The whole thing, here: http://www.deadline.com/2012/02/advisory-nikki-finke-live-snarking-oscars/
If link is non-functional, just copy and paste. You’ll be glad you did.
It’s nowhere near official, but it is pretty clear – Spring has Sprung, and it’s only the edge of February. By the books, the last freeze in this part of Texas is mid-March, but this year, we have already had one over-ninety degree day already. Well, it was only one day, and it was the tippy-topmost high for that day and I think that the high only held for about an hour and a half … but it still necessitated running the AC for half a day. Hold that thought in your mind for a moment. Air Conditioning. In late February. Fortunately, the next day, a cooler front blew in, and since then, the weather has been more or less back to something more or less resembling normal late-winter weather. Which is to say, highs in the seventies or so, lows in the fifties, with a ten degree deviation either way, enlivened by the occasional rainstorm; quite pleasant, as winters go, especially when the northern hemisphere is suffering under two or three feet of snow, and roads covered with black ice.
Anyway; because the weather has been so mild, we’ve been able to get started on spring planting. This year, it looked like early vegetable starts were everywhere, especially lettuce, mache, corn salad, mizuna – and early tomatoes. We had a couple of earth-boxes, lots of pots, and some topsy-turvy planters, so we bought some enormous bags of potting soil … and several trays of plants, and set about reviving my garden.
Among the empty pots was one of those strawberry planters, with the little pockets on the sides – which never quite work as advertised, as the soil leaks out before the plants grow roots enough to keep it all in place. This time, my daughter cut circles of thin coir with a slit in the middle to accommodate the plants – and not strawberries, but eight different varieties of mint. Mint is tough, invasive and grows like a weed, so what better way to keep it confined. Peppers and tomatoes went into the earth boxes and into the topsy-turvys, and the lettuces and greens went into ordinary pots, and everything looked very, very well … but that’s not all.
Last Thursday, we went out walking with the dogs, and saw that one of our neighbors was having their trees pruned back – in some cases, the limbs being pruned were pretty substantial. They were all piled up, waiting to be sent through the chipper – and so I asked the crew supervisor if they could drop off some of the mulch in our driveway once they were done working. He was agreeable, but warned – the mulch coming off the truck would mount up to at least two or three cubic yards. I said, cheerfully, that we could use every bit of it … and so we did.
That afternoon, they dropped off what amounted to a Matterhorn of mulch; good stuff, with hardly any twigs and green leaves in it. My daughter and I spent two mornings, scooping it into the wheelbarrow and trundling it hither and yon. We did have a dispute: I wanted it to go to the back garden first, as that is the part of it that we look at the most, but my daughter said that the front is what everybody else sees, and we didn’t want to be ‘those people’, did we? The neighbors whose house looks like it was just declared a disaster area? Well, no … We could have maybe used another cubic yard or two, but my daughter said flatly that her back couldn’t have stood another barrow-load. But the yard does look lovely now – and once again, something that I am proud to have people see.
And leave. That’s the discussion going on over at Rantburg, today, where Steve White has laid out the case, here, (http://rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=339729&D=2012-02-26&SO=&HC=4)
and I have to say he’s made a strong argument. Oh, there are things that can still be done … like drop in a SEAL team or a Hellfire missile the next time a tall Taliban poppy raises his head, or gives support and shelter to a beturbaned goon with ambitions to knock down multi-story office buildings half a world away.
I honestly thought – and still think that there are workable solutions for the problem that is Afghanistan. But if we aren’t going to apply any of them – and it is very plain that under this current feckless, amateur-hour, drop-down-on-knees-and-apologize-in-heart-beat administration, will not – then perhaps it’s time to say so long and thanks for all the fish.
…they toil not, nor do they spin, yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Enough of that simile, since it’s pretty obvious that Solomon in all his glory was not spread all over just about every fashion and women’s mag for the last couple of years, accompanied by cutlines, stories and editorials, all drooling over how chic, fashionable and oh-so-modern and otherwise laudable the spouse of the current occupant of the White House was.
Yep, upon the apotheosis of the Empty Suit known as Barack Obama, to the highest office in the land, I could hardly pass the supermarket checkout stand, without being assured that his Significant Other was the best thing since Jackie Kennedy or sliced bread… so lovely, so tasteful, so chic, the very model of an ultra-modern First Lady. Frankly, the sycophantic chorus got to the point where I began muttering to myself something along the lines of, ‘Sister, I remember Jackie Kennedy – and you, darlin’ – aren’t no Jackie Kennedy. If Jackie Kennedy had ever dressed for a public event by raiding her daughter’s closet and the nearest Goodwill outlet, she would have at least made it look good!’ Frankly, if I never see another picture of Michelle in a boob-belt and too-small cotton cardy, or one of Laura Ashley’s more unfortunate evening dress designs, it will all be too soon. And I speak as one who does raid her daughter’s closet, the local Goodwill store and loved Laura Ashley, but then I do not see any fashion mags out there breathlessly lauding Sgt. Mom’s inimitable sense of style.
About the only mystery left unexamined regarding Michelle Obama’s dress sense is how on earth one can spend a bomb of money and still finish up wearing such desperately unflattering clothes, or clothes grotesquely unsuited for the occasion – or both.
So, you will have gathered that Michelle Obama annoys me. I would have been content to dismiss her as I did, yea these many months ago as “a seething pit of resentment in spite of two high-end degrees, a large income and a mansion; a BAP with a limitless sense of entitlement.” I might have been able, eventually, to blow off the fashion and women’s magazine going all full Pravda on us … but for the vacations.
The incessant expensive vacations to lavish resort locations annoy me. I don’t grudge rich people their amusements, knowing that they mostly pay for such excursions themselves, and that spending on them will trickle down to make a good living for the people who own, run, and work at such places – heck, I live in a destination city, although I’ll be the first to admit that it’s not a tropical paradise like Hawaii, or an enclave of the uber-rich like Martha’s Vinyard. I certainly didn’t grudge President Reagan, or either of the Presidents Bush from taking vacations at property they owned and improved, and even hosted VIPs at. (I did derive amusement out of the White House Press corps being dragged to Crawford, Texas, in August, though. Awwww, poor cosmopolitan urbanites, being dragged to the ass-end of nowhere in the most miserable part of a Texas summer!)
But at a time when ordinary working people are cutting back to a week or so, taking a frugal holiday here and there, or even not taking a vacation at all – Michelle Obama taking a lavish holiday every two months or so, looks very, very bad to the general public. And the White House must know that it’s going over about as well as a case of the chicken pox at a kid’s birthday party. That someone whose job it is to consider damage control can’t or won’t talk her into slumming it at Camp David instead is not a good thing.
Yes, it really happened – the details here, courtesy of Ace of Spades HQ.
Tomorrow…
Found, courtesy of a comment thread on PJ Media.
Three carriages entered the square, and as they halted before the jail door, the ranks of waiting men presented arms. Half a dozen men descended from the carriages – William Tell Coleman and the other leaders of the Committee. They talked for a few moments through the wicket-gate … and then they were admitted into the jail, to speak with Sheriff Scannell.
“We have come for the prisoner Casey,” Coleman told him. “We ask that he be peaceably delivered us, handcuffed at the door immediately.”
“Under existing circumstances,” replied Sheriff Scannell, “I shall make no resistance. The prison and it’s contents are yours.”
“We want only the man Casey at present,” One of the other Committee members added. “For the safety of all the rest, we hold you strictly accountable.”
Casey was taken to the Committee headquarters – later, Charles Cora was also added to the Committee’s bag. Three hundred men guarded Fort Gunnybags, another hundred the jail, while the rest were relieved for the moment. The next day, Vigilantes patrolled the streets, and warned merchants selling weapons not to sell any such … for now. James Casey and Charles Cora were allowed visitors. On Tuesday, Cora was brought before the Committee and informed that he would be tried for murder. All the forms of law would be observed, and he would be represented by a lawyer. Who was one of the Executive Committee … Cora provided a list of witnesses, who would testify in his defense, and they were all sent for; none could be found.
That evening, word arrived that James King of William had died. Sometime that evening, both Cora and Casey were convicted and sentenced.
Thursday at noon was the time set for King’s funeral to begin. The nearby Unitarian Church where it was to be held was jammed to overflowing by mid-morning, and the procession with the coffin was said to have been two miles long. Mourners stood in the streets to pay their respects … and in the street before the Vigilance Committee’s headquarters there were also men standing; men in three ranks, in the pose of attention as they had stood in the square before the county jail on Sunday morning.
Just before one o’clock, the tall windows on the second floor of the building were opened; from two of them, a pair of small wooden platforms were pushed out, and balanced on the edge of the window-sill. Above, from the flat roof of the building, a pair of heavy beams was set into place, just over the platforms; a noose of heavy rope dangled from the end of each beam. Then … silence again, although those who waited in the street below could hear the faint music of a church organ. The music seemed to be a cue of some kind. Charles Cora, his eyes covered by a white handkerchief blindfold was guided out of the window, to stand silently on the little platform. A few moments later, James Casey followed; he was not blindfolded at his request, but his nerve broke, looking down at the implacable faces below. He babbled, pleading that he was not a murderer, he had done nothing, he only responded to insult … the words fell into grim silence.
In that silence, the commotion at the door of the Unitarian Church could be heard clearly; James King’s coffin was being carried out by the pall-bearers. From the steeple above, the church bell tolled a single note. Another church bell joined, and then another and another, as those men in the street presented arms. The platforms beneath the Casey and Cora dropped … and justice as it had been declared by the Vigilantes was done.
Postscript: the Committee did not disband, immediately. They went on adding members, conducting military drill, and doing business – one item of which was the formation of a list. Those on it would either leave, or be charged and tried under the ordinary rules of law. Only two more miscreants were hanged, and thirty banished officially, although it was estimated that at least eight hundred left town voluntarily. The Committee formally dissolved in August of that year, with a grand parade and an open house of “Fort Gunnybags.”
Many years later, a curious visitor to the city asked, “What has become of your Vigilance Committee?” “Toll the bell, sir – and you will see!”
That might be true today.
It’s hard to know where that fine line is between being ready to say goodbye to a much-loved pet, and giving up too soon. We’ve all faced it, or we will, if we haven’t yet. The gray hair creeps over the senior muzzle, eventually whitening the entire face; the eyes cloud over, the ears stop up, and the gait shifts from exuberant to hesitant. But still she eats, drinks, roams the yard (bouncing off the fence due to the clouded eyes), and barks imperiously when she needs your attention.
Then one day she just doesn’t get out of bed, choosing instead to sleep all day. You wake her up and carry her outside (if she’s carry-size), and when you set her down, she falls over and can’t right herself. She stands spraddle-legged, shaking from the effort of maintaining balance. You bring her back inside to her food dish because she hasn’t ‘t eaten since the day before, and she sniffs it and turns away. You take her to the water bucket, because she drinks water 20 times a day, and she sniffs it and turns away. You put her back in her bed, and she goes back to sleep almost immediately.
So you call the vet, make an appointment to have them checked out, and you worry. And you cry, because you realize that 16+ is a fantastic age for an iggy, and her paws are totally entwined all around your heart.
Meantime, you glance over and she’s standing up, getting out of her bed, hobbling to the water bucket and drinking deeply, and your heart smiles, thinking maybe it was a false alarm. You bring some BilJac liver treats to her bed, and she eats them with no hesitation. You pull the expensive lunch meat from the fridge, and give her a couple slices, breaking it up into bite size pieces. Your heart smiles again, thinking maybe it really was a false alarm.
You cuddle with her awhile, loving the weight of her 10 lbs gathered in your arms and resting on your chest, grinning when she rests her head on your shoulder, hoping she’ll fall asleep there. But she lets you know she’s had enough, and you gently place her back in her bed, in front of the little ceramic space heater that’s been running all day for her on this fairly warm day. You notice, as you rearrange her blanket before putting her back in bed, that the bed is damp, and your heart sinks again. The little one has never peed the bed before, to your knowledge. Maybe it wasn’t a false alarm.
At any rate, there’s nothing you can do tonight, so you make sure she’s warm and cozy, the water bucket nearby in case she wakes up thirsty, and you head to your own bed. Your other dogs curl up beside you and you find comfort in their presence and their enduring, unquestioning love.
You find yourself waking early the next morning, listening for the imperious, demanding bark of the senior iggy that always starts your day, and it doesn’t come. Then you realize you haven’t heard her bark since the previous morning, and she usually barks several times a day. Your heart sinks again, and you lie there cuddling the big dogs while pondering the little one.
What is the right thing to do for her? What is BEST for HER? It’s hard to say. She eats, she drinks, but the sleep-aggressive dog has to wear a muzzle 24/7 because she’ll walk into him while he’s sleeping, not realizing he’s there. She has to be carried into the yard so she doens’t walk off the side of the ramp. Once there, she walks in circles, like a canoer paddling on only one side of the boat.
You think about your friends who have faced this journey before you, about Giorgio, the IG who lost both is eyes to glaucoma and lived at least one more year, confined to the kitchen and carried in and out for potty breaks. You remember how you thought that was no fit life for a dog, and you remember hoping it would never reach that point for yours. Has it now? She used to have the run of the house. Now she has a portion of the kitchen and laundry room, and her bed in the office during the day. She lost her human bed privileges when she started pooping in her sleep.
You ponder the next 10 days on your schedule. The first three are relatively light – a Friday doing course development instead of teaching, and a weekend. But the next week is packed full with a tight schedule that would leave no room for an unescheduled vet trip, if one is needed. You remember the pain of letting your last dog go without being able to be there to say goodbye, because that was best for her, and you resolve to not face that this time.
You think about asking an animal communicator to talk to your little one, but remember when she tried to do that with another dog, and how she said the dogs were surprised you had asked her, because we all communicate fine with each other. And you realize that the little one *has* been communicating with you through her cloudy eyes, the unhappy droop to her head, her gentle snuggling the night before. And you weep as you realize you might be saying goodbye today to the best little iggy that ever walked the face of the earth.
Then you start doubting yourself. Maybe you misunderstood what you saw. Maybe she’s not that bad. She still eats, doesn’t she? Still drinks? Maybe it’s not time. We’ll let Doc tell us. Doc is good at knowing this stuff.
Having decided that you’re not making a decision, you get up and take hte big dogs outside. When you come back in, you go wake the little dog, and realize as you lift her from her bed that she’s soaking wet. Your heart sinks again as you realize maybe you didn’t misunderstand anything. You carry her outside and set her down, gently catching her before she falls over, and watch her stand spraddle-legged to keep her balance, head shifting from side to side like a snake, entire body quivering from the strain of standing. Your heart sinks again as you gently pick her up and bring her back inside to her bed in the office in front of the space heater. Since her bed is wet, you appropriate one of the beds from the big dogs and put that in front of her heater.
Then you go to your PC to type a post on GreyTalk.com and are interrupted by the sound of her toenails scrabbling on the kitchen floor. You bring her back and put some water in a dish. Because you love her, you hold the dish of water directly under her pretty little nose until she realizes it’s there and starts drinking it. Then you find the BilJac liver treats and feed her some of those for breakfast, becuase she ignored her food dish when you pointed it out to her in the kitchen.
And you doubt yourself again, because she’s eating and drinking, standing and walking, looking for what she wants and needs. To be honest, at this point you don’t know if you’d rather she be ok or not. You don’t know for sure how happy she is with her very limited life that would drive *you* crazy. So you email Doc and give her a status update, and end the email with: “Just so you know, if we have to let her go today, I’m ready.” And you try not to hate yourself for saying that, and try not to think about whether you’re saying that because it’s best for the little one entwined in your heart, or because you can’t bear the thought of watching her decline further over time and aren’t willing to do the heroic things that other friends have done with/for their dogs. You reassure yourself with the knowledge that she is a much-loved dog, and she knows that she is loved and will continue to be loved no matter what happens today.
And then you sit and weep because you have no idea how this day is going to turn out, and 11am is still so very far away.
Update: 11am came and went, and at 1140, I left Doc’s office alone, a tiny blue collar tucked into the pocket of my jeans, and a big piece of my heart lying on a table in Doc’s exam room. Run free to good health, baby girl. Your mama loves you more than she has words to say.
The shooting of James King – political murder disguised as a justifiable response to a personal insult – inflamed the city of San Francisco immediately. King, shot in the chest but still clinging to life was taken to his house. Meanwhile, an enormous mob gathered at the police station, and the police realized almost at once that the accused James Casey could not be kept secure. He was removed under guard to the county jail. The indignant mob was not appeased, not even when the mayor of San Francisco attempted to address the crowd, pleading for them to disperse and assuring them that the law would run its proper course and justice would be done. The crowd jeered, “What about Richardson? Where is the law in Cora’s case?” The mayor hastily retreated, as the square – already guarded by armed marshals, soon filled with armed soldiers. The angry mob dispersed, still frustrated and furious. No doubt everyone in authority in the city breathed a sigh of relief, confident that this matter would blow over. After all, they controlled the political apparatus of the city, at least one newspaper, as well as the adjudicators and enforcers of the law … little comprehending that this shooting represented the last, the very last straw.
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We’ve done it again … come home with another stray dog, one which to date defies returning to whoever lost him. He isn’t from our neighborhood – since no one here recognizes him. We found him romping happily last Sunday afternoon in the empty field next to St. Helena’s Catholic Church, and he followed us home. There are at least three neighborhoods besides ours that he could possibly have come from, four if he galloped across Nacogdoches Road sometime in the wee hours last weekend. We’re going to go around tomorrow and paper them with fliers, but I am not holding my breath on being called by his owner any time soon.
It is possible he came from a good distance. In the past, we have found dogs and returned them to owners who lived a good few miles from our house. Big dogs can go a long way – especially if frightened out of their tiny canine minds by a thunderstorm, or 4th of July fireworks. Like those previous rescues, this one is a big dog, not a fifteen-pound pocket-puppy like Connor the Malti-Poo who could not possibly have come very far from where we found him five or six months ago. We were certain that Conner had strayed, and that someone was frantically searching for him, but no. Connor was dumped, and we fear it is the same with Muttley, as we have called him, purely for the convenience of calling him something. Muttley is a German shepherd and hound cross, about a year old, with a collar and no tags – he might have come from a neighborhood a fair distance away, but I registered him with fido-finder and find-toto-dot-com, without result. So we’re pretty certain that he was dumped also … which is a pity in a good many ways.
First – because someone house-trained him, and taught him to sit, stay, lie down, and shake hands – which is a heck of a lot of work to do with a young dog. He was very clean when we found him, he likes the cats, is agreeably subservient to the senior dogs, behaves himself indoors, and otherwise gives evitence of being a dog that someone took care with. The last couple of dumped dogs that we found were anything but – they were rowdy, undisciplined, destructive, and we were happy to find one lot some new owners (with a large and dog-proof back yard) and turn the other two over to the county Animal Shelter, which does all that they can with healthy and well-tempered animals.
The one thing that keeps us from doing the same with Muttley, is that he seems to have an old but healed injury to one of his fore-legs, or rather to his shoulder – scapula bone. He limps a little bit – and we’re afraid that if we do turn him over to the shelter, he will be immediatly euthanized because of it. So – if anyone knows of anyone in San Antonio who would like to adopt a nice, well-trained and affectionate larger dog … let us know. Muttley will be available.
It’s been another one of those weeks, sportsfans; all kinds of odd things going on, some of them personal and some of them in the larger world. Kind of hard to see which of them are more important in the big scheme o’ things, and not many of them worth a full blog-post.
1. So King Barry I did his state of the union address this week. Meh … I didn’t watch, although we did catch a few seconds of it while channel-surfing. Just enough time to wonder why on earth he appeared to be such a garish orange color … seriously, he looked like a giant Cheeto with ears. I gather the speech was the same paint by the numbers blah-blah-blah. It must not have gone over all that well with the partisans, because I distinctly heard an announcer or a guest on a certain classical music program make a crack about it; something about a certain classical music performer getting more applause than the state of the union address.
2. Gingrich or Romney, Romney or Gingrich. I am underwhelmed. The sniping between the partisans is unseemly. My one wistful desire is that it were possible to take elements of all the candidates and mold them into one single candidate: Gingrich’s fire and take-no-prisoners attitude, Romney’s skill at organization, Santorum’s constancy to principle, Perry’s experience as a governor … but it isn’t, so I’ll just have to deal with the easy decision of who to vote for in November. Anybody but King Barry, of course, but I might give the Dread Cthulhu a look-in.
3. Working all week on an editing job; a novelette supposed to be a horror story, but in actuality it was what I call secondary guy-porn. Primary guy porn is what you think it is, secondary guy porn has lots of loving detail about weapons and vehicles in it. Secondary fem-porn has lots of loving detail about clothes and accessories. Hey, it’s a living. And it’s not the worst project I’ve ever edited.
4. The second edition of the separate books of the Adelsverein Trilogy has been uploaded to Lightning Source, the proofs are approved, and it should be listed on Amazon and the usual suspects by the end of the week – and at a price of a couple of bucks cheaper than the first edition. I’d always winced, looking at the retail price, and winced again, whenever I had to purchase a bulk quantity at my author discount from Booklocker. Here’s hoping that the Trilogy chugs along just as steadily as Truckee does – both e-book and print versions … and the German translation sells like hot-cakes.
5. Sigh. We found another lost dog. And no, we’re not keeping this one, as we did with Connor. German shepherdish, youngish, fairly clean and well-mannered, unneutered male, bouncing around in the empty field back of St. Helena’s. He followed along with us, all the way home; did not take well to having a leash put on him, so we deduce that he was never taken for walkies. Of course no tags. He’s already listed on fido-finder, and tomorrow we’ll go through the usual rounds. The other two dogs are freaked out by this. The Weevil has taken over Connor’s bed, wedged underneath my desk, and Conner has had to take the Weevil’s bed, which I moved over next to my chair.
And that’s been my week – yours?
It appears that a great number of veterans and relatives of veterans are increasingly incensed at the news that the late Senator Murtha may have a new Navy ship named for him. The late senator was famed for nearly being nailed in the Abscam scandal, lo these many decades ago, for sucking down absolutely mind-boggling quantities of political pork for his district, and last but not least, pre-judging the Marines charged in the so-called Haditha incident.
Those veterans and relatives feel so strongly about this gross insult to military honor that they have opened a website, and a means of communication their displeasure to the Secretary of the Navy.
This is the website -
www.nomurthaship.com
Go, therefore, and do your duty, with regard to their petition. That is all.
(sorry, means of posting embedded links has gone the same way as the ability to post pictures.)