This douchebaggery needs to STOP

I was going to start off with something about normally defending the right to free speech, but this kind of behavior is completely indefensible. From station KTUL in Oklahoma:

Funeral Protesters Now Targeting Oklahoma Children's Funerals

Protesters from a Kansas church who have gained attention through picketing at the funerals of fallen military servicemen are now turning their attention to protesting at the funerals of children to retaliate for their tires being slashed at a McAlester serviceman's funeral last week.

You can find the rest of the article here. Their spiteful behavior towards fallen heroes is disgusting enough, but they're really scraping the bottom of the pond now. One of these days these assholes are going to do this to the wrong family, and someone's going to get hurt - badly. I can only hope it's one of the adult WBC scumbags that it happens to.

Folks, if these hate-mongers are going to be protesting in your area, show up and help keep them as far from the grieving family and the funeral sites as possible. If they show up in your business, refuse them service and request that they leave. According to freelawanswer.com:

Legally, . . . you can absolutely refuse service to anyone you want, for any reason you want. Just put a sign on the door to that effect. You know, like "Managment retains the right to refuse service to anyone for any damned reason they pull out of their ***."

...so long as you are not discriminating in violation of the law. (There's also a discussion of the topic on the boards at straightdope.com specifically regarding businesses and the WBCers.) Raise your voice: Let your state lawmakers know that protesting at funerals is unacceptable and that the law needs to be changed to reflect this now. Do whatever you legally can to make life as difficult for these people as possible while they are off their home turf. Heck, have them arrested for trespassing where possible - anything to let them know that their message of hate is not welcome in your community!

Really cool engineering

I hadn't seen one of these before. AMAZING technology! I'd love to have one, could we afford it - our current dinner table is too big for just Athos and myself, but if we have three or more extra bodies for dinner, it's too small, and we need something more like this! The manufacturer's website is here.

Also pretty cool:

"I have evolved thumbs..."

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

We have two "mitten kittens", and this cat looks an awful lot like one of them. But it's his brother who's learned how to actually use the thumbs to advantage. The other cats come to get him to open doors that they can't. We've often commented that it's a good thing his thumbs aren't truly opposable, otherwise he'd take over the world....

And speaking of egotism

Alvin Greene, one of the country's . . . ah, 'most unexpected' political candidates, is back in the news - and in court for showing pornography to a college student. He threatened to sue an area newspaper if they reported on the legal proceedings. (Sorry, dude, but criminal cases tend to be a matter of public record, and therefore fair game for newspapers.) For some reason, he seems to think he's a viable candidate:

“I’m the next president,” Greene said. “I’ll be 35 … just before November, so I was born to be president. I’m the man. I’m the man. I’m the man. Greene’s the man. I’m the man. I’m the greatest person ever. I was born to be president. I’m the man, I’m the greatest individual ever.”

"[T]he greatest individual ever"? Um, no. Seriously, can you really be comparing yourself to people like Mohandas Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Eleanor Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk, William Shakespeare, Jesus of Nazareth, Muhammad ibn Abdullah, Saladin, Alexander the Great, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Siddhartha Gautama, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and JFK?

And then there's former boxer and notable humanitarian Muhammad Ali: "The Greatest" is still his title.

Food for thought

Erin from Our Little Chatterboxes posts details of her recent encounter with the TSA, one which apparently meets the legal specifications for a sexual assault. I wish her luck in her search for justice. She says:

I will leave you with this thought: “It is acceptable and encouraged that a TSA government official can do something to an American citizen that US military personnel cannot do to a member of the Taliban.”

Think about it.

Think air travel security has been bad? It gets worse!

Johnny Edge has a post up about his recent encounter with TSA officials. Anyone who travels by air, or may be considering traveling by air - or anyone who gives a damn about the fact that our civil liberties are being eroded - ought to read it. It begins:

This morning, I tried to fly out of San Diego International Airport but was refused by the TSA. I had been somewhat prepared for this eventuality. I have been reading about the millimeter wave and backscatter x-ray machines and the possible harm to health as well as the vivid pictures they create of people's naked bodies. Not wanting to go through them, I had done my research on the TSA's website prior to traveling to see if SAN had them. From all indications, they did not. When I arrived at the security line, I found that the TSA's website was out of date. SAN does in fact utilize backscatter x-ray machines.

Having been denied use of the available metal detector, the writer declines both a groping and the nude-image backscatter scanner and is (eventually) escorted out of the security area, only to discover:

He informed me that I could not leave the airport. He said that once I start the screening in the secure area, I could not leave until it was completed. Having left the area, he stated, I would be subject to a civil suit and a $10,000 fine.

It gets better. The writer had checked the airport's website to see what screening procedures to which he might be subject:

I told him that I would submit to a walk through the metal detector, but that was it; I would not be groped. He told me that their procedures are on their website, and therefore, I was fully informed before I entered the airport; I had implicitly agreed to whatever screening they deemed appropriate. I told him that San Diego was not listed on the TSA's website as an airport using Advanced Imaging Technology, and I believed that I would only be subject to the metal detector. He replied that he was not a webmaster, and I asked then why he was referring me to the TSA's website if he didn't know anything about it.

There's audio confirmation for most of what the writer relates (the video's not good because the cell phone was out of his immediate control for a good portion of the encounter), although I imagine that after this goes viral the TSA will require proof that all recording devices are turned off before a person is allowed to enter the screening area. After all, it's easier for bullies to deny what they're doing when they can prevent evidence to the contrary coming to light.

So will I be flying commercial while the virtual strip-searches and gropes continue? Not unless hell freezes over.

Bestest friends

Veteran's Day

To all of our military members, past, present, and future:

Thank you and God bless you.

Saying goodbye

It's tough saying goodbye to a friend with whom you've lived, cuddled, shared tuna sandwiches and homemade cheddar cheese soup, and battled over possession of the softest pillow for 15 years.

No, I'm not talking about my husband.

Our oldest cat, the diabetic to whom we've been giving twice a day insulin injections for over 4 years, has been battling cancer for the last few months. How long she's actually had it, we're not sure; we only found out about it in late August, when she had to have some dental work done and our vet sent a sample of suspicious-looking tissue from her upper jaw to the lab. We've tried to keep her as happy and pain-free as we can, but now the tumor is interfering with her ability to breathe, eat and drink, and our vet agrees that it's almost time to let her rest. With the help of some heavy-duty pain medication, we're hoping to get her through the weekend as comfortably as we can.

She frequently used to sleep on my pillow, wrapped around my head and using me as her pillow, her purr lulling me to sleep as she contentedly drooled into my hair. Over a month ago, she stopped doing that and won't stay on the pillow if I place her there. Now she either sleeps near my feet, or somewhere off the bed entirely. I miss having her close while I drift off; even the raspy snore she'd developed was comforting (if not exactly sleep-inducing), in that I knew she was still alive and breathing.

We've all been watching her closely for the last few weeks as the tumor has continued to expand in both her nasal passages and her mouth. Her breathing's become quieter as she's shifted from breathing through her nose to her mouth, and when she's sound asleep, she doesn't rouse as easily as she once did, so we find ourselves checking to make sure she's still with us.

I do find myself half hoping that maybe she'll just peacefully drift off to sleep and . . . away, so that I don't have to make the decision again. I've had to make it too many times over the years, for too many pets. I hate having to say yes, it's time to put my little friend to sleep, I die inside a little myself every time I have to say the words, but I know it's the last act of kindness I can do for them, when there are no other options left, no other way to ease their pain or prevent them from suffering.

It's hard, saying final goodbyes and holding them as they cease to breathe, as their hearts slow and stop. But harder still is finding them when they're cold and lifeless, knowing that I wasn't there with them in their final moments.

The time is coming soon to part ways until we rejoin at the Rainbow Bridge. But not today. Not today....

Ghost deer?

A friend who lives "up nort' " sent me the link to a WPT video on white deer. I've been trying to figure out how to get the video to embed, but haven't been having any luck, so you'll just have to go here to see it.

Beautiful creatures!

Oh, and if you see one? Don't shoot it, they're protected by law.

Quote for the Day

"Isn't it amazing that the vast majority of American politics can be fully described with YouTube clips from Blazing Saddles and Monty Python?"

-- Badtux the Thought-food Penguin

'Nice' vs. 'decent'

I finally found author Steve Dublanica's blog Waiter Rant, and he has a good post up on the difference between nice and decent, and what we're teaching our children by example. An excerpt:

Nice is overrated. Nice is very often a lie. We’ve all been stabbed in the back, exploited, and robbed by people who look “nice.” Con artists are often “nice.” Nice is easy.Decency is hard. Over the years I’ve run into people who weren’t exactly nice but were decent. Even though they appeared unpleasant at first they would do the right thing, very often at expense to themselves. Nice and decent are light years apart. Nice is just smiling and showing a minimum of social graces. Sure it helps make life go a bit smoother, but decency would do far, far more.

My therapist once apologized for maybe not being nice enough on occasion. I told him to save the nice for outside of his office; inside, I expected honesty. (Painful though it sometimes is.) I'll take decent or honest over nice any day....

Attention campaign coordinators

If you defeat my telemarketer trap, that pretty much guarantees I won't be voting for your candidate even if I initially liked them, it's on there because I'M NOT INTERESTED IN YOUR FUCKING POLITICAL CALLS as much as it is to stop the telemarketers! There are other candidates available (maybe in your party, maybe not - that's for me to know and you to sweat) from whom I can choose. Your particular candidate, however, is shit out of luck so far as my vote is concerned. And I DO vote. Every damn time there's an election. I think I've missed only two or three since I turned 18 and registered for the first time. I may be only one voter, but I'm betting there are more like me out there than you know.

So, fellow voters, why don't we start a movement to allow us to opt-out of political calls the way we can telemarketer calls?!? Campaign signs and billboards, along with our mailboxes, TVs, radios, newspapers, and magazines allow politicians plenty of opportunity to get their message to us without rudely pulling us away from whatever we're doing, be it cooking dinner, using the bathroom, taking care of our children, etc. It's not so much thwarting their right of free speech as it is of enforcing a little common courtesy.

One more day...

The polls open in just over 12 hours, and I can't even begin to tell you how glad I am! This means the end of the political junk mail, the end of the political bullshit calls - and, hopefully, the end of the venom and spitefulness that has made it into what should be civil discourse.

If we disagree, does that automatically make you my enemy? No. If we disagree, does that mean I need to label you as something anti-American? No. If we disagree, does that mean that I get to threaten to kill you, commit violence against your person, have you arrested? FUCK NO. But somehow, people have been doing those very things, apparently, from their perspective, in the best interests of our country. How is it in the best interests of America to stifle the very thing this country was founded on: Dissent???

We have the hate-mongers and the fear-mongers to thank for this. I don't need to name them; we all know who they are. Oh, they've waved their hands and disavowed any responsibility for the isolated violent incidents up to now, but what happens after the election, if things don't go their way, and they continue to egg the dissatisfied and unstable elements of society into using their so-called "second amendment remedies" (which, by the way, can hardly be interpreted as anything other than armed insurrection aka TREASON) and legitimately elected officials begin to be targeted in a more concrete way? Assassination and murder are not - and should not! - be part of our political process. If that happens, we become no better than some of the countries whose governments we collectively deplore, ruled not by law, but by violence.

I'm voting my conscience tomorrow. I'm voting to take our country FORWARD - and hopefully into a better future for all of us. Will it be easy? No. It will take all of us, both sides, working together. We can do it, we can turn our differences into strengths.

Or, we can let our differences continue to divide us until our country is torn apart. Is this to be the end of our nation - or the beginning of a more cohesive whole?

Think about it.

VOTE.

Just in time for Halloween

"Shards of Glass" Cupcakes from A Zombie at My Cupcake: 25 Deliciously Weird Cupcake Recipesvia Confessions of a Cookbook Queen....

They look . . . interesting....

Swiss "Top Secret" Drum Corps

Peter from Bayou Renaissance Man posted this - these folks are phenomenal!

Get out your drool-bibs!

I keep intending to talk about recipes and cooking, but never seem to actually get around to doing it, do I? Part of the problem is that the depression I've fought for years has kept me from enjoying cooking for quite awhile - sometimes it's kept me from cooking, period. But I'm doing better on that score now, and a few days ago I found a Honey Glazed Pork Tenderloin recipe on the Mennonite Girls Can Cook blog. We fixed it for dinner tonight, and it is to-die-for! I don't know if the ladies would mind if I shared the recipe here (with proper accreditation, of course), but I'd just as soon not risk ticking them off, so hop on over there and prepare to drool into your keyboard!

Squid wisdom

We just got off the phone with Squidboy. He said they bumped the dock again yesterday after having been out for a week or so. We hadn't talked with him for several weeks, so we were catching up on the latest news around here.

At one one point we told him about nearly bagging Bambi with the truck a few nights ago. His dad had seen the whole buck as it bounded across the road, including a nice spread of antlers; I was tracking about a second behind and only saw the body and rump. So Squidboy comments, Yeah, that's the way it always is. Guys see racks, chicks see butts....

Good question

From ERtards:

Walk into psych pt room, and calmly he looks me in the eye and says "Why is it when you talk to God in your head it's called praying, but when God talks talk to you in your head you guys call it schizophrenia?"

Dear former employer....

Don't call up asking for your shirts back when you never kept a record of how many (or what size) were issued - especially when some of your employees only received ones that they personally purchased, and apparently you're not asking for them back from ALL of your former employees. You're lucky you're not being told provide proof or no deal, bitch!

That is all.

WTF?

So what the hell has happened with blogger? Everything now seems to have shifted to a feedburner mode - almost everything on my blog list has TOTALLY changed format. It'd be nice if they'd actually WARN people when they're going to fuck with things. It's not like blog owners need to KNOW that type of shit....

Apropos of nothing...

You know how sometimes you start following links . . . and before you know it, you end up stumbling across something like this:

Wussitude

There's something seriously wrong with a healthy 45-lb. dog who's afraid of a 7-lb. geriatric cat with no claws and few teeth.

This is the cat I mentioned awhile back, the one on whom we were awaiting the pathology results. She does have cancer. We have no idea how far it's spread, or if it even has yet. The prednisone may be keeping the cancer in check - I certainly hope it is! Chances are good she doesn't have too much time left simply because of her age, never mind the cancer. But until she's ready to go, we're going to do our best to keep her happy and pain-free.

Gotta love Elvira

...even if she does have bigger tits.