Month: April 2007
Attack of the Cat Videos!
Posted on April 30, 2007 in Cats Humor?
If you have a mood to improve and the time for a few videos, here you go:
- Talking Cats
- Waltz of the Cats
- More Cat Videos
- A Narrated Cat Video*
- Get Down Kitties!*
- Expensive Cat Toy*
- Cats in Dreamland*
- Cat Exercises*
- Cat Playing Fetch
- Barking Cat*
- Kitty Cat Square Dance*
- Not the Sharpest Tool in the Shed
- Japanese Cat Commercial
- My personal favorite
- Kitty Cat Dance (annoying as all hell! — used at Camp X-Ray)
* These are to notify my wife that she hasn’t seen these yet.
[tags]cats,videos,links,humor[/tags]
Jeez!
Posted on April 29, 2007 in Psych Wards
This psycho-schmo gets Internet access while locked up! I’m jealous!
There’s a good read to be had there
War on Terrier – Covert Operations
Posted on April 29, 2007 in Cats War on Terrier
A member of the Feline Intelligence Agency (FIA) prepares for the infiltration of the office of the Terrier in Chief.
[tags]cats,photos,war on terrier,humor[/tags]
The Guns for Bipolars Issue
Posted on April 28, 2007 in Bipolar Disorder Privacy Violence
The post-Virginia Tech fallout has me thinking hard — along with half of Congress and much of the nation — about what we should do about the gun problem. Long ago, I came to the conclusion that the strife over guns was mostly due to the failure of both sides to understand the needs of the other: for example, a friend in Texas told me that it took 30 minutes for a sheriff to arrive at her house after a 911 call. Then there were the numerous stories of innocent and not so innocent bystanders being shot in our cities.
But this essay is about what people are thinking of doing after Virginia Tech. We “mental defectives”, the reasoning goes, should not be trusted with guns. In my own case — that of a bipolar with suicidal wishes — I agree. A gun makes killing myself way too easy and irreversible.
I don’t like the idea of guns being readily available anyways, so asking me if I want my right to bear arms being taken away doesn’t fit the terms of the debate as it is now in Congress. Congressman want to limit the availability of guns to “mental defectives”. That’s what they are calling me in their draft legislation and I don’t like it. Just what the bipolar community needs these days is a big sign saying “Stupid” or “Dangerous” around our necks. “Hi there. I’m mentally defective. Do you want to have dinner with me?”
Mental health groups are sure to rise against this language. I can already hear the whine of conservatives who want to hold on to their precious argot, denying all the way that there is anything offensive. Hear them mutter “Oh, those mentally ill people are going off again. Just pass the legislation and be done with it. They will be upset no matter what we do.”
The question of what constitutes a “mental defective” follows on this rudeness. Are all bipolars, depressives, and schizoaffectives going to be classed under this? Or are they going to rely on a “danger to self and others” criteria such as is used for involuntary commitment in California and many other states? Who gets to say that you are a danger to self or others? Your psychiatrist? A police officer? An obsessive civil servant down in the basement of the county courthouse who voted for Bush for reasons unknown to normal human consciousness, who thought you might be a little kooky? How will we fix mistakes?
Having declared my reservations, I’d like to propose something: an advance directive for gun ownership. Now that I am stable, I know that I don’t want myself buying a gun when I am in episode. So why not allow me to send a form in to the ATF saying “Joel Sax does not want you selling a gun to Joel Sax” so that I can’t walk down to the local gun shop and buy my very own suicide weapon on demand? This safeguard would be put in place by me for me. There’s a question of cancellation — what if I decided to take up target shooting? for example — but I think for the most part this may be the most sensible response to the Virginia Tech episode. It may not save us from the kook who comes in by the door but it can I believe get each of us thinking about firearms in our life. We can’t afford not to.
[tags]gun control, Virginia Tech shootings, privacy, gun regulation, mental illness, bipolar disorder[/tags]
More from The War on Terrier
Posted on April 27, 2007 in War on Terrier
Shocking evidence that Terriers and their sympathizers have resorted to aliurophagy:
Kyped from Can I Haz a Cheezburger
[tags]cats,war on terrier[/tags]
Confidentiality Lost
Posted on April 25, 2007 in Confidentiality Conservatives Paranoids Privacy Violence
This is all very telling about the kind of government conservatives want. It’s a small, sneaky government that does nothing for most of its citizens and keeps tabs on their actions through a secret police network
Excerpt from Turtle Diary
Posted on April 24, 2007 in Reading
At three in the morning I sat in the dark looking out of the window down at the square where the fountain is not and I thought about the turtles. The essence of it is that they can find something and they are not being allowed to do it. What more can you do to a creature, short of killing it, than prevent it from finding what it can find? How must they feel? Is there a sense in them of green ocean, white surf, and hot sand? Probably not. but there is a drive in them to find it as they swoop in their golden-green light with their flippers clicking against the glass as they turn. Is there anything that can be done about it? My mind is not an organizational one….
There is no place for me to find. No beach, no breeding grounds. Do I owe the turtles more or less because of that? Is everyone obliged to help those who have it in them to find something? I bought a second-hand mathematical book, I don’t know why, on self-replicating automata. Not robots but mathematical models. The book said that random search could not account for evolution. Something evidently wants there to be finding. Time’s arrow points one way only. Even the moment just past cannot be returned to.
— Russell Hoban
How can we ever find for determinism or freedom of the will if we can’t reverse time and run things through once more?
The Minority Group Forbidden to Speak for Itself
Posted on April 23, 2007 in Hatred Stigma
If you follow the blogs of bipolar and borderline sufferers, you’ll have noticed something: we haven’t been commenting on what happened.
A Woodrat’s Nest Model of the Mind
Posted on April 23, 2007 in Creatures Thinking
This place is a concretion of memories, experiences, and instincts, a mess of sticks carefully intersticed with others. You have to burn me or bulldoze me or root me out to change me.
A Shadow of Someone Else’s Pet?
Posted on April 22, 2007 in Cats
It seems that we may not be chasing our Virginia Mew at all, but shadows belonging to other people.
Bitter Water of the Gods
Posted on April 22, 2007 in Consuming Eating
The Republican controlled [[FDA]] is considering saving you from the ravages of cocoa butter. Or rather, it is trying to allow fatty food producers yet another avenue into your diet, a chance to purvey an ersatz product as the real thing. Your [[chocolate]] is in danger!
“2007P-0085: Adopt Regulations of General Applicability to all Food Standards that would Permit, within Stated Boundaries, Deviations from the Requirements of the Individual Food Standards of Identity” is a brassy attempt to sell faux chocolate as the real thing. An opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times reported:
The FDA is entertaining a “citizen’s petition” to allow manufacturers to substitute vegetable fats and oils for cocoa butter.
The “citizens” who created this petition represent groups that would benefit most from this degradation of the current standards. They are the Chocolate Manufacturers Assn., the Grocery Manufacturers Assn., the Snack Food Assn. and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Assn. (OK, I’m not sure what’s in it for them), along with seven other food producing associations.
This is what they think of us chocolate eaters, according to their petition on file at the FDA:
“Consumer expectations still define the basic nature of a food. There are, however, no generally held consumer expectations today concerning the precise technical elements by which commonly recognized, standardized foods are produced. Consumers, therefore, are not likely to have formed expectations as to production methods, aging time or specific ingredients used for technical improvements, including manufacturing efficiencies.”
Let me translate: “Consumers won’t know the difference.”
I can tell you right now — we will notice the difference. How do I know? Because the product they’re trying to rename “chocolate” already exists. It’s called “chocolate flavored” or “chocolaty” or “cocoalicious.” You can find it on the shelves right now at your local stores in the 75% Easter sale bin, those waxy/greasy mock-chocolate bunnies and foil-wrapped eggs that sit even in the most sugar-obsessed child’s Easter basket well into July.
The idea is that by changing the name, we’ll not know that they are passing a less-than-holy product to us. But we know better, we know the real thing when we taste it. The big sellers in “chocolaty” snacks all contain the real thing! Our taste buds guide us just fine. The fake chocolatiers believe that it is all in a name, so they are willing to lure us into wasting money on a greasy candy in the name of profits.
“Chocolate” is a [[Nahuatl]] (Aztec) word that means “bitter water of the gods”. It’s emblematic of our age that this sacred confection should be supplanted by cheap thrills and instant, second-rate pleasure. It’s the way that our religion has gone, our politics, and our news media.
How dare they adulerate this last good and true thing!
[tags]consuming, chocolate, food[/tags]
Blogspot Erasures
Posted on April 21, 2007 in Blogging Site News
It’s come to my attention that several blogspot users were wiped from my bloglines account for no apparent reason. If you’ve been wondering about why I haven’t been commenting on your blog, well, now you know. If you are a lurker and would like me to visit, just leave a comment.
[tags]blogs,blogging,bugs,snafus[/tags]
