Dissent is born from the simple reality that government must prove its case to us, NOT vice-versa.

--Dolly's current fave aphorism, stolen from Dante

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Well! Da Doll Is Soitenly...

GONNA TAKE THIS bit of sartorial guidance under advisement.

I mean, not only do I have to make my own clothes on accounta th' boobage, I also have t' worry 'bout where to hide m' gat. I c'n use all the help I c'n get.

When I'm off duty, 'course. When I'm working... well. There's nothing to make a girl feel sexy like sportin' a skin-tight, black-leather-and-kevlar catsuit. And a full-auto ten-mil. And real bitchin' Doc Martens.

I'm a tactical high-maintenance bitch.

Gabrielle Francesca "Dolly" East | Comments (0) |

...

Saturday, July 31, 2010

So… Taxachusetts...

HOW DOES IT FEEL to be more racist than a bunch of Georgia crackers?

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (0) |

...

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Teaching Involves Repetition...

TEACHING SLOW STUDENTS involves endless and even tedious repetition. If you support Democrat politicians or policy, you are an enemy of the American People, consorting with traitors, and the most corrupt and perfidious poltroons and fools to ever hold high (or low) office. Case in point.

And, if you lie down with dogs, you're gonna get up with fleas.

Just sayin's all.

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (0) |

...

Friday, July 30, 2010

Can You Smell a Setup?...

(UNNAMED) FEMINISTS are offended by and demand the withdrawal of beer ads objectifying hot babes.

Instantly guaranteed a brazilianfold increase in the number of eyeballs seeing the ads.

Very agile, Howie.

Said feminists being in the employe of the brewer's ad agency. Or, if not, they should demand a cut.

Sheesh!

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (0) |

...

Friday, July 30, 2010

The Chick in the Sound Bite...

SAYS IT LIKE it's supposed to tug at our heartstrings, "My parents are illegal immigrants and they're treated like criminals."

Got news for you, chica: they are criminals. Own it.

Just thought you should know.

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (0) |

...

Friday, July 30, 2010

You Know That Quiz...

THAT'S FLOATING AROUND? Are you a hippie?

I took it.

ZERO

And I was a hippie -- well, a wannabe -- back in the day.

Go figure.

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (2) |

...

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Thought Balloon...

ON READING this post at PowerLine...

How come nobody thought to bring these guys up on charges of fraud? Intent to defraud> Obtaining government jobs and money from the Treasury under false promises? False premises, evennn?

Hmmm?

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (0) |

...

The Cloud Observatory
Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Observation #899...

...

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

I Did Not Know That...

THESE RAIDS WERE going on across the nation. But now that I do, several things occur to me.

First: these are an infringement upon liberty.

The Ninth Amendment insures that unenumerated rights are not to be disparaged. In the Declaration of Independence, the writers (some of whom also participated in the framing of the Constitution) affirmed that among our (including but not limited to...) inalienable rights are those of life and liberty. Therefore, it can / may /should be argued that the Ninth Amendment specifically affirms and protects a right to liberty.

Liberty: autonomy: immunity from arbitrary exercise of authority: political independence
freedom of choice; "liberty of opinion"; "liberty of worship"; "liberty--perfect liberty--to think or feel or do just as one pleases"; "at liberty to choose whatever occupation one wishes"
personal freedom from servitude or confinement or oppression

We may, therfore, take it as given that the right to liberty is a part of our Original Intent. So definitely a part that the Framers held it to be Self-Evident.

Included in liberty must surely be the right to engage in free commerce with all and sundry, in any object and at any price the market may allow, without hesitation, delay, or let on the part of the state. Yes, this does imply that laws against markets in drugs are unconstitutional. It also means that the state has no lawful authority to limit the citizens' access to arms. Suck it up.

Second: in the article, it is alleged that officials from several states (Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois) colluded to institute a strategy of raiding private associations for the distribution of farm products. This is a conspiracy in restraint of trade. If the Congress can claim to be legally permitted to force a farmer to destroy crops raised for his personal consumption because his consumption of it denies his custom to interstate commerce, certainly we can claim that the states have no authority to regulate agriculture, since it impinges on interstate commerce, which is the exclusive purview of Congress.

And, yes, I will quite easily turn right around and argue that Congress does not have the lawful authority to regulate private exchanges wholly contained within one state. Arguing different theories in the same case in different venues is a long-established legal practice on which no shame should attend, especially not in the defense of liberty. The purpose of governments, (this, too, is a part of our founding intent), is the preservation and defense of liberty, and all activities which neither defend or protect liberty are perversions, not to be tolerated under any circumstances. All tactics toward these ends are appropriate.

So let's hear no more about "compelling state interests."

However. There is in the United States Code a law requiring that those who conspire to deny the free exercise of civil rights are subject to fines and/or imprisonment. There is even a provision for doing so under color of law, which disposes of the idea of sovereign immunity. These are the sections in code so famous in these parts: 18USC241-242.

Third: the assumption that governments have the legitimate power to regulate what a free people may choose to exchange among themselvs is specious and a gross perversion of the purposes of government (see liberty above). Yes, this does mean the FDA, the USDA, the DEA, and the rest of those regulatory edifices that so eat up our sustenance and trammel our liberty.

So what do you do about it? How do you struggle against a program of subversion going back over 100 years? How do you respond?

The Chicago Way.

When they pul a knife, you pull a gun. When they put one of yours in the hospital, you put one of theirs in the morgue. When they infringe upon your liberty and trammel your rights of association and commerce, you attack their right to exist.

Works for me.

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (1) |

...

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

In the Mail Tuesday...

JONI MITCHELL'S album Hissing of Summer Lawns from... well, I'll thank [him/her] privately. But... thank you nonetheless.

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (0) |

...

...

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

American Exceptionalism...

IF YOU WONDER SOMETIMES how the Left can continue to push its agenda in the face of overwhelming evidence it is bound for failure -- as to thoroughly demonstrated in Europe and elsewhere -- wonder no more. It's American exceptionalism. We can do it better.

That's the ticket.

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (0) |

...

Monday, July 26, 2010

Observation #898...

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (0) |

...

Monday, July 26, 2010

Look What the Cat Dragged In...

LIKE THE BIBLICAL assertion that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children (which isn't so much a sentence of divine retribution as it is an observation of a fact of life), is a home truth embedded in a cliche. Given that cats tend toward littering in secret and then moving the litter to a different home almost immediately the afterbirth is licked off the kittens, the observation of, "Look what the cat dragged in," applies most frequently to the cat herself.

That being the case, it's sometimes impossible to determine a birth date certain for any given cat.

Of course, a cat who has gone into confinement, as the phrase goes, rather than drop her litter in the wild, can keep her littering only so secret. And thus the birthdays of some kittens and the cats they become can be known.

Boy Oliver, for example, is two years old today.

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (2) |

...

Monday, July 26, 2010

A Lot of People, Even Skeptics...

IN WHAT I ASSUME is a foolish attempt to appear ecumenical and open-minded, will try to assert that, "Of course global warming is real, and of course mankind has an effect -- no matter how slight -- on the trend. Of these there can be no doubt or argument."

And I call "BULLCRAP" in big and stinking piles of it on that whole notion.

When I first began my personal journey of discovery on this subject, before I even googled my first data site, I looked up into the sky -- that great vault of the heavens -- at miles of piles of clouds and the few cubic miles, the tiny portion of the entire atmosphere I can see from my insignificant perspective on the ground, as immense as it is, and wondered: how would I go about determining the temperature of this incredibly huge volume at any one moment, let alone a meaningful annual or "normal" average.

I have since come to realize that all of the data collection stations, measuring for all the time they have been in operation, all over the entire globe could not do the job even for my tiny slice of heaven. I have not determined precisely how much of the atmosphere one can see from the ground, but it's not hard to arrive at a rough notion. Realize that the horizon for a perspective 6 feet off the surface of a sphere 25,000 miles in circumference -- with no intervening terrain features, such as hills and valleys -- is 3 miles away. Think about that. As far away as you can see in the atmosphere (assuming unlimited visibility) is 255 miles to the edge of space. That's a tangent from six feet above the earth, through a point of the horizon, and on to the edge of space (assuming the atmosphere to be 8 miles deep, which is close enough). A circle 510 miles in diameter, which takes off a tomato slice of a sphere in volume. Map onto that what you know or may have observed about air currents in a volume as small as your living room (say 15 x 15 x 8 feet, or 1,800 cubic feet, and then ask yourself how many thermometers it might take to determine with a half-degree accuracy the realtime temperature -- or the annual average -- of that space.

Now understand that what the climate sciences are attempting to measure -- or claim to us that they have or can measure -- is the temperature of a volume of a shell 8 miles thick above a sphere 7,800 or so miles in diameter and they are only measuring the bottom surface of that volume for the overwhelming number of datapoints. And they are saying that they can accurately state the temperature of around 7,300 points on that surface, and that they have done it with a currently-active network of 2,300 stations. (Click through to see distribution map.)

In a volume of air that is roughly one point six billion cubic miles.

So, when I see and comprehend that there are gaps in the coverage to amount to what's shown here, you might well imagine the Spock-like raised eyebrow of skepticism.

And why I assert that there's NO FUCKING WAY those guys know the temperature of the earth to within a margin of error the size of, let alone smaller than, the delta they claim represents potential catastrophe for mankind.

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (2) |

...

...

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Caturday...

EVER SINCE WE MET [mumble]-ty-odd years ago, Toni has always had a Best Boy cat. When we first met, it was the bunny-furred Russian blue, Lester Pedunk. Then, when Lester lost a game of chicken with a car on the Parkway, there came Jake, whose name came from the way he settled into Casa d'Alger: instantly, with great vim. Everything was just jake with him, see. And now, it's Oliver: the cat most likely to be in the middle of a catpile.

Oliver is the all-white one with the grin like a Japanese Bobtail in an anime. The other one is Aqua.

Oliver is the friendliest guy you'd ever meet. But he's also the Omega male of our little herd of cats. Belle, the eldest, and in the running to be typecast as basement cat (not that she's evil -- far from it -- she's just very ... definite) used to whale on him at mealtimes. She'd ram him with a shoulder or haul off and swat him, knock him into the kitchen cabinets so hard the doors rattled. I imagined it was because she found his squeaky, whiney little myieu as annoying as I did.

But that might have been projection.

Now, he's grown up a bit and the pitch of his voice has dropped a little and he doesn't whine quite so much, and it's actually endearing when he does figure eights on the floor in front of the couch, demanding to be petted.

His favorite hangouts are the bed and the cat tree.

And, lately, as Toni's been on away gigs quite a bit, he's taken to walking up to me as I'm drifting off to a nap or to sleep for the night, and demanding I pet him, and nipping at my fingers until I do. Friday afternoon, he even supplanted Loki in the same maneuver. The Lokester hung out down-bed from the action and looked hurt or maybe just jealous.

When the triplets (Aqua, Sky, and Jazz) were new, he sort of acted like a foster mother or a babysitter. Even now, they pile up with him more than anyone besides each other. As Toni puts it, he's very good with the kids.

...

Their new favorite stunt is to get into the utility closet -- filled with all sorts of things dangerous to kittehs. Just now, I heard through the cold air return duct something rattling around in that closet. I went downstairs to find Jazz peeking out all innocent and shit, and Aqua and Sky back deep in the piles o' stuff. Chased them out and tried to block the door with the dehumidifier. Damned doors weigh a ton (real wood louvered sliding doors). Dunno how those tiny little critters can move the things. Have to figure out a way to catproof them that doesn't make it impossible for people. Sheesh!

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (4) |

...

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Somebody Mentioned...

JONI MITCHELL the other day. I'd guess that anybody of a certain age has a favorite Mitchell song (You sign all the papers in the family name...). Mine would have to be from Court and Spark or Hejira -- but how to choose. "Twisted" maybe or "Coyote"...

Coyote's in the coffee shop
Starin' a hole in his scrambled eggs
He picks up my scent on his fingers
While he's watching the waitress's legs

And then I realized that there are a bunch of albums from that period of the '70s that I have on vinyl, but not on CD or MP3. And, since the old thirty-three-and-a-third machine may never play again... I added them to my Amazon wish list. (Hint-hint: over in the right column.) Being's I'm broke at the moment and for the foreseeable future (Who's not?) that may be as far as it goes. But at least now I have a reminder.

A-a-a-nd we're rockin' Court and Spark -- "Car on a Hill."

TWIST-ted...

Joni Mitchell- Twisted - Watch more Music Videos at Vodpod.

Twisted! Crazee! Poop-shooby. Y'hear? Flip city!

...

Dolly's lover, Mitchell Cary Drummond is named after Cary Grant, but he and his erstwhile flame, Semiramis East, thought of Mitchell's "Carey" as their song.

Joni Mitchell - Carey - Watch more Music Videos at Vodpod.

There was a time in Drummond's life when just the phrase "The wind is in from Africa...," spoken or sung, carried an unbearable emotional freight.

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (2) |

...

Saturday, July 24, 2010

So Much Older Then…...

I OFTEN WONDER THESE DAYS just how long the libertarian idealists of the '60s can hide from the deeds of the dead-eyed totalitarians who usurped our vision. Apparently, I'm not alone

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (0) |

...

Saturday, July 24, 2010

The Tenth Amendment...

STATES THAT powers not delegated to the United States are reserved to the States.

The Regime claims that Arizona's anti-invasion-enforcement-of-federal-law act usurps Federal police powers.

I want to know just exactly where in the Constitution police powers are delegated to the United States.

IOW, how can the States usurp a power the Union does not have?

I seem to recall that, on the foundation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, there was great concern that Congress was creating a national police force, and would by precedent and the creeping extension of powers, usurp powers (sovereign police powers) properly reserved to the states. And the States and People were assured, "Trust us: the FBI will ONLY investigate and assist local law enforcement."

Wonder what the over/under was on that bet.

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (0) |

...

Saturday, July 24, 2010

They Be Hatin’...

SHIRLEY SHERROD: "I don't hate my fellow citizens because of their race; I hate my fellow citizens because of their class."

Instead of hating people for something thrust on them through no choice of their own, she hates them for something thrust on them through hard work and perseverence.

Well. All right, then.

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (0) |

...

Saturday, July 24, 2010

To Myself, I Seem to Tend to Think...

THAT WHATEVER THE conventional wisdom of the moment may be, it is wrong. It is a comfortable feeling to me in that my instinctive reaction to the risible banalities that pass for received or conventional wisdom these days is to withdraw in melodramatic horripilation. It is only on post-reaction reflection that I see the logic of my instinctive position and am able to muster better-reasoned [Note: not necessarily well reasoned. -- Ed] arguments.

It is this nearly knee-jerk negative reaction to the groupthink du jour that I see in Andrew Breitbart and find him admirable for. As Scott Johnson writes Friday, Andrew deserves the support of We the (Little) People In the Right for his service in these regards.

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (0) |

...

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Meme of the Day...

THE DISINTERMEDIATION of the media.

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (2) |

...

The Cloud Observatory
Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Observation #897...

...

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Yeah, OK...

IT'S A PRETTY argument -- that the Obamacare individual mandate is a capitation and therefore must be apportioned (which it's not and can't be, because then it won't be individual) and therefore can't be a constitional tax.

But it misses the point. And in doing so, all it does is tell the Left what changes they need to make when they bring it back next time. (Or lie about it this time; why haven't Congress and the administration been bitch-slapped for this bait-and-switch?)

No.

The point that needs to be made -- and hammered home repeatedly until it sticks -- is: CONGRESS DOES NOT HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO LEGISLATE ON THE MATTER AT ALL.

Sheesh! Come ON, people!

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (0) |

...

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

I’ve Run Across This on the Innertubes a Few Times Before...

THIS TIME I stole it from Bookworm.

Subject: The Fence...

Which side of the fence?

If you ever wondered which side of the fence you sit on, this is a great test!

If a Republican doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one.
If a Democrat doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.

If a Republican is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat.
If a Democrat is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.

If a Republican is homosexual, he quietly leads his life.
If a Democrat is homosexual, he demands legislated respect.

If a Republican is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.
A Democrat wonders who is going to take care of him.

If a Republican doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels.
A Democrat demands that those they don't like be shut down.

If a Republican is a non-believer, he doesn't go to church.
A Democrat non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced.

If a Republican decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it.
A Democrat demands that the rest of us pay for his.

If a Republican reads this, he'll forward it so his friends can have a good laugh.
A Democrat will delete it because he's "offended."

Well, I forwarded it.

The harder-right among us might spot a category error here, as these attitudes are not so much partisan as they are principle-positional. Me, I can be charitable and accept that terms can be used in a less-specific manner than the literal-minded may like. This is called metaphor, and contributes to poetry.

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (0) |

...

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

You’ve No Doubt Seen It...

ELSEWHERE BUT I can't help getting off on the irony of the descendants of the Spanish Conquistadors telling folk from all over the world to "Go back to Europe! You're not welcome here!"

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (0) |

...

...

The Cloud Observatory
Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Observation #896...

...

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Havink Suspicions, Dahlink...

LOKI IS BACK TO HIS OLD rambunctious self. He's been rambuncting all over the place and this midnight, I noticed that his coat is sleek and well-groomed for the first time in awhile.

SOMEbody has been eating plastic grocery bags. Two plus two equalling two to the second, I'd be accepting of a wager it was Loki, and the indigestion was the reason he was feeling so punk over the past week.

Yet another equivalence between cats and children. Keep plastic bags out of reach of both.

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (3) |

...

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Red Queen’s Trial...

"VERDICT FIRST then the trial,"* was the way it went through the looking glass. Pretty sure way to get what's called a directed verdict. And, if the populace cares whether its betters are lying to it, and it finds out, there might indeed be a bit of a sticky wicket.

One can hope. What a card! What a pack of cards!

* Actually, it was. "Sentence first, verdict afterwards."

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (0) |

...

...

Monday, July 19, 2010

Anybody Know...

WHETHER IT'S possible/legal/whatever to demand that your doctor provide you with the hard copy of your file and flush you from their electronic records?

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (2) |

...

Saturday, July 17, 2010

I Don’t Have a Clue...

AS TO HOW VALID this guy's conspiracy theory is. But the fact that reasonable people can nod their heads in an abstracted fashion and go, "That could happen. Yeah. I can see it." should give us pause. I'll be watching for further developments, but can't help wondering...

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (2) |

...

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Why Isn’t Shiela...

JACKSON LEE'S district embarrassed to keep sending her -- moron that she is -- back to Washington time after time?

Truth in advertising.

Eh?

Yeah. At least with her, there's no doubt she's a moron. With some other moron, it might be less obvious.

Oh... keh...

I mean, how sure was the Right that Scott Brown was the answer to the party's prayers?

And how easily did they get fooled? Is that your point?

Right. If you resolve never to trust any congressvarmint ever again, you can relax a little and have fun with it.

Which would be cool, if Congress wasn't so deft at committing mayhem. Like those Allstate commercials. "Shakey-shakey!"

Hey! You pays your money and you takes your chances. Not necessarily in that order.

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (6) |

...

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Romney Never Really...

IMPRESSED ME all that much to begin with. For one thing there's -- check it out -- Massachusetts led the way to Obamacare under Romney. People, this tendency to truckle with socialism is not a republican (small-r) virtue. If you will, you may look upon socialism and other strains of the collectivist syndrome as a political Original Sin -- bent on enslaving all men everywhere to a vision of the Almighty State which has already been Q.E. Demonstrated to be made of FAIL. And you may -- should -- view any who would compromise with such evil as tainted with it themselves.

But then this man-who-would-be-President reaches out of his gutter and attempts to drag Sarah Palin down into it.

You know what we In the Right say about those who spew ad hominem attacks -- that they have no stronger meritorious argument.

As Ms Bruce says, no more free shots on Sarah Palin. And that includes taking Governor Palin as a metonomous part to symbolize the whole. No more free shots on any anti-statist leader. Especially not from proponents of the failed statist regime.

Cut 'em dead.

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (0) |

...

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Ellipses...

KRAUTHAMMER BETTER PRAY that Obamacare is NOT irrevocable -- and quick -- or there WILL be violence in the street. I don't see any way around it. It will be the last straw. The only restraint is the hope of repeal. It if turns out to be impossible, then we may see the specter high officials strung up with piano wire. And you don't want to see the mob when it's angry.

...

REMEMBER THE DEVIL can quote scripture too.

Probably better'n you.

...

OF COURSE YOU won't see police advising householders to fire on ANYONE breaking their doors in. In self-defense, doncha know.

To me, it sounds like a really good reason to get rid of the no-knock warrant. For the safety of the officers involved, y'see...

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (0) |

...

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Caturday...

Well, Loki seems to be improving. He's been in several times since Midnight to tell me it's time to go to bed. So maybe the jinx thing was a bit of a stretch. I'm gonna try another one and see what happens.

WHEN MY BABY SISTER was a baby -- well, a toddler -- she was a living doll. Absolutely beautiful. (Not so bad now as a mother and a middle-aged politician.) People -- total strangers -- would come up to her -- ignoring any adults in whose custody she might have been -- and told her she was beautiful. Beautiful Delft-blue eyes and ass-length golden blonde hair in not-quite ringlets.

That kind of thing can go to a girl's head. If parents aren't careful, a child so extravagently praised for something not really his or her accomplishment will develop into a Heather. As in the movie.

Mom and Aunt Chris were very careful to instruct Sis that beauty is as beauty does. It took. 'Cause Sis is a beautiful doer.

But this is a post about cats. In particular, Aqua, my little Aqua Bevacqua. Our feline Heather.

This is her baby pic. The one that everybody on the Internet went all googly-eyed over when it was first posted in March last year. Apparently, her mom forgot to give her the "Beauty is as beauty does" talk. 'Cause she's really selfish and inconsiderate and thinks the world owes her a living.

OK. That's over the top. But of the triplets, she's the one who is the most self-centered. The meanest one. She'll jump on her brother Sky or her sister Jazz.

I could never prove it in a court of law, but I think she picks on Jazz in particular in a bit more than just a sibling rivalry way. And I think I detect a bit of a pattern of a user in how she interacts with the older males, Loki and Oliver. She likes to snuggle with them, but SHE gets the best positions, and they have to be alert for danger to HER, while she slumbers on undisturbed.

And we tease her a lot about how she looks like a snake that swallowed a goat or something like that. Which isn't really fair, because spayed female cats generally develop a gut. Comes with the territory. But, yes, that thermos does make her butt look big, dunnit?

But you know that Jerry Harrison song, "Man With a Gun"? Refrain goes:

Pretty girl, young man, old man, man with a gun (man with a gun), the rules do not apply.

And there's the verse about how she walks into a club and all faces turn to follow her? Well, Aqua... when she comes up and wants to be petted, she gets petted. When she climbs up on Toni's chest and demands head rubs, she gets them. And if you pick her up and give her belly rubs, she will tolerate them as long -- and only so long as -- she finds them enjoyable, and not one second longer.

But there's a dark side to beauty. Pretty girls attract a lot of attention I'm sure sometimes they'd rather not have. I think a lot of them develop into unhappy people. Might be why women noted for their beauty and not much else seem to have such a high rate of self-destructive behavior. The sadness.

Aqua thinks we don't notice.

But we do.

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (2) |

...

The Cloud Observatory
Thursday, July 15, 2010

Observation #895...

...

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Not to Be Disingenuous...

BECAUSE YOU KNOW the intent of the NAALCP's resolution against the TEA Parties is invidious, but it isn't hard to sense that the Left's self-assessment is that their arguments are weak on the merits, and that therefor, the ad hominem is all they have left to fall back on.

Especially considering that there are more than enough black and brown folk in the TEA Party ranks to give the canard the lie.

The trouble is, the racialist card been the default -- if you will -- Hail Mary for so long it's become a stock -- if hackneyed -- stance, a virtually guaranteed loser with all but the most embedded tools, a cliche so shopworn as to bear more witness marks than the ink of the original text.

Lame and made of fail.

As Chris Muir so deftly points out today. (Send money.)

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (3) |

...

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Loki is Improving...

EVERY DAY IN EVERY WAY he's getting a little better. This evening, he was a positive chatterbox, and hung out by my desk as I was surfing the blogs and preparing Thursday's posts. And he looked about like...

Well, if the camera would actually take a picture when you pressed the button, I could show you. As it is, you'll have to settle for the late shot.

Thanks to all for the meta-physical support and to Old Grouch for the running commentary. That might be the first time I've noticed an ellipsis in a URL.

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (0) |

...

...

The Cloud Observatory
Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Observation #894...

...

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

The Lokester...

ACTUALLY SEEMS to be improving -- albeit slowly. For example, as I was getting up from my afternoon nap, he wandered by and favored me with a few choice words. "Myap. Myut." and, (if I heard him correctly) "Myip." All with a falling inflection, whatever that means. Toni reports he enjoyed the hell out of canned food (they normally eat Science Diet kibble). And he's leaning into head rubs and back strokes. On the other hand, when normally he'll voice a couple of one- or two-syllable utterances, ("Myit-aap" being a favorite) upon being greeted, he's been only raising his head and looking wearily up.

A major sign of hope. Late this evening, when I stood up to go downstairs and get the recycling out, he met me at the office door and made as if to lead the parade into the bedroom. And he's been flopping down and asking for belly rubs, too. Just... not as vocally as usual.

In sum, it appears he's feeling better today than yesterday, and we can hope he'll feel better tomorrow.

...

Postscript: Just minutes after I hit the Submit button, Loki walked up next to my desk chair, yelling "Maaouu" at me, flopping down for past-arm's-reach bellyrubs, and weaving around an outstretched hand. He even suffered to be picked up and snuggled for all of ten seconds. Definitely improving.

::big sigh::

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (1) |

...

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Golf Clap...

clapclapclap clapclapclapclapclap.

Mark Philip Alger | Comments (0) |

...

...

Previously on BabyTrollBlog...