It will never ever stop raining. Ever.
Some things never change
I’m going to the beach town of Viareggio for the day. I read that Shelley died off the coast of the town (as you may know, it was very popular for English poets to die in Italy during the 19th century). Leafing through his wiki I found this (here are other references):
The day after Shelley’s death, the Tory newspaper The Courier gloated: “Shelley, the writer of some infidel poetry, has been drowned, now he knows whether there is a God or not.”
Saving Saturn
The only car I’ve ever owned is a 1998 Saturn that now has 120,000 miles on it. The engine and transmission have never needed any work. All I’ve ever had done on it is the brakes (once at 50K, once at 100K) and a few knick-knack things. Turning its back on the Saturn is, in my opinion, one of the dumbest things GM has ever done. So I was glad to hear this:
Only two weeks ago, Roger Penske looked on from trackside as his team won the Indianapolis 500 car race. Now he has laid claim to what he hopes will be another trophy: Saturn.
General Motors announced Friday that it had agreed to sell Saturn to the Penske Automotive Group, whose chairman is Mr. Penske, 72, who is one of the nation’s biggest automobile dealers.
The move rescues Saturn and its dealers from the uncertain future they have faced since February, when G.M. announced plans to shut Saturn by 2012 if no buyer could be found. G.M. subsequently said it would discontinue Saturn by the end of this year.
GM has 16 bidders for Saturn. So clearly there are some people who think you can make money off the business.
Artists in Our Midst, Round Two
This was really successful the last time we tried it, with a lot of people linking up and finding reliable vendors with whom they could establish good relationships, so I thought we would do it again.
If you are an artist and selling your craftwork, link your wares and a description of what you do, and hopefully folks will find their way to your site. And don’t be shy. If you participated the last time, throw your info up again.
Also, if you need something, specify what it is and maybe someone can help you. Personally, I need a new night stand and would be thrilled to pick up a nice piece of handcrafted work. Here was one of my favorites from the last time.
Also, I would be remiss if I did not mention the work frequent commenter Laura W. does, as she is also one of our advertisers through Project Wonderful, an ad site I have really started to appreciate because of the niche it fills.
Open Thread
I dunno why, but I am just exhausted tonight. Not sure what I am going to do with myself.
I Think This Is the One
So I went to kitty prison after gardening, and brought them all some fresh catnip, and then spent the next two hours with the dog I think I am going to adopt next week. It isn’t for sure, and I’ll explain why in a bit, but here is a picture of her:
Currently her name is Missy, but she doesn’t answer to it, so that will likely change (in fact, if you have any better ideas throw them in the comments. I really can’t think of any names I like other than Viola and Fiona, and I’m not sure either fits her). At any rate, here is her story.
According to Dana (the pound lady who I trust on anything pet related and who got me hooked on Tunch years ago- she still remembers him because he has such strange markings), she was rescued from some crazy cat lady who had four other dogs and some ungodly number of cats (in the 20’s) who all had to be put down. I wasn’t even there to look for a dog yesterday, and was actually there to get another sense of Shayla (the cat we talked about last week). As I was leaving, though, I saw Missy through the glass door looking at me, and she just looked so lost and terrified that I did an immediate u-turn and went back in to check her out.
She is terribly timid, and was in a bay with two howling hounds (one is part bloodhound part beagle, the other beagle and something else), and was just shaking horribly. I got them to take her out, and she has a nasty rash on her back (you can’t see it in the pictures) that we think is from fleas, and obviously has just a lot of anxiety from being in the pound. I don’t know if it is separation anxiety from her old home, or just the chaos of the pound, but she is just miserable. You can see it in her eyes.
I spent some time with her yesterday and after about 45 minutes in a quiet room, got her to stop shaking and actually look somewhat relaxed. I decided then and there I would come back and check on her today.
Today, I got her out and spent another couple hours with her. I took her outside, and it is immediately clear that she has never been leash trained. She simply has no idea what to do with it on. She sort of walks around in circles, and then when you start to follow her, she hears you, looks back, and starts to move in another direction. She really is going to need a lot of work with that, but that is what obedience school is for, I suppose.
After I got her outside and away from everyone else, she was a lot better. It only took several minutes for her to stop shaking, and she looked much happier. According to Dana, she is 4 1/2 or thereabouts, and she really, really needs a bath (the dog, not Dana). They can’t bathe her though, because of the rash, so she still smells like cat urine and the other nastiness from her original home. The other thing that is really weird is she simply does not bark. I have spent several hours with her now and not heard a peep out of her.
So, to recap, she smells like cat urine, is not leash trained, has an open rash on her back, probably is not house trained, is suffering from horrible anxiety, I’m not really fond of the name Missy, and I think she is perfect. I scheduled an appointment with the vet on Tuesday to take her in to make sure she does not have any diseases that will harm Tunch and to see if we can get the rash fixed, and I will probably take her home next week.
So that was my afternoon. They have no idea what she is, other than having some terrier in her. Her markings look almost yellow lab-like to me (although surprisingly, because of lighting, she looks more reddish in the pictures than she does in person). Should we keep the name Missy or do you have any other suggestions?
More pictures after the fold.
Your Neighborhood Womb Bigots, Pt. 3 & Last
There is nothing entertaining about the relatively few and fortunately rare specimens of human Ebola virus incubated, however unintentionally, in the warm petri dish of Pro-Life civic virtue.
Disgruntled Would-Be Baby Buyers Many years ago, a pro-choice friend working the gantlet outside her local clinic had a very white protestor shove an Asian-featured baby at her while hissing “Because of you people, I had to settle for this!” Would-be adoptive parents remain a small but fervent subset of the forced-birth terrorist squadrons. If they had as much power, education and money as Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, they could ship babies from Ireland to Latin America to circumvent inconvenient international adoption laws and guarantee themselves a couple of perfect adorable blue-eyed blonde infants. As it is, they’re reduced to dreaming of a Golden Age when healthy white American teenagers who “got in trouble” had very little choice but to “give up” their by-blows to be raised by decent, God-fearing middle-class white married couples. Yes, it can be argued there is some kind of “biological imperative” to crave a baby of one’s very own, a proto-human to carry the best possible simulacra of one’s one features, genes, and philosophies into the future. But, NO, here in America, not at the cost of using teenagers as their incubators.
(And for a brief but hair-raising tale of the dark side of this very human impulse, try The Baby Thief: Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption.)
Testicle Defenders These are the men who make the police officers monitoring the legally-mandated separation zones nervous, the men whose photos are posted at every battered women’s shelter. Murder may be the number-one cause of death for pregnant women in America, but that doesn’t mean the Real Men are going to let “their” women screw them over…
“Bitch thought she could get away with killing MY baby.”
“She won’t be slutting around on me while she’s swollen out to here.”
“Good luck finding someone else dumb enough to support her lazy ass, once she’s got another man’s kid(s) hanging off her leg.”
“Everybody knows” the stories about the teenager on her fourth abortion because she doesn’t want her parents to find her birth control pills, or the lawyer who has a second-trimester abortion so she won’t lose billable hours when a big case goes to trial. But the women murdered *because they got pregnant* are just statistics — they only make the local news if there aren’t enough camera-worthy car crashes, fires, or sporting events to fill the evening timeslots.
Certified Crazies Dr. George Tiller, “Tiller the Killer”, was widely condemned by the “pro-life” media cheerleaders as a willful baby-butcher whose murder would be “justifiable homicide”. Scott Roeder, “Sovereign Citizen” and diagnosed schizophrenic, walked into a church and fatally shot Tiller in the midst of his family and friends.
There are a lot of sad, disturbed individuals wandering around unsupervised. Instructing these people that they will be applauded — even rewarded — for committing acts of violence may not be illegal, but it’s still evil.
I’m saying the pro-life crowd is full of real-life assholes doing real-life harm, and it’s imperative that we call them out for the specific, factual, actual things they do.
I’m not excusing what they do, for fuck’s sake, I’m demanding a thorough and honest accounting of what they’ve done and said so that they can be held responsible and shunned by polite society.
I wish I could competently address the plea that I am using “strawmen” or “caricatures” when it would be more effective to point at actual individuals. There needs to be a discussion about the boundary between identifying a specific person’s acts, and encouraging would-be “martyrs” to target them. Because “Naming & Shaming” is what Bill O’Reilly did to a good brave man in Kansas… and now Dr. Tiller is dead.
I want to thank all of you who commented on my earlier segments. Even when we don’t agree, I have learned from you, and (still) believe it is important that we look at these issues and discuss them honestly. I also want to thank John for his forbearance, and the opportunity to get my ideas before some of the smartest, most widely experienced commentators of any political blog I know.
One reason I set up a new personal tag is so that people who just don’t care to read about these contentious issues can killfile my offensive posts. I promise I will diligently use this tag whenever it’s relevant.
Your Neighborhood Womb Bigots, Pt. 3 & LastPost + Comments (126)