The Furious Spinner

You may have heard this story. When the tsunami hit, a hippopotamus and her one year old baby were swept out to sea. Momma died, but Baby ended up in a zoo with 100-year-old male tortoise, which Baby adopted as its mother. Many incredible stories about the tsunami have turned out not to be credible. As far as I can tell, this story is true, but we may hear otherwise later.

The Emperor gave his State of the Disunion speech. Fortunately, I missed the entire thing. I was having dinner in Eugene with my husband. However, I hear The Emperor has a new boy toy in the form of Joe Lieberman. (Never liked him—politically, I mean. Too much of a war mongerer.) Apparently the Emperor was so happy with Lieberman for voting for the new Torture Attorney General (TAG...you're next) Gonzales that he laid a big wet one on Joe "Uncle Tom" Lieberman. Ain’t love grand?

As Bush was talking about how great everything is here, the rest of the world came together to say that global warming isn't happening in 10 years or 100 years. It is happening today. (As I've said before, anyone who spends any time outdoors or pays attention to the weather knows something has drastically changed in the last 20 years.) The Emperor now admits global warming is real (unlike that idiot Michael Crichton, but remember he's also the guy who wrote about the terrible problem of men being sexually harassed by women in the workplace); however Bush says people (or businesses) aren't responsible for the warming so we can't do anything about it. (Remember, he's a rapture president, and they believe the degradation of the environment is one of the signs of the apocalypse which means god is coming to take them away soon, so...bring it on.)

By the way, Crichton has a bibliography of sources for his (fictional) book about how global warming isn't true and it's the evil powerful environmentalists who are the problem. The authors of one of the studies Crichton cites, scientist and science fiction writer Gregory Benford and Martin Hoffert, say Crichton used mostly secondary sources for his novel, and he apparently didn't understand the sources he did use.

By the way, there are things we can do to mitigate some of this. First off we can drive less, drive energy efficient cars, use less electricity, buy energy efficient appliances, and we can bug and bug and bug our politicians to do something and encourage our businesses to act responsibly. (Awright, you can stop laughing now. I do believe there are some very responsible businesses out there.)

Have you read Maureen Dowd's piece "Torture Chicks Gone Wild." It's about the use of female interrogators (torturers) on Iraqi (and other) prisoners. You've come a long way baby. What the women were asked to do and what they did was disgusting. Dowd writes, "After the prisoner spat in her face, she (the interrogator) left the room to ask a Muslim linguist how she could break the prisoner's reliance on God. The linguist suggested she tell the prisoner that she was menstruating, touch him, and then shut off the water in his cell so he couldn't wash." So that's what she did—only she put red ink on her hands to simulate menstrual blood, then reached into her pants and put the red ink (which the prisoner thought was blood) on his face. Why would anyone agree to do this kind of shit to another human being? Even though I think these patriarchal religions and regimes are disgusting, I hope I would never torture another human being.

And speaking of apocalypses, did you hear about the general who told the truth? Lt. General James Mattis says, essentially, that war is a blast and shooting people is a "hoot." We suspected some of these military folks were cowboys out there having a ball. I guess we were right. Don't you just love free speech?

All photographs and written material copyright © 2003-2008 by Kim Antieau unless otherwise indicated. May not be used without permission.