Monthly Archive for January, 2009

A War on Profanity?

Published
by
alice
on January 31, 2009
in comedy, cool sites, republicans and wingnuts
. 3 Comments

It’s hard to believe that someone could come up with an idea that is dumber than the War on Drugs, but South Carolina State Senator Robert Ford has gone and done it (via Ice Station Tango):

Now, why would we, as a community, want to take a productive member of society and turn him into the taxpayer’s problem by throwing him into jail or prison, when all he did was drop the f-bomb (or pick up a bit of weed for the weekend)? Plus, if swearing were outlawed, we’d miss out on wonderful moments like this one (via One Good Move):


(from old jews tellling jokes.com)
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Friday Creature

Published
by
alice
on January 30, 2009
in friday creature - bugs and photos - 2009
. 1 Comment

Even though I took this picture, I don’t really believe these bugs exist. They’re just too weird. Their parts don’t fit with each other — like the sad little platypus and all the other poorly assembled creatures that got rushed into production before they were ready.

Enjoy the Superbowl, everyone (go Pittsburgh!) and have a great weekend (happy Annie’s birthday, too!)! The ark is teeming with critters, as always!

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Short Days

Published
by
alice
on January 29, 2009
in movies
. 3 Comments

These gloomy days of winter are really sapping me of energy. After giving up both coffee and cigarettes, the only thing I have to cling to in the morning is the sun’s light, and we haven’t been getting much of that around here lately. Plus, there’s the added frustration of the SE Tennessee “winter”: either cold or precipitation, but never both, so we get bone-chilling, gray rainy days or (rare) sunny days that are too damn cold to be useful to anyone. It sure would give me a thrill to have a snow day — a real snow day, with some accumulation on the ground, and not just the masses freaking out (how much milk and bread do you need, people?!?) because it might snow.

But anyway, instead of continuing to whine about the global warming (when is Al Gore going to turn it off already?!?), I’ll leave you to check this out. These people are most clearly not suffering from a lack of vigor.


Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers

Update:

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Wordless Wednesday

Published
by
alice
on January 28, 2009
in emmie, photos - 2008 and wordless wednesday
. 5 Comments


Wordless Wednesday

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Istanbul Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts

Published
by
alice
on January 27, 2009
in photos - 2008 and travelogue - turkey (2008)
. 2 Comments

(Can you believe I still have photos left from my trip to Turkey?)

What do you put in an art museum when your culture spent years discouraging the creation of representational art?

Well, you fill it with metallurgy…

…calligraphy…

…rugs…

textiles…

… and other fashions.

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Monday

Published
by
alice
on January 26, 2009
in nonnie
. 5 Comments

When I was a little kid and sat around thinking about how cool it would be when I was a grown up, it never crossed my mind that I might end up spending a day trying to figure out how to get my dog’s blood to Kansas.

This has been one of the stranger days in my adulthood.

Last year, after Nonnie had her annual visit to the vet — complete with immunizations — things went south quickly and stayed pretty awful until they finally became much, much worse. After a couple of months of sick dog, she was finally fixed by pretty drastic surgery.

Now, there might very well have been two, separate, things going on there. First, the immunization-induced canine autoimmune hemolytic anemia. And then there was the intestinal inteceception. They might be connected and they might not. But we’re pretty sure the shots made her immune system freak out, and we’d like to avoid doing that again. And we really don’t want her insides to get all knotted up again. So, the vet came up with a plan.

The county requires pets to be registered, and you can’t register without proving an immunity to rabies. Now, the easiest, cheapest way of doing that is with a certificate of immunization — give the dog the shot, and you can be sure she’s immune. But you can also test the dog’s blood for antibodies, and if the immunity is there, then there’s no need for the shot. Most people don’t bother with the test because it’s (much) easier and (far) cheaper to just give the pets the shot.

But my dog is a special case. So this morning we went to the vet’s for a blood draw. Then we came back home and I did a bit of research about how to get a spun serum to the rabies lab in Kansas while keeping it cold (this is not a routine activity at the vet’s office, so he gave me the job of figuring this part out). After lunch (the La Paz de Dios luncheon!), I headed back over the vet’s to pick up the prepared blood sample. Then I swung back home to pack the sample with one of those freezer blocks that’ll keep your cooler cool in the summer, and rolled it up in bubble wrap — hopefully that’ll keep it cold until tomorrow morning. Then I took the forms, payment and my parcel to the UPS store to have it wrapped and shipped off. It’s all supposed to arrive at the lab in Kansas by 10:30 tomorrow morning.

So, how was your day?

UPDATE: as of 2:30 on Tuesday afternoon, our little vial of dog blood is still out there somewhere. According to the tracking data, today’s blizzard in the midwest has it sitting in Kansas City, MO…

UPDATE: delivery was made at 10:05 on Wednesday morning. We’ll see if the sample was still any good — hopefully it was sitting on a truck out in the cold somewhere…

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On TV tonight…

Published
by
alice
on January 24, 2009
in civil & human rights, religion and tv
. 0 Comments

Just a reminder, that Prayers for Bobby is on TV tonight. Andy’s got some more info, along with a few reviews (and this link to FOF reaction). Here is the book.

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Inauguration tidbits

Published
by
alice
on January 24, 2009
in cheney
. 5 Comments

Cheney When I first saw Dick Cheney rolling around in a wheelchair (Blofeld, Strangelove, or Potter?) on Tuesday, I was awfully surprised. Why was he unable to walk? The talking heads explained that he’d hurt his back lifting a box (oh, really?). But that didn’t make any sense to me for two reasons. First, because I’ve been there, done that (lifting –> injured back) and the last thing you want to do with that sort of injury is sit down! Ouch! Standing and lying flat were the only options I had with my back injury. And secondly, why was he lifting boxes? Off the top of my head, I can think of at least a few million people who would have been very happy — ecstatic, even — to help Dick move his stuff out of his office to wherever he wanted to go. Seriously. We could have had a team of volunteers there within moments. Though in his defense, perhaps he was moving his own boxes because he was afraid that he might somehow get lured into a box and instead of arriving safe at home after a journey, he might find that he’s been dropped at The Hague.

Photos You know I love the pretty pictures. Here’s a collection of beautiful, huge images from the big day. A cool high-res pan and zoom image from the inauguration (go ahead — zoom in on Obama!). A collection of newspaper front pages about the inauguration. And some great shots of Obama’s team.

The Hat One of the best things about the inauguration? You gotta give props to Aretha’s hat! Flickr feeds and buzzfeeds are keeping up with the aftermath!

The First Granny Mo Rocca (understandably) has a crush on Marian Robinson.

The Poster And, if you want a souvenir of the day, here’s a good one (click on the image to go to the source):

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Friday Creature

Published
by
alice
on January 23, 2009
in friday creature - cats and photos - 2009
. 2 Comments

G-Dog and I spent our holiday last weekend with friends, holed up in a cabin in Blue Ridge, GA. When we ventured out to explore the town, I ran into this enormous cat (the photo doesn’t really show his size, but check out his huge feet!). He wasn’t interested in any kind of interaction, but I did manage to snap this picture while he was trying to get away.

Have a great weekend! As always, the Modulator’s Ark has your full spectrum of critters!

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Blog for Choice Day

Published
by
alice
on January 22, 2009
in wombs
. 4 Comments

Here’s a thought for the day. The evidence all suggests that the best way to reduce the number of abortions is to keep them safe and legal, while also providing information, health care and contraception to people — reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, and abortion becomes unnecessary. But there are still some people who cling to the idea that abortion should be illegal. Evidence suggests that these people are not terribly thoughtful, because while they claim abortion is murder, if you ask them what the penalty should be if a woman chooses to murder her unborn child, they become flummoxed.

Now, I don’t believe that abortion should be illegal. If it were, women with legitimate medical reasons to terminate a pregnancy would be put at serious risk. But I do believe that if abortion were illegal, there should be a penalty if a woman gets an abortion. If there’s not, then why call it a crime?

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