I can’t stop crying, and sorry if this is getting too maudlin for you all:
God, this sucks. I’m German. I’m not used to grief.
This post is in: Cat Blogging
I can’t stop crying, and sorry if this is getting too maudlin for you all:
God, this sucks. I’m German. I’m not used to grief.
This post is in: Post-racial America
George Zimmerman, as I predicted, was acquitted. Because we’re all surprised six white women in Florida would come up with any other verdict.
And, If There Was Any Way for the Day to Get WorsePost + Comments (435)
This post is in: Cat Blogging, RIP, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
I’m pretty inconsolable, but I really do want to thank each and every one of you for trying to do the impossible act of cheering me up. I just can not believe he is gone. We were together for twelve years, basically the longest relationship I have ever had with anyone not a very close friend or family, and the suddenness is overwhelming.
I buried him in his favorite blanket (the one with all the kitties on it that you guys used to joke about), and I put him in the back yard in his favorite spot in the yard, which was the only place that had morning, afternoon, and evening sun. He spent so much time there that I had to put sunscreen on his pink ears so he would not get burnt or develop cancer. Earlier this morning I picked him up and was holding him like a baby- he loved it- and rubbing his belly and he would always lick my hand while I did it, and I actually thought “It’s a good thing he has been saving up his energy sleeping for the last decade because I want him around for another one.” I buried him in a place in the back yard I can see from the deck, so he may not be there on the porch with me, but he will be there.
I almost feel guilty for how I portrayed him as mean and vicious, but you all saw through that. He was really a super sweet cat, and everyone who came to the house would get a complimentary 15 minutes of Tunch on the lap. He wasn’t skittish around folks like some cats- he would walk right up and say hi and jump on your lap. And everyone who met him had two things to say “MY GOD HE IS BIG” and “Wow he is super sweet.”
I never mentioned this before, because I always thought it was really, really weird and I didn’t want to deal with the comments, but one of Tunch’s idiosyncratic behaviors was every time I left the bathroom door open and went to the bathroom, he would come in, and while I was on the throne, lick my toes. I have no idea why, but after a couple years you just deal with it and flip the pages of sports illustrated to the next article.
I just can’t believe he is gone, and in such a violent way after I pampered him and was so protective for so long, freaking out when he got out of my apartment before I moved here with the fence, with me driving around town for hours in the dark, ruining clothes as I climbed through bushes because I saw him and wanted him home where he belongs.
Now all that is left is my memories, a grave in the back yard, and a bloody t-shirt and shorts from when I found him just lying there lifeless in the back yard. God damnit I’m crying again. I haven’t cried in decades.
I’m never going to get over this. I don’t know how I am going to sleep.
This post is in: Cat Blogging, RIP
I am barely keeping it together as I write this, but Tunch was just killed a half hour ago by one of my sister’s dog. My brother was watching her and came to my house and I yelled that I didn’t want her in the house with Tunch, so he put her out back, and we heard nothing at all, but then Kiwi had blood on her face and Seth went out back and came around and broke the news. He tried to hold me back because I wouldn’t want to see it, but I had to. It looks like he died instantly with a snapped neck. I picked him up, held him for a while and had a good cry.
I got his favorite blanket and buried him in the backyard. I’m heartbroken and can not stop crying and think I need a good drunk and to just be left alone.
I love you little buddy. I can’t stop sobbing. I have no idea how I am going to sleep without you next to my head purring. How am I supposed to work without you weaving in between my legs and meowing. Damnit to hell.
And if you would, please make a donation to MARC in Tunch’s name. Tunch’s visage saved a lot of pet lives already, so let’s save a few more.
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Republican Venality, Jump! You Fuckers!
Before the strain of staying on our best behavior breaks us, here’s some more well-deserved invective concerning the food-stamp-free farm bill. Gail Collins, in the NYTimes, on the GOP’s “Tasty Bites theory of government”
… Lately, the House has begun chopping up big, complicated bills into what Speaker John Boehner once described as “bite-sized chunks that members can digest.” No more legislative sausage-making. No more bipartisan trading. The House was going to stick to clean, simple ideas, more along the lines of Liver Snaps.
So the farm bill got divided. The two parts were not equally tidy. As Ron Nixon reported in The Times, the rate of error and fraud in the agricultural crop insurance program is significantly higher than in the food stamp program. Also, the agriculture part has a lot of eyebrow-raising provisions, like the $147 million a year in reparations we send to Brazil to make up for the fact that it won a World Trade Organization complaint about the market-distorting effects of our cotton subsidies.
And while food stamps go to poor people, most of the farm aid goes to wealthy corporations.
So House Republicans passed the farm part and left food stamps hanging…
The House bill actually spent more money on subsidies for farmers than the bipartisan Senate version the Republicans scorned. It also dropped the Senate’s limit on aid to farmers with incomes of more than $750,000 a year. And while it mimicked the Senate in dropping most of the much-derided direct payments to farmers, the House gave cotton farmers a two-year extension.
Let’s take a special look at cotton, which is a particularly good example of the tendency of agricultural benefits to flow uphill. “Some of these guys — and they’re all guys — are getting more than $1 million in support. The bottom 80 percent are getting $5,000 on average,” said Scott Faber of the Environmental Working Group.
Faber’s organization, which keeps careful track of these things, says direct payments to cotton farmers since 1995 have totaled $3.8 billion. That does not count the annual $147 million the United States has been sending to Brazil in hush money…
Open Thread: Billions for Millionaires, But Not One Cent for Hungry ChildrenPost + Comments (92)
This post is in: RIP
Stuck’s pastor has confirmed that it was indeed Stuck who died:
Mr. Cole,
I can confirm to you that Steve Arnold Martin passed away after a brief lung illness in a nursing home in New Mexico. I held a memorial service on behalf of the family on June 29th. There were pictures of his dog and hummingbirds at his service. Family members were able to secure a new home for Charlie.
May God bless all who mourn his passing,
Pastor Kevin Collins
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
by Betty Cracker| 186 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Politics, General Stupidity
Wingnuts will soon have to find another target for their misogyny, paranoia and homophobia:
Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, announced Friday that she was stepping down, setting off a search to fill one of the most challenging positions in government at a time when the Obama administration is struggling to get a team in place for the president’s second term.
The vacancy sets the stage for another confirmation fight as Republicans continue their efforts to nullify the last two presidential elections. There’s no word yet on whom the president will nominate, but WaPo put together a speculative list, including:
[Joe] Lieberman makes sense as DHS secretary for one pretty obvious reason: He created the department. Lieberman, as chair of the committee that is now referred to as the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, drafted the bill that created DHS shortly after Sept. 11, 2001. He also recently retired from the Senate, meaning he’s a free agent. But his tendency togive his Democratic colleagues heartburnbe a spiteful, war-mongering Republican dick may not make him an ideal fit. [Edited for accuracy]
No, no, a thousand, million, kajillion, ding-dong-dillion times, no. Jenny Durkan (profiled in that same WaPo article) sounds qualified, and since she’s an out lesbian, her candidacy would have the added benefit of triggering even more Lesbocalypse fears among the right-wing assholes who have spent the last five years absurdly imagining that the innocuous Ms. Napolitano was rifling through their underwear drawer and monitoring activities at the Moose lodge.
But perhaps the best outcome — and most fitting monument to Lieberman’s work in the Senate — would be to abolish the Department of Homeland Security altogether, break it up into its component parts. Like so much that is wrong with this country, it’s a remnant of post-9/11 hysteria.
Or we could at least change the name, which, as Peggy Noonan pointed out in a rare moment of clarity, is “vaguely Teutonic.” What shall we call it? Please feel free to discuss other topics too — open threadage.
[X-posted at Rumproast]Farewell, Big Sis. Plus, Saturday Morning Open ThreadPost + Comments (186)