Entries Tagged 'time-wasters' ↓

I like sheep… in a purely platonic sense, of course.

bigskate

We’ve been passing this thing every time we went to visit our friends in Virginia over the past 6 or 7 years. Finally pulled the car over on a gorgeous New Year’s Day afternoon and snapped a couple of shots with the phone-cam.

Do you often see a headline like this? « Criggo

I didn’t even realize that I was entitled to any delegates in this Democratic primary until around 7 p.m. yesterday. If you didn’t win a state’s primary election and your name wasn’t on the ballot, you might be entitled to some delegates, too! Follow along and I’ll explain.

See, yesterday, I watched the meeting of the Democratic Party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, which was seeking to resolve the question of what to do about the delegations from Michigan and Florida — two of the states which violated party rules by holding their primaries earlier than allowed. The final decision was to seat all of Florida’s delegation, but give each delegate half of a vote, and to seat the Michigan delegation, giving Senator Clinton most of the delegates she earned and giving the delegates for “Uncommitted” — plus some extras — to Senator Obama, with each delegate only worth half a vote.

At first, I was very angry with the decision — particularly about Michigan — because it seemed like a decision which goes against the basic principles of the modern Democratic Party, where voting rights are supposed to be sacred, and where the results of an election are supposed to be a fair reflection of the expressed will of the voters. There were points raised prior to the meeting which challenged whether the Democratic Party’s Charter would allow any delegates to be stripped of their full vote, but that argument was brushed aside. And then, in the name of “the rules”, the rules themselves were brushed aside.

It was pretty amazing — almost Bush-like — the way the Rules and Bylaws Committee just totally invented a rule out of thin air, giving themselves the power to override the votes actually cast by the public. Using a suggestion from the Michigan State Democratic Party, they divided up the delegates based not just on actual ballots cast, but also on:

• those wonderfully accurate exit polls from Michigan’s primary day
• polling from the day Michigan’s primary was supposed to be held
• a fudge factor which presumed to divine the intentions of the registered Democrats who didn’t vote

So the outcome is, the tea-leaf readers on the RBC have interpreted the will of the voters to mean that:

• not everyone who voted for Senator Clinton really meant to
• everyone who voted for “Uncommitted” really voted for Senator Obama, and
• more of the voters who didn’t vote would have voted for Senator Obama than for Senator Clinton

Instead of Senator Clinton getting the 73 delegates her vote count should have entitled her to, and the other 55 delegates going to the convention uncommitted to either candidate, the RBC took 4 delegates from Senator Clinton, then gave those 4 plus all the others to Senator Obama. Final tally: Clinton – 69 delegates, and Obama – 59 delegates. They didn’t even really have to run the election, since the RBC totally made up the results, anyway.

When Senator Obama’s political ancestors in the Chicago Democratic “Machine” used to fix elections, at least they made the dead people actually cast a ballot! And when the Republicans stole the 2000 Presidential election, at least the dispute was over counting ballots. This way is so much more efficient and flexible for getting the result you really should have gotten if only those pesky voters had done as they were expected to.

Anyway, I got to thinking: Senator Obama got 46% of the delegates in Michigan, even though no one voted for him and his name wasn’t even on the ballot. Well, no one voted for me in Michigan and my name wasn’t on the ballot either! In fact, no one voted for me and my name wasn’t on the ballot in all 50 states! I think I’ve got a pretty good case to make in Denver, and I won’t be greedy: the Vice Presidency is just fine with me!

You walked away for just a minute—maybe to brush the gooey jellybean innards from your teeth, or to get an aspirin to try to ward off that nasty sugar-crash headache you know is coming—and when you walk back into the kitchen or living room, there’s Fifi or Fido happily munching on the scattered contents of an overturned Easter basket full of candy…

Those of you who have dogs and who buy Easter baskets of candy for kids (or spouses who want to re-live their childhoods by pretending they’re kids on Easter morning) know the horrible feeling this scene engenders.

Once you’ve ascertained that the foolish mutt didn’t just sentence himself to a fatal chocolate rush, your next worry is that silly green plastic Easter grass which lines the bottom of the basket. If she’s lucky, the plastic strings will just pass through the intestines and make for some colorful poop the next day. If she’s not lucky, the strands can get tangled up in her digestive tract, snagging on any of the many surface features the same way it grabs onto sweaters and carpets. In particularly bad cases, it can cause a blockage like hair in a drainpipe or it can actually strangle and twist the intestines, restricting blood flow to the tissues. Nasty!

But what’s an Easter basket without the artificial grass? you ask. Truly, there is nothing that quite commemorates this Spring holiday like neon green simulated grass, but we’re willing to forgo that pleasure for the sake and health of our animal companions. Some web sites advocate using real sprouted wheatberry grass as an alternative, but, I’m not so sure I’d like digging in the soil to find the last, reluctant jellybean. So what to do?

I have found the solution: Edible Easter grass! Cheap, soil free, non-toxic, non-polluting and non-hazardous to pets, this rice and/or potato-starch based material is the perfect solution to a problem you probably never thought about before, and which you will likely never remember in time for next Easter. (This article was supposed to come out before Easter, but, as usual, my timing is impeccably poor.) You might still be able to find some in post-holiday sales at Target stores, which is where I found it (although I didn’t see it in their online store.) Or else you can order it through Candy Warehouse  Oriental Trading Company online or in their always-fascinating catalogs of jumbo bags of cheaply-made too-cute Asian junk.

Now I’m waiting to see if they can come up with edible tinsel in time for Christmas.

Technorati Tags: candy, dogs, easter, grass, pets, veterinary

I call this one “Still Life with Oranges”. Obie and Portia are really good at still life.

Sander is daydreaming. Fondly remembering either his last meal or his last poop.

Sander (the dog) admiring Tibby’s luxurious tail. Ferdie is obviously not impressed

Obie and Portia in the cuddle cup. Obie, the black cat, is 16 years old, while Portia, the pearly calico, is only 5… scandalous!

Obie is 16.5 years old and he’s been with us since he was a kitten. The vet says he has the organs of a 3 year-old and I can vouch for the youthfulness of his vocal cords.

This is Caliban, my Schneider’s Skink. Someone told me I could find out what sex he was by taking him to a vet who specializes in herpetology, but — it’s really not that important.

A year ago today, Hunter S. Thompson ended his life. But he’s not really gone… thank goodness! His wife, Anita has placed a new and rare photo of the Doctor on the homepage of his website, inspiring me to do the above comparison. (I think that the Thompson quote attached to the photograph helped spur the comparison: “At the top of the mountain, we are all Snow Leopards.”)

His wife is also publishing a magazine The Woody Creeker which debuts today. The initial copies will be given out to friends and neighbors, but subscriptions are available at the Gonzo Store. She also says, in her editor’s note to the first issue, that “Ralph Steadman is on deadline to finish his book about his relationship with Hunter and how it all began.” Douglas Brinkley, his friend and biographer is set to release the third volume of Thompson’s letters in October, and Duke is dancing and spouting his inimitable wisdom on the Doonesbury homepage.

Toby, contemplating what trouble to get into next

Sander has so many toys but no one to play with