Snippets and snarks

* Newly-finished: a soundtrack for the Sudden Yurt Commune.  I'll be working on the insert over the next couple of days.  Any of you Yurters want a copy, please email me - nightflymail AT gmail DOT com - with a mailing address.

* Hey, one of the SYC-OST songs is playing on the iPod right now.  Sweet.

* It is currently 92°, with 85% humidity, about to storm.  This is an improvement over last week, when it was 103°, with 174% humidity, and always five minutes away from a huge rainstorm that never came.

* I've played tournaments outdoors, in the bright strong sun; on painted concrete surfaces that baked like parking lots, where you could see heat waves at the far end of the rink; I've played as many as four hour-long games in a night; I've reffed for nine straight hours each day of a weekend tournament... but I have never been as beat as at the end of my one game last week, indoors no less, during the absolute depths of the hideous oppressive weather.  The heat from under my gear felt like an open oven door.  I could feel my pulse in my neck and ears.  It was brutal.  If there had been an overtime I don't think I could have finished it.  I felt like a crayon melting in a closed car.

* I am holding an hour-long press-conference/ego-stroke/circus/charity fundraiser on ESPN tonight at 9 pm Eastern, to announce my decision about what to do with this blog.

* Speaking of which, the Miami Heat announced a free-agent deal with LeBron's former Cleveland teammate, Zydrunas Ilgauskas.  I thought he left Cleveland because they surrounded him with bad teammates?

* Today someone at work brought in donuts for everyone.  This happens about once a month or so, for no particular reason, on no set schedule, just because.  My coworkers are pretty darned cool.

* I have too good a life to be so pissy lately.

* A few months ago I was walking the Official Dog, and an orange tabby decided to trot over, tail high, to make friends.

Since then Catfriend pops around every week or so and he hangs out with the pupperkins.  She wags, he purrs.  Pupperkins must think he's the strangest-smelling dog ever, but they're buddies - unlike the day last week when a lady on a horse walked through the neighborhood.  (We have a sizable park near the house and folks will sometimes ride there.)  The Official Dog was freaked about that a little.  I kept her close to me, across the street, so she wouldn't spook the horse.

* If Ladybug wasn't allergic, I'd consider getting the pupperkins a catfriend of her very own at home.  I have always been a cat lover.  She'll have to make do with her eleven dozen toys, various snacks and treats, mild Internet fame, and the single attention of her two owners.

* There's a four-lane divided highway about a mile from our house; people enjoy making illegal lefts onto and occasionally off of said highway, despite no fewer than five signs forbidding the practice.  You'd think that you couldn't miss such instructions, nor all the helpful people honking incessantly at you, or the friendly pointing to the signs with one finger.  You'd be in error.  It's amazing that there aren't more wrecks at that intersection.

* Last night was baseball's All-Star Game, out in Anaheim.  Both leagues trotted out an assortment of pitchers who threw 95+ mph: Justin Verlander, Josh Johnson, Matt Thornton, Jose Valverde, Brian Wilson, Jonathon Broxton.  Not surprisingly, there was a dearth of scoring.  The AL's only run came off a walk, error, and sac fly.  Dodger pitcher Hong-Chih Kuo (who was dealing in the high-90's himself) helped this immensely by fielding a dibbler in front of the mound, throwing off his back foot, and airmailing it 20 feet above his first baseman's head.  Every New York Giants fan watching immediately said, "Hey - Eli Manning's in the game!"

* The NL won on a late bases-loaded double by Braves catcher Paul McCann.  They wasted a great early opportunity when Verlander struck out Ryan Braun on a pitch down the middle of the opposing batter's box.  This thing would have been wide of a soccer net.  Every New York Mets fan watching immediately said, "Hey, I thought Jeff Francoeur didn't make the All-Star Game this year!"

* Brian Wilson and Corey Hart were NL teammates.  Now THAT would be a weird musical collaboration.

* Paperwork.  Always with the paperwork.  I close my eyes and see these forms floating around, demanding to be properly catalogued and compiled.  My subconscious has turned into a flash drive.

* Mmmmmmmm...... coffee.......

*In three weeks I will have been married three years.  Wild.

* I love fonts.  Thus, I love Blambot.

* The Mother of Unfinishable Stories goes slowly in any font.  I've been writing others.  As they begin to bog down, I think that switching back to the MOUS may help get everything moving again.  I hope so, because I am enjoying the adventures of the characters in the series and would like not to have that stall permanently.

* Love you all.

Hells yeah

Pudd'nhead Wilson stands justified: "When angry, count four. When very angry, swear."

Bad language could be good for you, a new study shows. For the first time, psychologists have found that swearing may serve an important function in relieving pain.

Basically, when we (for example) smack our bare toe against the coffee table, the amygdala, our fight-or-flight response center, fires up; one of the byproducts of this may be a well-timed cuss, which can actually help relieve a lot of the stressful emotion involved.

Psychologist Steven Pinker of Harvard University, whose book The Stuff of Thought (Viking Adult, 2007) includes a detailed analysis of swearing, compared the situation with what happens in the brain of a cat that somebody accidentally sits on. "I suspect that swearing taps into a defensive reflex in which an animal that is suddenly injured or confined erupts in a furious struggle, accompanied by an angry vocalization, to startle and intimidate an attacker," he says.

The reasonable counter-argument is that we are people, not cats, and we ought to know better. The larger part of me agrees with this statement. We are supposed to be in charge of our instincts, and our will is meant to order our passions to serve one goal - the definition of integrity. To lose control of them is to lose our integrity for the moment. It's probably a bad idea to simply let the cusses fly at every opportunity. (In other words, this doesn't qualify as clinical therapy just yet, no matter how good it may feel.)

In extreme cases, the hotline to the brain's emotional system can make swearing harmful, as when road rage escalates into physical violence. But when the hammer slips, some well-chosen swearwords might help dull the pain. There is a catch, though: The more we swear, the less emotionally potent the words become, Stephens cautions. And without emotion, all that is left of a swearword is the word itself, unlikely to soothe anyone's pain.

Yeah, like I said...

BTW- they won't let me put an exclam next to SCIENCE. I'm trying the double exclam (‼) but it's not standard ASCII, so we'll see...

This is for Tracey

Because of this post.

It's too bad this isn't the weekend "pitching woo," huh? Off to the basement to start the wash. Woo.

Hey, waitaminnit!

Funny lolcat from a few days ago.



One of mine. This makes two (huzzah) - except for a small technicality. What you see, above, is actually over a year old, done in the pre-profile-saving days. (Luckily, I email myself on these things.) The one that popped up on Oct 13 is here. You'll notice a subtle difference in teh capshun.

So, am I funny, or just early?

U can has memmereze

Great post about the Games of our Youth at Ricki's Rants and Rambles.


Growing up I was lucky to have a lot of those classics: Scrabble, Boggle, Stratego (gosh, that commercial is so goofy!), Life, Monopoly... And Dad, being Dad, also taught me chess, which I still (mis)play now. It wasn't all Atari 2600, no sirree!

The Ladybug and I have a shelf with dozens of these, plus more modern card and board games... Rocketville, Scotland Yard, The Great Dalmuti... and our friends, the Prussian Tiger and family, have dozens more. Good times.

Wife-beating, coke-snorting...

...athiest, cat-killing Mets.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Prosecutors say former baseball player and actor Joseph Petcka beat, stomped and kicked a cat to death in a jealous and drunken fury after complaining that his girlfriend loved the feline more than she loved him.
...
Petcka, who pitched in the New York Mets' minor-league system in 1992. ... claimed he unintentionally killed the declawed cat on March 27, 2007, while defending himself from it.

Bastard. What can a declawed cat do? Bite, maybe, but cats primarily use their claws in any confrontation - and we're not talking about a 100 pound dog or something. The largest breeds may reach twenty pounds. That's why a cat will usually retreat or hide, especially after coming off poorly in any initial meeting. Petcka would have had to follow the cat to wherever it tried to hole up, then drag it out and stomp on it to inflict all the injuries listed in the initial story.

This joker would have fit right in with the Dallas Green Mets - bleach squirters, firecracker tossers, and generally surly.

The trial took only four days. Hopefully I can update soon with news that this clown is going to the pokey.

Aiiie! A Balrog has come!

Sheila's post about the Feline's Bane reminded me of a couple of things. The first is my favorite story about cats and vacuums.

I lived in a boarding house for a few years. Said house had two cats: an older, mellow cat (I called him the Living Beanbag, he'd just flop anywhere and relax) and a younger, larger, yet shyer black cat. This younger cat would hunt (and catch) bunnies and stuff outside, but the vacuum was truly his Balrog... he has met his equal, and has nearly been destroyed. One day I took the vacuum out of the closet and parked it in the living room, and went back to plug it in. I turned back around and, out of nowhere, there was Younger Cat, sitting and staring at the infernal machine. Before I could do anything else, he puffed up, spat and hissed at it, and then tore up the stairs in a black blur. Basically, he just had to come out of hiding to defy his arch-enemy - for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee! - and then ZZZZZZIP! Poor kitteh.

The second, which showed up in the usual place a few months ago, is wonderfully apt:

Rachl Lukis, we feel ur pain

Ur mad wit IRS? U can has help!


Pros: works for catnip and purrs when finished.
Cons: tends to fall asleep on the pile of receipts.

Song of the day

Pic courtesy of ICHC. Song courtesy Bjorn Ulvaeus and Tim Rice. Idea courtesy the man with the best blog name evah, A Boy Named Sous.

My capshun

Let me show you it!

Yup, one of mine - I missed it yesterday, but ricki didn't. First time I've ever gotten off the voting page. This is as close as I'll ever get to winning an Oscar or something.

Of course this means that I have to print it and put it up on the refrigerator.

Plague of locusts cats

Yup, it’s confirmed – thanks to SCIENCE! (And a hat tip to the Ace of Spades.)

It's an older post, but I've been a little busy lately. (Explanations to follow.) I just loved the solution that Dr. Lord called for in the article: "Government has tended to not want to be involved with cats. And I don't know if they can avoid it anymore."

Of course! And if the gummint can't come through, we'll have to fall back on our guns and religion.

I happen to be a cat lover. (I mean, those cats in the picture with the article? Awwwwwwww.) As far as ferals are concerned, I support "catch-fix-release" programs. This way, they get to live out their natural life with no risk of breeding in the wild (or knocking up poor Fluffy). Seems fairest to all concerned. But I’m not such a big fan of letting a government attempt to manage this, especially if it works as well as the rest of their social programs. Behold, government Cat Population Control:

May 2008 – Dr. Lord publicly freaks out about feral cats overrunning our cities, like miniature Godzillas rumbling through Tokyo.

June 2008 – Obama clinches the Democratic nomination and promises “Change Kittehs Can Believe In.” (Hillary’s “A Cat in Every Pot” backfires among undecided voters.)

Jan 2009 – Congress’ first session of the new term results in a “Cat Population Commission” to study the problem, even though Dr. Lord has done so for years. She drops her objections in exchange for a six-figure, six-month position leading the Commission.

Sept 2009 – The CPC overruns its budget but says it still needs more time to weigh the competing options for feral cat control – catch-fix-release, abstinence-only programs, or giant slingshots into the ocean.

March 2010 – gangs of feral cats start hanging on street corners, intimidating neighborhoods, vandalizing public property, and selling catnip in schools. The CPC is doubled in size and tripled in budget.

August 2010 – ferals are caught trying to smuggle dozens of undocumented cats across the border. The CPC becomes the federal Department of Cat Immigration and Neuterization.

Sept 2010 – Moqtada al-Sadr issues a fatwa encouraging domestic cats to join their feral brothers in vexing America. “The blessed Prophet (peace be upon him) was a great cat lover and you can repay his kindness by eating all of the infidels’ tuna, fighting and mating outside of their windows at 2 am, and putting all female cats in large shapeless bags so that you shall not be tempted by their sleek coats, almond eyes, and come-hither purring.” The Department of CIN concurs; the bags make it easy to toss the cats in the river should they be found with kitten by a domestic tom.

November 2010 – the Republicans crush the incumbent Democrats in the midterm elections, calling for tighter controls on feral cats.

Jan 2011 – new majority party proposes sweeping reforms; Democrats stall by saying their own programs need more time and that Republicans just hate cats.

May 2011 – feral populations are in sudden, shocking decline. Both sides claim success. Neither side notices that private organizations got fed the hell up and decided on their own to catch-fix-release – and occasionally employ the giant slingshot.