All this nonsense about Obama slandering Palin by continuing to use the "lipstick on a pig" bit of his stump speech that he's been using for months now is ridiculous. What - just because Palin also used the word "lipstick" once? Puh-lease. Obama remains a hypocrite and an asshole, but trying to play this as a sexist remark on his part is an absurd, if typical ploy, on the part of the GOP. Count on the mainstream media to run with it, though.

For what it's worth, Sarah Palin is a pig - but it has nothing to do with gender.

Tags: media, politburo
humour: annoyed

Tags: photo/graphic, politburo
humour: pessimistic

Browse your friends pages for five minutes and look what happens. Okay, I got tagged...


RULES:
1. Put Your iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc. on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS.
4. Put any comments in brackets after the song name.
5. Put this on your journal and tag five of your friends.


1.If someone says, "Is this okay?" you say what?

"The Good Times Are Killing Me" - Modest Mouse
(If the "this" is this meme, the response is deeply ironic)

2.How would you describe yourself?

"Squalor Victoria" - The National
(Hmmn - "I'm a professional in my beloved white shirt"? More like "I'm going down among the saints")

3.What do you like in a guy?

"All My Friends" - LCD Soundsystem
(Uh, that means I'm generous?)

4.How do you feel today?

"DARE" - The Gorillaz
(Don't quite know what to make of that)

5.What is your life's purpose?

"Chasing Cars" - Snow Patrol
(Not sure what to make of that either)

6.What is your motto?

"Golden Years" - David Bowie
("Never look back, walk tall, act fine" or "Run for the shadows"?)

7.What do your friends think of you?

"London Calling" - The Clash
(Don't know what to do with that one)

8.What do you think of your parents?

"So In Love" - k.d. lang
(That works, I guess)

9.What do you think about very often?

"Cool Waves" - Spiritualized
(Actually, no - I seldom even think of warm waves)

10.What is 2 + 2?

"This Is Not a Test" - Oppenheimer
(Ah ha ha ha ha!)

11.What do you think of your best friend?

"Everything Will Be All Right" - The Killers
(Depends on the best friend)

12.What do you think of the person you like?

"Time and Love" - Laura Nyro
(Yeah, okay)

13.What is your life story?

"Neon Bible" - Arcade Fire
("A vial of hope and a vial of pain, In the light they both looked the same" - sounds more like an Obama campaign slogan)

14.What do you want to be when you grow up?

"Independence Day - David Byrne
("We'll be lovers in the open, We'll be lovers on Independence Day")

15.What do you think of when you see the person you like?

"Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" - The Eurythmics
(Okay...)

16.What will you dance to at your wedding?

"Every Breath You Take" - The Police
(Ha! Possessive much?)

17.What will they play at your funeral?

"It Doesn't Matter Anymore" - Hall & Oates
(That pretty much fits)

18.What is your hobby/interest?

"Square One" - Coldplay
(Board games??)

19.What is your biggest fear?

"Your Racist Friend" - They Might Be Giants
(Well, that works)

20.What is your biggest secret?

"American Tune" - Paul Simon
("I don't know a soul who's not been battered, I don't have a friend who feels at ease, I don't know a dream that's not been shattered, or driven to its knees" - not much of a secret)

21.What do you think of your friends?

"Mushaboom" - Feist
("we'll collect the moments one by one I guess that's how the future's done"

22.What will you post this as?

"From Here We Go Sublime" - The Field
(And so I have)


That's it? We couldn't go to 23 or 25 - or stop at 20? 22 is one of the dopiest numbers ever. Sorta like this meme - though some of it kinda fit (if you look beyond the titles). And, no, I'm not tagging anyone. But if you wanna do this thing, I'm not stopping you.

Tags: muzik, teh internets
humour: cranky

I've enjoyed reading Susan Faludi over the years - Stiffed was excellent and, while I found Backlash a bit less convincing, it was still pretty stimulating and well argued. To me, she is one of the best "post-feminist" writers going (and a helluva lot more credible - and readable - than a shrill, if articulate, harpy like Camille Paglia). So it was with keen interest that I read her op-ed piece on Hillary Clinton in the New York Times yesterday.

Again, I don't agree with her thesis entirely, but her argument that Clinton has gained ground among working class white males because she has overcome a number of gender stereotypes (notably through her recent pugnacity) seems to have some merit. It could be that what the powdered faces of MSNBC's talking heads find so distasteful in Clinton is exactly what many American men find appealing about the candidate. The piece is well worth a read.

Tags: media, politburo
humour: thoughtful

So I was sitting at the computer last night - around 2am or so - and heard a loud, rattling thump. My computer sits facing the dining room over a small room divider. There's a door from the dining room onto a small, screened in back porch - and a screen door to the back yard. The noise seemed to have come from outside the porch.

Anyway, it was loud enough to arouse both cats: Toyota had been dozing on the back of my chair and Xerox was under a chair a few feet away. When there was a second thump a few seconds later, both cats started growling, ran to the dining room and began stalking the door to the porch. This was followed by more rattling and banging and what sounded like scratching. I assumed something was trying to get in through the screen door from the yard to the porch - and my first assumption was that it was some other village cat.

But the thumping (against the door?) sounded a bit heavy for a cat, so my next thought was that it might be a raccoon trying to get to the bag of rubbish that was sitting on the porch. Anyway, the noise subsided and, while Toyota remained on a windowsill overlooking the back yard, Xerox wandered back to his place under the chair.

About five minutes later, though, the rattling and scratching started up again - a bit louder. Both cats were back on the scene, growling and fluffing up their tails. Then there were a couple of loud bangs, followed by some clattering and a few more loud thumps. I repaired to the bedroom to let Sean know that I thought a bear might be trying to get to the garbage bag on the back porch. A few years ago, a bear had come into the yard fairly regularly when a large garbage can had been kept outside the house. It would periodically toss the lid aside and tear apart the garbage bag inside, scattering rubbish all over the yard.

I must admit I was a bit spooked - as I suppose we're meant to be by things that go bump in the night - and was a bit goose bumpy by the time I got back to the bedroom to wake Sean.

"What? Why do you think it's a bear? Did you see anything?"

"No, but it sounds too large for a small animal."

"What sounds large?"

"The thumping and rattling. Like bigger than a possum or a fox. It's not a person because Xerox didn't hide [he hides behind the television when people approach the house] - he's right there with Toyota making cat noises at the back door."

"So what do you want me to do?"

"I don't know."

"Come to bed, then."

"With a bear or something out there?"

"It can't get in the house, can it?"

"It could if it's a zombie."

"It's not a zombie."

"How do you know?"

"Come to bed."

"I left all the lights and stuff on out there."

"Then go turn them off."

"..."

"Oh, all right."

By the time we got back to the dining room, the noises had subsided, but the cats were still a bit agitated. We turned off the lights and went to bed. "I guess it wasn't a zombie."

"Why?"

"They tend to be more persistent."

This morning, I investigated. The back door to the yard had, indeed, been attacked. In fact, the screen in the top half of the door had been replaced with glass for the winter - and the glass and most of the frame had been knocked into the back porch. The door is up a step, so the top panel is about four feet from the ground. As it turns out, it was a plexiglass panel, but it had been broken into three pieces nevertheless. The frame on the door was also slightly bent.

The weird thing, though, was that there were no scratches on the door (or anything else): the lower panel and frame are aluminum, painted white, and would be easily marked. The scratching I'd heard sounded like something scratching at a screen, but the only screen on the porch at the moment is on the inside door, right outside the dining room. There was one hair on the door frame below the punched out panel - black with a gray tip, slightly wavy, and about three inches long - not very coarse.

For some reason I was reminded of the Pennsylvania Creature that had been spotted in Westmoreland County back in the seventies. It was supposed to be a Marked Hominid, a slightly smaller relative of the Sasquatch. Anyway, night has fallen. We'll see if there's a return visit. Meanwhile, any thoughts?

Poll #1185931
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Was this most likely...

Tags: cat kingdom, nature studies, social and personal
humour: uneasy

It's official: Barry Obama and Jerry Wright are no longer BFFs.

I was really afraid that Obama might throw Rev. Wright under the bus, but no. All he said was that he was "outraged" and "saddened" over the "spectacle" of Wright's "performance" over the past few days, that Wright is "divisive and destructive," that he gives "comfort to those that prey on hate," and that there are now "no excuses" for the all the things Wright said prior to The Greatest Speech Tongue Has Ever Uttered (Obama's facile speech on race a few weeks ago, in case you missed the address that left Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Daniel Webster, Frederick Douglas, Henry Clay, Sojourner Truth, Abraham Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, Chief Joseph, William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, Mother Jones, Woodrow Wilson, Emma Goldman, Eugene Debs, Clarence Darrow, Al Smith, Franklin Roosevelt, Douglas MacArthur, Dwight Eisenhower, Martin Luther King, John Kennedy, Earl Warren, Adlai Stevenson, Barbara Jordan, Ronald Reagan, Thurgood Marshall, Bill Clinton, and Elie Weisel choking in St. Obama's dust).

So, no: Obama didn't throw Wright under the bus - he shoved him in front of a fucking subway train - and an express train at that.

But what we should all be asking ourselves is why? Why now? What has Rev. Wright said in the last three days that he hadn't said previously - and perhaps continuously - over the past twenty years? Easy. He's said one new thing - and one new thing only: Barack Obama is a politician. He "says what he has to say as a politician" and "does what politicians do" - or, as Obama paraphrased him, Wright suggested that the senator's "values and beliefs" - the lifetime that he has selflessly devoted to giving speeches - was nothing more than "political posturing". Now that is an unpardonable sin.

Tags: duly noted, politburo
humour: nauseated

The cave, I find, is always more interesting in the spring. Mostly, with more run-off from melting snow and ice on the mountains and heavier, more persistent rains, the cave is a lot wetter - the dripstone is dripping, the flowstone is flowing, the stream bed is streaming, the rimstone dams are damming, and the sound of dripping, trickling water is everywhere.

     

     

     
While I was in snapping some of teh wetness, I also did several portraits of the last of the bats (the hibernating bat population being another thing that makes the cave more interesting in the early spring - and late fall). There are only a few pipstrelles left - the little browns have finished hibernating and the last of them left the cave for the summer a few days ago. Here are a couple of them:
 

Tags: nature studies, photo/graphic, speleological
humour: impressed