Twisted Spinster

Well, it looks more and more like I’ll be taking the old cat to the vet tomorrow. Since I don’t stand over her to check I’m not sure how long she’s not been eating — for at least two days now she just looks at the food and then maybe drinks a little water. She spends most of her time sleeping on her pillow, and when I go to pet her she gives me that “leave me alone, I’ve given up” look. Great. My father died four days before Christmas so this sort of thing is somewhat of a family tradition.

As for the other cat, she just finished doing her “I’ve peed and I feel great!” mad run up and down the apartment. She’s like a Baby Boomer with her bodily functions — you know, like no one has ever gone there before. “Look! Look what I did just there! I horked up a huuuuge mess of hair and cat food on the carpet! Go me!”

I think that covers just about everything. Trust me — when I was a liberal I was stupider than wood. I actually thought Jeanine Garofalo and Margaret Cho were funny! I voted for Bill Clinton despite that little voice in my head telling me that he was a thief and a conman. I took seriously the idea that the way to fight crime was to ban guns, since we all know that criminals fear the law more than anything. Hey, at least you know I’d make a lousy criminal.

So far, the best commenter is Don, who has brought to the debate here the stunning revelation that Kathy Shaidle is, in fact, a Canadian, and not an American, a thing that… actually nobody believed. Even in remote villages in Kazakhstan where the wifi-enabled Starbucks just opened yesterday they know she’s from Canada. But you have to give him props for trying to fire up those two remaining synapses. Oh wait, no you don’t.

Can I opt out? I mean, do I really have to be counted as being among the same sex as this woman? Sometimes I wonder why the sort of women who actively pursue homicidal males (not women who are simply taken in by the guy because they had no idea, but the ones like the freak who married Ted Bundy while he was in jail waiting to be executed for slaughtering a bunch of women who looked just like her) aren’t simply arrested along with their husbands, because even if they have nothing to do with their beloveds’ crimes, their refusal to face facts about their spouses do much to support those men in their swollen sense of the rightness of their own behavior, and should be counted as a kind of obstruction of justice.

Well that was fun. I drove over to the grocery store earlier this evening. When I got through shopping I went to start the car, and it was completely dead. It was as if I was trying to start a rock, or a bookcase. I hadn’t noticed the way the inside light didn’t go on until then… When I opened the hood I discovered that corrosion had eaten through one of the battery cables where it connected to the terminal.

Fortunately all turned out well. The auto parts store was only a block away, so I bought a new battery terminal connector thing. Then things got complicated. I couldn’t get a grip with the pliers on the screw on the worn-out terminal connector. Then a mechanic who came to do some food shopping saw my distress and helped me out. I took his card — the other terminal connector wasn’t looking so good, so I want to get that replaced ASAP. It will have to make it for a couple of weeks, though — I spent all my money on this one.

Sorry, kids, the creative banks are low these days. I can’t believe it’s December 16th already. I feel like I’ve wasted a year. I can’t wait to move out of Florida. My lease ends May 31st (not April, as I thought — God forbid I remember the dates on the lease I signed or even look at the paperwork). If I find a job up north I can leave sooner but I’ll have to pay for it — I’d rather not. I’d rather just live out my year here and get my deposit back. If I can get a temp position until then that would be great.I think I only have a couple more weeks of unemployment compensation, so I’d better find something soon.

On to other worries: my older cat has been off her feed for a couple of weeks now. She used to hang around me and bug me when dinner time was near; now she just sleeps on her pillow (which used to be my pillow, until one day I turned around and she had parked herself on top of it — I am now down to three pillows) all day. The other evening I trimmed her nails — that got her moving about, as she hates me to clip her nails. But I think she’s on her last legs. She’ll eat a bit if I pick her up and plonk her on the kitchen floor in front of her dish, but she’s not eating as much as she used to. Right now she’s next to the open sliding glass door — she likes to sit there and block my other cat’s entrance from the patio. She and Xena (my other cat) still don’t get along. Right now Xena is on the patio chair, washing her butt.

More news of my exciting life: the tomato plant has produced more flowers. The first tomato is almost full grown but still green. I’ve got more tomatoes coming in, though, but they are still very small. As for the other edibles, I had planted thyme, purple basil, rosemary, and chives. Xena killed the chives by eating them all, so I planted a couple of garlic cloves. When the garlic chives grew out, Xena killed those by eating them. And yesterday it was obvious the basil was not thriving at all — I don’t know why, Xena had no interest in the basil — so I pulled it out and tossed it. The rosemary and thyme is still going pretty strong, though. I want my tomatoes to ripen, dammit! Then I can make sauce.

That’s all for now.

This is the sort of thing that makes me glad I jumped off the atheism bandwagon ages ago. I would almost swear that this the website is simply a well-done parody, like that fake Baptist church one, but these days it’s so hard to be sure. (Note: I was going to title this post “Atheism Jumps the Shark,” but that happened a long time ago. When I’m topical I’m topical!)

(Via this article, which seems to take the site at face value. YMMV.)

Fortunately the stupid remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still (the original of which was lame enough already) is being roundly panned. But you still have to wonder why movies like this are being made — wherein humanity, or at least the mostly European or European-descended, prosperous parts of it, is seen as some sort of disease or mistake and therefore deserves to be destroyed by Our Designated Betters — and what it says about the mindset of the mostly European or European-descended, prosperous humans who green-light them. Since I watch tv scifi I haven’t been able to escape commercials for the flick, which show scenes of Keanu Reeves dully intoning “Your planet?” and “I tried to speak to your leaders…” and “the problem is you” interspersed with juicy destruction of the usual tourist hot spots like the Coliseum in Rome*. I have to admit, if I were an Islamic jihadist stuffed to the brim with hatred for decadent Western society films like this would only encourage me in my terrorist plans. “So they want to die? Okay! I’ll be glad to speed them on their way!” I’ll bet you there’s no scene of the aliens destroying Mecca.

*Correction: I just saw the trailer again and now I think that’s actually meant to be Shea Stadium or some other New York landmark since the main action is set there.

Global Warming, feh! Real aliens do it for the LULZ!

Update, Sunday: well, that takes care of that. Lesson: don’t f*ck with the Doctor’s favorite planet. (Oh, like he really cared all that much about Gallifrey. The few episodes he was actually on his home planet he 1) nearly got killed every time, and 2) clearly couldn’t wait to get off the place even when whatever trouble he was in blew over. I think all his “survivor guilt” in the new series clearly stems from the fact that he probably used to wish dusty old Gallifrey and the stuffy old Time Lords would just disappear, and then it turns out he got his wish. Be careful what you wish for… Hey, it’s the only thing that describes his fairy-tale exposition scene in The Sound of Drums — in all the episodes for Doctors 1 through 7 — I’ve never seen the movie with number 8 — he clearly has nothing but contempt for most of the other Time Lords and their lifestyle.)

Oh noes! It’s the Santa Swarm!

(Via.)

Damn, I just don’t know what to say about this. Except, maybe — go us! We Americans don’t need no Big Brother-style government bureaucracy to censor us; we can do it all by our free, individual selves.

(Via Tim Blair.)

(Title Track.)

"I'm the Burger King!"

I suppose I’d be pissed off too if I’d spent a fortune to go to England to see David Tennant play Hamlet only to find that he couldn’t perform that night due to being made of flesh and blood. On the other hand, I’d be in England! Seeing Shakespeare in his country!!! And I could get better closeups of Mr. Tennant watching Doctor Who on my dvd player so I’d get over it. People in Blighty are so spoiled. They are surrounded by art and history and all they seem to do is moan and complain, and so many UK denizens (Scots, Brits, Welsh, whatever) seem to have taken a headfirst dive into the worst crap 21st century culture has to offer (drinking until you can’t see in flashy clubs that play loud, awful music; dressing like thugs and whores; having absolutely shit taste in everything — Skins? Big Brother and its spin-offs? — and their enabler government just indulges them because people are easier to control when all they’re thinking of is the next drunk or the latest cute celebrity). I used to be like that (except for the dressing like a whore part, I could never bring that look off, I just looked like more like a nerd than ever) but I got tired of it all eventually, including the rabid fandom that meant I’d be crushed with disappointment if the opening band I’d bought the expensive concert ticket just to see ended up not appearing because the lead singer got laryngitis and, you know, couldn’t sing.

I gave myself a much-needed reality check: life is too short to be a fan. It looks like the crazed Doctor Who fanatics also need a slap upside the head with Mr. Real Life’s cluebat. It’s one thing to be on a tv show or in a movie — you can do more than one take, or cleverly film around an actor’s illness, broken ankle, inconvenient pregnancy, etc. But the whole point of live theater is the fact that actors are real people who can get sick or injured. That’s why they have these things called “understudies.” I’ve been to maybe two live plays in my whole life and I know that. And not one word from Tennant’s adoring fan to express concern for whatever is wrong with him — what’s that all about? I’ve had a hurt back, and I can tell you that it’s a special debilitating pain that no painkiller really takes care of without knocking you out, and you can’t find a comfortable position either lying down, sitting, or standing. I wouldn’t wish back pain on my worst enemy. And it might never go away. In any case — whether he really does have a bad back or is actually drying out from a heroin binge, you’d think somebody would say something indicating they acknowledge he’s a human being. The human race, sucking for 200,000 years!*

And the critics are no better: here’s some prime blaming-of-the-victim from some guy called Tim Walker writing in the Telegraph bitching about “the folly of celebrity casting” and how it’s a ” form of miss-selling” because celebrities attract people who “are likely not enjoy the experience.” Erm, for one thing, who are you to say who might or might not enjoy something they’ve never done before? And b, or second, or — anyway, how is the fact that some turnip decides they don’t like plays except unless their speshul fave star is in one the fault of the casting director, the theater, the star? This is just more of that “indulge the little people in their little desires, don’t let them get into new things that might GASP change them, above all don’t make them take responsibility for their own behavior” bullshit that is becoming the chief characteristic of too many Western nations (including, increasingly, our own). If you spent a week’s pay on a play you normally wouldn’t bother going to just to see your special guy, he doesn’t show because he’s injured, and you let that spoil your evening, it’s no one’s fault but your own.

Sometimes I think Western culture is doomed and this is one reason why. What’s really sad is that most of the people interviewed in the first story were well into adulthood, not teenage girls. Grow the fuck up, ladies. Get men of your own — I’ll bet more than half of these fangirls are single and have wasted their youth looking for the “perfect” man, and that all their male friends are gay.

*According to Wikipedia anyway.

Update: I wouldn’t blame you for thinking I’ve totally written off American actors, and I mostly have (British actors at least usually go into theater after they become big stars on tv and in the movies; American actors just go to Hollywood, which is increasingly like being dead), but Gary Sinise is an exception. Ooh, and there’s a new episode of CSI:NY tonight. It’s all about some mysterious energy field near the Empire State Building. I guess they never cleared out that Dalek laboratory.