Have Some Cheetos, Chill

By request from DCLaw1 at Glenn Greenwald's place. :)

I guess I need to go back to Kentucky.
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Vampire Curly!

The fang! The faaaaaaang!
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Fightin' Dem Over Here

Yeah, I know -- he's gonna vote like Joe Lieberman most of the time, but if he keeps firing salvos like the one above at targets other than Democrats, I think I can live with that.

And no, that wasn't a chair that Bob Corker just got hit with, it was a chair fuckin' factory.
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Curly's Breakfast

Mmmmmm-mmm! Purina Indoor Formula!


I have to go back to Aldi in a few, so that I can have a breakfast that is not ramen. I tried to accomplish that on Saturday, but the damned place was out of everything.
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Another Socks Curly

It's all I have -- sorry! But, as the man said... "A slightly different picture of the same cat, nearly every day!"
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Take Your Dramamine

Curly likes to walk around and around and around Dad's legs. He gets the payoff at the end, though -- the brush!

It's hard to tell (since I can't do natsound with the A410), but every time you see him look up, that's a new "meow!"
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Funky Chicken In The Spambucket

Seems like everyone's doing it -- posting about the bizarre spam they get. Gmail intercepts all of mine, flawlessly, and I never open any of it... but here's what the previews have looked like the last couple of days:

From: Lew Ferrell
Subj: automotive sunbathe
No, Shoz-Dijiji never be reservation Indian! But Gerohimo is old and he has the wisdom of the old...

From: Moll Shafer
Subj: shower
There was no telescreen, but there must be hidden microphones: besides,they could be seen. You...

Now, who in the hell is gonna open anything that looks like that?

UPDATE: Check it:

From: Reg Pearce
Subj: dreamer doghouse
He seemed to have been waiting for it, for he told us the exact time of the interval. The priests...

From: Cancelamento
Subj: Urgente Cancelamento
Brasília, 29 de julho de 2006 Restituição de multas eleitorais A Portaria n° 40/2006...

From: Benedict Boyer
Subj: first lady
Your mother would NEVER have done that, Emily. I have our names here, writtenon these slips of...

Fom: Barbara Hartman
Subj: firing line
She held out her hand with its short, broad-tipped fingers. But the Prince had seen him and had...

From: Steve Robertson
Subj: right angle tutor
Hes even younger, a very thin,very dark, nervous-looking boy. I got to a spot where the grass...

I mean, literally... WTF?
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Dirty Laundry

He likes Dad's slightly used socks. He's asleep on them as I type this.
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Just For JeffCO

You were not misidentified... I just didn't zoom in enough. :)
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Another Foe Vanquished

These nail clippers will trouble you no more, Dad!
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Friday Night Bonus Curly

Here he is, all zoned out on the corner of the bed, again, twitching, mewling...
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Not Serving The People. Period.

"We literally sat knee to knee...I looked deep into his eyes and talked to him about love and losing people and that he was responsible for this. I said, `I didn't vote for you, but you are my President. And you're not serving me.'"

"I said I believed it was time to put an end to this. His job is to find solutions. I said, `You yourself have said you had erroneous information going into this.'"

She continued: "I said, `As a Christian man, you realize that when you've made a mistake it's your responsiblity to end this. And it's time to end the bleeding and it's time to end the war.'"

"I said, `what would truly bring healing is to start working on changing your policy towards the Middle East...as President, you're here to serve the people. And the people are not being served with this war.'"

She added: "I told him, `It's time as a Christian to put our pride behind us."

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Friday Afternoon Curly

Curly's getting quite PC-literate, these days. I've even created an account for him on the GWPDA Coalition notebook!

UPDATE: Dammit, Jim! Why can't I hit the "a" key?!?
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He Should Know From War Crimes

A chief prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg has said George W. Bush should be tried for war crimes along with Saddam Hussein. Benjamin Ferenccz, who secured convictions for 22 Nazi officers for their work in orchestrating the death squads that killed more than 1 million people, told OneWorld both Bush and Saddam should be tried for starting "aggressive" wars--Saddam for his 1990 attack on Kuwait and Bush for his 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"Nuremberg declared that aggressive war is the supreme international crime," the 87-year-old Ferenccz told OneWorld from his home in New York. He said the United Nations charter, which was written after the carnage of World War II, contains a provision that no nation can use armed force without the permission of the UN Security Council.

Ferenccz said that after Nuremberg the international community realized that every war results in violations by both sides, meaning the primary objective should be preventing any war from occurring in the first place.

He said the atrocities of the Iraq war--from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the massacre of dozens of civilians by U.S. forces in Haditha to the high number of civilian casualties caused by insurgent car bombs--were highly predictable at the start of the war.

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Oh, My Word

I thought all these tinfoil hatties were supposed to be on my side of the aisle!

A Republican candidate for this area’s congressional seat said Wednesday that the U.S. government was complicit in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

In an editorial board interview with The Telegraph on Wednesday, the candidate, Mary Maxwell, said the U.S. government had a role in killing nearly 3,000 people at the World Trade Center and Pentagon, so it could make Americans hate Arabs and allow the military to bomb Muslim nations such as Iraq.

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Beg A Ride?

UPDATE: Never mind -- it's got to be too late now (after business hours, Friday) to reserve a seat.

Hey, West-of-Gnashvegans... wanna give a po' boy a ride?

Brittney, blog-diva and mistress of NashvilleIsTalking.com is trying to fill some seats for this Saturday's free video editing seminar, presented by WKRN-2. I have all the goodies to participate, but due to poverty (an inability to pay for car insurance), and a predisposition to be pulled over by Metro's finest, I don't have a way to get there, or back.

Brittney, being the sweetheart she is, has offered to drive across town to get me there, but she can't stay for the whole thang, so I'd need a ride back. Given that she and I live on opposite sides of town, I really can't take her up on the generous offer... that's just too much to ask of a blog-diva, IMO.

However, if anyone's going to the class from points west of town, and would like to help a guy out, I'll buy you a few beers for your trouble.

I live ~2 miles from the I-40 @ White Bridge Rd. exit. Leave a comment, or e-mail me (see blog logo), and we can work out whatever details needed. Thanks!
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Nose Pettin'

That's the spot, Dad.

UPDATE: I was actually trying to get a photo of him licking my thumb, as shown towards the end of this clip -- nose-petting almost always gets the licking to happen, as it did this time, but the flash can't keep up with the tongue!
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Late Night Curly

What sucks is I'm gonna wake him up when I lay down. He's been talking in his sleep on-and-off for the last half-hour. I hate to disturb him, but... hell, he's a cat. He can sleep any time. :)
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Curly Hangin' Out At The Crack Den

Yeah, he likes to read the A-Man, occasionally.
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#600: Persistence

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Smell The Glove

The glove of fear enveloping the the flaccid fist (PDF file) of the RNC. Wherein you will see the desperation, aimed at one successful blogger:

Moulitsas Called “Liberal,” “Angry,” And “Vile”:
“[M]arkos Moulitsas [Is] The Creator Of The Daily Kos, The Popular Liberal Political Weblog (www.dailykos.com).”
(Anne E. Kornblut, “The Peculiar Power Of The Chattering Class,” The New York Times, 4/2/06)
• Slate Called Moulitsas “Leading Liberal Blogger.” (Torie Bosch, “WMD? Really?” Slate, 6/22/06)
• Moulitsas Was Called The “Most Vile Of The Angry Left Bloggers.” (Donald Luskin, “America’s Looniest Liberal Pundit,”
National Review, 9/26/05)

I'm just surprised they waited so long after the wildly successful (and much-covered in the media) YearlyKos convention in Las Vegas.

Man, that shit is weak. More like this, please, RNC!

UPDATE: You know what I like best about this PDF file? The ten links to www.dailykos.com that are there... so should one want to go see all the anger and hate for themselves, right there's the address!

Of course, it'll probably end up looking like this to wingers...
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Last Night's Curly

Peacefully sleeping by Dad's side, after a hard day of tetherbunny.
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Struttin'

Now that he's free of the evil chair, Curly's struttin' around like he owns the place!
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Snagged

Dad even had to help him get loose, when he started crying about it. I tried to talk him out of using the crazy green checkerboard chair's back corner for this activity long ago, but did he listen? Nooooooooo...
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By Popular Late-Night Demand

Claim Your Dot!!!
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Vidclip: Hide-n-Seek

Curly gets a little exercise by chasing Dad around and over the crazy green checkerboard chair.
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Seriously

You sleep tonight, Dad... you die! Just you wait.
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Excellent Greenwald

They agreed to acquiesce to the administration's fiction that there are some sort of complex and difficult legal questions with which one must grapple, and that only shrill partisans say that the President is violating the criminal law. And thus, a Washington ruling class which reveled in subpoenas and criminal investigations over such towering matters as Whitewater, Vince Foster and Monica Lewkinsky has collectively decided that talk of criminality on the part of the President for how he is spying on Americans is imprudent and unserious.

The Justice Department lawyers who approved this illegal program, the political officials who ordered it, and the journalists who defended it (and have enabled this presidency) are all part of the same circle, and the very suggestion that any of this is actually criminal -- even though it is all being done in violation of the crystal clear criminal law -- is just too unpleasant, too unruly, too disruptive to admit. As Turley puts it: "The question of the president's possible criminal acts has long been the pig in the parlor that polite people in Congress refused to acknowledge."

This man's consistently on-point with his analysis and documentation of America under a radical, authoritarian administration. If you don't have his book, at least bookmark his website -- it is absolutely vital for all patriots to read and understand what Glenn Greenwald has to say.
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Do You Have A Favorite?

... Curly picture? My three candidates are as follows, but if you get bored and want to poke around the archives to nominate your favorite, please do.

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Sunday ClosetCurlyBlogging

In your sleep, motherfletcher... in your sleep!

Yes, he is going to kill me. In my sleep.
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Surname Ranking

How popular is your last name? Filmmaker Alan Berliner explores the American name pool for an upcoming PBS P.O.V. episode.

Hat tip to Meredith.
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Mid-Afternoon Curly

'Cause I can. And all Curly's fans are out and about.

This is the new orientation of the notebook station -- 90-degrees from where it was, 'cause the signal's better this-a-way. The antenna I bought? It arrived today, but it didn't improve shit -- I'll have to find some steel (it has a magnetic base), and stick it out the window to see if that has any effect.
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You Messin' With My Dots?

Look at you guys, out there.

Oh, a shoutout to you western homies, too.

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Music Row Democrats: Congrats!

Right there in The New York Times, even.

Country music, the genre of lonely hearts and highways, lost jobs and blue-collar woes, has become a cultural battleground. Conservatism is widely seen as having the upper hand, a red-state answer to left-leaning Hollywood.

Democrats on Music Row, the country music capital here, have grown frustrated with that reputation. A group of record-company executives, talent managers and artists has released an online compilation of 20 songs, several directly critical of Mr. Bush and the Iraq war.

The price for the set is $20, with most of the proceeds going to the group, which calls itself Music Row Democrats and is using the money to support local and national candidates who share its values.

Go support 'em, and take this country back, dammit.
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It's Saturday

So, it's bath day! :)

Actually, for Curly, every hour is bath hour. Thank Gore for Purina Indoor Formula -- since Curly's been on that, he's only hacked up two hairballs.
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Lame

Seriously... this is the most boring Curly clip, EVAR. That's why I had to throw Jeff Beck at it. :)
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Friday Night Curly

In profile, even.

Well, it's hot and humid outside, y'know. Even Curly's disinterested in the balcony, tonight.

And so am I. My antenna didn't come today. :( Probably tomorrow, then.
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What's Wrong With This Statement?

From Glen Dean:

I have really never understood the arguments against our government listening in on Al Qaeda's phone calls.

Could it be that it begs the wrong question?

Has any sane individual on any point in the political spectrum ever proposed not listening to al Qaeda's phone calls?

Not anyone I've seen. But hey -- prove me wrong. Show me someone who says "We should not listen to al Qaeda's phone calls." A URL is fine.

No, the issue is not wiretapping, or even who should be wiretapped. The issue is obeying the law, getting warrants and having a record of what was done to whom, and why. Legal wiretapping is good, and it's surprisingly easy for our government agencies to do. Secret surveillance without any statutory oversight by the government is bad. Simple.

I imagine that Glen just naturally trusts our current administration to only be spying on who they say they're spying. If so, that's a curious position for a libertarian. Not so much for an authoritarian, though.

For anyone who wants to argue the focus of my point, save yourself some time, and read up on FISA and the various arguments asserted by the Bush administration for their obvious lawbreaking.
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Nifty New StatCounter Feature

GoogleMaps integration!


Better yet, you can get all the details right from the map:


Pretty cool, eh?
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Giant Cat Spotted in West Nashville

He eats cars, too!
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Scenes From A Walk

First mile... passing building "J," I notice a little Curly clone (maybe 2/3rds the size of Curly) in one of the condos. It's pawing at the sliding glass door as I go by. And it has li'l black feetses, like Curly, too. Awwww.

A few blocks later, two guys, arguing in Farsi. The hood is up on a car in the driveway. I don't speak Farsi, but I assume someone has a better idea about what needs done to fix the car.

Arrive at Sahib's. Get my beers. He tells me he's going back to India for a family visit in a few weeks, and wants to show me his new notebook he bought, so's he'll have the Intertubes while he's there. It's a Toshiba. Nice.

Second mile (the walk back)... I pass another little store, a half-block from Sahib's. Some young fool is crawling around on the roof of a slowly-moving car in its parking lot. Some young, fat fool jumps out of the back of said car, to harass the roof-crawler, until he notices me. Then, he turns to me, obviously drunk already, and hollers, "Hey buddy! You wanna get drunk?!? You wanna go get drunk with us? HAW haw haw haw!" Uh... yeah, sure thing. I'll get right on that.

Passing back by the Farsi argument, there's no more arguing -- just two guys under the hood of the car, doing car-fixin' stuff, I suppose.

Metro cop passes by, shines his spotlight on me, as he slowly passes. I shrug and give the universal sign for, "What the fuck?" He moseys along, and over the hill he goes.

Back at the condos, some woman is talking to a guy in an SUV, when it suddenly peels out of the lot. She starts walking back towards her building, and when she and are are within 20 feet of one another, she says, "There goes one stupid motherfucker!" I said, "Sing it, sistah!"

And then, I'm home. In the 37209.
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Curly Knows

... where his bread gets buttered. Right beside Dad, yo.

Note the nail clippers (in front of his paws) -- another favorite toy of his.
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Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes

Ah, technology.

Two changes I made yesterdiddy:

1.) I started using Firefox 1.5.0.6. I had been using Mozilla 1.7.1, and liked it very much, but it was a bit slow. Firefox seems to render screens faster, and it's got some beauty-full features (movable tabs, integration with Performancing, for offline Bloggering... an integrated "Find" bar, etc.).

The only problem was that I couldn't get my Home/PgUp/PgDn/End keys or the spacebar to work for scrolling through content, and that was gonna be a deal killer for me. Then, I found the fix: F7. That toggles "caret browsing," whatever the hell that might be. Life is good!

2.) I took up Blogger on their invitation to convert the bloggie over to Blogger Beta. Best new feature I've seen thusfar? Now, when I get an e-mail notification that someone has commented here, it actually tells me on which post the comment was made!

Stay tuned for evening Curly, radiohead willing.
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Breaking News

Right here.

Fox News reports a federal district court in Detroit has ruled that the Bush administration’s NSA warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional and ordered an immediate halt to it.

Of course, since they're sourcing Fox News, we may have to wait to see if this is on the up-and-up... ;)
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Curly, Through A Window, Dirty

Still hard at work, keeping the balcony safe from insecto- and avianoterrorists.
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And There You Fuc King Have It

Bush administration officials now admit that Iraqi government’s original plan to rein in the violence in Baghdad, announced in June, has failed. The Pentagon has decided to rush more American troops into the capital, and the new military operation to restore security there is expected to begin in earnest next month.

Yet some outside experts who have recently visited the White House said Bush administration officials were beginning to plan for the possibility that Iraq’s democratically elected government might not survive.

“Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy,” said one military affairs expert who received an Iraq briefing at the White House last month and agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity.

“Everybody in the administration is being quite circumspect,” the expert said, “but you can sense their own concern that this is drifting away from democracy.”

No WMD.
No operational connection to al Qaeda.
No reverse domino effect.

FUCKED. NO LUBE.

What is the fucking plan for success, GOP? What?!?
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The Evening Curly

Brought to you this evening by Blogger Beta (ooooh, scary, kids!).
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Party Unity, Or...

... unit parody?

As I listened to this, another Joe supporter -- a somewhat older woman in horn-rimmed glasses -- came over and cornered me.

"You know what?" she said. "You reporters are all alike. You won't admit it, but you're all anti-Semites . . . "

I scratched my head. Anti-Semites? The song rattled on creepily:

If you rough it up

If you like it you can slide it up, slide it up

I shuddered at this, trying to keep my wits, but Horn-Rimmed Glasses was still whaling away at me. "You people really do have no respect," she went on. "Joe is such a wonderful man . . . "

"Listen," I exploded, interrupting her. "Do you know what this song is about?"

She froze.

"It's about a guy who gets an erection that doesn't go away," I said. "Can you explain to me why this song is playing now? What the hell is wrong with you people?"

Horn-Rimmed frowned and listened. At that exact moment Mick Jagger was wrapping the song up:

You, you make a dead man come . . .

You, you make a dead man come . . .

The woman recoiled, briefly assumed a quizzical expression, then walked away shaking her head, like the song was my fault.

Go read more of Matt Taibbi's excellent Rolling Stone article here.
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Humpday Morning Curly

Railstalkin' Curly, keepin' the perimeter safe from terrorists both insectoid and avian!
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Rhetorical Question

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Brush Your Kitty

... and let him back in, and he may deliriously start playing with nail clippers under your notebook stand. :)

Then, after a few minutes, bolt for the door, for no apparent reason.

That brush... it's like catnip for Curly.
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Wimpy Pines

Yes, we had another humdinger of a summer storm blow through west Gnashvegas, right about 6:40 p.m., last night. A good 10-15 minutes of 60+ m.p.h. straight-line winds, hail, and lots o' lightning.

This photo is of a tree about 30 yds. from my balcony -- thankfully, the two pines right off my balcony are still intact (except for the half-pound of needles all over the balcony, and my sliding glass door). Curly likes the pines... he considers them "bird acquisition aides." :)

So, that's four pines down this summer, from where I can visually survey from the balcony. Damned Defeat-o-Pines!
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Closet Curly Fans -- Rejoice!

Raise your hand if you like Curly's sleep shelf.

I've noticed that it's tough for me to get photos of Curly's white bits unless he's asleep. It's like he's always trying to hide his chin from me.
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More Outdoor Curly

He's caught the scent of something in the breeze.

Right after this, Curly jumped down off the rail, and got a vigorous, and welcome brushing. He sounded like an outboard motor with a leaky exhaust manifold.
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My 30 Minutes Is Up

... so let me at that Purina Indoor Formula, Dad!
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Mind Control

Stare at it. Go ahead.
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Your Curly Moment For Sunday

Awww, sleepy!
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Peekaboo

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Saturday Morning Curly-Q

I'm sitting here, minding my own business, trying to snag a little radio signal. Suddenly, there's a couple of quick, light paw-touches to my big toe. The love sponge needs petting.

Of course, he gets it.
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I'll Show You Unserious

From Yahoo!:

While the British terror suspects were hatching their plot, the Bush administration was quietly seeking permission to divert $6 million that was supposed to be spent this year developing new homeland explosives detection technology.

Congressional leaders rejected the idea, the latest in a series of steps by the
Homeland Security Department that has left lawmakers and some of the department's own experts questioning the commitment to create better anti-terror technologies.

Homeland Security's research arm, called the Sciences & Technology Directorate, is a "rudderless ship without a clear way to get back on course," Republican and Democratic senators on the Appropriations Committee declared recently.

Assholes.
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Somebody's Knockin' At The Door

Do me a favor
Open the door, let 'em in.
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Nothing Bad Ever Happens To Me

Anybody remember that tune by Oingo Boingo? Well, read the so-called liberal mainstream media over the past five years, and see if you don't come to the same conclusion as Greg Sargent:

Terror Arrests Bolster Democratic Case Against Bush

Democrats seized yesterday on the arrests of terrorism suspects in England to bolster their case against the Bush administration and the GOP leadership in Congress heading into the midterm elections, arguing that the terror plot showed that the administration's homeland security policies were woefully inadequate and that the GOP-backed Iraq war was a substantial drain on military resources which are required to combat other global threats.

No, that story didn't appear anywhere -- but why? I mean, seriously, we've reached a point where our media seems even to agree that the GOP VP's accidental shooting of a man in the face is a boon for the GOP!

Go read.
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Itchy

... and scratchy.
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Oooh!

I think I know what I want for Christmas! It's cheap, easy, and just likely to be all the boost I need.
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Bush Channels FDR

"The only thing we have to fear is... whatever I tell you to fear!"

Dunno about you, but I'm all out of bubblegum.
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I Have A Cat

He's just big-boned! Especially the belly bone.
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Tetherbunny: A Different View

Of course, he was much more interested in the new, shiny silver thing in the floor (hey, it has a stringy thing on it, too!) than in the bunny, today.
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Some Things Are Just Too Funny

... for a cheap screen shot. So, without further adieu, I give you the new, hackproof Joe Lieberman website.

FEEL THE JOENERTIA!
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The Truth, Finally On Fox News

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