my best friend

Ordinarily sparse, the kitten cages in the cat room at the Humane Society in Golden Valley, Minnesota were full of kittens this visit. A scraggly-looking brown tabby with a giant head sat at the front of his cage, mewing plaintively and poking his huge paws between the bars, while his ink-black litter mate napped indifferently in the back. I stopped at the cage to tug at his paw, and he immediately purred, loudly and intensely, and his plaintive mew turned to a contended chirp. I was struck. This was my cat.

Castor and his brother, Pollux, came home to live with me in my little apartment on Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis. They followed me to an apartment on Lyndale Avenue, and finally to Seattle, where they settled in to Liberty House like it was built for them.

Knowing Castor as I do now, I know he wasn't unhappy in that cage in Golden Valley. He wasn't begging to be adopted, or clamoring to be let out; he simply couldn't understand why, in a room full people, he wasn't getting any attention. It was the only thing he really craved.

After four years of a beatific life, my best friend passed away yesterday. I don't believe in the afterlife, but if I'm wrong, I hope Castor's is a perpetual Indian Summer with plenty of falling leaves to chase, lots of squirrels to stalk, and a warm lap to nap in whenever he wants one.

I'll miss him.

Fitzgerald for Attorney General

Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. Attorney who caught Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevic allegedly trying to sell a U.S. Senate seat,is the same attorney who sent Scooter Libby to jail for covering up for whomever in the Bush Administration leaked Valerie Plame's name to Robert Novak (we're all looking at you, Mr. Vice President).

I'd piss my pants with glee if President-Elect Obama makes him Attorney General.

good fucking god

Gov. Palin credits a witch-hunting African pastor with praying her into the Alaska Governor's office. No, seriously:

At a speech at the Wasilla Assembly of God on June 8 this year, Mrs Palin described how Thomas Muthee had laid his hands on her when he visited the church as a guest preacher in late 2005, prior to her successful gubernatorial bid.

In video footage of the speech, she is seen saying: “As I was mayor and Pastor Muthee was here and he was praying over me, and you know how he speaks and he’s so bold. And he was praying “Lord make a way, Lord make a way.”

“And I’m thinking, this guy’s really bold, he doesn’t even know what I’m going to do, he doesn’t know what my plans are. And he’s praying not “oh Lord if it be your will may she become governor,” no, he just prayed for it. He said “Lord make a way and let her do this next step. And that’s exactly what happened.”

And back in Kenya, Pastor Muthee was busy gettin' all 17th Century on old ladies:

The pastor speaks of his offensive against a demonic presence in the town in a trailer for the evangelical video “Transformations”, made by Sentinel Group, a Christian research and information agency.

. . .

According to accounts of the witchhunt circulated on evangelical websites such as Prayer Links Ministries, after Pastor Muthee declared Mama Jane a witch, the townspeople became suspicious and began to turn on her, demanding that she be stoned. Public outrage eventually led the police to raid her home, where they fired gunshots, killing a pet python which they believed to be a demon.

high life

We do it for the candle in the sky
Here's a toast goes out to those
That can't handle they high
--Atmosphere
"The Arrival"




I'm now two weeks into my return to the trudge-through-the-mud that is life in corporate America, and I just can't get my motor running. My body might be at my desk, but my mind is still sharing a 32 ounce High Life with evil cat while we sit on a rock overlooking the Pacific.

Which is where my body really ought to be, as well.

black helicopters

Dave Neiwert at Orcinus has been chronicling and examining the various activities of extreme right wing groups for some time. He writes in this post about racists on the internets hoping Senator Obama wins in November, then fails as a President so that white folks learn once and for all that we can't trust the darkies:

If you thought the far right went nuts in the 1990s -- when the Democratic president was a white Southern male -- just wait till there's a President Obama. Progressives should be bracing for it.

Remember all the black helicopter loonies from the 90s (Hank Hill's loony neighbor on King of the Hill, Dale Gribble, is a dead-to-rights satire of the type)? The end of the Cold War took away the bogeyman they needed to feed their wierd fantasies of manliness and glory, so they turned their energies to hating the Clintons, the U.S. Government, and the U.N., while Rush Limbaugh and others in the talk-radio echo chamber provided plenty of fodder. It was the crazy-ass rumor mongering that turned me off of politics in the 90s.

When a Republican took the White House and started a war in the Middle East, these loonies had a new, Islamic bogeyman and their mistrust of the government changed to lock-step approval of warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention in Guantanamo and ohter such threats to American civil liberties. They especially won't be happy if a President Obama manages to end the war and take away their new bogeyman. And, as Dave points out, it'll be much, much nastier than it was in the 90s.

The good news is that liberty held on in the 9th to win 5-4.

re: small ball

So much for that...Chicago swept the Twins, and Cleveland shut them out yesterday. Oh well. Maybe next year they'll have some pitching.

i'll whoop 'em

Senator Obama threatens Congress with a stick. Seriously. Crooks and Liars has the video.

small ball

Ty Cobb, enormous prick that he was, pretty much invented the modern game of baseball. Then came Babe Ruth, an enormous prick of a different kind, who changed everything. Their legacies have been slugging it out ever since. Generally, Ruth's wins.

Not an overly talented athelete, Cobb played an aggressive game based on speed and hustle. Put the ball in play, and run like hell. Once on base, steal. Challenge the defense. Distract the pitcher. Cobb played small ball. And he cheated.

First basemen were sometimes afraid to keep their foot on the bag long enough to record an out for fear of getting Cobb's spikes, sharped with a file before each game, in the calf. Second basemen and shortstops faced those same spikes in the face if they dared lay a tag on him as he slid into the bag on a steal. That Cobb's career batting average of .366 still leads the Major Leagues, and that he's still fourth all-time in stolen bases owes a little to the fact that that shit don't fly anymore in the Majors. But that doesn't change his legacy.

Babe Ruth, on the other hand, had loads of talent. A dominanting pitcher early in his career, his explosive bat became too valuable to his managers to have him in the lineup only once every four days. In the last fifteen years of his career, Ruth only pitched in five games. Meanwhile, he racked up homeruns like no other player before him.

Before Ruth, the homerun was rare. Ruth himself hit more in one season than most other teams before him. Other ballclubs started looking for their own sluggers. The homerun ingrained itself in baseball's culture, and the Cobb-style small game was slowly pushed aside. Too bad. Except for the cheating.

The Twins head into Chicago tonight for a four game stand against the Central Division leading White Sox. Sitting in second place two and half games behind the Sox, if they take all four, they'll lead Chicago by half a game. If they lose all four, they'll be six and half behind Chicago, and probably in third place behind Cleveland. The Twins are one of the few teams left that play small ball. Sluggers are expensive and the Twins are famously frugal. Their pitching is too weak for them to do anything in the playoffs this year if they make it, but its nice to see a team in contention that doesn't rely on homeruns to be there.

Maybe next year they'll have pitching.