What Kind of Person Tortures Animals?

We think someone (intentionally) burned Tiger with a cigar.  He has a perfectly circular wound on his flank that looks for all the world like someone punched a hole out of his flesh.  It’s deep and red and angry-looking.  The edges are hard, like they would be if he were burned.  This is the time of year when the fireworks-freaks are non-stop, and they often use cigars as handy punks for the firecrackers.  I know of a couple of neighbors who don’t like us (we keep our garbage cans out behind the garage, in clear and flagrant defiance of the Dreaded Neighborhood Association) or Tiger (because he catches the birds they draw to the feeder they keep 12 INCHES off the ground).  But really, who does this sort of thing?  (And can we burn him back?)

How the frog got into his pajamas, I’ll never know.

That is my favorite line from David Kahane’s new piece over at NRO. Mostly because it’s the kind of non-sequiturish afterthought that I append in my speech all the time…a kind of verbal tic where one of the LPIMH hijacks the conversation for 10 seconds and throws everybody off the scent. I judge whether a person can keep up with me by whether or not he can follow my train of thought as it leaves the track every now and then. David Kahane is like that a lot when he writes, which is just one reason I like him.

Go read the whole damn piece, because it just sums up so well the tragic farce playing out right in front of an America that cares more about a mentally disturbed used-to-be-black guy who danced great 20 years ago. When Joe Jacko-Pack wakes up in five years and finds he can’t sell his house without the EPA seal of approval and that his job has been packed off to some carbon-spewing used-to-be-third, now-first-world county where Joe’s company can actually make a profit, I hope he still has enough electricity to replay his “Thriller” video, because he’s going to need some entertainment here in his own newly-minted underdeveloped backwater. Maybe, if the wind is blowing hard enough to power Joe’s personal wind turbine, he can run the A/C AND watch the video at the same time. I guess if it’s night time, and the wind is still, Joe is shit-ouf-of-luck.

I also liked this line: “Ever since Fidel hung up his baseball mitt and turned Cuba over to his brother in a slobber of senile drool, we’ve been looking for a strongman we could unconditionally worship.” I got an image. (Erase, erase, erase.) But then there were more and more lines I liked, so that I couldn’t possibly quote them all here. Although this one, with the holiness and Protector business, did bring to mind the Holy Hand Grenade in Monty Python…

And so has, magnificently, our very own el Jefe, His Serene Highness the Emperor Barack Hussein Obama II, Lord of the Flies, Protector of the Holy Cities of Honolulu and Chicago, and — by the grace of Gaia — the 44th President of the United States.

Come to think of it, Obama is a lot like that little white bunny.  All innocent and white (oops, well, maybe not literally) and cuddly-looking…ripping the throats out of anyone who gets in the way of Progress.  Sure, he’s just O-Bambi, but oh, the long, sharp, gnashing teeth…Maybe, like David imagines at the end of his piece, Dick Cheney will break out the Holy Hand Grenade and blow the bunny to smithereens, in a constitutionally-okay sort of way, that is.  But it’s not looking good.

Random Friday Thought Episodes

When I am doing something mindless and repetitive, like painting woodwork, I have the chance to ponder important things…like ways to punish Osama Bin Laden should he ever be captured.  I used to think that making him waitress at Chuck-E-Cheese for the rest of his life would be an adequate and just punishment, but after redoing the downstairs powder room, I’ve decided that having OBL remove wallpaper all day, every day, for the remainder of his days would also be an exceptionally fine sentence.  Give the man a “Paper Tiger,” some DIF and a scraper and let him get to work.  No new blades for the scraper, either.

Another one that occurred to me was holding his eyes open like Malcolm McDowell in “A Clockwork Orange” while showing him terrific art films like “The Day After Tomorrow” and “Black Hole.”  Max has a real talent for sniffing out fantastically bad movies, the kind that you almost can’t quit watching because they’re just so awful that it’s kind of mesmerizing.  Personally, I can’t watch a movie without popcorn and a Coke, so the additional torture of having to watch a movie without treats would be icing on the cake.

Speaking of terrific films, I did think “Public Enemies” was pretty darn good.  I heard some whinging about “character development” from some critics, but I think Depp summed Dillinger up pretty good when he gave his life summary to Bobbie Flechette:  “I was born in Mooresville, Indiana.  My momma died when I was three.  My daddy beat me because he didn’t know any other way to raise me.  I like movies, fast cars, good clothes, whiskey and you.”  (Warning—that was paraphrased from memory; I know it’s wrong.)  What else do you need to know?  John Dillinger was a force of nature.  They don’t have a lot of nuance.  And I think Christian Bale, who is laconic at his most talkative, did a fine job of portraying a man with a distaste for his work.  I think they made Hoover’s character a little too obviously foppish…but I don’t know much about Hoover—maybe he was really a bit camp like that.  And I could empathize with Dillinger, when he asked why they were taking him to Indiana, where there was nothing he wanted…it’s like a singularity; there are some of us who just can’t achieve escape velocity.  Dillinger is buried here in Crown Hill, and somewhere around here is where I’ll probably be buried.  Unless I can talk my kids into spreading my ashes in Saks Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

 Meanwhile, I just read a piece over at NRO that is so good it deserves its own blurb, so I’ll close up and move along, little doggy.

Think Small, Very, Very Small

That’s how I have to think about painting the woodwork.  If I think about painting all the woodword all over the house, my head feels like it is filled with cement.  So.  I shall just tackle the kitchen window.  It is small.  Not even a real-sized window.  And it peeled within the first six months of our moving-in, which drove me insane.  Now, eight years later, I am going to do something about it.  I was suffering a little ritardo.

Quelle Surprise

Il pleut.  Encore.