Caturday!

And we pulled a Rupert today, too. Blog, read, blog, write, putz around, and then we're gonna watch a movie, yay.

It's getting close to surgery scheduling time.

Have I mentioned how much I hate being cut on? I like to think my integument would go with me to my grave, intact. I've been lucky, never a broken bone in my long life, and this is my fifth surgery EVER (that includes the tonsillectomy as a kid, and the replacement of my left knee, and the two arthroscopic knee surgeries which resulted from accidents).

This will also be arthroscopic surgery. They don't use anesthesia for that anymore. They give you a drug called Versed, or *twilight.* It puts you under, but you can regain consciousness during. I seem to remember doing that briefly, but they hadn't started sawing on my leg yet at the time (thankyoudeity). I seem to remember someone putting their hand on my eyelids, and a voice saying "Close your eyes. Close your eyes."

I hate losing consciousness. I don't like pain much, either, but you know what, pain is something we can all put up with. It's no fun, and it can be depressing. But if the choice is taking pain drugs that turn you into a zombie or suffering a grinding pain for the hours that you're awake, but being mentally functional, I'll take the pain. And going under is the worst kind of loss of control, isn't it? I have to do this. I keep telling myself I have to do this. But I have weird reactions to drugs, not having taken many in my life. Most painkillers just knock me out for days. Vicodin gives me projectile vomits, and the last time I had Versed, I slept for three days. I just could not open my eyes, except to drink and pee. It felt like a very bad binge drunk hangover. So I guess I can look forward to a little Percocet and a lot of pain (I hate Percocet too, but my body tolerates it -- I lose my appetite and I can't sleep, but at least I'm not horking my innards out or unconscious for more than 12 hours at a stretch).

Of the 260+ books on the list for the year, I've barely read 60. Bah. Perhaps I'll save the fiction to read post-surgery. A lot of George Eliot, some Tolstoy, Don Quixote (I'm re-reading it), some Flannery O'Connor and Wallace Stegner and William Faulkner. I guess I'd better try reading all the film books before surgery. Can I do it? There's only 20 or so. I'll have to re-read Kurosawa's Something Like An Autobiography, and also Stuart Galbraith's The Emperor And The Wolf, a book on the long filmic collaboration of Kurosawa Akira and Mifune Toshiro.

So, books, film, and music, all geared up and ready. Now to put the house in a sparkling state of cleanliness and shut down the food garden for the year. All the barrels and pots need to be scrubbed, bleached, hosed down. The deck needs to be sealed. Can I do it? I hate being a gimp, I really do. I used to do all this stuff myself, for years. Now I need to rely on others. But hopefully, this surgery will put me in a position where I can exercise my way back to a reasonable shape. I don't need to be able to run up or down the stairs in the dark, four at a time, like I used to. I just need to be able to haul brush down the hill. Weed for 10 hours at a stretch, instead of having to get down off the hill because my leg is cramping. Is that too much to ask?

Enough whining. Tomorrow we have a hike planned. Let us hope that cramps, pains, etc. are under control by mid-day and we can at least try for a mile. And then it's home, sweet home, and playing with fancy machines. And eating some fine, fine ribs and roast potatoes and stir-fried choy with my two dearest friends. The obligatory tormenting of the resident felines proceeds apace. They got their pillow moved from the middle of the bed to one side, and judging from the chorus of howls that went up, you would have thought we dissected them individually without anesthesia. How pussy-whipped are we? The pillow is back in the middle of the bed, even though all the little bastids are now sleeping sprawled out all over, everywhere *except* the pillow.

A pleasant Caturday, all!

Stumble It!

Sally Kern, Ambulatory Fecontainer

If you didn't already know who Sally Kern is, feel free to look her up right here, which is where we pinched this horrifying photo.

Sally Kern's bigotry doesn't just aim itself at Teh Ghey. She is also no fan of women or minorities (no, she doesn't belong in either category), as she evinced by this speech. So why should it even be news that this dreadful cackling cow is making yet another gay-themed grab at headlines? She's got a book out. It's titled The Stoning of Sally Kern. Regrettably, it's not an instruction manual. Stupid twat, I mean, twit. Can you imagine having anything at all to do with this fetid ambulatory pigshit canister? No? Neither can we. Yet, somehow, she managed to find something that would join loins with her long enough to spawn. There's a persistent rumour in blogtopia that her husband, Southern Baptist minister Steven D. Kern, was once a member of the KKK. There's also the little matter of her gay son. Srsly. Click that link to read an interview with him. If your gaydar doesn't hit 12 out of a maximum of 10, let us know. These people just make us hork a big fat fucking hairball, OK? Srsly. And then there are people like this in the universe, who renew our faith in humanity and make it clear that the Kerns of this world are not a reason to give up on all its beauty, wonder, and awe:

The reason you have to "deal with" homosexuality is because these men and women are our fellow citizens. America is the people who show up. The show up for work, school, volunteer. They show up in the military, the police, the fire department (and the fire department calendars). They raise their kids and watch out for their neighbors.

The lesson I choose to take from 9/11 is not the paranoid fantasy that "they" are destroying us. It's that people are good. On that day, they called home to say "I love you". They helped strangers escape the danger -- sometimes dying in the effort. They fought back and made God work like the devil to take their lives. And they didn't check each other's religion, sexual preference, political party or immigration status.

Wonkette commenter JustPixelz

Yeah. That. Also, kittehz. We at this blog don't take our responsibilities lightly.

Too, FUCK YOU Sally Kerns! FUCK YOU very, very much, you horrendous bitch. Why can't all the people who have a problem with their GAY FAMILY just deal with it and leave the rest of us alone?

Stumble It!

Humpday Entertainment

Because, you know, why not? We're a fucking caramel world, or we soon will be, and this is like, the coolest Black/Jewish rap ever:

Black and Jewish (Black and Yellow Parody) from Kat Graham

The GARDEN CALLS, goddammit. Although in a muted voice. Smell fall in the air? I do. I'm off then, my precious little liberal vampire-rats. (I've fallen in love with Sara Benincasa and find myself emulating her speech patterns. Jesus fuck, be grateful, folks. I'm reading about a special class of employees of the early Kampuchean throne, and the first Muslim ruler of Champa. These people specialized in punishing anyone guilty of lese-majeste. Suffice it to say that I will not repeat what they did because I lost a week's sleep to nightmares over it. If you absolutely MUST know, go buy yourself a copy of Alfons van der Kraans' book, Murder and Mayhem in 17th-century Cambodia. And don't come crying to me when you have nightmares too.)

Stumble It!

Caturday!

And this blog was BROKEN this morning when I checked on it! Troubleshooting: they call it that because it's a fuckin' heap of trouble and you're ready to start shooting by the time you figure it out.

Anywho. I fixed it. Somehow, a line of text in the template that called a javascript got borked. I commented it out, but, you know, after three years of not even looking at software, ever, I had forgotten how to comment out stuff in HTML.

Maybe it's just time to throw out all the fucking software manuals. Or read them. But who's got the time?

La Casa de Los Gatos is planning to make the pigmeat today. Baby back ribs cooked with cherry juice, cherry preserves, jalapenos, garlic, red wine vinegar (just a smidge), a little palm sugar. With a side of baby bok choy and golden roasted potatoes.

Food is one thing that is not lacking in this house.

The fall is coming, isn't it? Feel it in the air? The sky is a richer, darker shade of blue, even in the hottest part of the day. The light is more golden. The tomatoes have finally set fruit, but the deer have harvested several of the plants for me. I want venison carpaccio SO BAD! So fucking bad.

The Republican Party is in some kind of crazy death spiral, where every candidate is top of the heap for two to six weeks, then flames out to some disgraceful embarrassing level. Today, Michele Bachmann, who was last month's "tea party darling" (notwithstanding the fact that there is no such entity as the Tea Party registered in the US as a political party; although there sure are a shitload of vultures making business off the "tea party" meme) clocked in at a lousy four per cent (4%) of the Republican electorate's support. Behind Sarah Palin, Ron Paul, Willard (Mittens) Romneycare, and Rick (Dick) DinglePerry.

I'd shed a tear, but I seem to be fresh out of delicate lawn handkerchiefs with lace edging.

So RickDick DinglePerry is the pig at the top of the heap right now, and who's putting money on his staying there? He's already making calls to Repugnicant leaders everywhere, begging them not to keep pressuring Chris Christie and Jeb Bush to jump (or bellyflop, as the case may be) into the race.

Thad McCotter is still in the race, but a life-support system attached to his candidacy showed a remarkably flat line.

So here. Laugh at this, instead:

Stumble It!