Cat, bird, seat

Christmas in Ohio was a tad dreary, what with the weather, and the usual sad and nostalgic memories piling up all over the house like so much dust. But it was nice to relax with Mum, burn a few logs (and cancelled checks dating back to the 70s, which I found while cleaning out the attic) on the fire.
Mum's cat has the pretentious full name Valentino Provenzano. I forget his middle name. To me, he responds to "Schmootie" or any other epithet said in a falsetto. We think he's gay, since he prefers to cuddle up to men. He's a funny little creature who knows enough to chase after a tiny stuffed mouse when it's flung at him, but fails in the retrieval department.

He also likes to sniff and park himself right inside the piles of clean laundry as I fold it on a bed. And since he's mostly jet black, a few times, I nearly sat on him when he was sleeping on my mom's desk chair. He constantly craves a trip out on the porch, or thinks he wants to run outside whenever the front door is opened, then scurries back in after discovering how wet and cold it is outside. He also likes to snoop about in the attic, but since I hung some fox scent odorizers, which smell a bit musky, he gets a little freaked out. I bought them at Fur, Fin and Feathers, a mini-mall of hunting equipment, with camoflage everything, and up on the cathedral-lodge walls, dozens of mounted deer, moose and other animals, shot and stuffed. They even had a full-size bear above Aisle Three (the knives department).
The fox scent is used to keep out the squirrels, which once again made a makeshift nest up there behind the plastic tubs of childhood books and toys. One had died. That wasn't a fun experience, scraping the dried flat carcass of a squirrel off the attic floor (Sorry, no photo of that.)

Since Mum, as usual, shopped for food for more than the two of us, I made the medium-sized turkey without any hassle. I'll never understand the fuss made over cooking them. You just oil it, stuff it, baste it and voila! dinner for two, plus days of leftovers. Now I have weeks of gym-going to burn off the few pounds gained.
So, that's my last cutesy self-indulgent post of the year. No round-ups of media Top Tens. I'll leave that to other blogs, which do a better job.
Here's to a Happy New Year, in which the neocon criminals are once again ousted from power, or perhaps stuffed and mounted, and the troops are withdrawn from the miasma of Iraq.
One can hope.

Flakey

With all the bad news about tigers and assassinations, and with it being rainy here in Ohio, and more of that expected upon my return to San Francisco, I thought I'd share a fun time-waster: Make-A-Flake!

A Charlie Brown Christmas

...performed by the cast of Scrubs.

The War (is still) on (during) Christmas

'Father Christmas' beaten in West Bank Protest
Israeli guards beat five demonstrators, including one dressed as Father Christmas, during a protest on Friday against Israel's separation barrier in the West Bank, organisers said.

About 50 Palestinian, Israeli and international peace activists attended the rally in the village of Um Salomona, near Bethlehem, the Biblical birthplace of Jesus that is preparing to celebrate Christmas.

Archbishop says Nativity "a legend"
The Archbishop of Canterbury said yesterday that the Christmas story of the Three Wise Men was nothing but a 'legend.'

Dr Rowan Williams has claimed there was little evidence that the Magi even existed and there was certainly nothing to prove there were three of them or that they were kings.

Boy Arrested for Opening Christmas Gift Early
A South Carolina boy, 12, was arrested Sunday morning after his mother called police to report that he had unwrapped a Christmas present without her permission. According to a Rock Hill Police Department report (a copy of which you'll find below), the child opened a Nintendo Game Boy, though he had been directed not to by family members. When the boy's mother learned that the $85 gift had been opened, she called cops, who charged the juvenile with petty larceny.

Karl Rove Gets $1.5 Million Book Deal
GOP strategist Karl Rove has agreed to write about his years as an adviser to President Bush in a deal worth over $1.5 million with former colleague Mary Matalin's conservative imprint at Simon & Schuster, officials said Friday.

Rove, the architect of Bush's 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns and one of the most influential political advisers of his time, signed the deal with Threshold Editions, the imprint's publisher and executive vice president Louise Burke said.

"All of us at Threshold are thrilled to publish the book from the man who had the president's ear for two terms," Burke said.

Talking Jesus Action Figure Sells out at WalMarts
"We feel blessed that the toys are now in the hands of thousands of children, teaching them the word of God. We knew that the toys would make great Christmas gifts, but to see them sell so well before the Christmas buying season begins proves that parents want alternatives in the toy aisle," says the manufacturer's spokesperson, Joshua Livingston.

The Ass in Assumption

College Prez Snubs Gay Iraq Vet

Assumption College faculty members, by a vote of 45-33 this week, charged President Francesco Cesareo and his cabinet with violating policy when they refused to host a gay activist veteran as a Veterans Day speaker, but the faculty also voted not to pursue the issue.

The faculty voted Monday that the president and cabinet “violated published College policy when they canceled the appearance of a speaker invited by an official student organization, AC (Assumption College) Allies.”

Speaking for the administration, Thomas E. Ryan, vice president of Institutional Advancement, argued there could not have been a violation or a cancellation because the speaker never signed a contract.


The issue came up in August, when the campus’ gay-lesbian-bisexual student group, Assumption College Allies, was pursuing a contract to bring retired Staff Sgt. Eric Alva to campus for Veterans Day. Mr. Alva, a gay Marine, is a vocal opponent of the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Mr. Cesareo, who is new to Assumption this year, and the college’s vice presidents decided Mr. Alva was too political a guest for that observance.

Read my interview with Eric Alva here.

And Your Little Dog, Too!

What is it with Rethuglicans and dogs?

Guards at prisons in Iraq used dogs to torture prisoners, and Donald "You're Fired" Rumsfeld approved it.

Back in 1998, whack job flipflopper Mitt Romney strapped his dog in a cage atop his car and let the thing suffer for twelve hours.

The incident: dog excrement found on the roof and windows of the Romney station wagon. How it got there: Romney strapped a dog carrier — with the family dog Seamus, an Irish Setter, in it — to the roof of the family station wagon for a twelve hour drive from Boston to Ontario, which the family apparently completed, despite Seamus's rather visceral protest.

Massachusetts's animal cruelty laws specifically prohibit anyone from carrying an animal "in or upon a vehicle, or otherwise, in an unnecessarily cruel or inhuman manner or in a way and manner which might endanger the animal carried thereon." An officer for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals responded to a description of the situation saying "it's definitely something I'd want to check out." The officer, Nadia Branca, declined to give a definitive opinion on whether Romney broke the law but did note that it's against state law to have a dog in an open bed of a pick-up truck, and "if the dog was being carried in a way that endangers it, that would be illegal."

Fundie whack job and preposterous Rethug Prez candidate Mike Huckabee's obese son hanged a dog.

"...no charges were ever filed. But John Bailey, then the director of Arkansas's state police, tells NEWSWEEK that Governor Huckabee's chief of staff and personal lawyer both leaned on him to write a letter officially denying the local prosecutor's request. Bailey, a career officer who had been appointed chief by Huckabee's Democratic predecessor, said he viewed the lawyer's intervention as improper and terminated the conversation. Seven months later, he was called into Huckabee's office and fired."

And only days ago, some hired thug from Blackwater USA shot the dog of New York Times staffers in Iraq:

The U.S. embassy in Iraq is investigating another deadly shooting incident involving its Blackwater bodyguards -- this time of the New York Times's dog.

Staff at the newspaper's Baghdad bureau said Blackwater bodyguards shot Hentish dead last week before a visit by a U.S. diplomat to the Times compound.

Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said the dog had attacked one of Blackwater's bomb-sniffer dogs while a security team was sweeping the compound for explosives.

"The K-9 handler made several unsuccessful attempts to get the dog to retreat, including placing himself between the dogs. When those efforts failed, the K-9 handler unfortunately was forced to use a pistol to protect the company's K-9 and himself," she said in an e-mail to Reuters.

The U.S. embassy employs about 1,000 armed Blackwater staff to protect American diplomats in Baghdad. Soon, they'll be protecting diplomats and oil conglomorate reps who want to lounge by the pool while they sell off parts of Iraq.

I'd make another reference to Toto and the Wicked Witch, but it would be an insult to The Wizard of Oz.

'Roidian Slip

Oh, dear.

Hundreds of pro baseball players took steroids.

Well, I'm glad that's out in the open; like no one ever suspected that.

Chimpoleon mumbled out a response a few days ago; something about it soiling, er, sullying, the sport.

Is he referring to the years when he served as an incompetent puppet of a "manager" of the Texas Rangers, while the steroid abuse was going on, particularly with players on his team, while he sat in the stands and picked his nose?