As it happens, only one of the hundreds of saber-rattlers in congress has a son in the military. I think these pigs at the trough ought to be the first to ship out in the event of war. I’m sure that idiot Lieberman or Lott can shoulder a modern-day musket. We’d probably be better off if they caught the wrong end of an Iraqi grenade or something. Lord knows they do nothing for us here but drive us to betray the very principles our constitution is supposed to uphold.
05
Jan 03
One question
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking because of recent personal problems involving the breakup with my ex. Of course, I’ve done a characteristically bad job with things. I can always be counted on to do the exact wrong thing in any situation and come off looking like an asshole to everyone involved. One thing I was wondering, just randomly is: who do you think are happier pessimists or optimists? If you had to choose either which would you choose and which do you think are better off in the long run?
04
Jan 03
What a shame
Have you ever had that feeling that your heart might collapse into itself forming a blackhole from which you’d fear being unable to escape except for the fact that you find yourself caring less and less and less? Yea, me neither.
03
Jan 03
Why I can’t watch too much TV
I made the mistake of lingering too long on FoxNews to hear O’Reilly harangue about the ACLU and how they support pedophiles. This guy, this guy….I want to fight him so bad. He argues like someone’s asshole Uncle. “The ACLU is free to support pedophilia if that’s what they want to do. It’s sick, but this is a free country.” [heavily paraphrasing here] The thing is I didn’t really catch his evidence regarding this. Invariably, he starts off with something about how he used to support the ACLU because he thought they championed freedom, but eventually he wised up. The implication is that you should wise up too. This reminds me of so many arguments I’ve had with egotistical knotheads. They are basically saying to you that they have you all figured out and understand completely where you’re coming from because they were just like you….until they wised-up, grew up, or evolved. It’s smug, presumptuous and insulting. When I was growing up going to church (Southern Baptist) they often tried the same tack with skeptics. Some fatherly figure would take you aside and relate his own rebellious youth where he questioned the authority of the church and the dogma of our southern Puritanism. Apparently, he too was once rebellious, skeptical, questing, proud, incredulous just like me….until he grew up.
Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life’s nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed behind, masked by, dressed up as, faith in “another” or “better” life. — Friedrich Nietzsche
03
Jan 03
Wanted: Shrikes
I was thinking. Maybe I should see if some shrikes wanted to move into the neighborhood.
Feathered Terror: The Strange World of the Shrike:
The hunter spots his prey. He quickly swoops down and slams his victim to the ground. Battering it into submission with repeated blows to its neck, he picks it up and . . . impales it upon a spike?
Such violence seems more suited to a mad slasher in a horror movie than a robin-sized songbird. Yet this behavior is the ingenious adaptation of the shrike, a bird with the carnivorous tastes of a hawk without the raptor’s full set of predatory equipment. Like hawks, shrikes have keen eyesight and sharp beaks, but they do not have the same powerful talons. “They are perching birds with delicate feet,” says Carola Haas, a wildlife ecologist at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg. “Consequently they can’t hold on to their food and eat it at the same time.”
So what’s a hungry shrike to do but look to nature for the necessary silverware? The birds use everything from cactus spines to hawthorn thorns to barbed wire barbs for skewering their prey, which includes insects, amphibians, reptiles, other birds and even small mammals. The two American shrike species, the loggerhead and the northern, are the only songbirds in the country that regularly prey on other adult songbirds. But despite their butchering habits, shrikes are in trouble. Data are scant for the northern, which breeds in Alaska and Canada, and ranges as far south as New Mexico in the winter. But the loggerhead, once found throughout most of the United States (as well as in Canada and Mexico), has declined an average of 3.6 percent yearly since 1966, according to U.S. Geological Survey figures.
03
Jan 03
Rodents!
Okay, so it’s obvious by now that I keep odd hours. I have this thing about going to sleep. I don’t like it. Once I’m asleep I like to remain asleep, but I hate the act of going to bed. I call it inertia, but maybe it’s just some sort of restlessness. Usually now when I go to sleep I have to distract myself by reading until I’m sleepy or I’ll just lie awake thinking morbid thoughts. I’ve been doing this more since I’ve been living on my own. Anyway, tonight I was watching something on the History Channel and I hear a scraping noise that sounded like it was coming from the kitchen cabinets. The noise stopped and I opened all the cabinets but didn’t see anything obvious. I stood there silently for a few minutes with my ears turned up to maximum sensitivity and didn’t hear anything else for a long time. Then I heard that phantom scraping noise coming from what sounded like inside the walls behind my cabinets near the ceiling. I think there is something inside the walls. Judging from my recent experience I’m guessing it’s mice or rats or whatever it was Sarah and I killed last night. Something that makes scraping noises inside walls at three in the morning.
The only thing I can figure is that maybe the cold, wet weather and the new construction on the once vacant lot next door has driven the rats out of Nimh and into my apartment complex. I imagine I’m not the only person who has them in such close proximity but maybe my neighbors haven’t noticed them since they’re not awake in the dead of night and don’t have cats. I guess I’ll mention this to the apartment people when I drop off my rent tomorrow. It’s a good thing I’m moving soon. I don’t know how much longer I can sleep with all the lights on, fully dressed, with my hand on a rodent-death-dealing instrument.
02
Jan 03
Fascist Cog of The Day
Got a visit from some Pentagon desk jockey looking for information on GPS jamming. The DoD is concerned with this given their tactical reliance on GPS technology which they use to target missiles and direct units. They use an encrypted GPS system that operates on a secret restricted band, but the Pentagon still has concerns about GPS jamming.
02 Jan, Thu, 14:01:15 WCS2-PENT-2.NIPR.MIL Netscape 3 Other
02 Jan, Thu, 14:01:16 WCS2-PENT.NIPR.MIL MSIE 6 Windows 2000
From this Google search on “gps “aviaconversia”“.
02
Jan 03
My cat, the world-class mouser
So there I was lying in bed reading a few chapters of Proverbs since I couldn’t sleep and all of the sudden I hear this crazy racket coming from the kitchen. Stuff clanking together, something squealing. There’s really only a few things it could be when you hear squealing, some sort of animal. Of course, I’m completely unprepared having just gone to bed. As I was equipped only with boxer shorts I threw on my Doc Marten’s (sans socks) and peaked out my door into the darkness of the main living area and kitchen. I didn’t hear anything
else, so I jumped to the kitchen lightswitch and turned it on. Sarah was sitting over looking intently at the vacuum cleaner roaming back and forth around it (I keep it in the kitchen). I see a long tail sticking out from under the vaccuum….a rat tail.
I don’t know how big this thing is since all I can see is its tail and I have no idea how injured it is or if it is injured. The last thing I want is a pissed off rat climbing up my leg so I grab the broom and push the vacuum cleaner while Sarah prepares to jump on our unwanted visitor. So it comes out and Sarah starts swatting it and KOing it with her paws while I egg her on. And meanwhile I’m trying to keep it from running under the fridge and thinking what I should do. Now this thing is bleeding and I’m not about to nurse it back to health or release it into the wild so it can come back with some friends. Not to mention it has violated my rule about roaches or vermin in the house so I decide I will either have to catch it and throw it outside or kill it. I tried to sweep it up into a dustpan and then into a plastic bag but it wasn’t going. It kept trying to jump out of the dustpan or run away. I did feel bad for it on one hand, but on the other hand I was horrified that something like that would be in my apartment. Anyway, so finally Sarah bites it and picks it up and tries to take it somewhere to torture further or to snack on. I manage to scoop it up into the dustpan and I run outside in my boxers and boots and toss it into the bushes. So now, I’m suitably freaked out and glad to have my cat around.
