:::whimper:::

Is my comment button busted?

Or does everybody not love me anymore???

(If anyone needs me, I'll be under the back porch eating worms.)

Sometimes They Just Write Themselves

An interesting paradox, here.

Zoo Puts Giraffe on Birth Control

JERUSALEM -- Vets at the Biblical Zoo have a tall order -- stopping a baby boom among giraffes.
After the giraffe population tripled to nine in recent years, outgrowing the zoo on the edge of Jerusalem, the most fertile female -- Shavit -- has been put on birth control. The 5-year-old has been injected with birth control hormones, delivered by dart, after giving birth twice in four years.
Zoo spokeswoman Sigalit Dzir said Thursday that while the babies are cute and female giraffes make good mothers, there isn't enough room for more. Zoo keepers are also worried about inbreeding.
The zoo recently moved two giraffes to a zoo in Singapore, but American and European zoos don't want animals from Israel because of the risk of foot-and-mouth disease, Dzir said, adding that it's also difficult to transport giraffes overseas.
Shavit has received an injection of hormones that will prevent her from getting pregnant for at least a year. During the year, Shavit will be monitored, and the Biblical Zoo will share its information with other zoos around the world, including those in Berlin and San Diego.
Other zoos also administer birth control, but dart delivery is unique, said Dr. Nili Avnimagen, the zoo's head vet.

Does it strike anyone else as odd that this is happening at the BIBLICAL Zoo? And that there are plenty of people who justify their stance against birth control because "the Bible says it's wrong"?

So it's wrong to assuage human suffering and famine by reducing the birth rate, but somehow when it's a giraffe it's perfectly acceptable.

(Yes, I know--just because it's the "Biblical" Zoo doesn't mean the vets are Bible-thumpers. But I found it funny just the same.)

When Life Goes Well, the Blog Gets Quiet

Everything is going really well right now. (Other than the cold, that is, which is forcing me to pet the kitty's ears just to keep them warm, poor thing. He seems to be enjoying it, though--he's sitting on my lap and purrrrrring his fluff off.)

I'm coming up on two months clean, which is wonderful; I feel great, and it's a relief not to have to worry about where the dope is coming from. I got my tax check, which I can now put toward bills instead of drugs. I'm proud of myself.

LJ has been really sweet, too. For Valentine's Day, I came downstairs to find a HUGE heart-shaped balloon that plays "I Think I Love You" by the Partridge Family. I grinned at that for about an hour straight--the Partridge Family, for heavens' sake! And what he wrote in the card was really great. I think he's trying to be a little more open with his emotions. We've got a long way to go, but I'm encouraged.

And best of all: Unless something completely unforeseen happens, I'm approved for the financing I need to get the roof, the windows, and the doors replaced on the Catastrophe! A few weeks ago, I got a questionnaire in the mail about what repairs were needed on the house. I filled it out and mailed it, and a couple of days later a contractor came out and looked at the place. He was totally reputable--showed me his licenses, gave me all sorts of information--TOTALLY unlike Bob the Plumber, the guy who screwed me over so badly a couple of years ago. He's also working on a house across the street, which I've seen them working on for a couple of months now--I was very impressed with the work they were doing even before I knew who was doing it. Anyway, we made a list of all the things that need to be done, and even though we can't get them all done right now, we can get the big ones done and then refinance again when the appraisal increases. I'm really excited--I've been wanting to get this work done since I bought the house, and now it looks like it's really going to happen.

So like I said: everything is going really well!!

I'm still depressed, somewhat; I think of JP all the time, and I miss him constantly. I've tried to talk about it with my therapist, but she seems more interested in the here and now of my life, in getting me to take care of myself and not be such a doormat. And I see her point, but I honestly believe the root of my sadness is unresolved grief over JP. I'm consistently amazed at how often I think of him; my first thoughts of him are usually before I get to work, and then throughout the day he's in and out of my thoughts. If it was a couple of months since his death, that would make more sense, but it's over ten YEARS and he's still a fixture in my mind, and I still feel as though my life is incomplete without him. Something needs to be done about that; I want to be able to fully enjoy the good things in my life, instead of thinking all the time of what might have been.

Even with that grief, though, I can still look at this moment and see how much better things are than they were a couple of months ago. I feel very lucky that I was able to stop using--it was a lot harder to quit this time than it was last time, and I think one of the main things that will keep me from ever doing it again will be the fear of NOT being able to stop, next time. I think it was close to that this time. But I stopped, and I'm not going to make that mistake again. I have too many things I want to do with my life.

(The OTHER great thing that's happening now?? The Daytona 500 is tomorrow!! NASCAR season is once again underway....Woo hoo!!!!!!!!!)

Things I Have Been Doing Besides Blogging

--Working
--That damn word game

This

Also this

--Watching way too many cartoons
--Watching way too much reality TV (and being too disappointed for words that Nick got voted off "Project Runway")
--Having a nasty cold
--Pondering my life and making, as always, large decisions which I'm afraid to implement
--Eating ice cream
--Herding housecats (yes, they're STILL HERE)
--Having the Catastrophe inspected, with an eye towards the massive renovations (I should know more Tuesday, so everyone please cross all your appendages for me)
--Being, on the whole, fairly contented with myself, even if everything else is a little bit messed-up right now
--Still not doing heroin (over 1 month clean now--closer to 2 months, actually)
--Avoiding Valentines Day and all its accoutrements....
--...except for little red cherry gumdrop hearts, for which I have an eternal soft spot (DAMN but I love those things)

More details on everything are coming soon, I promise. I'm just in a "silent" mode, lately. Not sure why....but I'm good.

Blow You A WHAT, Now?

Anyone wanna take a crack at explaining THIS one??

DURHAM, N.H. -- The alcohol that got Julia Zukerman into trouble with the law wasn't in her hand or in the front seat of her car. In fact, she was just walking when a police officer told her to "blow a kiss in my face" and smelled her breath for booze.

"I thought I was fine because I didn't have anything on me," said Zukerman, 19, waiting for her case to be called one recent morning in the courthouse of this college town. "Apparently not."

Italics mine, because...Okay, granted, this is apparently a "college town". But seriously--on WHAT planet, exactly, is "blow a kiss in my face" an appropriate request for law-enforcement personnel to make??

No--seriously.

If I were this girl, I would squawk so loudly about the total inappropriateness displayed by this officer...they'd HAVE to throw the case out. Yeah, sure, prevent underaged drinking, blah blah...but there's just no excuse for this.

Humans And Why They Suck

I'm sitting here watching "Grizzly Man", which was on my Netflix list til tonight, when the Discovery Channel obligingly showed it.

I will have more to say about this later, I guess, but so far I have mumbled "oh my god, I HATE you" at my screen several times, and the movie's not half over. If ever there was a human being who needed to be eaten by a bear, I can think of no one better than this stupid, clueless, blithering, self-absorbed, self-aggrandizing, babbling arrogant fuckwit. In fact, I feel sorry for the bear who ate this guy--they shot the bear, basically as a punishment, and I think the bear got the rough end of the deal....to say nothing of the girl who died with him.

Watching this movie is enough to make me want to become a Republican--if this is what the world sees of progressives and environmentalists and such, it's no wonder they hate us. After watching this movie, _I_ even hate us.

There Truly Is No End To Our Depravity, Then--Part 2

This is just disgusting. I have no words. (note: safe for work, but probably not good lunchtime reading)

(Via Pisser, which--now that I think of it--is strangely appropriate...)

There Truly Is No End To Our Depravity, Then.

You know, I'm like many of you; I've found it hard, these past few years, to be proud of being an American. We squander international goodwill, run rampant over other cultures, pass judgement over ancient religions and deride everyone who believes differently from us and blah blah bleeding-heart-liberalcakes. You've heard it all before, if not here then elsewhere.

But I think today I found the topper: the evidence that we have truly, as a culture, lost our collective frackin' mind. (And no, contrary to what you might imagine, it has nothing to do with Lindsay Lohan.)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Here on Earth we get rid of our old clothes by dropping them off at the Salvation Army. But what do astronauts at the international space station do?

Friday, they will stuff an old spacesuit with discarded clothes and a radio transmitter and toss it out the door. Complete with helmet and gloves, off it should float like a lost soul in space.

The transmitter will send recorded messages in six languages to amateur radio operators — known as hams — before eventually re-entering Earth's atmosphere and burning up.

The stunt will precede a six-hour spacewalk by Russian flight engineer Valery Tokarev and U.S. commander Bill McArthur to perform maintenance and photography tasks.

The project, known as SuitSat-1, was the brainchild of a Russian ham radio operator. It will send several words in code for schoolchildren listening on the ground. Radio operators will be able to pick up the messages by tuning into FM frequency 145.990 MHz.

Along with the radio transmitter, it also will have internal sensors to monitor temperature and battery power. As the empty suit floats along, it will transmit its telemetry — temperature, battery power and time it has been in space — to the ground.

On a NASA Web site, students and others can track the spacesuit's location. The suit is expected to pass once or twice a day in the U.S., between midnight and 4 a.m., according to NASA.

"We expect the ham radio operators on the ground to be able to receive the suit signal for several days," said Kwatsi Alibaruho, flight director for the spacewalk at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Y'all, we're littering space, now. And we're proud of it. We're calling it "education" and writing press releases about it, and nobody is looking at this and saying "Of what possible scientific value is this?" Because if there were scientific value to it, they could have created an actual object to do it--a little radio transmitter with instruments to measure temperature, power, etc--instead of the high-tech equivalent of a scarecrow.

Now, this may have been "the brainchild of a Russian ham-radio operator", as the article claims. But only an American mission commander would actually go through with something this silly.

I don't know why this makes me so angry, but it does. Maybe because of all the billions of dollars spent puttering around in space, while back on Earth there are people living on the streets and schools closing and senior citizens who can't pay for their medications and their gas bills in the same month. Maybe because the lead to this story makes it so typically American--we view the world as our trash can, but even THAT's not big enough anymore; now we need the whole UNIVERSE!

Personally, I hope the Vogons pick up on the radio transmissions, infiltrate the communications system on the space station, and stage a marathon poetry reading. But that's just me.