Dramatic

Hmmm, this Italian player's flop was rather dramatic.

Shuttle Diplomacy

B1 loves the Space Shuttle. And while researching it to talk to him about it, I saw that the last two shuttle flights are this year (mid-September for Discovery, and mid-November for Endeavour), and told him that. He said "But I love the Space Shuttle Program; I don't think they should cancel it." And I could hear a little hitch in his voice, so I gave him a hug. He said "What are they replacing it with?" and I told him that there wasn't anything lined up, yet, and he couldn't understand why they hadn't done that. I didn't have the heart to tell him that our country's increasingly becoming an economic and cultural basket case and things like space programs are going the way of art and music programs in the public schools. Sigh. Then he sweetly came up with some alternative plans for space programs. He's such a smart, sweet lil' guy.

Toes

Hey, I may stub my toes an awful lot, but I'm not clumsy! It's just that I have big feet and a small apartment! If I lived in a loft, I'd probably do somewhat better. Especially without furniture. Hah! Big Man + Small World = Stubbed Toes.

I've been eyeing these units in my building that have balconies. I'd really, really love a balcony. I'd put a bunch of potted plants and trees up there around the perimeter, make it a nice little sanctuary. That would be awesome. I'd love that. My boys would love it, too. I'm sure the units with the balconies are pricey (maybe even condos? Who knows?) but they look so awesome.

I need titanium-toed slippers until I get to a large enough residence where toe-stubbing is less likely. What can I say? I'm a man of action -- I move swiftly, and if something's in my way, I run into it.

My left foot still isn't 100% better. It's getting there, but not yet. Hairline fracture. Grumble grumble.

Touchdown!

Touchdown Jesus Destroyed By Lightning

God does work in mysterious ways. He's not a fan of graven images, but don't tell the fundamentalists that!

What up, Tiger Lily?

Saw these near my work, had to capture'em.

Good Quote

"In the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."

-- Bertrand Russell

Newt, 1992-2010

Tonight we had Newt put down; he had terminal renal failure, which is often what does in old cats. And he was an old cat. Sweet to the end, dying with feline grace around 6:00 this evening. He was snow-white, with golden eyes, and had this high-toned, sweet meow. He loved people, especially gals, although I was usually the one to take care of him, and since I usually woke up earliest in the household, he'd meow at me to get some food or whatever he needed. A very talkative meower. He was a big, strong American Shorthair bought in southern Ohio, he was around 20 lbs. at his peak, and that was muscle. We never had him declawed (I just never believe in that -- fuck the furniture -- not like I had any furniture valuable enough to worry about that).

Newt was always a charmer, a people-pleaser. He was boundlessly curious, would come trotting out to check you out and loved attention. He was a pretty good mouser (I discovered this at the Black House), although not as good as his sister, Jinx, who was a really prime mouser. But Newt was very quick. In his youth, he could jump very high -- like maybe 62" straight up, which was pretty impressive for a cat. As a kitten, we had him and his sister blocked off in a room of the first apartment we ever rented, and entertained guests in one of the other rooms. And we heard this scrabbling and tiny Newt had managed to crawl his way up and over the barricade, peeking his lil' head over and mewling, to everybody's delight. He and his sister caught fleas, and turned that apartment into a real flea trap, prompting a major chemical war on those damned fleas.

I remember giving him a bath to get him clean, and Newt just hating that, mewling and refusing to make eye contact for a day or so. But he was ultimately an incredibly sweet and forgiving animal, with this calm and even temper. The only time I ever saw Newt bristle was when he saw an opossum on the other side of a sliding glass door at our apartment circa 1999 -- Newt didn't know what the hell that thing was; and when the in-laws brought one of their dogs in, and Newt actually swaggered out and growled at the intruder dog (I thought it was stupid of them to bring their dog in, anyway). Newt just moseyed up to the dog that was easily three times his weight and he'd whack her with his paws. She came from a house with a cat and only wanted to be friends, but Newt was having none of it. Newt was named from the character, "Newt," from ALIENS, which we'd watched maybe the weekend before getting him and his sister. I don't really remember how we decided on Newt, but it stuck, and everybody was calling him Newt in short order, our peers from college in our college town, where we got him. When we took him and his sister from the cages and let'em roam around the pet store, kitten-Newt terrified these guinea pigs -- Newt ran up to them (they were in their cages) and peeked at them and they did that guinea pig distress-trilling, which was funny, since they dwarfed Newt back in the day. I remember as kittens, Newt and his sister would cuddle up by my shoulders and purr during the night, before they grew up and got too cool for that, although even as an adult, Newt would crawl up onto my chest and peer at me (usually at night, with that white fur of his and his eyes all dark in the night, very "Ghost Cat") and he'd sometimes lay down on my chest, touching my chin with his paws, or he'd just stand there and give me an interrogative meow.

Newt loved when I'd comb him -- he'd just sit there very patiently and let me groom him, in this Sphinxlike pose with his legs out. Sometimes he'd hold that pose and fall asleep, and his head would droop down between his paws, which was adorable. Most of my pix of Newt are from the old days, before the digital camera came along. Around 1993, the day before Exene was going to get her state ID photograph, Newt used her face as a springboard to launch himself to a windowsill, which scratched her face. She got up, jolted awake by that, and then promptly fainted. She was chagrined that her ID picture had her with this fresh scar on her face. Newt really was a great cat. I put his picture (above) on our wall -- it was a photograph taken by a mutual friend from the "Summer of Love" (as I ironically called the summer after college graduation, when our group of college peers hung out and just basically partied and had a good time, everybody still friends, all of that -- me stupidly deciding on getting married at 22 years -- dumbass). Anyway, that friend managed to capture Newt's essence perfectly in that photograph. It's quintessential Newt, as a young cat, laying there, curious, paw extended, wanting to explore. Totally, totally him (there's a companion shot of Jinx, too, which is also very her -- but Newt's open expression is just so sweetly him). Anybody who met Newt knows how sweet a cat he was. He'd just come out and say "Hi" and want to be petted. He wasn't afraid of anybody, loved everybody.

Later, Newtral. I love you, lil' guy. *NOSETOUCH*

Imposter!

NPR's "Fresh Air" had Jackie DeShannon on, and they played one of the songs she wrote...

The Fleetwoods, "The Great Imposter"

In addition to sounding like something David Lynch would put in one of his movies (likely in a scene of terror of some sort involving a straight razor), it's sooooo a song that hearkens back to the very dark time of early 2009. Hard to hear it without wincing!

Horny

I am enjoying the World Cup, but good lord, those fucking horns they're constantly tooting are horrendous. An endless drone. I can't imagine how horrible it is for the stadium attendees.

B FLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT

Constantly. Torture. I try to tune it out, but it's almost impossible to.

Weekend Worrier

I wasn't as impressed with the Old Town Art Fair (OTAF) this year as I've been in previous years. I don't know if the jury composition changed or what, but there were too many jewelry makers there, and there was way too much meh 2D Mixed Media. I don't object to 2D Mixed Media, but it should be "Wow!" and not "Meh." Still, I always enjoy ambling around the OTAF and seeing what's going on.

I've been encouraging B1 to read to his brother. B2 loves to read, but B1 is more reluctant to do so, trends toward nonfiction. I try to have him read some nonfiction and fiction daily, so he can (hopefully) get into the habit more. His baby brother loves to, but can't properly read, yet (although he really wants to). So, I've been having B1 read to his baby brother, and it's adorable to watch them curled up together with a book. I ordered (and just received) "Icarus at the Edge of Time" by Brian Greene, which is a retelling of the Icarus myth with a black hole in place of the sun -- it's right up B1's alley, and I can't wait for him to see it. He'll love it.

Our old cat is dying. I took his sister to the vet a few years ago -- she was my cat, and her brother was Exene's cat. Anyway, after 18 years, his number's finally up. I told Exene it was on her to take him to the vet's, since I'd done that with his sister, when she was dying. So, predictably, she didn't do anything all weekend, and poor cat's condition worsened. I tried to take care of him, but he's suffering from terminal renal failure, which is common with old cats. He's conducted himself with rather amazing grace, just trying to keep it together, cat-style, but it's still very sad. Exene finally called the vet's this morning, and is going to take him after work. I'm annoyed at how she dithered on that. The moment he got to the point of no return, she should've taken him in, rather than waiting four+ days to tend to it. *headshake*

400,000

I heard on NPR the other day that Ohio has lost 400,000 jobs over the past four years. That's a lot of jobs gone. It has something like a 10.8% unemployment rate. The Republicans have really buggered that poor state.

The World Cup is fun so far. Ghana won their match with Serbia, Germany smoked the Aussies (4 - 0 -- ouch), Slovenia squeaked by Algeria (1 - 0), and of course the US tied with England. I think England and the US will smoke Slovenia and Algeria (they're in the same group), so things are looking good for the US.

It rained a lot today. I went to the Old Town Art Fair, will comment more on that later, as I need a shower (so humid and rainy today, I feel like I'm in some kind of temperate rain forest!

Buffalo Chicken?

I had bought some bison burgers last week, cooked'em up. I made a couple today, and, on a whim, I later made my kickass BBQ sauce in the same pan, using the grease (of which there isn't much -- bison is pretty lean) as the shortening for the recipe, instead of the usual. I liked the idea of using the savory from the bison in the BBQ sauce. It tastes extra-yummy! I slathered it on the chicken and it's cooking right now, making the place smell yummy!

In other news...

England 1
USA 1

Awwwoo! A draw!

Who Killed the Electric Car?

I watched "Who Killed the Electric Car?" last night, on a whim. I usually avoid documentaries like that because it just gets my blood boiling. And this was no exception -- it's a good documentary, and they lay it out methodically. It's a clear case of an automobile company sabotaging and scuttling one of their own products in the interest of serving Big Oil. It just kills me, because the EV1 was clearly a cutting-edge vehicle. 100% electric battery-powered, no emissions, fast and powerful, it was a real forward step. GM had the opportunity to corner the market on a new and exciting product, and they backed away from it and, instead, went with SUVs. And not only did they scuttled the EV1, but they took them all back from folks who leased them and had them all crushed and impounded on a GM lot! Amazing. Near as I can tell (although this isn't explained in the movie, I'm just theorizing, here) they realized they weren't going forward with electric cars, and they didn't want the EV1s out there to 1) show that electric cars were desirable and realizable, and 2) potentially be snagged by competitors and reverse-engineered, giving a competitor access to a fine electric car that they had no intention of mass-marketing.

In the wake of the Gulf Disaster, the open wound in the world that it represents, this documentary is a must-see, because you really see how Big Oil calls the tune in our country. It's especially fascinating to see the damning appraisal of hybrids and hydrogen fuel cell cars -- both of which are blind alleys intended to keep gasoline front-and-center. Fuel cell cars are inordinately expensive, relative to electric cars, and are, even in the best-case scenario, a stopgap technology. There's been plenty of money poured into them, and they're still a prohibitive blind alley -- compared with that, the electric cars are a far-cheaper, user-friendlier real-world alternative.

Anyway, the movie shows a clear case of companies acting against their long-term economic interest and actually foregoing commanding market share because of the easy, oily money being made in the here-and-now. And how they will work tirelessly to ensure that emission-free electric cars don't displace the gas-guzzlers anytime soon.

Amazing stuff, well worth a viewing, but if you have an iota of liberal and progressive values in your heart, it'll piss you off.

It's also staggering to see that the first electric cars appeared in 1897.