Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)

Datsa's so cute and demure when he sits on his paws:



Amy's cute, of course, all the time:



Tomorrow should be a traumatic day, as we'll be at Mom's most of the daylight hours, back home pretty late feeding them. So we expect they'll be super-needy on Sunday.

Silly Site o' the Day

Weird and humid and too revved. I feel stupid and contagious. I feel like having some fancy fast food (via Mark Evanier), but maybe I don't fancy it after all. Perhaps I just need another lie-down.

Silly Site o' the Day

Look, Bill Wolfrum used the Roflbot and made himself some Lolpopes! Yummily infallible!

Silly Site o' the Day

In honor of Phil Proctor's birthday (which was yesterday): don't crush that shy dwarf, hand me the pliers! Shy dwarf game via Sheila Lennon. It's even in one of those foreign languages that Phil no doubt speaks fluently (or can at least imitate in a flawless accent).

Silly Site o' the Day

Hey, editors and other comics creative people, welcome back from San Diego! Don't forget, you can always contact the Riggs residence for all your one-stop shopping artistic needs! Hope you enjoyed all the cool the movie trailers, and bet you didn't see this one:



It's no Tron remake, but I like it anyway. Via Kieran Healy at Crooked Timber.

Silly Site o' the Day

We had pizza tonight, and I just couldn't get People in Pizza Costumes Becoming Pizzas (via Adam at Serious Eats) out of my head.

Silly Site o' the Day

So a gal named Jill and a guy named Kevin decided to get married, and this is their processional. It made me laugh and cry at the same time and I didn't even mind the Auto-Tuned song (well, not that much):



Via Linkmeister.

Silly Site o' the Day

I've spent much of the day away-from-keyboard, sorting out all my print magazines and catching up on at least half a year of my local newspaper, in preparation for deciding which of my subscriptions to renew (yes, I time it so just about everything comes up for renewal in July). I haven't read this or this in years, so this one-income family has no incentive to re-up there. I've decided to keep this and this and this, and that's about it. Now all I have to do is catch up on those back issues and I'll be set. Oh yeah, and those tons of comics and graphic novels I've yet to tackle. At least I've now seen the second installment of Animusic!



And now, so have you. Via Jim at Skippy's place.

Whom Are You Sponsoring?

Looks like most of the participants in Blogathon 2009 are women. That was probably the case when I did it back in 2003 (wow, I can't believe that, six whole years ago!). This year I'm sponsoring the two bloggers on my blogroll, Natalie Davis and Cara Kulwicki. Good luck, everyone!

Friday Cat (and Tourist, and Food) Blogging (FCB ™ Kevin Drum)

Fun day today, as the rain held off and I was able to meet fellow blogger and traveler extraordinaire Carolyn Ibis in the afternoon. Naturally I brought my camera to work, and the morning brought my first animal sighting, of the stuffed variety:



Kinda sad, isn't it? Who leaves a teddy bear lying by the side of the road? I'll never know. Anyway, Rob came down to meet Carolyn as well, and we wended our way through the Times Square area, where I saw a cat, believe it or not.



No, that's not the cat. That's the poor worker dressed up to advertise the NY Duck bus/boat tours. He or she is doubtless glad that the minimum wage rose today. There was a cat, perched atop a fellow's head, but when I tried to snap a photo he (the scammer, not the cat) demanded I pay him a buck first. Eff Tee Ess, y'know? Times Square has become in-your-face unbelievable, everyone's very aggressively shilling something.



But at least there are places to sit now, in what used to be a traffic-filled street! I really like the pedestrian mall, and Carolyn and I found a bench so Robin could take our photo.

I suggested we take advantage of NYC Restaurant "Week" and check out Ruby Foo's, a place about which I'd always been curious after viewing it from the outside so many times. The $24.07/person come-on was too good to pass up, and the food was quite nice, although the restaurant's regular prices are a bit out of my normal range. I probably should have taken more photos of the ambiance, it's sort of high class Asian kitsch but nice anyway.



But no, not me, I saved my photos for dessert. My blood sugar reading doesn't like me much tonight, but honestly, I gave most of this choco truffle thingie to Robin.



And it might have been worse had I had Carolyn's watermelon granita, as watermelon has a really high glycemic index.



Carolyn bought us gifts - a Vancouver 2010 Olympic pin and this cute little mascot called Quatchi. I thought he looked a bit like Vinnie's Norbert.



Home again, where Datsa expressed mild curiosity about DC's newsprint-upgrade Wednesday Comics...



...but much more interest in blocking my view of the Yankees game.



Meanwhile, Amy's all wired.

Your cat fact for this week involves a study, via Sheila Lennon, about cats' dominant paws (lefty or rightie) and how they seem to correlate to sex, which does bear out with Datsa (a lefty male) and Amy (a rightie female). On the other hand, our cats don't seem to employ the "solicitation cry" discussed in this study and on blogs everywhere last week, so there you are.

Muddled Class Morality

DOOLITTLE: Don't say that, Governor. Don't look at it that way. What am I, Governors both? I ask you, what am I? I'm one of the undeserving poor: that's what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that he's up agen middle class morality all the time. If there's anything going, and I put in for a bit of it, it's always the same story: 'You're undeserving; so you can't have it.' But my needs is as great as the most deserving widow's that ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of the same husband. I don't need less than a deserving man: I need more. I don't eat less hearty than him; and I drink a lot more. I want a bit of amusement, cause I'm a thinking man. I want cheerfulness and a song and a band when I feel low. Well, they charge me just the same for everything as they charge the deserving. What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything. Therefore, I ask you, as two gentlemen, not to play that game on me. I'm playing straight with you. I ain't pretending to be deserving. I'm undeserving; and I mean to go on being undeserving. I like it; and that's the truth. Will you take advantage of a man's nature to do him out of the price of his own daughter what he's brought up and fed and clothed by the sweat of his brow until she's growed big enough to be interesting to you two gentlemen? Is five pounds unreasonable? I put it to you; and I leave it to you.

Moral arbitration is hard to escape. A lot of people who swear they never do it are probably lying. Heck, I know I do it, I've made my share of catty remarks directed at those crazy kids with their too-tight or too-loose clothing blocking the sidewalks while texting and don't think I don't know they've been on my lawn.

So yeah, we're human, we make moral judgments. But there's a big diff between being all Go Fug in your down-time and making a federal case out of it. Separation of curch (i.e., personal belief) and state and all that, y'know?

Current examples include:

- The C Street Family, consisting of lots of wacko-religious, mostly Republican Congressmen who live together and believe God has chosen them to be above the moral laws they preach should be followed by all those undeserving little people (like their constituents, parishioners and a former President). Tune in to the Rachel Maddow show just about any night to get an earful on these dangerous "do as I say, not as I do" loonies.

- Conservative shill Ralph Peters deciding unilaterally that Taliban captive PFC Bow Bergdahl is a deserter, based on nothing more than what appears to be hearsay. Essentially Peters said something along the lines of "Never mind the facts; it looks to me like he left his post, therefore he doesn't deserve to live."

- Henry Louis Gates-gate, where a distinguished and moderately famous Harvard professor was arrested outside of his home by police investigating a possible break-in. The reaction of the white racists dominating much media discussion of this incident center around how the professor must have done something to deserve his treatment, either having trouble unlocking his door or talking back to the cops. And the cops themselves, say these same racists, deserve the benefit of the doubt and not to have our "militant black" President (if our centrist Commander in Chief is a militant, I'm the queen of Romania) term their actions "stupid." Silly politician, don't you know only one side gets the benefit of the doubt here? (Pam adds another interesting dimension to this when she talks about the Ivy League Effect.)

- Dick Cheney's contention that Scooter Libby "deserved a pardon" for what we can all surmise was essentially covering up for Cheney. If you've committed a high crime of a treasonous nature, like helping to quash a legit investigation into whether a deep-cover CIA's identity was deliberately blown by your boss, I suppose it stands to reason your boss will consider you deserving. And your boss' (nominal) boss won't, because he considers you a liar and therefore he retains the right to moral arbitration of your fate. (And remember, Bush retained this right because, like the C Street fellows, he believed he was chosen by God and therefore not subject to the same moral codes as the little people.)

- The continuing obstructionist debate around healthcare reform which, at its essence, comes down to the deserving-of-profits insurance companies and Big Pharma versus the undeserving underinsured or uninsured just-plain folks. Again, it's not a matter of cost-savings, but of who deserves to keep winning.

- The situation that bothers me the most personally - the face-value opining on whether Dr. Regina Benjamin should be the new Surgeon General because she's not a size 2. Never mind that she's a lot more svelte than many previous porky Presidential picks (wow, that John Hamilton was substantial!). I think Amanda has the right of it here:

I’m not making any health claims about weight. That discussion, while interesting, is beside the point of this post. It’s enough to know that most people strongly associate health and weight. So when disingenuous sexists start to bellyache about the dangers of letting fat women out in public, they get traction, because it’s becoming increasingly acceptable to suggest that not being perfectly healthy is a moral failing that should be punished with social disapproval, shaming, ostracism, and lowered access to society.

Her entire post is well worth reading, and did a lot to inspire this post of mine.

However, even though Amanda chose to set "side the debate about the link between weight and health, even if there is a link," I don't. A couple bloggers I admire who are also outraged over Benjamin's treatment are stating as fact opinions with which I'm reluctant to agree, like Pam's "Obesity is clearly a health risk" and Digby's "Nobody disputes that morbid obesity is dangerous to people's health." I'd dispute this point, which is far from clear. You cannot tell someone's health just by looking at them! You can't know that fat people are automatically unhealthy any more than you can know that thin people are automatically healthy. I've known tons of fat and fit folks (particularly when I was taking exercise classes with them), and a fair number of svelte and sickly ones exist as well (aside from anorexics). You don't know what's going on inside someone's body just by looking at the outside. That's supposed to be what doctors and other health professionals are for. Except, of course, they morally prejudge as well; I've had doctors tell me I need to lose weight without even putting me on the scale, or panic if I've gained a pound or two within the space of a few months. Never mind that stress is far more dangerous to one's overall health than poundage. It's a good thing I have a blog to relieve this stress. Which, after all, I don't deserve.

Silly Site o' the Day

While NerdProm goes on (and there's other NerdProms about, depending on what floats your inner geek, whether it be BlogHer, the Blogathon [which I did a few years back], or the upcoming-next-month Netroots Nation), my favorite current gathering is taking place atop the fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square. More about this fascinating project (including live video streaming of the plinth's current hourly occupants) at One & Other. Via Mike at Left is Right.

Silly Site o' the Day

Well, maybe not silly as much as really cool - via Maru, the Most Alien Landscapes on Earth. Not including San Diego this week.

Silly Site o' the Day

Long workday ahead of me, none of which will have anything to do with comics or seeing my industry friends. Via BoingBoing, here's a Don Martin dictionary.

Silly Site o' the Day

Well, it's not like it's a for-really comic book convention any more, but a part of me still wishes I could be at San Diego this week. Y'all say hi to everyone for me, you lucky duckies who are going, okay? Oh, and put in a good word for Robin too. :) So anyway, comics are on the brain, so here's a Lovecraft Chick tract via PZ Myers.

World's Shortest, Most Sexist Fairy Tale

This bit of "humor" was passed on to my boss' in-box. He tends to get a lot of jokes that I don't find particularly amusing, so I've decided to improve them. The "joke" below is followed by my addition:

Once upon a time, a guy asked a girl 'Will you marry me?' The girl said, 'NO!' And the guy lived happily ever after and rode motorcycles and went fishing and hunting and played golf a lot and drank beer and scotch and had tons of money in the bank and left the toilet seat up and farted whenever he wanted.

And so did the girl.

On a more serious note, I'm really sick and tired of people treating marriage like it's some sort of death sentence. Lots of studies show that loving couples live longer and are generally happier than people who haven't found their special someone. And the other theme of this particular punch line is, of course, that women are all ball-busting harridans whose only reason for existence is to make men's lives miserable because men are supposed to Have Fun and women are supposed to Be Responsible. Eff Tee Ess, you know?

Oh, and while I'm on the subject, you go, Rachel. If I'm a girl into Marvel Comics, especially if I'm not yet a teenager, I'm not going to be craving lipstick while my boy buddies get to dress in cool costumes.

A Man of Vision

With the San Diego Comic Con coming up later this week, my first thought was to beg our con-going friends to drop Robin's name to various publishers and editors, as he's been available to work for some months now. But we've cut back on any luxuries and are pretty much getting by okay for now on my salary and savings.

So I want to talk about something really important that SDCC attendees can do. Y'all can spread the word about helping my friend and colleague John Ostrander.

I've known John for around two decades, starting back when his late wife Kim Yale was one of the founding rabble-rousers in Friends of Lulu. Kim was, plain and simple, my hero, and I also derived a lot of pleasure out of the comics work that she and John did. Her dedication to industry equality for women, as creators and readers and vendors and production people and so on, is the main reason I still support FoL. And John was right there with her every step of her private and public fights.

After Kim's passing, John donated a goodly amount of money to the organization's newly-established Kim Yale Fund, earmarked for those interested in putting in "sweat equity" to the cause but who couldn't afford the (at the time) $25 annual membership fee. John didn't have to do this; it was just the kind of person he is.

And now John needs our help, and few deserve it more. To quote from Colleen Doran:

John "recently underwent eye surgery to help with his glaucoma. I spent several days with him at the Superman Celebration in Illinois a couple weeks ago, and he was just a complete pleasure to be around the whole time, and never once complained about his eyes, though they did seem to be obviously causing him some discomfort. He spent the entire weekend being amazingly generous to both the fans and the other creators, giving advice to both aspiring and working writers, and free comics to little kids. As I’m sure we all know, there’s no feeling quite like meeting someone you have idolized and finding out that they’re a wonderful person on top of everything else.

"John’s very expensive health insurance isn’t completely covering his surgeries, his recuperation time in Boston, or his follow-ups. Thus, his friends at the Chicago Comic-Con and Wizard Entertainment are endeavoring to raise some money to help, bless ‘em, through both cash donations and an auction to be held Saturday, August 8th. All the information right is right here at Comix4sight.

"This is all those guys, I have nothing to do with it, I’m just passing along notice of their good works. They put it more simply and powerfully than I could – if he loses this battle, he loses his sight.

"All of us have enjoyed John’s brilliant work, most of us have been inspired by what he’s created or improved, and more than a few of us, like myself, have shamelessly been swimming in his wake for some time now. Please take a moment and donate what you can in cash, and also consider adding an item to the auction that these wonderful people are putting on.

"This is one of the really, really good guys in the industry, one of the best writers we’ve ever had. Please help these people lend him a hand in his complete recuperation. John has asked that any monies raised over his medical expenses be given to the Hero Initiative, so whatever you donate is going to a worthy comics cause no matter what."

Having John as a colleague during my ComicMix stint was one of the best things about that gig. Although we had the same "job" (weekly columnist) I don't think I'll ever think of us on any sort of equal footing, but I'm very honored to be his friend. Of course, Robin will be donating some pages to the auction (guess which ones). Wish we could afford to go to Chicago to help out more. But the beauty of a blog is that now y'all can help too! That website again is Comix4sight. Thanks in advance!

Silly Site o' the Day

I was a very sleepy 11-year-old when human beings first landed on the moon forty years ago today, having stayed up till around 3AM to watch the last few orbits live, as I recall. Of course, my recollections of just about anything that long ago are kinda fuzzy. I do remember the wonder and joy, though; those have never left. So let's celebrate with this long-lost Captain Stargood video:



Explanation via Annalee at io9.

Blogaround for Andante

My day job continues to utilize most of my waking energy (including my writing "muscles"), even in the summertime. I expect to get a handle on the situation soon. Until then, an occasional blogaround is the most I can do.

And my goodness, so many people have shuffled off this mortal coil since my last blogaround. Walter Cronkite just passed away, the day after the Firesign chatters would have been typing "This is Walter, this is Walter" to one another. Then of course there was Michael Jackson (Michael Davis has a lovely remembrance, and I found David McCandless' aggregation of the most-used words in Jackson's songs fascinating), and Ed McMahon (MJ Norton runs down a list of Fark headers in his honor), and Farrah Fawcett (to whom Kathy Flake, among others, pays tribute) and Billy Mays and Fred Travalena (remembered here by Skippy) and David Carradine and a host of others. But the one who touched me the most wasn't famous, except to the Liberal Coalition and other blogging circles. Andante of Collective Sigh, who had been kind enough to occasionally comment here back in the days when I was more active and she had more energy, left us on June 16. This is one of those occasions where pseudonymity makes me mad, because I would have wanted to know her real name in order to honor her more properly, and now I never will. Andante, this one's for you, wherever you are.

• By the way, if you're going to have a conversation with your kid about death, you could do a lot worse than the way Bint Alshamsa handled it.

• Also leaving us, but in a good and just way, is Hilzoy, who has decided to quit blogging. Hilary has been also gracious enough to visit Pen-Elayne and comment on occasion and, truth be known, was the only reason for me to keep both Obsidian Wings and the Washington Monthly blog on my blogroll, since neither place links back to me. Thanks for giving me seven years of great reading, Hilary. (Here's Hilzoy's last post, and here's another good one to remember her by.)

• But let's not forget all the celebrations as well. It's good to see other bloggers from the "class of 2002" celebrating the completion of seven years of blogging, like Dave Johnson at Seeing the Forest and Skippy. My 7th blogiversary is coming up on September 7. Also, Bully celebrates number six with a great pictorial (as usual), and Pam and Kate have another lovely pictorial of their wedding five years ago. Oh, and there was July 4, of course, which occasion the News Writer took to remind us how far we still need to go toward perfecting this union.

• Elsewhere on the political front, Susie Madrak utters a succinct truism; Eric Boehlert dissects the myth of an Obama honeymoon period; and Digby straightens out the Republican spin conflating diplomacy with apology, analyzes why conservatives cry wolf over deficits during times when the country has had surpluses, and reminds us again of the radical right's MO when it comes to media manipulation; over at HuffPo, Art Levine brings us up to date on the strike going on just down the road from me; and the General posts a top ten list of how liberal political correctness is oppressing rich white Christian men.

• With the San Diego Comic Con media event coming up, superheroes are on many people's minds. Charles Yoakum examines the unfortunate article in the L.A. Times giving advice to female con-goers as though we're brainless idiots rather than fellow geeks. Cheryl Lynn believes she knows why Wonder Woman isn't more popular to the current generation of readers. Michelle Bacon has a stellar feminist analysis of male fan reaction to Supergirl's new costume. (Full disclosure: My husband inked Supergirl for four and a half years, when both the character and costume were a bit different than present.) Speaking of Supergirl, Ken Jennings comes to the defense of Oscar the Juggling Octopus. And speaking of geek girls, Melissa McEwan notes an unfortunate substitution magazine to replace Electronic Gaming Monthly.

• Elsewhere in showbiz, Melissa Silverstein tallies up how many Emmy nominations went to women, including female comedy writers. I honestly don't know what gives with the late-night comedy show writing staffs having so few women -- still. No wonder so much comedy not automatically catering to a male sensibility is seen as unfunny. This could also have something to do with why a Comedy Central stand-up series "will only sign five women maximum," as reported by Courtney at Feministing.

• Mike at Left is Right isn't thrilled with Chase's latest financial shenanigans towards its credit card customers, but happens to note that "Like the average American I owe 10K on a Chase credit card." Say what? Are Robin and I the only middle-class people left in this country who aren't in debt? I can't even imagine how you get into debt for ten thousand dollars!

• Seriously, PETA? You're not helping. I mean, really, Che Guevara's granddaughter? Perhaps I shouldnt' be so suprised to find, as Amanda Marcotte did, that food consumption reporting is so sexist. Although I did know, as Jesse Taylor reports, that genre book covers are.

• Speaking of books Lance Mannion imagines himself as the hero of a very good novel or two; here are two short excerpts. He also bemoans the passing of hobbies, with a hobby defined as "a systematized, borderline obsessive form of usually solitary play that requires multiple trips to a specialty store for supplies and parts and manuals and has as its goal intellectual and spiritual and psychological satisfactions beyond simple amusement." I think we still have hobbies, but they don't require as much shopping, which is a really, really good thing. My blog is my hobby now, and I don't spend a single cent to do this, not like all the bucks I used to lay down at the copy shop and post office during my INSIDE JOKE days. On the other hand, when I was a teenager, one of my hobbies was making gum-wrapper chains (which I still have), and I didn't really spend any money doing that either.

• PZ notes "something too many religious people fail to understand — you can practice your religion, other people can practice their religion, but you don't get to tell other people that they must practice your religion." Some of us have a much lower tolerance for this behavior than others. Also from PZ:



Pass it on. I can't believe our President is only two months older than my baby brother. Gah, I'm old.

• Bits and pieces: I second Skippy's question: why doesn't MSNBC feature any actual news during the weekend? Zuzu reports that NYC has sold another piece of its soul, such as it is. Some of us who surrender to Britain tend to do so on an individual, marriage-type basis, not city-wide. Tgirsch writes an open letter to Wisconsin drivers; it's funny, just about nobody in NJ seems to treat the left-hand lane as passing-only. Vanessa at Feministing made me blub with this story about high schoolers from my current hometown. (Melissa McEwan blubbed too.) Tom Tomorrow hits the nail on the head as to what makes me so uncomfortable about movies featuring cruel humor. Pretty much it's the cruelty. Julianne at Cosmic Variance brings us 20 Insults from P. G. Wodehouse (are you listening, Bully?). Liza Sabater brings to our attention Death to Auto-Tune:



to which I say, amen. At Fafblog, the Medium Lobster celebrates Another Bold Victory in the War on People. Finally: Look out, says Annalee at io9, it's raining dead tadpoles! Seriously, a brolly ain't gonna cut it.

And that's the way it finally was, from about mid-June through mid-July...

Silly Site o' the Day

Oh no, I think der Untergang is on to us:



I guess I'm not the only one spreading this meme!

Silly Site o' the Day

Still chugging on my blogaround, but I did get caught up on all sorts of household-related stuff this morning, so it's been a good day so far. Hey look, I'm behind in my Sarah Haskins videos, here's a new one about dating. I never dated much, having known both Steve and Robin through correspondence before we ever met in person, but I guess there are people like this in the world:



"Spaghetti sauce..." heh...

Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)

Storm's a'coming -- wow, did you see that lightning?! And hear that thunder? Well, Datsa sure did!



It's okay, boy, nothing to be scared of, we're all here to protect you. Well, almost all of us. Where's your sister? Amy? AMY?



Ah, never mind.

Silly Site o' the Day

I've been posting a lot of YouTube videos lately, but even if I had the time, and even if my office didn't block the site, I don't think I'd ever bother reading the comments sections of any given video. Luckily, now that I've linked to the Random YouTube Insult Generator (via Gerard), you don't have to either!

Silly Site o' the Day

You know what might taste good right about now? A room covered in melted cheese:



Via Robyn at Serious Eats.

Silly Site o' the Day

Two cute ones from Crooks & Liars. First, one for Robin:



Then, one for me:



C&L can be found here, as usual.

Silly Site o' the Day

Hey, speaking of my ex, as I was yesterday, he beat me to the posting of the latest Auto-Tune the News:



Or did I already post this? I'm not really keeping up lately. I contine to hope I can devote more time to blogging and other writing, and I keep Doing Stuff at work and then being Too Tired at home. Still, I'm proceeding apace with an Any Day Now blogaround...

Silly Site o' the Day

Sooner or later, if you live long enough all the stuff you once thought "might be a good idea" to organize on paper for a goof winds up as some sort of online reference. The latest example is a site brought to my attention by the latest xkcd comic called TV Tropes. I remember a long, long time ago when Steve and I started to compile just-for-fun a list of what we then called "top sitcom clichés." You know, like "character discovers true meaning of Christmas while trapped in elevator with woman giving birth" (the top three situations on our list combined into one), stuff that seemed to appear over and over. As the site explains, we were probably using the wrong phrase: "Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations. On the whole, tropes are not clichés. The word clichéd means 'stereotyped and trite.' In other words, dull and uninteresting. We are not looking for dull and uninteresting entries. We are here to recognize tropes and play with them, not to make fun of them." They have at least one page dedicated to characters being trapped in an elevator. Not sure if this is going to become as addictive for me as it seems to be for Randall Munroe's character, but I'm glad somebody is (or "somebodies are") doing it!

Silly Site o' the Day

I was so busy passing along news of Beatles Day on Friday that I forgot to mention - RUN, run for your lives! The Beatles were actually terrifying! Just look:



Via George (not Paul, John or Ringo) at the Comedy Central blog.

Silly Site o' the Day

Just wondering, is every video the Upright Citizens Brigade does very male and pretty much very white?

Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)

Apparently something's up with the side of our house that faces Yonkers; the cats haven't been able to get enough of the computer room window.



Ohhh-kay, that's a tail, but whose?



Oh, of course, Amy, whose tail is about half her total length. This was yesterday.



And then Datsa got into the act today.

By the way, if you haven't read this post by Amanda about cats, it's absolutely spot-on and highly recommended.

Silly Site o' the Day

You know there are some days when you just want to be in a newsroom? I'd love to be able to hang out at the Liverpool Echo today. Today is the second annual Beatles Day, which to all intents and purposes seems to be sponsored by the paper although they're not actually listed as one of the official sponsors. Seems like everyone had a good time, and it's all to raise money for charity. Good on them!

Silly Site o' the Day

Bloglines is down at the moment, so I'm spending my lunch break perusing Japanese rice field art, 'cause that's the kinda gal I'm.

Silly Site o' the Day

I would like, if I may, to present the following listing of select channels on our cable system:

1 New York 1 News
2 WCBS New York (CBS)
4 WNBC New York (NBC)
5 WNYW New York (FOX)
6 WXTV Paterson (Univision)
7 WABC New York (ABC)
11 CW11 New York (CW-WPIX)
12 News 12 The Bronx
16 WNJU Linden (Telemundo)
19 WRNN Kingston (IND)
23 MSNBC
25 CNN
26 FOX News Channel
51 E!
52 VH1
53 MTV
54 BET
77 CNN Headline News
103 EuroNews
104 BBC World News
186 VH1 Classic
189 VH1 Soul
194 NY1 Noticias

Robin compiled this list yesterday. It's all the channels that showed the Michael Jackson memorial service live. And that's not even counting other markets or the millions of internet viewers. Overkill, a testament to the most famous and notorious entertainer in the world, or both?

Regardless, der Untergang has been at it again:



Via Xeni at BoingBoing.

Silly Site o' the Day

Well, it looks like someone is having fun with money at work (via BoingBoing). Me, I'm having fun making money from working. With the real unemployment rate (and I'm not even sure that includes freelancers like Robin who are between assignments but aren't eligible for unemployment insurance) hitting almost 17%, I'm darn grateful, too!

Silly Site o' the Day

Back to the land of go-getting young adults who prowl Manhattan's streets and never look up from texting! Wonder if any of them made Texts From Last Night (via Robert at Lawyers, Guns & Money); wouldn't surprise me a bit.

Belated Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)

Oops, forgot to post these on Friday. Time to clean out the camera!





For whatever reason, Datsa was fascinated by the area around my printer this week.

Silly Site o' the Day

I spent a lot of the day in bed yesterday, elevating my legs and plowing through lots of indie (non-Marvel/DC) comics, which "category" I may just finish today. Then of course there's a desired blogaround if I ever catch up on reading all my blog subscriptions. I only have a half dozen tops to iron, my earring holder's on the computer desk waiting for me to file about a dozen pairs that I've worn in the past month or so (never mind, I did that between typing sentences), and those linen closet shelves aren't going to reorganize themselves. Robin keeps trying to get me to stop "doing stuff" and just relax, but I'm honestly not sure that's possible. Besides, "doing stuff" does relax me, in a way, particularly reading. In any case, it beats the risk of aggravating my ankle; lord knows I do enough walking during the week!

Meanwhile, Sarah Haskins is being productive by talking about hair:



Is it really that good an idea to advertise long hair in the summer anyway?

Silly Site o' the Day

Happy Independence Day to my fellow Americans! Me, I'm still dependent on a particular Brit, but never mind all that. Um, here:



Don't ask, and I won't tell.

Silly Site o' the Day

Good morning! Yeah, Datsa woke me up for his feeding time, but I conked again, it being a vacation day, and slept fitfully until... holy moly, 1:30 PM?! Still trying to wake up enough to do a few errands. Hoping the effects of a hot cup of tea will counterbalance baseball. Apparently they're wearing the red "ooh-ess-eh" caps in honor of July 4, which it isn't. But that's Amurka for you, we not only insist on wearing faux patriotism on our sleeves, but we're proud of our inability to count as well. There, now I'm awake. And YouTube knows what I like: Michael Gregory of the "Auto-Tune the News" gang and his latest:



Dang, that's catchy! And kitschy too!

Silly Site o' the Day

Aaaaaand, the three-day weekend begins, woo-hoo! Bloglines celebrates by going temporarily wonky again, so to YouTube I turn, and they don't disappoint:



This sort of things happens in the Riggs Residence more than I want to admit.

Silly Site o' the Day

White Rabbits! And more rain here in the Northeast, apparently. But it's getting hot out there anyway, so why not fire up the grill and try out a Hot Sauce Generator (via GeneratorLand)? As for us, we have no grill, garden, backyard, property of our own, etc. etc., but we have lots of heart!