You Don't Need India

When you can outsource your mouse-keteering just across the street.  So we had to make a trip to Petco to purchase mouse accoutrements…Albert is now comfortably ensconced in his Mouse Hilton, with fluffy blue (!?) bedding, wheel, tube and platform.  No mouse could ask for more, unless it would be a mouse-spouse, and that ain’t gonna happen.  Albert will have to make do with human companions.  He is the center of attention for now, but I know that soon all the care & feeding of the royal rodent will fall to the same person who takes care of everything else that breathes and poops in this house.  At least Albert won’t clog up the toilet.

Random Sunday Thought Episodes

Oh, I have been gone awhile.  Busy with a special project at work; Tobie has been hogging the computer; depressed over the statist drift of the country.  And Max and I have become addicted to “Heroes,” catching all the back episodes on Netflix.  I’ll catch up to things today, dribs and drabs of thoughts.

In our quest to share living space with every genus of animal on the planet, we have acquired a mouse.  Seems the mild-mannered critter was left in a box on our across-the-street-neighbor’s front porch, apparently as a practical joke.  She is not a mouse-admirer and was happy to off-load said rodent on her all-too-willing neighbors.  He (she? it?) is an inoffensive little beast, latte-colored, and currently hiding in the sleeve of my shirt, up by my elbow.  The cats, interestingly, were blase about having Mus musculus paraded in front of them, perhaps planning a sneak offensive for a time when Mus is unguarded.  At any rate, we’ve named it Albert, which I guess means it will be living with us for the time being.  After snakes, lizards and psycho-rabbits, a mouse is no trouble at all.

Re:  The afore-mentioned quest.  No birds.

Who watches fishing shows on TV?  Is there really q wide audience for them?  I don’t have the imagination to know how desperate I would have to be to sit on the couch and watch two men in a boat periodically drawl about a large-mouth bass.  Pretty damn bored is my guess.

My Own Twisted Little Fantasy

While we’re making stuff up.

I have a film short I run in my mind every so often.  It plays, for instance, whenever someone with whom I am visiting (or a random stranger who falls within my ambit) shows a preference for bits and bytes over being polite and courteous to those actually taking the form of flesh and blood in front of them.  In my fantasy, I remove the cell phone from the user’s hand, throw it on the ground and smash it to bits with my feet.  Then I look up, smile apologetically, and say, “Oh dear.  Your phone just lost its signal.  Can you hear me now?” 

I don’t carry my phone with me most of the time.  I never take it into offices.  I don’t keep it with me in movies or at dinner.  I don’t sleep with it on.  Thus, I never have the opportunity to check my email or answer a text when I am supposed to be giving my time and attention to a real human.  I figure whatever someone not with me has to say and/or whatever event of moment occurs, I will have time for it later.  After all, homo sapiens sapiens has flourished over the course of millennia without instantaneous digital communication.  I presume I can make it a few minutes in the same fashion.  I find people who have formed an almost organic link to their phones to be not only irritating but, dare I say it, self-important.  No one is indispensable.  Although most of Washington thinks it is. 

I just began a book by Mark Helprin that covers some of this ground.  Aptly titled Digital Barbarism, he makes the argument that individual liberty is at risk from the technological strides we are making—not from their intrinsic evilness, but because we are not acting deliberately as we use our new machines.  He uses the idea of the copyright to make his argument, precisely because it embodies both the idea of information management and personal property.  That much I know from the preface and the reviews of the book.  I plan to enjoy reading it, without my cell phone anywhere near me.

Revenge of the Jews...and What Is That Cliche?

The one about sauce for the goose…

Just saw “Inglourious Basterds” and thought it was a cogent presentation of one of my dad’s favorite aphorisms from my childhood:  “If a bullfrog had wings, it wouldn’t bump its butt every time it hopped along the ground.”  If only.  Not that I didn’t enjoy the movie; I liked it tremendously and even thought Brad Pitt got his southern accent down just about right.  (And his redneck Eye-talian was pretty funny.)  But I couldn’t NOT notice the irony of the Jewish film industry (the Weinsteins ARE Jewish, are they not?) making a vengeance gore-fest about a bunch of Jews slaughtering Nazis.  With a little torture and permanent scarring thrown in.  And of course, the producers, director and actors in the film knew it would find a receptive audience here in the U.S.  Who among us doesn’t loathe the Nazis?  Who among us, knowing what we know, wouldn’t have gladly cut Hitler’s throat ourselves, given the chance?  Just so.

So are these the same people—and not only those who made the movie, but those watching and acclaiming it—decrying our use of forced insomnia and simulated drowning to persuade modern day monsters to divulge information crucial to our well-being?  That was a rhetorical question.  Just so.  I guess for Jewish liberals, at least regarding the Nazis, it’s still a little personal.  Regarding the Islamist beasts who would gladly slice open their veins, not so much.  I guess I am too damn dumb to understand the distinction.  But I’m kind of black and white like that.

Sadly

I have the time but not the inclination to write about anything today. 

Except to note that we are being subjected to late September weather in mid-August, so by October we should have a foot of snow on the ground.  From what I understand though, a mild El Nino is developing in the Pacific, which bodes for a mild, wet winter for us.  Just what I was looking forward to:  cold, rainy weather from October to April. 

Are teenagers missing a synapse that allows them to understand the link between actions and consequences?  Charlie is on a “banking” system for free time during the school year, wherein he earns play time (including time for extracurricular choir activities) by depositing homework and study time.  If he fails to make a deposit, he can make no withdrawals—and this includes not being able to attend choir rehearsals and shows outside of school hours.  This last regulation led to much wailing and gnashing of teeth, with the inescapable, concomitant “Why are you doing this to me?”  I just looked at him owlishly and blinked. 

Our ornithological entitlement program proceeds apace.  I hung a feeder not three feet from the kitchen window, and the freeloaders were in a frenzy within an hour.  Still mostly brown birds, but an occasional goldfinch appears.  I also hung suet and peanut butter in the oak tree in the middle of the yard, hoping to get more visits from the pileated woodpecker we’ve seen a couple of times.  We don’t have any blue jays, which disappoints me; they are my favorite bird (if I were a bird, I’d be a blue jay or a mockingbird!).

Imagine my surprise when, on my run today and a good half-mile from home, I (literally) almost ran over Tiger.  He ranges far afield for a small domestic animal.  He stopped to let me greet him (I hope he doesn’t take candy from strangers), then jumped to the top of a six-foot fence and was gone.  He’d better be looking both ways before he crosses the street.