Cats

9 08 2013

Because, yep, that’s what this post is about.

Ignore the cat hair on the ottoman---look at the pretty kitty instead!

Ignore the cat hair on the ottoman—look at the pretty kitty instead!

Kitty boy on the floor.

Kitty boy on the floor.

His preferred floor-space is actually the threshold of the bathroom:

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Trickster, however, almost always prefer a higher plane:

Coolin' her armpit.

Coolin’ her armpit.

Another high spot:

Trickster looking down on us all.

Trickster looking down on us all.

That shelf, alas, is no more. It was a great place for Trickster to escape Jasper, but one day I came home and the wall brace had been torn out.

I think Jasper probably tried to leap up to it and the combination of his weight and the jump was too much for the bracket.

I may try to rig an alternative up for Trickster—she really does need a place to get away from Jasper-in-fightin’-mode—but in the meantime, she and the kitty boy are sharing (alternately) this:

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Yes, I constructed a dresser from wine boxes—perfect for my (de-jewel-cased) cds. It used to sit in my living room, topped off by my mini-stereo, but as I was trying to free up space in the main room, I thought I’d see if it would work to put it in my bedroom.

It works, and the cats dig it.

Anwyay, it’s been awhile, and I didn’t want you to forget how gorgeous my kitties are.


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Categories : Photos & art

Bang bang

9 08 2013

I have no idea what happened.

My back was to the stove and I heard this BANG! I finished what I was doing, then turned around to see this:

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It kept making cracking noises, and I’d swear that I saw a few cracks form as I watched it. I did, carefully, pick up the lid: the glass didn’t scatter.

Kinda bummed about it—I use that pot a lot, and I like a glass lid—but I have to admit, it also looks cool.

And that the glass, shattered, nonetheless remains intact within the ring? Very cool.


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Categories : Photos & art, Quick hits

Nothing to hide, believe what I say

8 08 2013

What a shocker: “protester” is an undercover cop.

This should surprise exactly no one.

Police forces-have a long and dishonorable history of infiltration of and provocation among organized protest groups—never mind the First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and assembly. Those tasked to “protect and serve” forget that protesters, too, deserve protection and service.

Anyway, given that long history of surveillance and disruption, the best course for any protest organization is to be open and public as possible: hide nothing, publicize everything.

There may be bits that it makes sense to keep under wraps for tactical reasons—the location of a pop-up protest, for example, might be texted to members at the last minute—and those involved in present-day sanctuary movements of whatever sort have good reason for discretion, but on the whole, if the purpose is to raise public consciousness, change public opinion, or call for new/different laws, then the best bet is to embrace one’s status as a public entity and throw everything into the open.

Will this prevent police surveillance? Almost certainly not. But it will both eliminate the need to waste any time worrying about who among the crowd might be a cop and inoculate the group against claims of criminality.

(Of course, there are protesters who embrace criminality as the best/only way to undermine/overthrow the whole shebang, so, yeah, secrecy might be the best bet for them. It will also, in combination with the criminality which requires it, curb their effectiveness in under-/over- mining/throwing.)

This, for example, is the wrong attitude to take:

[United Students Against Sweatshop protester] Shishido Strain says his run-ins with Rizzi have already made him wary of strangers who want to get involved in fights for workers’ rights.

“I have personally become much more cautious with people who express support for us at actions and others who express an interest in joining our actions, if I do not know them already,” he says.

I  get why Strain is concerned, but if your group has any sway whatsoever, it’d be so much easier simply to assume cops are present, and move on. Don’t let ’em distract you, don’t let ’em limit your efforts to reach out.

Open subversion: it’s the better way.

~~~

None of this is to say that cops shouldn’t be sued each and every time they infringe upon the Constitutional rights of protesters. You can be open without being a sap.


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Categories : Politics, Quick hits

Special, special, what do you get?

4 08 2013

Pressed on the topic of Hitler, Borges said that “of course I hate and loathe him. His anti-Semitism was very foolish.” This is hard to read because, although we should know better, it’s difficult to stop ourselves expecting wisdom from a person who happens to be a genius.

—Mark O’Connell

I used to believe that talented people were better people.

I wouldn’t have put it that way, back then, don’t know that I even knew I believed this, but I almost certainly did. If you were talented you were special, and if you were special, you were special all the way through.

I think this bias cuts through our celebrity culture, such that fame itself is a signifier of specialness. We want to meet, become friends with these celebrities, hoping that by virtue of being picked by someone special, we’ll become special ourselves.

I don’t want to push that too hard, not least because there’s also a knowingness about this desire, and jokes about “My boyfriend George Clooney” poke holes in the whole cloth of celebrity-dom. Still, why else would any of us who are not-famous and not-friends of the famous care enough about them to make them famous unless we though there was something more to them than [what led them to] the fame itself?

Anyway, it was well into adulthood before I even became aware of this equation, and while I’ve pretty much disabuse myself of the notion, those times that I have met famous folk (mostly actors, mostly while working at Big & National Bookstore), I’ve had to remind myself that they are just folks.

Yes, just-folks with name recognition, just-folks with talent, but when not on stage or in front of a camera, just folks, full stop.

Still, it must be said: I don’t tell my friends when I meet non-famous just-folks.


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Categories : Musing, Quick hits

Give me the gun

4 08 2013

Yet another article about yet another shitty government official and in the comments, the usual:

Yeah, we should totally give up our guns to these tyrants!

Okay, yeah, comments (often a cesspool, not representative, blah blah), but this sentiment is so commonly expressed in the comments that someone less obsessed with gun regs/rights (take yer pick) is likely simply to skip past them.

I, for example, usually skip past.

But today a new thought hit: Guns are a simple answer to a tough problem.

I’m a good-government type of gal, but any leftist who isn’t at least skeptical of governmental power isn’t doing it right. I like big, messy, pluralist, complicated societies, and the only way to live well in a big, messy, pluralist, complicated societies is to establish some kind of rule of law to navigate those messes and complications.  And if that law is to have a chance at approaching justice, good government is required.

But it’s also manifestly the case that government isn’t always good, that law falls short of justice, and sometimes you really do have to defend yourself by any means necessary.

Thus, while it’s easy for me to roll my eyes at so-called gun-nuts, there is some small part of me that gets some small part of their agenda. There’s a lot I don’t get and a lot I don’t agree with, but the notion that the government is not always to be trusted. . . ?

Anyway, trying to wrest good government out of bad is hard, hard work, rarely straightforward, and almost always takes too long. And even if you think you’ll fail, you have to believe enough in the worth of good government to try.

Not everyone believes this, of course, which is why some prefer the quick recourse to weaponry. But there may be others who are driven less by animus against the government (or the big messy society which requires it) than a frustration that the Right and the Good are just so goddamned obvious and just as goddamned obviously never to be achieved by standard operating procedures, that the best way to the Right and the Good is to blow a hole through those SOPs.

Thus, the gun: It’s quick, it’s easy, it’s done.

~~~

h/t: Brad DeLong


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Thinking like the sea

4 08 2013

Good gifs are amusing for about as long as they last, which, all things considered, ain’t bad.

This also means they’re highly disposable: you want a quick hit, and that’s it.

Still, string a bunch of them together under a common theme, and, well, they can take on a kind of extended absurdity—as with Research in Progress.

As with all absurdity, you gotta be able to giggle at how fucked we are.

~~~

h/t Eszter Hargittai, Crooked Timber


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There is more than one of everything

3 08 2013

Two things.

1. I not only don’t mind spoilers, I kinda prefer them.

I don’t know when this happened, when I began to prefer to know how things work out rather than just waiting to find out, but now I do.

There’s more to this than that, but, for now, this’ll do.

2. I’ve been watching and more-or-less-enjoying Fringe.

I got interested in Fringe maybe a year ago, when I’d see teasers for the latest episode on Hulu. At first, I ignored it, then I thought, Huh, that might be interesting, as I flicked past, then thought, Huh, if that shows up on Netflix, I think I’ll give ‘er a go.

It showed up on Netflix.  I’m giving ‘er a go.

And while I did do a bit of skim-spoiling of the show on Wikipedia, I decided to, y’know, actually watch the show to find out what happens.

There are some things I like about it and some things which are quite ridiculous (even for the grim sci-fi/conspiracy subgenre in which it exists), but I mostly like it. I liked X-Files before it went off the rails, and Fringe clearly owes a great deal to pre-derailed X.

I also thought, prior to tonight, that while it is in many ways a more sophisticated show than X-Files, it is a lesser one.

And then the last scene of the episode. I was not expecting it. I think I stopped breathing for a moment or two.

I don’t know why, I can think of so many reasons why it shouldn’t have stopped me, but stop me it did.

I won’t spoil it for you; I was glad I hadn’t spoiled it for myself.


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Categories : Quick hits, Review

Every move you make

1 08 2013

Move along, people, nothing to see here.

Yeaaaah, not so much:

Because who wasn’t reading those stories [about the Boston bombing]? Who wasn’t clicking those links? But my son’s reading habits combined with my search for a pressure cooker and my husband’s search for a backpack set off an alarm of sorts at the joint terrorism task force headquarters.

[snip]

What happened was this: At about 9:00 am, my husband, who happened to be home yesterday, was sitting in the living room with our two dogs when he heard a couple of cars pull up outside. He looked out the window and saw three black SUVs in front of our house; two at the curb in front and one pulled up behind my husband’s Jeep in the driveway, as if to block him from leaving.

Six gentleman in casual clothes emerged from the vehicles and spread out as they walked toward the house, two toward the backyard on one side, two on the other side, two toward the front door.

A million things went through my husband’s head. None of which were right. He walked outside and the men greeted him by flashing badges. He could see they all had guns holstered in their waistbands.

“Are you [name redacted]?” one asked while glancing at a clipboard. He affirmed that was indeed him, and was asked if they could come in. Sure, he said.

They asked if they could search the house, though it turned out to be just a cursory search.

[snip]

Meanwhile, they were peppering my husband with questions. Where is he  from? Where are his parents from? They asked about me, where was I, where do I work, where do my parents live. Do you have any bombs, they asked. Do you own a pressure cooker? My husband said no, but we have a rice cooker. Can you make a bomb with that? My husband said no, my wife uses it to make quinoa. What the hell is quinoa, they asked.

They searched the backyard. They walked around the garage, as much as one could walk around a garage strewn with yardworking equipment and various junk. They went back in the house and asked more questions.

[snip]

They mentioned that they do this about 100 times a week. And that 99 of those visits turn out to be nothing. I don’t know what happens on the other 1% of visits and I’m not sure I want to know what my neighbors are up to.

45 minutes later, they shook my husband’s hand and left.

[snip]

All I know is if I’m going to buy a pressure cooker in the near future, I’m not doing it online.

I’m scared. And not of the right things.

Hey, if Michele Catalano, her husband and son weren’t doing anything wrong, well, then, no harm, no foul, right?

Right?

~~~

h/t Melissa Jeltsen, HuffPo;  *Update* on the men-in-black, see this piece by Philip Bump of the Atlantic Wire (tip to Sullivan’s Daily Dish on Bump bit)


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