Twelve Reasons Cats Are NOT Republican

MessagingMatters at Kos lists the reasons.

Kitty Esther's Most Recent Transit Through The Pearly Gates (Cartoon)

Thanks to one of Stella's brothers for the ref. Stella promptly reminded me of the frequent diner card we take to Dimassi's Mediterranean Buffet, which is, in its own right, a kind of paradise...

Dear President Obama And Speaker Boehner:

I have read from many sources including this one that you are very near to closing a deal on the budget and the debt ceiling. I have also read from a couple of sources including the one just cited that the deal includes "significant cuts in spending on Medicare and Social Security disability benefits."

This old geezer is watching you very closely and would like to inform you of my own plans. If you severely whack Social Security, and as a result I find myself getting hungry on a regular basis, I will take a knife and start carving myself some steaks...

... OUT OF MEMBERS OF CONGRESS!!!

(Note to concerned government agents, FBI, etc.: Put the gun down. I'm a vegetarian. I've been a sprout-eater for about 35 years. Give it up; I'm not gonna take a knife to anyone.)

‘Happy Birthday,’ Screw You —‘Happy Birthday,’ Screw You —

Parker Higgins at Electronic Frontier Foundation:

It’s now (probably) legal to publicly sing the world's most popular song, thanks to an opinion handed down yesterday [9/22/2015] by a federal judge in Los Angeles. After years of litigation, the court held that the lyrics of "Happy Birthday To You" are not restricted by Warner/Chappell's copyright, handing a solid victory to a group of filmmakers producing a documentary about the song, not to mention the general public.

We’re glad about the ruling, but we can’t help noting that the case casts some of the deeper problems with our copyright system into stark contrast. For one thing, copyright terms are way, way, way too long.

...

Regular readers may know I'm not fond of copyright the way it has developed here since the founders of our nation embedded it in the Constitution (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8): a concept intended to do two things— materially reward useful or artistic creative effort ("... by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"), while allowing such work to become part of the commons after a time as a means of encouraging later authors, composers, inventors etc. to develop earlier ideas into further useful creations— has ended up serving only a couple of very powerful trade associations in the movie, music and publishing businesses and simultaneously doing practically nothing to encourage the proper use of earlier material by later creators. That use is, of course, where the real benefit to society resides; now it's gone.

That's what we've seen to date (e.g., kids facing near-million-dollar fines for downloading digital recordings and making their own CDs or iPod content), and I'm pretty sure we can expect nothing but more-of-the-same in the future. That's pretty damned far from the expressed original intention of copyright, but it serves the greedy very well, and that's the nature of America today. [/rant]

So the judge's releasing of America's usual Birthday Song from a faulty copyright held by Warner/Chappell, who exercised it to a profit typically $2 million a year (see the EFF article linked above), is a good thing. I assume the excessive fines levied in some copyright matters will now be challenged in court, at least by those who can afford the legal bills. And that, too, is a good thing.

As to the song itself, which I consider an unartistic near-atrocity, see this post's title for my unchanged reaction to it. That song is not a good thing!

What Will The American Media Do When The Pope Has Gone Home?

Well, perhaps they could produce an opera. Here's a duet from it...

POPE‑A‑GENO		POPE‑A‑GENA
Pope... Pope Pope...
		Pope... Pope Pope...
Pope... Pope... Pope... Pope...
		Pope... Pope... Pope... Pope...
... etc. ...

Nah... that's too much like what we're hearing right now when anyone but the Pontiff himself is speaking...

Inquiring Herbivore Minds Want To Know...

The daily Trump TPM email pointed to an article titled "Trump Truth! Was Trump’s Obama/Muslim Questioner A Plant?" Well, surely, yes, but that isn't the half of it; the real question is, what kind of plant?

A ficus? a tulip? broccoli? a forest of giant oak trees (some assembly required)? I'd guess the last option; he was clearly some kind of nut...

Krugman Quote

I've been reading a rather dated (1999) Krugman book, more for the segment he appended in later editions about the crisis of 2008, but the whole thing has been an education for me, as is usual with his books. Here's the quotation:

"But hype springs eternal..."

— Paul Krugman, The Return of Depression Economics / and the crisis of 2008, p. 146.

You know, I think I really like the guy...

Little Seizers [sic]

Another recent Smash/Grab
in Houston

Smash-and-grab crimes, in which the thieves ram a vehicle into a storefront window, steal some items and load them into the vehicle, and finally exit the way they entered, have regrettably become as common in Houston as in other big cities; just google the expression "smash grab houston" for some examples. This morning, ABC 13 Houston News reported such a break-in at a location of a well-known pizza chain. (The news item is not yet on the ABC13 site.)

Safe!?

The thieves (there seem to have been a lot of them, perhaps seven people) broke loose the store's safe, seized it (so said the newscaster), and got away with it in the truck. Apparently the safe was subsequently transferred to another vehicle, but the woman driving that car was caught and is in custody. Clearly smash-and-grab is now an equal opportunity offense!

Considering the pizza chain, you could call the thieves little seizers. Apparently no one was seriously hurt, and none of the pizza parlor staff suffered petit mal (little seizures). I regret that there was such a major crime, but I am glad everyone is safe... if any of the thieves ordered (or stole) a salad while they were there, I hope they also got a handful of safe crackers to go with it... (and on and on...)

(FTR, I never go to Little Ceasars. I just don't like what they bake. I'm not saying it's bad, only that I don't like it, and this is a city full of choices when it comes to pizza.)

Cat-A-Planing

This appeared on the news yesterday evening... and this morning... and probably tomorrow morning... and...

I'm glad the humans had the decency to land, even if it made them ultralate...

‘I've Got A Lot Of Friends. We'll Have A Rotating First Lady.’ — Presidential Aspirant Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)

Ohhh-kaaay...

Potential rotating First Lady
(proposed by Lindsey Graham)

(If image doesn't animate, do a hard refresh [Ctrl-F5] to get it started. Or right-click the image and choose View Image Info. This appears to be a known bug in Firefox. Or just view the post in Google Chrome.)

Friday Folly — Rename Austin Street Or Not?

Houston's CBS TV news outlet, KHOU-11 News, ran a story about a street in Austin, TX named

BRUCE JENNER LANE

The residents are debating whether to retain that name, or to rename the street

CAITLYN JENNER LANE

The name change would require the approval of a majority of the street's residents and also the Austin city council.

I propose a compromise: why don't they just rename it

TRANS JENNER LANE?
(Sorry, no pic available!)

<grin_duck_run />

Tasteless Quiz: Rank The Evils In This Story

The story:

Carbon monoxide kills Kentucky couple having sex in car

Friday, May 22, 2015 04:46AM

GLENCOE, KY (KTRK) --

A man and woman died while having sex in a parked car, WCPO-TV reports.

Paramedics say Violet Iles, 25, and David Long, 32, died when carbon monoxide began leaking into the vehicle through a rusty exhaust pipe. The couple had turned the vehicle on because it was a chilly night.

Long's brother told WPCO-TV he found the bodies while walking his children to their school bus stop.

"I pulled him out and I tried to do CPR on him, and the paramedics tried to talk me through it over the phone," Kevin Long said.

Police are now waiting for a toxicology report to see if alcohol or drugs were in the couple's system. The Sheriff's Department says anyone who plans to spend a long period of time in a parked vehicle should roll down the windows or turn off the vehicle.

Kienholz: Back Seat Dodge '38 (1964)
or
Door Open - How You're S'posed To Do It

The quiz:

A. This is a story about the evils of...

1. carbon monoxide
2. Kentucky
3. couples
4. cars
5. sex
6. drugs
7. rock 'n' roll
8. toxicology
9. CPR
10. paramedics
11. sheriffs
12. all of the above
13. none of the above

B. As fluff news items go, this one is...

1. more entertaining than most
2. regrettably typical
3. bow-ring (aptly the name of the Gander, Newfoundland airport)

Thank you for your time. No matter what you answered, you may print your quiz and use it as toilet paper. You are now leaving...

THE TOILET ZONE!

Misread Of The Day

... occurred when I glanced at this headline...

American al-Qaeda leaders killed in U.S. counterterror strikes

... and misread it as follows:

American al-Qaeda leaders killed in U.S. COUNTERTENOR strikes

Actually, I think we should try it. Take three of the free world's finest countertenors (i.e., adult male altos) and turn them loose on an Al Qaeda cell...

---

AFTERWORD: Well, that turned out not only to be not humorous, but actually to be tragic: apparently the drone also killed two additional people at the site, one of them American, neither of them Al Qaeda. My thoughts are with the families. And despite my initial joking, I find the entire episode, as now revealed, anything but funny. [/sigh]

UPDATE: Obama apologizes for the American drone strike which killed "[a]n American aid worker and another man held hostage by Al Qaeda". Apparently the CIA had no intelligence (there's a temptation to end the sentence right there) indicating these hostages were present, and thus went forward with the strike.

18 Years — Cause For Celebration

 As of today, Stella and I have been an "item" for 18 years. This Lichtenstein-like work shows "Stella," but with all due respect to people who love their kids, the woman depicted here expresses (sarcastically) an attitude for both of us. Search the Web for "forgot to have children" and you'll learn how very many people feel that way!

We plan a splendid meal (probably at Vietopia), a walk in a park (weather permitting) and... our signature activity for most such celebrations... a trip to a bookstore!

‘Chocolate Snorting’? Tell Me You're Joking, Please!

No, apparently not; someone actually sells a device for it. Here's Miranda Alexander Webber at Reuters:

(Reuters) - When Belgian chocolatier Dominique Persoone created a chocolate-sniffing device for a Rolling Stones party in 2007, he never imagined demand would stretch much beyond the rock 'n' roll scene. But, seven years later, he has sold 25,000 of them.

I like chocolate as much as the next blogger, and I generally have a box of cocoa around the kitchen for the few recipes that call for it... but I think I'll pass on this delivery method!

(H/T Avedon.)

---

In other food-related news, you can add bacon to the list of inadequately inspected foods. (FWIW, Morningstar Farms offers a perfectly acceptable vegetarian bacon substitute; we consume quite a bit of it around Our House. Try some; go whole hog!)

Misspeak Of The Day

Electrical short

Electrical shortage

A reporter for Houston's ABC13 News said it, not once, but several times over the course of the early morning news. Referring to a residence (apartment? house? I don't remember) that burned, the reporter, obviously following a script, said that arson investigators had determined that the fire was due to an electrical shortage [sic]...

Emergency Responders Saving Man Mere Moments Ago At Downtown Houston Construction Site — UPDATED

(Warning: if you read far enough into this post, you will very probably groan at the horror you encounter...)

I turned on the TV to fill the time it took me to eat breakfast/lunch (not fancy enough to call it "brunch") and immediately happened upon breaking news: at an office building construction site in downtown Houston at the corner of Main St. and Texas Ave., an emergency crew was using some sort of crane-and-pulleys arrangement to lift a stretcher containing a man who had fallen, apparently into the deep hole in which the building will eventually be built. The man was strapped securely into the stretcher, which looked more suited to an ancient Egyptian mummy; the main cable(s) lifted the stretcher painstakingly slowly, while two yellow ropes attached to the head and foot ends of the stretcher served to stabilize the stretcher so that it didn't gyrate wildly.

The fixed screen caption read something like "Construction Site, Downtown Houston, Main & Texas." The news announcer, who was understandably repeating herself quite a lot because no one had provided her any more information than the rest of us had, kept saying, "You can see the two yellow ropes attached to the ends of the stretcher." Her repeated remark made me realize I'd seen this show before, and I even knew the theme song...





Wait for it...

The Yellow Ropes at Texas.

(Oh, groooaaannn!)

When I left the screen scene, the crew had the man back at ground level and were preparing to load him into an ambulance. I'll report more when I know more, but the good news is that one thing Houston has in great abundance, packed full and running over, is hospitals.

---

UPDATE Wed. morning 2/18, apparently from yesterday afternoon's Click2Houston news: the man was taken to Memorial Hermann Hospital (that's where I had my surgery done two years ago), and although there hasn't been a formal report of the worker's condition or announcement of his name, the consensus of people who saw him right after his fall from a crane is that his injuries were not serious and he was alert and responsive. Good... I'd hate to be laughing at his expense if he had been seriously hurt. One of many things I liked about my occupation in my working years is that it involved neither dangerous heights nor precarious balancing acts... well, there were those occasionally tense meetings with the bosses...

Extensible Slogan?

There's a chain of jewelers around here named Kay. Their slogan seems to be

Every kiss begins with Kay™

Hmm... OK, I got it. So when does a urologist open an office with the slogan

Every piss begins with pee™

<grin‑duck‑run />

Email Coincidence

In my inbox I saw a message from Blood Pressure Solution with a subject something like 1 food that keeps you off BP meds. I grabbed the mouse and reached for the button labeled "Spam" ...

(Hey, could you have resisted it?)

The Challenges Of Small Town Life — Doggerel!

Catherine Thompson at TPM tells us about one of those challenges:

Ohio Town Orders Man To Take Down Zombie Nativity Scene

A suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio has ordered one resident to remove a zombie-themed nativity scene from his property, local TV station WLWT reported Tuesday night.

Jasen Dixon, a Sycamore Township man who manages a haunted house in Indiana, built the manger scene with zombie-like figures standing in for Joseph, Mary, baby Jesus and the three wise men.

But town officials following up on two anonymous complaints found that Dixon's handmade nativity scene violated zoning codes.

...

Yeah, right; zoning codes. It's time for a double dactyl, folks, about the...

Zombie Takedown!

Higgledy piggledy,
Zombie Nativity
Vacantly stares at our
Midwestern town;

Direly reducing our
Profitability:
Bad for our Christmas — now
Take the thing down!

— SB the YDD