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Archive for June, 2007

And Think of a Title for This While You’re At It

Posted by s.z. on June 28th, 2007

My resolution to recommence posting on a regular basis sadly fell along the wayside due to:

(a) An orange kitten who met with a mysterious injury to his leg (I’m guessing he either fell afoul of Tonya Harding, or got it stuck in the heat vent cover on the floor), requiring an emergency trip to the vet and a day spent in the waiting room and then later, watching him and worrying about him.  (He’s fine now.  Emergency vet visit, X-Rays, etc.: $113; peace of mind: priceless, more or less.)

(b) The quincentennial (if that is a word) family reunion, that brought in relatives from all over the western United States, plus some weird people who presumably just heard about the free food.  Admittedly, my invovlement in this event was minimal UNTIL my mother was hospitalized with a gall bladder attack, and I was left to entertain some of the more “quaint” relations.  (Mom is okay now too.)

(c) The cat population explosion.  The woman who is in charge of cat adoptions at our rescue has some serious health problems, and had to scale back her efforts, so I’ve been filling in by meeting people at Petsmart who want to give a home to one (or more) of our cats.  For the last week, I’ve been there almost every day (not to mention my four-hour shift on Saturday), because it’s kitten season, and many people are falling victim to the insidious cuteness of these little varmints.  Which is good, because it’s kitten season, and every day or so our group gets a litter from the pound that would otherwise be put to sleep.  Kittens: buy them where you work or bank.

Additionally, my walk-in closet in now an auxillary cat hospital (the bathroom still houses Beth, who is basically over her respiratory ailment, but who can’t compete with the cute kittens at Petsmart, so will need to stay here until the youngsters are adopted; while the spare bedroom is still home for Willow and her two SUPER adorable kittens, whom I renamed Fanta and Rusty because I couldn’t remember their other names when I was at the vet’s). 

My new guests are Unnamed Black-And-White Long Hair Female, the most pitiful cat you’ve ever seen; and her 2-3 week old kitten, Leaky (once his persistant diarreah clears up he can have a new name).  Leaky’s 2 littermates died yesterday, which was sad, but also a blessing, because they were the most pitiful-looking things anyone has ever seen.  Seriously, it hurt me to look at them.  I did try to offer supportive care to help them through whatever malady this family has contracted (a seperate and distinct, and apparently much more serious, ailment than the kitty bug which Cooper and Beth have been suffering from), but it wasn’t meant to be.  Good night, sweet kittens — may feline angels sing thee to thy repose. 

Anyway, I am hoping that at least the mother will survive (she is a very sweet, loving cat, but is just skin, bones, and matted hair — and fecal material).  The baby is a scrappy little thing, but kittens are fragile, so I think he has at best a 50/50 chance. The kitten cries every two hours or so, and I offer him some kitten formula in a dropper, and clean up his behind — and then change my clothes, which invariable get some runny, yellow poop on them.  I sure hope that my quarantine efforts are successful, because I don’t own enough clothes to keep going if any of the other cats get this. 

Oh, and hey, if you wake up and discover that you’re one of the wealthiest people in the world (and just can’t decide what to do with your additional millions and/or your new portion of the quarter of the world’s wealth that you and your compadres own), then consider donating a bag of dog food to the Four Paws Animal Rescue.  Iif you buy a bag for $9.99, Pedigree will match it, and your donation can thus feed one dog for two months, or 80 dogs for a day (which is about how many dogs are at our shelter right now).  Go here:
DogsruleGear: Product: ’22LB BAG DOG FOOD – DONATION’, put in Logan, Utah in the location block, and select “Four Paws” as the rescue (which is the only one in Logan, Utah, which makes it convenient), and then Pedigree will send a coupon to our rescue good for two bags of food.  (Or donate a bag to your local rescue or shelter — I’m sure they could use the help too).

But, hey, there have been good things happening this week too. 

1. Cooper got to go to his new home today, and he and his people (and me) were all delighted about it.  Middle-aged orange (neutered) tomcats with the sniffles who end in in the pound aren’t usually lucky enough to get adopted by adoring families.

2.  A really cool, smart, nice, kind person who has just written the script for next year’s mega-hit summer movie (which will probably not star ex-jailbird Paris Hilton), and who had to hear all the details about how my old computer tries to kill me every time I attempt to download photos from my crappy digital camera, gave me a new digital camera!  One made this century!  Watch out, Friday Cat Blogging, I have the technology now to rock your world!  Thanks, Scott — you are the best!

Oh, and this would probably be a good time to thank the nicest person in the world (I don’t want to embarras her by mentioning her name, but her initials are Anntichrist Coulter).  This lovely person sent me the most thoughtful and wonderful care packages while I was sick, and is basically just a great person whom I will buy an important federal position for once I am one of the world’s richest people.  (Additional note: I still love those origami cranes that D.Sidhe sent — they are so cool!).

Oh, and thanks to everyone else who sent emails and left nice and/or irrate comments while I was gone — your kindness has been noted, probably by both the NSA and the IRS.

So, that’s my life. 

Well, maybe you need to learn about this item from my local paper today to really get the flavor of it.  So, here goes:

WOMAN SAYS TRANSIT CENTER VIOLATED HER LIBERTIES

As she sat and waited for the 2:30 bus to pull into the Logan Transit Center last week, Laura Stevens said she noticed a mother struggling to rein in her six children.

“I felt sorry for he,” Stevens said.  Maybe she doesn’t know that she could get a patch and not have a kid for five years.  That was my thought.”

When she told her thoughts to the woman, transit officials removed Stevens from the premises and told her not to return.

Yes, just because she tried to help a harried mother, the 76-year-old Stevens was banned from using public transportation, her only way to get around.  What a world, what a world!

Well, true, she’s been “making comments to some of the Hispanic passengers that they should be on the pill, that they’re taking over society,” claims the Transit District’s general manager, who believes that “the passengers have a right to ride and not be intimidated. (The story says that Stevens has been booted from the bus on multiple occasions over the last six months, presumably for harassing other passengers.)  But Steven feels her Constitutional rights have been violated. 

“If I can’t make one comment to someone, no one should.  I think it’s wrong.  It’s a violation of my First Amendment Rights.”

So, what say you?  Should Hispanic passengers be allowed to enjoy public transportation without being confronted by a kook who tells them they should refrain from breeding?  Or, does the bus system not have the right to ban an old lady from city-owned, tax-payer funded transportation because of her comments?  YOU make the call.

As for me, I have some runny poop to clean up in the closet.

Dennis Prager Sez: Tell Those Sabine Bitches To STFU

Posted by scott on June 26th, 2007

Dennis Prager brings some much needed perspective and cool, sober, common sense to the bruhaha surrounding the Duke Lacrosse case in his new Townhall offering, “The Rape of a Name is Also Rape.” 

The rape of a name can be as vicious a crime and as destructive an act as the rape of a body.  Sometimes the rape of a body is worse, sometimes the rape of a name is worse.

Yes, nothing is sadder than a name huddled on a gurney in the ER with a black eye, a broken collarbone, and severe vaginal tearing.  A body, on the other hand, pretty much deserves what it gets for wearing provocative clothes and being corporeal.

But they are both rapes. And morally likening the two is in no way meant to lessen the horror of rape; it is meant only to heighten awareness of the horror of intentionally destroying the name of an innocent person.

The fact that Dennis is using what rhetoriticians call the Mounds-Almond Joy Dichotomy (Sometimes you feel like a nut.  Sometimes you don’t.) to draw a parallel between rape and defamation in no way undermines the ethical majesty of his argument.

These words are written in the aftermath of the destruction of three young men’s names by a lying woman whose name is still hidden by The New York Times and other major newspapers whose commitment to truth is not as strong as their commitment to political correctness.

Their names having been destroyed, the three young men must now go through life being known by whatever cast-off, second-hand monikers they can scrounge.  At press time, the victims were calling themselves “Bachelor Number 1,” “Joe Doakes,” and “Miss Thing.”  Victims of “body-rape,” however, don’t have their bodies destroyed, so they can just, in the immortal words of my old baseball coach, “walk it off.”

Upon first hearing a comparison of name-rape to body-rape, most people are likely to recoil. But upon reflection, it becomes clear that the two are morally comparable. In fact, I have had women listeners to my radio show call and e-mail me to say that they have been raped — one woman had been gang raped — and felt they were better able to go on with their lives than men they loved who had been falsely accused of rape or molestation.

Wait, he has listeners who have not only been raped, but have also had their husbands, fathers and boyfriends falsely accused of rape?  Listeners, plural?  Wow.  I would never accuse Dennis of stitching together a hamperful of sock puppets to support his morally dubious fantasias, but I would suggest that some of his fans are a bit overscheduled.

If you are a woman and this seems far-fetched, imagine that a man you love — such as your father, brother, husband or son — were publicly accused of a rape he had not committed. Imagine the pain he and your family would endure. Why is that pain not comparable to the pain suffered by at least some women who are raped?

Because no matter how brutally you’re being raped, eventually the guy’s gonna blow his load and zip up.  But what about your imaginary male relation who’s being roasted in the tabloids?  Makes you feel a little silly, doesn’t it, still moaning and groaning about your concussion, fractured wrist, and hepatitis C?

To this day, a decent human being named Clarence Thomas, who has become a major Supreme Court thinker, is identified by his political enemies with sexual harassment (of the most innocuous variety, even if true) and of having looked at pornography (along with the majority of other decent men in America), as if those charges define his life.

And all he got out of that ordeal was a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court.  Imagine what the first President Bush would have offered Thomas if he’d let the Secret Service sodomize him with a broomstick!

The lying woman in the Duke lacrosse case, Crystal Mangum, raped three men. Generally speaking, it is meaningless to speak of women raping men’s bodies; it is men who rape women’s bodies. What women can rape is a man’s name.

And it’s apparent which of these assaults Dennis thinks is the more heinous.  Sticks and stones may break your bones, but names can never hurt you!  Names are holy, blameless creatures; white, silken, and pure, like a unicorn’s mane.  And what do you sexist bitches do?  You take our virginal, unsullied names into the shower and treat ‘em like Linda Blair in Born Innocent.

It is a symptom of the major sexism of our time — against men (see Christine Hoff Sommers’ “The War Against Boys” for a detailed discussion of this sexism) — that not only is the rape of men’s reputations not considered anywhere near as serious as the rape of a woman’s body, but the women who perpetrate such destruction are protected by feminist, politically correct news media. That is why, to this day, The New York Times and most other liberal newspapers refuse to publish Crystal Mangum’s name, let alone advocate that she be tried or punished for her cruelty.

Yeah, the only real sexism in America is prejudice against men!  Need proof?  The sole person who’s been punished in this fiasco is Mike Nifong, the Durham County District Attorney who framed the defendants by lying to the court and concealing exculpatory evidence.  And after all that, he was the one who got disbarred, while the stripper who made the original accusation was apparently allowed to keep her license to practice law.

The Talmud, the set of books of Jewish law and philosophy that rank in Judaism second in importance only to the Torah, says, “Whoever humiliates his friend in public is considered as if he has shed his blood.” That is why some rabbis call undeserved public shaming “emotional murder.”

Occasionally, a woman who has “emotionally murdered” a man can plea bargain the charge down to “psychological manslaughter with intent to commit grievous nomenclatural injury.”

That was written nearly 2,000 years ago.  The lack of interest by elite America in even identifying, let alone punishing, a woman who “emotionally murdered” three young men proves that those who believe in the inevitability of moral progress frequently delude themselves.

In short:  Until the thousands of women who are raped every day in America (yet live) realize that the handful of men who are falsely accused of rape every year are suffering much more than they are (because their names are emotionally dead), the authors of two millenia-old religious texts will think you’re a bitch.

Gidget Goes Vermin!

Posted by scott on June 24th, 2007

And now for your summertime surf ‘n’ sun enjoyment:  The Radical Rodents Hang Three!

Courtesy of Cuteoverload.  H/T to Happenstance.

Sadly, No! is DEAD!

Posted by scott on June 23rd, 2007

And the hamster did it!

Rashkolnikov J. Hamster courtesy of Dependable Renegade.

UPDATE:  It seems they’re getting better.

Get Out the Construction Paper and Glitter

Posted by s.z. on June 21st, 2007

At least, that’s what Laura Bush told me yesterday.  Okay, even though she signed the email, it officially came from the GOP, and while Laura and the GOP did ask me to send birthday greetings, what they really wanted was contributions (I could be the President’s new best friend for a donation of $5000).

 

But anyway, here’s part of what Laura said:

Dear Republican,Please help me celebrate a very special birthday.

On July 6, President Bush will turn 61 years old.  In our family, birthdays are special occasions that always include family and close friends.

I know George will appreciate receiving warm wishes from loyal supporters on his special day.  Please take a moment to add your name to the RNC’s e-card.

And don’t forget to leave a few dollars while you’re there, because that’s how George will be able to tell his loyal supporters from his disloyal, traitorous supporters (and during his last days in office, bad things could happen to people on the second list — just a word to the wise).Anyway, if follow Laura’s link, and then scroll down through the panhandling, there is a spot where you can leave your own birthday message for George (up to 600 characters’ worth).  Please share your communique with the rest of us, so we can all join the birthday fun.

P.S.  I don’t know if the two items are related, but I also got an email from the American Family Association yesterday — it was titled  “You just paid for a transgender beauty pageant.”

Scott Adds:  I can’t wait to see Hindrocket live-blog that pageant.

Henry and June. Midnight Cowboy. World O’ Crap.

Posted by Maryc on June 21st, 2007

What do these have in common? We’re all rated X!

What's My Blog Rated? From Mingle2 - Online Dating

Why are we so bad?

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

  • gay (11x)
  • rape (3x)
  • porn (1x)

So, there. Talking about the GOP has made us X Rated.

Darn Them Bush Boys!

Posted by Maryc on June 20th, 2007

Patton Oswalt’s take on why Bush and Cheney get away with soooooo much CRAP!

Back From CatMo

Posted by s.z. on June 19th, 2007

Sorry to be MIA for so long.  Here is a short photo essay that helps to explain what I’ve been doing, besides dealing with the health problems, technology issues, volunteer duties, bratty neighbor kids who want to play with kittens 5 times a day, and the broken glasses that give me headaches and make me want to kill.

First, here’s Willow, the foster cat who I took in when she was pregnant.  Although you can’t really tell from the photo, she is a rather unique cat: a brown tabby with patches of orange.  Although she seemed pretty sweet when I first brought her home, as her pregnancy progressed she became a ferocious fighter, always waiting to spring out of her room and attack the other animals whenever the door to her room was opened.  (She got Yodie in the eye about a month ago, and although his eye has now healed, he will never be able to read fine print again.)


Willow, Destroyer of Worlds
 

And here are her kittens.  (The neighbor kids have named them “Carrot” and “Milo,” but disagree about which is which.)  She had two other kittens who died shortly after birth, possibly because of complications resulting from the attempt to spay her when she was about a month into her pregnancy, but these two are fat, healthy, and fast on their way to becoming obnoxious (in a really cute way, of course).


Lethally Cute: The Carror and Milo Story

And here’s another shot of the kittens.  (There were better photos, but the explanation of why you can’t see them will have to wait for “Gripe About Crappy Technology” day.)  The white filaments in this photo are Willow’s whiskers, or alien laser beams or something.


Letting Sleeping Kittens Lie 

And here’s a photo of Cooper, the sick cat who is recuperating in my bathroom.  He’s a great cat who has an adoptive home lined up at the end of the month — hopefully he will have shook his upper respitatory infection by then, and won’t have shared it with any of my cats in the mean time.  (My house is operating under “Andromeda Strain” rules now, meaning that everyone has to bathe in Clorox; strip, and then burn their clothing; don decontamination suits; and have their DNA scrubbed by via infrared beams before leaving the sick room and either entering the rest of the house or going into the kittenery, AKA the Lair of Dog Doom.)


Cooper: Not Yet Named in Willow’s Paternity Suit

 

I couldn’t get the photo of Cooper’s cell mate, Beth, out of HAL, the only computer ancient enough to work with my oh-so-outdated digital camera, but here’s her Petfinder link:  Petfinder PetNotes.  She will be available for adoption as soon as she is cleared by the CDC.  She is a sweet, undemanding girl who was apparently once picked up in a sweep of ferals (one of her ears is notched), but was obviously a pet at one time.  But since she is nothing flashy to look at, and since it’s now kitten season, I am afraid she won’t be chosen right away, so if you have any ideas to help market her, let me know.  (Since 5 of the other 6 volunteers doing the cat adoption events at PETsMart have dropped out, I am there 3 Saturdays a month, so will be in a position to help push for my favorites.)

Anyway, the hounds have alerted me to the fact that Willow is trying to escape from Stalog 13 again, so I have to go.  More later … or will it?

Well Those Weapons Of Mass Destruction Aren’t In Your Ass, Mr. President

Posted by scott on June 18th, 2007

Mitt Romney, he of the chiseled features and airport-quality shoulders, takes a cue from another Man of Faith, Michael Medved and “looks past platitudes about love to focus on the raw actuality of male-male eroticism.”

Anyway…Caption contest anyone?

On Deadline

Posted by scott on June 18th, 2007

I’ve got a project due on Friday, so I just wanted to alert everyone that posting will be extremely sparse or insufferably dense, depending upon how aggressively I procrastinate and goof off.