the teachings of the Qur'an but, according to Islamic scholar Ziauddin Sardar, was conceived, developed and established by the powerful Abbasid Caliphate (749-1258) in order to help caliphs run their empire -- which at that time stretched from India to Spain.

As I understand it, the Abbasid caliphs of that time became more and more concerned with consolidating their hold over the vast territories under their control and with subduing their opposition -- and less and less concerned with the niceties of religion. With this new imperial goal in mind, Abbasid top dogs and their jurists began inventing laws mainly designed to make the accumulation of wealth and seizure of power easier for themselves and harder for anyone else.

The Qur'an's emphasis on community and justice for the common man (and woman) was thus set aside and replaced with more Draconian laws geared to subdue the main population, women, the working class and minorities in favor of the Abbasid Caliphate's top one percent.

Sound familiar?

And now, as the American empire continues to expand under the leadership of its own modern caliphate, jurists in Washington are once again developing Shariah Law -- a system of laws basically designed to strengthen the top dogs and to subdue the rest of us.

And just like the Abbasid powers-that-be pretty much ignored the Qur'an when developing Shariah, so the U.S. Supreme Court seems to be pretty much ignoring the Constitution in order to develop their own brand of Shariah Law.

While the Qur'an speaks idealistically about all people working together for justice and for the good of the community, Shariah Law was originally designed as a power-grab and a war on the working class, women and anyone else who tried to rise above their station.

And although many Shariah laws do appear just and fair, we must always remember the basic reason why Shariah Law was invented: To maintain and control an expanding empire and to benefit the caliphs.

Likewise, the purpose of many current Supreme Court decisions -- from the illegal appointment of George W. Bush to Citizens United and beyond -- appears to be the same one that drove those men in black robes over 1,200 years ago: To seize and maintain the power of the few over the many.

Both the Constitution and the Qu'ran were originally intended to set men's souls free -- not to enslave them.

PS: At the Berkeley-Albany Bar Association luncheon the other day, our guest speaker told us about some of the decisions made by the U.S. Supreme Court over the past year. Some of these decisions were actually quite fair and good, but many of them only seemed designed to allow the new American Caliphate to consolidate its power more quickly.

For instance, there's the Supreme Court's recent strip-search law validation wherein anyone taken into custody, no matter what their alleged crime was, can expect to be strip-searched automatically. Ugh. And apparently "Expectations of Privacy" is a thing of the past as well, to be replaced by Judge Scalia's favorite "Tresspass to Chattels," whatever that is. And you used to either have to get a warrant or show probable cause in order to search premises -- but not any more.

And with regard to voter-redistricting in Texas, the Supremes didn't want to get into that one at all. "That's a states' rights issue," they earnestly declared, a really big turn-around from when the high court chose to overrule states' voting rights in 2000 and foist GWB off on us.

But we still have a right to petition our government. However, we now apparently no longer have the right to get an answer from it. And now it's gonna be much harder to mount a class-action lawsuit against a corporation too -- especially one against WalMart!

PPS: Speaking of Shariah Law justice here in America, according to an article by Chris Hedges ironically entitled, "First they came for the Muslims," Muslim-Americans are now being falsely persecuted by the U.S. judicial system right and left http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/257-justice/10978-focus-first-they-come-for-the-muslims

According to Hedges, “[Attorney Stephen Downing stated that], 'I was unprepared for the fact that the government would put together a case that was just one lie piled up on top of another lie.... And when you pointed it out to them they didn’t care. They didn’t refute it. They knew that it was a lie. The facts of most of these pre-emptive cases don’t support the charges. But the facts are irrelevant. The government has decided to target these people. It wants to take them down for ideological reasons.'” Reasons like keeping the American Caliphate up and running? Yeah.

PPPS: If you want to understand some of the higher goals and wisdom of Islam, I highly recommend Ziauddin Sardar's enlightening (and very entertaining) book, "Desperately Seeking Paradise" http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/desperately-seeking-paradise-by-ziauddin-sardar-6167246.html.

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Advertizements for myself: In these hard times of brutal (and illegal) corporatist ball-busting socialism-for-the-rich-only, I am doing whatever I can to make a spare dollar. Here are some of my current alternate-economy schemes that never seem to work -- but I keep hoping!

****
Please vote for me to win a scholarship to the 2012 Netroots Nation convention in Providence, Rhode Island in June. Please vote here: http://www.democracyforamerica.com/netroots_nation_scholarships/1444-jane-stillwater

****

Need an actor to play an older woman in your movie? Then I'm your man! I can portray all kinds of older women -- from judges, business execs and other insane zombies to bag ladies, cancer patients, kindly grandmothers and dying patients in rest homes. I've played them all. So send me a script and let's do this. Hollywood, here we come!

****
Are you a plaintiffs' attorney who is tired of writing those pesky personal injury settlement briefs all the time? No problem! I can write them for you. Years of experience. And pay me only if you win the case.

****

I recently got my Notary Public commission!

Need a Notary Public? Have seal, will travel. E-mail me at jpstillwater@yahoo.com and I'll stamp your document, make it official and only charge $10. Of course if you live outside of Berkeley, I may have to charge travel expenses -- but am well worth it!

****

Want something good to read? Buy my book! "Bring Your Own Flak Jacket: Helpful Tips for Touring Today's Middle East," available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. http://www.amazon.com/Bring-Your-Own-Flak-Jacket/dp/0978615719/ref=cm_pdp_rev_itm_title_1. It's like if Jack Kerouac, Mark Twain and/or Janet Evanovich went to war.

I also wrote a book about going on Hajj (also included as a chapter in "Bring Your Own Flak Jacket," but this book is cheaper -- but it's worth buying them both!) My book on the Hajj is so outstanding that I bet even Christian fundamentalists will love it! Please buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Mecca-Hajj-Lessons-Islamic-School/dp/0978615700/ref=cm_rdp_product

****

"Imagine a world where EVERY child is wanted, nurtured, protected and loved: World peace in one generation!" You can now buy T-shirts, coffee mugs, tote bags, truckers' caps, baby gear and/or teddy bears with this logo printed on them. They make great gifts, especially for parents and teachers. To purchase, just click here: http://www.cafepress.com/StillTWaters



"Life is a competition. The winners are the ones who do the most good deeds." You can also buy T-shirts, coffee mugs, tote bags, truckers' caps, baby gear and/or teddy bears with this logo printed on them. They make great gifts, especially for those of us who are still idealists in these troubled times. To purchase, just click here: http://www.cafepress.com/StillTWaters

Government entitlements: The Pentagon gets them but we don't?

It seems that all we ever hear coming out of Washington these days are statements such as, "The only way America can pay off its debts is to cut Social Security," always followed quickly by, "For our own good, we have to eliminate MediCare!"

And these vociferous demands for cuts to entitlements for America's senior citizens always come in tandem with heart-rending cries of "Single-payer healthcare is Socialism," and "Government must cut all pork from women's healthcare and the Veterans Administration," and "Unemployment benefits are government entitlements and government entitlements are WRONG!"

Cutting government entitlements to Americans appears to be the brave new order of the day in Washington DC right now.

Everyone in Congress and the White House and the Supreme Court seems to be obsessively intent on cutting back on all "Big Government" entitlements.

Except....

No one ever mentions cutting back on Pentagon entitlements. And the subject of entitlements for weapons manufacturers is never even brought up. Bank-bailout entitlements are sacred and can't be touched. The Federal Reserve is Big Government but no one in Washington is trying to drown the Fed in a bathtub. The filthy-rich are given entitlements in the form of huge tax breaks and concessions. the nuclear-waste-creation industry receives entitlements up the yazoo and Big Pharma, possibly the world's largest source of illegal drugs http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/13438, is supported by all kinds of government entitlements. And what about all the entitlements that agribusiness receives? And the so-called health insurance industry that never insures anyone's good health but their own?

They get their entitlements bigtime but we don't get ours? Where is the outrage in that?

And do we ever hear any hue and cry at all when oil companies receive government entitlements, subsidies and tax breaks? And what about Citizens United? How come they are entitled but we are not? What?

Are America's middle class, homeowners, children, college students and the working poor -- America's 99% -- all just supposed to sit down and shut up while they get no government entitlements or even any pitifully small bread-crumbs of benefits thrown their way like chicken-scratch? And then we're supposed to feel all ashamed and guilty that we even get these small handfuls of crumbs?

Apparently yes.

You and me are not allowed to band together, pool our tax money and provide ourselves with any kind of mutual benefits at all. That would be Socialism!

Yet mega-corporations, war-mongers, stock-market cheats and advocates of a police state can and do band together -- and are given buckets full and bank vaults full and wire transfers full of entitlement money like there was no tomorrow.

The Pentagon gets trillions of dollars in entitlements. Wall Street profiteers go to sleep at night on soft pillows filled with Socialism-for-the-wealthy entitlements provided to them by our tax money at work -- and by Draconian cuts to OUR entitlements.

Homeland Security, FEMA, the War on Drugs and all those huge corporate-run for-profit prisons also get big bucks -- even while our local police departments and fire departments have to sell tickets to strangers over the phone because their entitlements have been cut -- and our public schools have to hold bake sales to pay for their books.

Have I missed anything here? Have I left anything out? Any other examples of "entitlement" hypocrisy that you can think of offhand? I just bet that there are.

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Advertizements for myself: In these hard times of brutal (and illegal) corporatist ball-busting socialism-for-the-rich-only, I am doing whatever I can to make a spare dollar. Here are some of my current alternate-economy schemes that never seem to work -- but I keep hoping!

****
Please vote for me to win a scholarship to the 2012 Netroots Nation convention in Providence, Rhode Island in June. Please vote here: http://www.democracyforamerica.com/netroots_nation_scholarships/1444-jane-stillwater

****

Need an actor to play an older woman in your movie? Then I'm your man! I can portray all kinds of older women -- from judges, business execs and other insane zombies to bag ladies, cancer patients, kindly grandmothers and dying patients in rest homes. I've played them all. So send me a script and let's do this. Hollywood, here we come!

****
Are you a plaintiffs' attorney who is tired of writing those pesky personal injury settlement briefs all the time? No problem! I can write them for you. Years of experience. And pay me only if you win the case.

****

I recently got my Notary Public commission!

Need a Notary Public? Have seal, will travel. E-mail me at jpstillwater@yahoo.com and I'll stamp your document, make it official and only charge $10. Of course if you live outside of Berkeley, I may have to charge travel expenses -- but am well worth it!

****

Want something good to read? Buy my book! "Bring Your Own Flak Jacket: Helpful Tips for Touring Today's Middle East," available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. http://www.amazon.com/Bring-Your-Own-Flak-Jacket/dp/0978615719/ref=cm_pdp_rev_itm_title_1. It's like if Jack Kerouac, Mark Twain and/or Janet Evanovich went to war.

I also wrote a book about going on Hajj (also included as a chapter in "Bring Your Own Flak Jacket," but this book is cheaper -- but it's worth buying them both!) My book on the Hajj is so outstanding that I bet even Christian fundamentalists will love it! Please buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Mecca-Hajj-Lessons-Islamic-School/dp/0978615700/ref=cm_rdp_product

****

"Imagine a world where EVERY child is wanted, nurtured, protected and loved: World peace in one generation!" You can now buy T-shirts, coffee mugs, tote bags, truckers' caps, baby gear and/or teddy bears with this logo printed on them. They make great gifts, especially for parents and teachers. To purchase, just click here: http://www.cafepress.com/StillTWaters



"Life is a competition. The winners are the ones who do the most good deeds." You can also buy T-shirts, coffee mugs, tote bags, truckers' caps, baby gear and/or teddy bears with this logo printed on them. They make great gifts, especially for those of us who are still idealists in these troubled times. To purchase, just click here: http://www.cafepress.com/StillTWaters

Starving by accident: Are Americans actually eating real food?

I've been thinking a lot about food lately. No, scratch that. I'm ALWAYS thinking about food. So the other day I wandered over to eat at Picoso, a family-run Mexican restaurant in north Berkeley that makes the world's best guacamole. And while walking home past the world-famous Chez Panisse restaurant, I spotted a huge crowd of people standing around out in front.

"What's happening here?" I asked one of the people in line.

"Michael Pollan and Maira Kalman are doing a book-signing event -- and there is also free food." Well, one of the major creeds that I live by is, "Never turn down free food" -- so I bought a copy of Pollan's and Kalman's illustrated "Food Rules," had it signed by the authors, went on a tour of Chez Pannise's extensive stainless-steel kitchens and then sampled hors d'oeuvres that had been prepared using Pollan's 83 rules about food. http://www.berkeleyside.com/2011/11/02/michael-pollan-new-food-rules-but-no-need-to-be-neurotic/

And I also ran into Alice Waters herself. "I usually celebrate my birthdays at Chez Panisse," I told her, "because it gives me something to look forward to each year besides just getting old -- but this year my birthday falls on a Sunday and you guys will be closed. And it's my 70th birthday too! So what should I do?"

"Perhaps you could celebrate it here on either the day before or the day after?" Waters replied.

"Or you could try Aziza, a Moroccan restaurant over in San Francisco," added Pollan. Then other people recommended trying Camino, Dona Tomas, Pizzialol, Quince, Cotogna and Commis. But it just wouldn't be the same -- not going to Chez Panisse on my big Seven-Zero. So we worked out a compromise. I'd have my dinner celebration at Chez Panisse the night before, eat very slowly, and then celebrate turning 70 at the exact stroke of midnight -- even if it meant sitting out on the restaurant's front steps after they closed. Perfect.

PS: Here are some of Pollan's 83 really helpful food rules:

2. Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food [and nothing highly processed or containing unpronounceable chemicals either].

5. Avoid foods that have sugar or some form of sweetener listed in the top three ingredients.

11. Avoid foods that are advertized on television [this rule should also apply to restaurants too. Thank goodness Chez Panisse doesn't advertize on TV].

40. Make water [not soda] your beverage of choice. Do what animals do when they're thirsty.

42. "The whiter the bread the sooner you'll be dead."

45. Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.

56. Eat when you are hungry, not when you're bored.

82. Cook! Cooking just might be the single most important thing you can do for your dietary health.

Pollan then summarized his book in just seven words: "Eat [real] food, not too much, mostly plants."

Which brings me to the "main course" of this article: Why food is so important to us: WITHOUT FOOD WE WOULD STARVE. So bear that in mind the next time you read about how Monsanto or Archer Daniels Midland or Congress is screwing with our food supply again.

Christopher Cook, author of "Diet for a Dead Planet," states that, "It is no longer news that a few powerful corporations have literally occupied the vast majority of human sustenance. The situation is perilous.... This corporate occupation of our food isn't just unfair and wrong; it's impractical and destructive. It's ruining farmers, the land and our future food supply." http://www.democraticunderground.com/101616552

Yes, large for-profit-only corporations are endangering the food supply in places where people are barely subsisting and we're always seeing photos of starving babies from there. However, here in America these same corporations are highly endangering you and me as well. Why? Because Americans just THINK that they are eating real food -- when much of our food merely consists of the three Cs: Cardboard, chemicals and crap.

Americans may think that we are nourishing ourselves when we eat corporate junk-food but the reality is that all too many of us are dying young from heart disease or cancer or obesity or diabetes; that our thinking has become fuzzy due to lack of nutrients; and, even worse, we are always hungry even though we keep stuffing our faces with imitation "real" food.

A photo from Peter Wenzel's book, "Hungry Planet," shows a typical American family sitting around a kitchen table with all the food they will eat in a week -- and there's hardly even one real fruit or vegetable among all of that stuff! http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/state-of-the-arts/content_images/HungryPlanet-USA.jpg

PPS: For a month now, I've been eating by the food rules of Dr. Terry Wahls' famous "nine-cup" diet http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxIowaCity-Dr-Terry-Wahls-Min -- which consists of having every meal include one cup of colorful fruits or vegetables, one cup of deep greens and one cup of either cruciferous vegetables, onions, mushies, garlic and/or leeks. Eat nine cups of this stuff per day plus some salmon and grass-fed meat thrown in and see what happens.

"You get a long list of nutrients from [unprocessed] food that you don't get from any other source," stated Dr. Wahls, who cured herself of advanced MS on this diet. And, surprisingly, it appears to be making me feel healthier too -- plus I'm actually starting to cook. Me? A chef? Who would have thought.

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Advertizements for myself: In these hard times of brutal (and illegal) corporatist ball-busting socialism-for-the-rich-only, I am doing whatever I can to make a spare dollar. Here are some of my current alternate-economy schemes that never seem to work -- but I keep hoping!

****
Please vote for me to win a scholarship to the 2012 Netroots Nation convention in Providence, Rhode Island in June. Please vote here: http://www.democracyforamerica.com/netroots_nation_scholarships/1444-jane-stillwater

****
Need an actor to play an older woman in your movie? Then I'm your man! I can portray all kinds of older women -- from judges, business execs and other insane zombies to bag ladies, cancer patients, kindly grandmothers and dying patients in rest homes. I've played them all. So send me a script and let's do this. Hollywood, here we come!

****
Are you a plaintiffs' attorney who is tired of writing those pesky personal injury settlement briefs all the time? No problem! I can write them for you. Years of experience. And pay me only if you win the case.

****
Fortune Telling: If you scan a photocopy of the lifeline on the palm of your dominant hand, e-mail it to me at jpstillwater(at)yahoo.com with "Madame Jane" in the subject line, and then slip five dollars into my PayPal account, I can (and will) get Madame Jane to tell you approximately how long you are gonna live -- and also have her throw in some stuff about quality-of-life as well.

****

I recently got my Notary Public commission!

Need a Notary Public? Have seal, will travel. E-mail me at jpstillwater@yahoo.com and I'll stamp your document, make it official and only charge $10. Of course if you live outside of Berkeley, I may have to charge travel expenses -- but am well worth it!

****

Want something good to read? Buy my book! "Bring Your Own Flak Jacket: Helpful Tips for Touring Today's Middle East," available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. http://www.amazon.com/Bring-Your-Own-Flak-Jacket/dp/0978615719/ref=cm_pdp_rev_itm_title_1. It's like if Jack Kerouac, Mark Twain and/or Janet Evanovich went to war.

I also wrote a book about going on Hajj (also included as a chapter in "Bring Your Own Flak Jacket," but this book is cheaper -- but it's worth buying them both!) My book on the Hajj is so outstanding that I bet even Christian fundamentalists will love it! Please buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Mecca-Hajj-Lessons-Islamic-School/dp/0978615700/ref=cm_rdp_product

****

"Imagine a world where EVERY child is wanted, nurtured, protected and loved: World peace in one generation!" You can now buy T-shirts, coffee mugs, tote bags, truckers' caps, baby gear and/or teddy bears with this logo printed on them. They make great gifts, especially for parents and teachers. To purchase, just click here: http://www.cafepress.com/StillTWaters



"Life is a competition. The winners are the ones who do the most good deeds." You can also buy T-shirts, coffee mugs, tote bags, truckers' caps, baby gear and/or teddy bears with this logo printed on them. They make great gifts, especially for those of us who are still idealists in these troubled times. To purchase, just click here: http://www.cafepress.com/StillTWaters