imkittymyers at hotmail dot com
Saturday, May 27, 2006
RELAX, IT'S THE WEEKEND
Happy Birthday to Aaron at Lifelike Pundits!
Here, have some fun ...8 Penguin Swing Game
8 Penguin Shuffle Game
8 Cow Abduction
8 Noah's Ark
8 Eyeball Mazes
8 Jigsaw Puzzles
*
BEFORE YOU RAG ON NAGIN
Dana, who lives and blogs in Slidell, LA, and who survived Katrina, would like people to give Nagin a chance.Let me try to explain Nagin's re-election: The first thing you have to do is go back to the days before Katrina. Ray Nagin was a conservative businessman who was actually a very good mayor for New Orleans. He was fighting the in-grained corruption that has plagued the city for decades. It was a hard fight, but slowly he was gaining ground….I would have loved to seen a change, but, given the choices, I think Nagin was the lesser of the two evils.
This is good news for the city of New Orleans: I have often said that a lot of the problems that faced Nagin over the last four years were created by the City Council.
*
VELCOME TO MY HUMBLE ABODE
It may be be his home, not yet anyway, but Bran Castle, better known as Chez Dracula, has finally been returned to its rightful owner, New York architect Dominic Habsburg. Dracula's castle returned to heir: A Transylvanian castle famous for its connections to the 15th-Century medieval ruler who inspired the book, "Dracula," was returned Friday to a Romanian royal heir, more than a half-century after it was seized by the country's communist regime. … Habsburg said he did not want the castle's name to be associated with Dracula. "We are talking about a fable, a novel, I don't think that's OK," Habsburg said.
Each year more than 400,000 people visit the castle -- mainly because of its loose association with Prince Vlad, who punished wrongdoers by impaling them on stakes. He once impaled all the elderly people in a community in an act of revenge following the killing of his father and brother. Vlad did not own the castle but is believed to have used it during incursions.
For now, the castle will remain a tourist attraction:
Habsburg has promised to keep the castle, which attracts 400,000 visitors to the tiny mountain village every year, open to the public for at least three years. He said he would speak with Bran residents before deciding its future after that. Many of those residents earn a living from the castle's Dracula association, selling "Vampire" wine and souvenirs at its gates.
*
Friday, May 26, 2006
HRC BATTLESHIP or HRC BATTLE AXE?
When I referred to Her Royal C as a battleship, Pat said she was a battle axe.
I replied, "Battle axe may be a good hand-to-hand weapon, but a battleship is big and can plow right over all the little politicians without ever hearing their screams or dirtying her hull."
Which is worse: the HRC Battleship or the HRC Battle Axe?
*
IT'S FRIDAY, SO IT'S POLITICS AS USUAL
It's Friday, so you'll need to look busy. Try online Etch A Sketch. Fiddle around with the mouse-and-drag and you'll see how you can "erase" your masterpiece and begin anew. And when you tire of that, there's always this ;~)
Into the muck'n'mire ...
8 Chris pines for the old President Bush. I like "bring it on" and "dead or alive": I cringed when I saw the President in apology mode with Blair today.
While Mac Ranger disagrees. Bush and the "A" word:
[T]he President hit a home run as far as I'm concerned.
8 IS THIS CONVICTION IRONIC?: The Bush Administration continues to clean up,the massive negligence which occurred in the 1990's...
Speaking of which, Don Surber notes Bush's housecleaning in Let us review this administration's Clean Up On Aisle Wall Street under President Bush
8 Captain Ed says that Bush Provides Ladder For Congressional Climbdown: Will Hastert grab the lifesaver Bush has tossed him? Any smart man would. Two weeks ago, I would have put Denny Hastert into that category. Now I'm not so sure.
8 Spook 86 points out Jack Murtha's Latest Slander
8 Repeat after me: Term Limits.
8 Finally, Dave has some good news updates :~)
8 Pee Ess: WANTED! for SABOTAGE
*
Thursday, May 25, 2006
CLOWNS TO HER LEFT, JOKERS TO HER RIGHT
And the Democrats are stuck in the muddle with Her Royal C.
I'll bet the Democrats view the Clintons like rich relatives who give you fat checks for Christmas: You wish they'd just send you the check without coming to visit. Even though the Dems like the money the Clintons raise for them, there are other Democrats who feel like '08 is their turn to run, like Algore and John L'Fraude Kerry. But there's that ol' battleship, the HRC, to contend with, heading your way, and you just know she doesn't care if you're in her way or not. And as much as you just love Bubba, he can be an embarrassment to y'all (which has made Paul Shanklin a wealthy man). How far will Her Royal C go to become president?
Same Al Gore, different day:
[H]e's not running for anything, right? Wrong. Or at least that's the hope of a growing number of liberals and journalists who are starting to get pre-buyer's remorse for Hillary Clinton. In a giant love letter to Gore in New York magazine titled "The Comeback Kid," an unidentified Democratic strategist likens the perceived inevitability of the Hillary nomination to "some Japanese epic film where everyone sees the disaster coming in the third reel but no one can figure out what to do about it." The answer seems to involve Gore on a white horse.
David Broder's column mentions the subject of Slick's extracurricular activities in The Shadow of a Marriage:
But the buzz in the room was not about her speech -- or her striking appearance in a lemon-yellow pantsuit -- but about the lengthy analysis of the state of her marriage to Bill Clinton that was on the front page of that morning's New York Times. The article, by Patrick Healy, was anything but unsympathetic. It touched only lightly on the former president's friendship with Canadian politician Belinda Stronach.
Belinda Stronach, a.k.a. "the Paris Hilton of Canadian Politics."
The real reason Bill shouldn't return to the White House:
The former president has so many business deals and so many political entanglements that his presence in the White House, even as first spouse, would make life very ... complicated. ... Would it make sense if Laura Bush had business deals in Dubai, and Brunei, and Taiwan, and all sorts of other places? Would that be accepted as normal practice? Of course not, and it wouldn't be for Bill Clinton, either.
I disagree with Byron York; should HRC become president, the Democrats and the sycophant MSM will do anything and everything to protect her and First Spouse Slick. Think Whitewater.
Which, in a way, brings us full circle to Slick and Belinda Stronach in this piece posted a year ago on 19 May 2005.
DIRTY POOL: Have you ever known the Clintons to be shy about meddling in politics, in America and beyond?
More on HRC ...
8 Hillary Clinton Proposes Funding for Illegal Immigrants
8 That ever-shy Don Surber says that Hillary Has Rocks In Her Head
Speaking of Algore, he's still the butt of humor, in video and in this cartoon.
Not to mention New Video Exposes Behind-the-Scenes Story of Gores Own Energy Use: "All the evidence suggests that Mr. Gore is an elitist who passionately believes that the people of the world must drastically reduce their energy use but that it doesn't apply to him,said Myron Ebell, CEI's director of energy and global warming policy and the creator of the video.
*
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
LINK ROUNUP
It's already past the lilacs' prime. Do you realized that the summer solstice is just 4 weeks from today? After that, the days will gradually become shorter.8 Hillary For President rally draws tens! Twenty people showed up.
8 Mac Ranger connecting the dots, and one of them is Clinton: My gut (usually right), tells me that there is a reason that this search called unprecedented - was deemed extreemly important by the DOJ. A reason I think may cap pretty much all of what we've been talking about for the last few years on this and other blogs.
8 Don Surber thinks that McCain May Nuke His Way To The White House
8 For those interested in how the five writers from Polipundit are doing as the first week since the PoliNova blew, a brief rundown. Check out DJ Drummond's new look while you're there. Scroll through his great posts, too.
8 LET'S ROLL!: JAMES Gandolfini is morphing into Tony Soprano. At Monday's Washington, D.C., premiere of the HBO documentary "Baghdad ER," the actor told The Hillnewspaper President Bush should "reinstate the draft, send 500,000 troops and finish it." "I'd go," he told a Hill source. "I'm too old and fat, but I'd drive a truck." He added, "The American people haven't had to sacrifice anything." Some soldiers are boycotting the often-gory film of the doctors of the 86th Combat Support Hospital treating real-life casualities in Iraq. But 36 soldiers reportedly attended Monday's premiere, and screenings are planned at 22 Army posts across the country.
8 M&M'S now come in 8 new flavors!: The worlds favorite chocolate candies now come in your favorite flavors. So let your taste buds be the first to try My Flavors, 8 NEW Limited Edition flavors of M&MS, only available online.
8 Quit in aCapsule: You are about to quit smoking. Again. And it all starts in a space-age-looking capsule called the Sunspectra 9000: a new, totally bizarre approach to detox.
*
ZAPPA REMEMBERS DIDI
I e-mailed Zappa to tell him about DiDi, who was originally his cat. Here's his reply:I just got your email. I'm very sorry to hear about this. I wish I could have seen her one last time. I should have been there.
DeeDee was just over 19 years old...she was born in March of 1987 when I was 17, and I got her when she was about 2 weeks old. [AG] asked me to take her because her mother was going to kill all of the kittens from a litter her cat had had. .... AG got up early and snuck out of the house with the kittens before her mother came home from work that morning. She found homes for all of them except DeeDee, so I took her at the end of that school day because she had nowhere else to go.
Miss W [his art teacher] helped me get her to hand feed from a syringe because she wasn't weaned yet. That's probably why she was always so slender. She mostly lived in my shirt for the first couple of weeks that I had her, except for when I couldn't have her there, and then she would sleep in a big box in Miss W's room next to the kiln where it was warm and where other faculty wouldn't notice her if they stopped in. I had 5 art classes a day that year so it was easy to have her with me most of the time. Still, it was probably the best kept secret in the history of [the high school].
Shortly after that I moved back home and she stayed with you from then on. Before I moved back home, I used to stop in at the Ice Cream Works on Market Street, and they would give her milk every morning up on the counter. She was so playful and bright-eyed, and she had that little corner of a red bandana around her neck...the women there thought she was the cutest thing they had ever seen, and they loved her name. Because she was so pretty and delicate and yet so determined by nature, I named her after Deborah Dutcher...DD*. You guys gave her a good long life...I knew that you would.
Thankyou.
* Zappa went to school with and dated Deborah Dutcher, who went on to become an opera singer, doing Les Miz and Phantom in Europe.
*
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
I ALWAYS SAID SHE HAD THE LIFESPAN OF TOXIC WASTE
DiDi died yesterday.She was 18 years old, yet up until very recently, she thought she was 18 months. Even yesterday, as DogMan tried to get her into her crate to take to the vet, she dashed out and ran into the bedroom.
She was a bitch, the cat who bit my hand nearly 2 years ago and sent me to the emergency room, a loveable high-spirited bitch, who was rescued from certain death by Zappa when she was 4 weeks old. At the time, our beloved Groucho Marx, Morris the Cat's doppleganger, was 15 years old and slowly coming to a halt.
Zappa and I took Groucho to the vet on May 16, 1988. DogMan had gone to Boston to judge a dog show that day, so I decided not to bring Groucho back home afterwards. The look on his face, as I handed him over to the nurse, was one of acceptance, as though he were telling me, "It's okay. I'm ready." I always cry thinking of that, partly because I have always regretted not bringing him home.
The normally thin DiDi had become skinny and then downright skeletal, even though she ate like a government mule. By Friday, however, she wasn't eating. Amazingly, she was still spry and active, although she did sleep more. We tried everthing. She drank evaporated milk, so I bought several cans. Yet she barely drank part of one all tolled. When DogMan said it appeared as though she were "shutting down," I knew it was time. So I called the vet Saturday morning. The soonest they could schedule her was for Monday morning at 9:15, which was when I was scheduled for jury duty. I desperately wanted to be there with her but just couldn't. Poor DogMan had to do it alone. He said later that it was worse than when we took our German Shepherd Freja to the vet and he had to give her two shots because the first didn't quite take. DogMan, the vet and I were all bawling like babies that time.
When I left yesterday morning, I asked DogMan to bring DiDi home, and then I cried all the way to the courthouse.
The trial, for which the county was empanelling the jury, was a child sexual abuse case. Jeeeeze, could my day get any worse? I sat there all day long, but I personally never made it to the voir dire phase. I witnessed 41 others being questioned; thank God they found 14 jurors before it was my turn.
When I arrived home, DogMan dug a deep hole in the backyard and we buried DiDi with some catnip. She was wrapped in plastic still in her crate. Rigor mortis had set in, so when I tried to retrieve her, her little back paws kept getting caught on the crate door. It was like she was still giving me grief, which made me laugh a little. Although the cats were never friendly with each other -- too territorial -- the other two, Ichabod and Princess, seemed at loose ends knowing that DiDi was not just "at the vet's." They seem to know she will never be coming home.
The vet said that DiDi's gums were very inflamed -- bloody even, which we just noticed on the weekend -- and that her kidneys were shot. And still she was running around 'til the end.
Over the years, we had lots of family pets come and go. Nurse G had mice and lizards -- snakes, too, when she moved out -- so we've made that last trip to the vets many times. Years ago, she had a very large gekko, about 18" long, named Kalibanos, after Raul Julia's character in Tempest. Kalibanos lived freely in her room behind the radiator. She fed him live crickets. One day he stopped eating and we noticed his jaw was "soft," almost pliable. The vet told me to puree the crickets with some water and feed the concoction to him with an eye dropper. Have you ever tried to puree live crickets in a blender? Their little legs do NOT puree! It wasn't long before Kalibanos took his last ride. We learned later that all he needed was nurishment, which Gatorade would have provided.
She got Kalibanos about the same time we got DiDi. Nurse G kept her bedroom shut so Kalibanos would not scare the crap out of me. One night, as we all lay sleeping peacefully, DiDi had somehow nudged Nurse G's door open and had her first face to face with Kalibanos. DiDi was a fierce tiny ball of fur, with razor claws and teeth. However, she must have looked like dinner to Kalibanos, because he clamped down upon her body and the two began squeeking and squacking and doing battle, waking everyone up in the process. DogMan had to put on leather gloves to unlock Kalibanos' death grip on DiDi as DiDi tried to claw and bite her way to freedom. Gekkos have razor sharp teeth and iron grips, yet DiDi escaped unscathed, but mighty angry.
DiDi could be the bane of my existance at times, which was why I used to say that she was too ornery to die, that she had the lifespan of toxic waste and could be just as lethal. Yet I love her as much as I have any cat. DogMan, the dog man, loved DiDi more than any other cat. We have three German Shepherd dogs and two cats, and still the house seems empty.
God, it never gets any easier, does it.
*
Sunday, May 21, 2006
HOW WOULD YOU LIKE ME DECIDING YOUR FATE?
Yes, I have been summoned for jury duty this week. My second time to bat, too, although last time the case was plea bargained out of court. Wonder if I'll reach the voir dire phase this time?
In the meantime ...
8 Anyone here from Northwest Arkansas? Then don't forget: Tuesday, May 23rd Jim Bob Duggar for Arkansas State Senate District #35 This man and his family are so not the Clintons!
8 I don't think I've read anything by Jane Haddam. But I was in B&N today looking for something to read while waiting in the court room this week and came across Hardscrabble Road: A Gregor Demarkian Novel. The cover looked enticing, so flipped it open to read its description:
When a local Philadelphia radio host known for his incendiary right-wing tirades is arrested for illegal possession of prescription drugs, the incident sets into motion a series of events that leads ultimately to the death of a homeless man. In the complicated mix are the local Benedictine monastery, a Nobel Prize-winning leftist academic, and a homeless advocacy group, among others.Gregor Demarkian, a retired FBI agent, is hired by a local legal project to look into the circumstances surrounding the death of their former client-a task that leads Demarkian through a mirror-maze of motives and actors as he struggles to unravel a most complex puzzle before the killer strikes again.
Gee, I wonder who the "radio host known for his incendiary right-wing" could be?
8 Speaking of Rush ... Kennedy's "Stigma" Is Limbaugh's "Crime": Pat Kennedy is not getting the Rush Limbaugh treatment. There is no prosecutor seeking Kennedy's medical records to find out who prescribed him painkillers. No, he is a congressman who suffers not just bipolar disorder but -- according to the New York Times -- a "stigma" of depression…. It is NYT shorthand for "you people are too ignorant, prejudiced and close-minded to appreciate the greatness of Patrick Kennedy and what he suffers."
If you've been waiting for the Left to get its comeuppance, these two bits should interest you.
1) Final Warning Shot To The News Media?: Get a clue media. There is a very high probability that the investigators have warrants in hand. Leaking secrets is very serious, and few judges will find a grey area to resist full investigation and prosecution. Fitzgerald set the bar so darn low in his investigation the media is now completely exposed.
2) "Seethe The Day": [I]n the fundraising portion of the campaign (now!), the check-writers want to hear that Bush is going down, down, down, and Nancy has delivered. Later this year, when both real voters and reality threaten to intrude, the Dem message will become a lot more sensible and forward-looking.
Thanks to Scott's comment, I've discovered other bloggers who have been summoned to jury duty.
8 Scott at Ah, Shoot!: Poor Lileks. He had such a bad experience for jury duty in his hometown. He had to stay available for two weeks! Fortunately, in Parts Unknown, jury duty is "One Day, One Trial."
8 And Lileks: I might as well stand up during voir dire and shout he damn well looks guilty to me! and save everyone time, since Im about as likely to get on a jury as PETA is likely to endorse a line of slaughterhouse implements called Krule-Kil Pig-Stickers. What is it?
8 Jim, in Cleveland, says: If they render me in a pastel silhouette, I wanna be like this guy; all dark and judging, yet full of whimsy and lumpy-headed.
I'll be back!
*
