Monday, April 14, 2008

MY PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE CAT.   You think your cat is your friend, don't you?  You poor fool.   Every time some homeless, cute, furry, creature staggers by my door, I feed him, and my doom is sealed.   Which is why a woman of advanced age, such as myself, can be found stumbling around in the winter dark morning trying to pull herself together without the current live in suck up--whose name is Thayer-- finding out that she is on her feet.  Of course, Thayer insisted on going out in the cool, dark night, and joining his friends in their revels and killings of small moving things.  So, ever alert to his needs, I free him from the house.  About 5 A.M., he will cry at my bedroom window which is also a door.  After he's back in, I must fill his plate with Fancy Feast or Friskies, making certain to alternate flavors every day, empty his bowl of dry cat food and refill it with fresh, and throw out yesterday's bowl of water and refill it with fresh water from Arrowhead.  Water from the kitchen faucet is not acceptable.. Throughout all of his food preparation, he swirls about my feet, threatening to trip me and cause a major injury, such as the breaking of a brittle bone.  Finally, I am allowed to make coffee. After eating, he doesn't want a friendly pat, or a good morning from me.  He stalks off without a backward glance.    Being a cat, he sleeps his life away.  Which is just fine with me.  But when he hears pots clanging in the kitchen in the evening, he strolls forth, and the whole feeding ritual begins again, the letting out and the letting back in begin. I am a doorman for a cat.   However, my servitude to a cat is not over.  Now it is time for the nightly brushing and combing.  He tangos around my feet in a threatening little dance until he sees the brush and comb in my hand.  If I shut my bedroom door and go to bed without the ritual grooming, he will avoid me for several days, and throw me some dirty looks too.  That's also fine with me.   I gave this miserable little animal food and shelter.   No good deed goes unpunished.              2:21:41 PM    comment []

REPRINTED FROM TWO YEARS AGO   Al Gore won the popular vote by one half million.  So we can only hope those 500,000 Americans are ready to give it another go, even if they are in the wrong states.  Meanwhile, who is still lining up behind Mr. Bush and why?  (Added 4.14.’08: Bush is the box McCain came in.)   Young white males who think war is a masculine "rite of passage."   Young white males as much aroused by violence as by sex.   Young males of all colors who are out of work and out of patience and eager to strike out against anything and anybody.  For them, killing is "payback time" for the way life is treating them.   Desperately poor and hungry men and women who need a place to eat and lay their heads, even if it is an army cot and a government-issue blanket.   Southern rednecks who will back anyone who feeds their inner rage.   Christian cultists hoping a bonfire in the mideast will bring on Armageddon.  They will have their 15 minutes of fame--read Rapture--by God, one way or another.   Manufacturers of goods and services that profit from war.   Men and women who have scratched together a little money and, by God, no Liberal administration is going to take it away from them and give it to poor people and tree huggers.   The Power seekers and power brokers in and out of politics.   The very rich who know war can't touch them, and are not adverse to "thinning the herd."   Women who dutifully vote the way hubby wants.   Fervent Christians more interested in spreading Christianity than democracy.   People who believe that since we haven't been attacked on our soil since 9/11 that Mr. Bush, and his "staying the course" polemics have prevented it.   People who think that Iraqis and other Mid-eastern people are bloody barbarians who deserve to be destroyed. If not by us, by each other.   People who are happy that terrorists have been attracted to an ever growing far away battleground.  "Let the blood flow so long as it isn't flowing in my neighborhood," is their rallying cry.   The mentally challenged.     1:50:16 PM    comment []

REPRINT FROM WELL OVER A YEAR AGO…..   WINNING BY LOSING   Mr. Bush continues to talk about “winning” and “victory.”   “Winning what?  Victory over what?   What, in fact, were we trying to win in the first place?  What was the Victory to be all about? Finding WMD that the inspectors had missed? . Discovering that Hussein was in league with Al Queda? Finding and killing Hussein? Winning over the hearts and minds of Iraqis? Changing the power structure of a sovereign nation ages older than our own with many sectarian divisions, and only held together by the slimmest of threads—the gut fear of a dictator. What, or who made us think we were up to that?  Yes, going in was deceptively easy  just as Hussein said it would be. But he also told us that the real war would be fought in the streets. Wasn’t anybody paying attention?   What victory are we seeking? A democracy  in a country where three different factions hate each other.  What are we after? Their oil as some have suggested?   Why have we built an expensive sprawling compound--larger than the Pentagon--fortified and impenetrable if we don’t intend to stay in that country indefinitely? Why doesn’t anybody talk about it?   We were told that if civil war broke out, Americans would not be left in the middle of it. So now it is not referred to as a civil war, it’s “on the verge of” or it is  “at the tipping point.” Why can’t the men (and they are mainly men) in government and in the military speak truth to the power of the people? Are American kids dying, losing arms and legs, and eyesight, and Iraqis dying like cattle herded into the killing lot? Is this to save somebody’s face. Why is this permitted to go on?   Remember the halcyon days when Mr. Bush arrived on the aircraft carrier with a large banner unfurled behind him that announced, “Mission Accomplished?” And he was carefully costumed so we couldn't miss his manliness in the nether regions. What exactly was the mission? Does anyone know? Does anyone remember?. The  war lords, who are still in charge of this country, rely on our collective lack of memory for any event older than a week.   I guess the “mission” was to get into Baghdad. Was it the nation’s mission or George Bush’s  personal mission—aided by burnt out warriors who wanted a second chance to be heroes--to show up his father for not taking it all the way, a pullback  for which we should thank God.   Days and weeks of killings and kidnappings and blood and crying children and wailing women and still the men talk, and talk, and talk. Every day, every hour more meetings are held for more talk, all of which is repeated by more men on television,   They are blah blah blahing us to death.                 1:31:45 PM    comment []