Musings and Mirth

About Me

I spend way too much thinking about me. This is the blank space where that paragraph should be.

Updating

The one person who reads my blog told me I hadn’t updated in a while and it’s true. Why? Well, I haven’t much felt like it, to tell you the truth. Too much going on in my world, not enough going on in my world. I’ve been delving into the Facebook phenom a bit and I still find it strange that we’ve found a way to all hang out together without having to see each other in real life.

My daughter Emma has started using a login and commenting on videos on YouTube. She watches kittens and puppies and mermaids. So she writes something like “that’s so cute!” And she thumbs up ones she likes. I’m wondering how long before I have to interfere and say something to her about the ways of the net. It can be a nasty, unforgivng place. One has to be sort of schooled on it. Her generation is growing up with Google as a way to research stuff. I can’t imagine how alluring that must be. I can’t imagine how alluring it must be to have video of yourself instantly uploaded for all to see. It is all very strange and we parents have to get wise pretty quick, is all I gotta say on that.

The real thing that’s happening is that I’ve fallen in love with a dog I can’t have.¬† We have two cats, two Siamese cats Emma and I adore. But then I met Cici.

My mothers dog Josie, sad Josie, who recently died left a hole in her other dog, Ella’s, life. One night, a little hungry scared dog crawled into her yard and refused to leave. Ella, ferocious beast that she is, pinned this new dog down at every opportunity but stopped short of killing her; Ella is adorable but she likes to kill small animals with regularity. My mom admitted to me that she didn’t like the dog. She didn’t even name her. When I laid eyes on her, though, I was won over immediately. She looked like a Cici and that became her name.

Cici turns out to be a bright, funny, adventurous dog who is a charmer each and every time I see her. She bounces and hops and is just so smart and cute. But the thing I love the most is that she follows me everywhere. She even has decided to perch herself behind me on the chair I like to sit on. She’s so damned cute and sad all at once. My mom doesn’t care for her in the least and keeps saying, “if you love her so much, you take her!” It didn’t help that Cici barfed in her new Rav4. Cici isn’t used to the car and well, nobody’s perfect. Now Cici has been banned from her car. I would give anything to keep this dog. I can barely keep our cats, though, and a dog is out of the question. It’s depressing as hell. Maybe Cici will live long enough that I can take her when I get a bigger place. Whenever that will be.

K2 Tragedy Unfolding, Worse than 1996 Tragedy

Got this from The Adventurist:

This quote is coming from the Spanish news site Gara.com and represents some of our worst fears. The tragedy on K2 could be one of the world’s deadliest mountaineering disasters ever, even surpasing the tragic 1996 disaster on Mt. Everest.

I am having a very hard time confirming these foreign reports, however. EverestNews and ExplorersWeb are both staying quiet until climbers reach the area and can investigate, but these reports are pretty wide-spread in the foreign press.

Some climbers are talking to their country’s press about this tragedy and most agree that at least 6 people have died, while at least 11 others are missing, and there are more that are in severe danger of dying from injuries suffered after an ice serec dislodged and caused an avalanche.

I do not have a list of names, other than those thought missing that I have already put up–

Hope still remains that many of these climbers could be alive. At this point, if there are that many that have died, their bodies are unaccounted for and no official news has been handed down. Ongoing Search and rescue efforts persist, but the longer this takes, the less likely there is that there might be a good out come. This is a dire, dire situation for everyone involved.

I do have to add that heading in to the third day of this tragedy, things are starting to look quite grim. One night above 20,000 feet is an amazing accomplishment in mountaineering. Three nights at that altitude is –to be quite frank–unheard of. I don’t know if it has ever happened before with survivors.

Earlier reports from yesterday, after Wilco was discovered alive, are showing that many of the climbers are already suffering some severe damage due to frostbite at the higher elevations. You just can’t survive at that altitude for days on end.

I can’t put my finger on it, but something just does not seem right with the reports coming out, leading in to day three. Either the foreign press have got the story majorly wrong, or the American Press is playing down news of the tragedy until more information is known–there is definitely some discrepancy.

Don’t Try This at Home

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN9xgUovIbA[/youtube]

I love this viral sensation, even though I’m behind the curve. There is just no getting around the fact that it will leave you a soggy wreck. So let it out, man. Let yourself sob without shame. But don’t be a poster child for stupid people and think that any lion can be approached this way.

Oh Hello Stupid!

I just read that insurance giant and some time annoying advertiser Aflac has decided to pull its advertising for Michael Savage’s nationally syndicated talk show after the dickwad opened his mouth and inserted his muddy foot:

Summary: On his nationally syndicated radio show, Michael Savage claimed that autism is “[a] fraud, a racket. … I’ll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out. That’s what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they’re silent? They don’t have a father around to tell them, ‘Don’t act like a moron. You’ll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don’t sit there crying and screaming, idiot.’ “

Okay, time to start getting medieval on someone’s ass. How stupid do you have to be to make a statement like that?

Oh but it gets worse. Says the NY Times:

On his Web site, Michaelsavage.com, the host posted a letter on Monday in which he iterated the central point he said he had been trying to make on his July 16 program: that autism is too often misdiagnosed in the cases of children, or falsely diagnosed, at least partly as a means of wringing resources. “Let the truly autistic be treated,” he wrote. “Let the falsely diagnosed be free.”

As someone who has a quasi nephew with autism (thus I’ve spent a few afternoons at birthday parties with kids who have also been diagnosed) I can tell you first hand that this moron has absolutely no clue what he’s talking about. And that’s putting it nicely. At worst he’s someone who should be immediately fired and exiled to the island of stupid people. It’s the only answer. I wouldn’t even insult a low-paying job with his presence. He deserves the worst humanity can throw out.

First, it is very difficult, read: not easy, to get a diagnoses of Autism. ADD, ADHD and Bi-Polar disorder in children, sure, over-diagnosed and over-prescribed. Autism is a whole different thing. It takes countless phone calls and pleas with doctors to take a look at a child before they will diagnose the kid at all and many who are probably somewhere on the spectrum never do get diagnosed. No one wants to give the diagnoses and no one wants to get it, as cool and wonderful as many of the kids are – no one wishes that kind of descrimination on their child. My best friend has been fighting the school district in Santa Monica just so that they will teach her child to READ. She had to fight to have him educated at all. The truth is, Autism is coming at such an alarming rate no one knows what to do about it or how to properly educate kids whose brains work differently. And until that happens, morons like Michael Savage will be free to draw their own idiotic conclusions — though you gotta admit, this takes the cake!

Bravo to Aflac. And here’s to hoping every single advertiser follows suit and this idiot is made to sit in a corner while a brutish fatherly type tells him to straighten up, act like a man and stop crying and screaming, idiot.” Lock and load.

Oh, and let’s send this one out to Michael Savage for getting the Moron of the Day Award.

Moment Vanishing

by Elizabeth Spires

Now, in the quietude of evening, the dove comes.
It does not flash its feathers, does not
make a sound, but feeds on what the finches
leave behind. How little it needs.
A few hard seeds. A drop of water.

It is late summer. It is always
late summer here. The air is hot and dry.
Brown leaves lie like hands in the yard.
There is no place to turn. No place to stop.
We are hurried along, pushed farther into our lives.

Moments are vanishing all over the earth
as bombs explode, the victim is hooded,
great populations scatter on endless dust roads.
It is too much. We avert our eyes.
We wait like children for the coming of the dove.

And if I were allowed a question,
one question, of the evening dove
who asks for nothing, whose pleasure
is a few small seeds, whose heart I covet,
I would ask, O what will I become?