Earthquake!!!

Apparently a 5.7 near Susanville. Felt quite a punch! I felt an early sway, wondered for a second if I was dizzy, or something, then suddenly felt quite a few more sways.

I worry about earthquakes, since the south wall of the house has settled unacceptably, and earthquakes could accelerate damage to the house, especially if the soil is wet. No obvious acceleration, though.

Hope folks in Plumas County are OK.

Wheelchair Hit-and-Run

Shudders:

A man in a wheelchair died when he was struck by a car early Wednesday in Sacramento.

Police received a call of a person struck by a car at about 1:30 a.m. at 19th and X streets. Police and fire personnel responded.

The man in his 50s was declared dead at the scene. His name was not released.

A witness told officers that the man in the wheelchair was in the street when a car eastbound on X Street struck him. Sacramento police said in an activity log that the man in the wheelchair was not in a crosswalk and was going against a red light when crossing X Street.

The car was described as a white two-door Honda or Acura. The motorist did not stop.

This is about the time I'm out driving around, and it occurred less than half a mile from my house: an intersection I pass through every day. I wasn't out driving around on Wednesday evening, though.

Wheelchairs in the street always make me worry. There was that fellow who got clobbered at 27th and L Streets, over my Sutter's Fort, a few years back. I cringe every time I go through that intersection. One time, I saw a car turn onto J Street at 13th just as a woman in a wheel chair was crossing in the crosswalk, and she screamed bloody murder when she realized she was going to be run over right there and then. Fortunately, the driver heard her screams and stopped his car.

This fellow crossing X Street deserved better.

Jerry Brown Puts In A Good Word For Latin

Jerry Brown gives some advice:

[E]veryone should take Latin "because it makes you smarter." Brown, as he often reminds us, is very smart, went to a Jesuit seminary, and often uses Latin quotations.

Is Joe The Plumber Getting Stable Again?

Joe The Plumber has a girlfriend! She has a place, too. So, Joe's battered, broken old van is in her driveway awaiting repairs. An exhausting journey is at an end?

In any event, they came to my house this evening to collect some of the boxes I've been storing for him. Time to set up house!

The last three years have been particularly stressful for Joe. Recessions always are. Here's hoping Joe becomes just another happy Citizian of River City!

Classic Hook Echo

That tornado in Oklahoma City was the stuff nightmares are made of:

Taylor Swift - Twenty Two

This must have been a fun routine to put together.

Great Bridge

Tayla Banks - Magalena

The day wouldn't be complete without some Brazilian Samba!

Wet Weekend

Spent a lot of time on both Saturday and Sunday paddling around three swimming pools at California Fitness, on Bond Rd., in Elk Grove. Pool, jacuzzi, pool, jacuzzi, etc.





Racquetball court. I like the blank look of this room.

"The Big Bang" - Sutter Street Theater, Folsom

Chris Schlagel (Keyboard), David Holmes, and Michael Coleman.

Excellent two-man show at Sutter Street Theater in Folsom on Friday night. Ate with the Isaacsons and Mary Young at Mel's Diner before the show.


Very fun show. The reasoning is that these two fellows use a temporarily-empty apartment to pitch a Broadway show to potential investors. The show is anticipated to be the biggest Broadway spectacular ever staged. They present what is basically the entire history of the world. Clever sketches include Two Jews building the Pyramids, Napoleon and Josephine, and a Rock music sketch. My favorite sketch was 'Cooking for Henry VIII'. Noblesse obese, indeed!

Worried About Oklahoma City

I E-Mailed John:

First guess is you're out of harm's way. Is that right?

He replied:

Yep, I'm on the northwest side. The damage is about 20 miles SE of here in Moore. It's the damndest thing about that--Moore seems to get devastated every few years...

I replied:

Glad to hear you’re all right. To me, that’s what matters.

I’m beginning to think idly about visiting Oklahoma City sometime. It’s possible I might visit Austin, TX, over the next year, and I was thinking OK City too, since they are so close.

John replied:

It sure looks like one hell of a mess down there and the tornadoes are still tearing their way eastward.

By all means come to OKC sometime. Summer is not a good time with the heat and humidity--and, of course, deadly tornadoes!!! Fall is usually a lot better. OKC and Austin may seem close but the drive is about 7 hours so you probably will want to fly if you come out this way. Southwest flies to both places.

I replied:

I thought I heard somewhere that you can point to any given piece of ground in Oklahoma, and a tornado will hit it – an average, once every thousand years. Sounds like the Gods don’t like Moore.

John replied:

The number I heard was once every 4000 years--which seems like fairly good odds. But sometimes randomness plays tricks on us...

ABC News Loses Its Credibility

Just a gang of right-wing hacks.

"Scandalgate" Is The Big Scandal

It's ridiculous, getting worse, but it also doesn't matter Daily Kos is now calling it "Scandalnavia":

Good reporters like Maggie Haberman and Ken Vogel aside, even Politico’s trademark triviality sometimes provides an important political service.

Case in point: Its hilarious “D.C. turns on Obama” piece last week, which marked the crest of Scandalmania and also helped explain polls that show Americans trust President Obama’s version of events when it comes to the Benghazi and IRS controversies. I expected polls to show people believe the president on these issues, but I’ll admit I was surprised to see his approval rating actually ticked up a bit despite the constant drumbeat of scandal. But it did — and that should force the media to look in the mirror, though it probably won’t.

...The GOP tipped its weak hand on the IRS scandal over the weekend, when top Republicans were forced to complain about a White House “culture of intimidation” rather than point to evidence that the White House directed (or even knew about) the Tea Party targeting. Not only Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell but Texas Sen. John Cornyn used the very same “culture of intimidation” talking points. The creative Peggy Noonan came up with the memorable notion that the GOP doesn’t need (and won’t find any) proof that the White House directed the IRS mess, because Obama was using a “dog whistle” to sic his pack of political hounds on his enemies.

...MSNBC’s Chris Hayes has taken to calling the past 10 days of media frenzy “Scandalgate,” making the point that the real scandal here is journalists conflating three very different issues — Benghazi, the IRS and the DOJ’s targeting journalists in its leak investigations — into one big, undifferentiated mass of … well, they don’t know what, except it’s gotta spell trouble for the president.

...What’s most disturbing, though, is that the paranoia and anger of the Tea Party base, as echoed by an intimidated, primary-averse GOP leadership, are taken seriously by Beltway journalists, who then lose their own ability to distinguish fact from right-wing fantasy. I keep thinking scandal fever has broken, but it’s not over yet. Still, these latest polls may make a few journalists nervous about insisting that they speak for the American people, and the American people are angry about scandals. They’re not, yet, and the Beltway’s insistence that the opposite is true just shows how “the town” doesn’t know much about the rest of the country.

Big Problems Near Oklahoma City

Ever-present danger out there:

A tornado was on the ground near Oklahoma City on Monday afternoon, moving toward populated areas.

The National Weather Service issued a rare tornado emergency for the Oklahoma City metropolitan area, meaning that significant and widespread damage and fatalities are likely.

Video from CNN affiliates showed a funnel cloud stretching from the sky to the ground, kicking up debris.

More than 171,000 people could be in the path of the storm.

Live Blog

Author Takes Issue With Many State Birds

The Western Meadowlark is a great bird, but too many states claim it:

Seven cardinals but no hawks? Come on!

Surprise Motivation Talk At Step One

After Pepper Von was injured (I think, towards the end of February, with a torn meniscus in his knee - a common-enough injury for a professional fitness instructor) I saw him only once more, a few weeks later, when he explained he'd be back in about four weeks. I took this short healing time as bravado: torn meniscus can be slow to heal. Nevertheless, four weeks passed, and Pepper remained absent. I figured something was up, but didn't know what.

At the end of last night's workout, Pepper made an appearance. He looked a bit frail, and had lost weight. Turned out, he'd caught a staph infection in the hospital, and suffered several additional surgeries as well. So, over the last several months, Pepper has been fighting for his life. And is still doing so.

Pepper thanked us for remaining steadfast, and discussed the dark times he has had. For someone who's been as healthy and active all his life as Pepper, this blow is terribly cruel. But we will persevere, as Pepper has - and will.

Jonathan Karl Should Stop Being A Hack

Here, here! (via Daily Kos):

[A]t every level of his steady rise in the business, some executive should have looked at Karl's resume, seen The Collegiate Network there, and then shitcanned the thing before the interview process even began. Are there conservatives who are good reporters? Absolutely. But all the ones that I know came up the same way I did, and none of them came up through the coddled terrariums of the activist Right. They learned their craft. They were not trained to be spies in the camp of the enemy. They were not trained to be moles. And every damn one of them would have checked those phony e-mails before throwing them out to the public, and most of them wouldn't have fallen for them, because they are journalists, reporters, and newsmen. They are not partisan warriors, propagandists, or hacks. If Jonathan Karl doesn't like being called a hack, then he should stop being a hack. Here's one way to do it.

Blow the source who lied to you and, therefore, lied to us.

Do that. Or be a hack.

There's no third alternative.

They Explain To Mark S. Allen How Truth Or Consequences, NM, Got its Name

Mark S. Allen is with a spacesuit in southern New Mexico.

"Get Fierce Funk" On Good Day Sacramento

This is my crew! And this is the routine they taught us yesterday evening!

In the front, Corina Bianca is on the left, and Krystle Morales is on the right. Djembe accompaniment by Tyehimba Kokayi.

I thought they were trying to kill me, actually. We did this high-intensity routine straight, for an hour and a half. No breaks. No mercy. At all. Like I mentioned on Facebook, I'm not 25 anymore. Never was. But maybe I can reach 25, if I keep up.

Breaking Bad Addiction

Resistance is useless:

Clearly, suspense is a key factor. The writers of these shows have taken the need to know what happens next to a new level. They’ve learned how to break off an episode at the very moment when it all hangs in the balance, for example, when Walt gets into a car where Tuco, a sociopathic rival, waits in the back seat with a gun.

...But if the story line propels me into my TV grotto, it’s the realism that keeps me there. There’s nothing artificial about “Breaking Bad” — the spell is never broken. The dialogue is pitch-perfect. And there’s a lot of useless but fascinating information: you can learn how a meth lab operates, how money is laundered and guns are sold, how to murder people.

...THEN there’s the background, the territory. We know our way around Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha, Joyce’s Dublin and Bellow’s Chicago: now we have the Albuquerque of “Breaking Bad.” It’s a second home to me: I know its restaurants, its scrubby desert, its ranch houses with their two-car garages and swimming pools. The characters become weirdly familiar, too. I spend more time in their company than I do with my closest friends. I observe them closely. There comes a point when these are no longer actors to me: they are real people leading their lives.

...The most compelling thing about the show, though, what makes it unique among TV series, is its depiction of how good and evil can coexist in one person. Walt gets into the meth business for an altruistic reason: he has lung cancer and wants to ensure his family’s financial security after he dies. Walt is a decent man. He cares for his teenage son, who has cerebral palsy; he feeds the baby. He’s monogamous even when he’s separated from his wife, Skyler. He’s a moralist: “It’s about choices, choices that I have made, choices I stand by.” And his knowledge of chemistry, displayed at odd moments, makes him endearing. (The show was pitched as “Mr. Chips” becomes “Scarface.”)

...The corruption of character doesn’t happen overnight. Its progress is insidious. Most of the characters in “Breaking Bad” are not all bad; even Mike, the resident hit man, can hand his granddaughter a bouquet of balloons before heading off to put a bullet in someone’s head. Like the characters in Dostoyevsky, Camus and Céline, Walt inhabits a world of moral ambiguity that TV has never been given the time to explore in depth until now. I watch “Breaking Bad” for the same reason I read the classics: to discover why people act the way they do. (Also, it’s colossally entertaining.)

A Cornucopia Of Nouns

I've basically finished a second draft of my California Gubernatorial Recall Election book. Yay! Now, I need to create an Index to it. But that's proving to be more arduous than I expected. Turns out, the Recall Election, for being just 2 1/2 months long, was still an absolute cornucopia of nouns: 135 candidates; dozens of newspapers, TV stations, and radio stations; cities and towns from one end of California to the other; companies; TV shows; actors; Propositions; Legislative Acts; mementos; restaurants; hotels; airlines; aircraft; Presidents; judges; politicos; you-name-it! I could just cover the important stuff in the Index, but then it loses utility, or I could keep it big, but balky. The Index is harder to manufacture than the manuscript!

Rand Is Sending Out A Dogwhistle To Have The Damning Memo Manufactured.

What slimy sumbitches!:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) claimed Sunday that the Internal Revenue Service had a "written policy" that said agency officials were "targeting people who were opposed to the president."

"And when that comes forward, we need to know who wrote the policy and who approved the policy," Paul told CNN.

When CNN anchor Candy Crowley pressed Paul for details, the junior Kentucky senator revealed that he had only heard about the memo.

"Well, we keep hearing the reports and we have several specifically worded items saying who was being targeted. In fact, one of the bullet points says those who are critical of the president," Paul said. "So I don't know if that comes from a policy, but that's what's being reported in the press and reported orally. I haven't seen a policy statement, but I think we need to see that."

This is just the famed Republican projection at work. Some tool is making the memo right now! Peggy Noonan too:

The dog whistle quote came via NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday from Peggy Noonan, who can no longer be taken seriously as a writer or pundit. When host David Gregory pressed her on the lack of evidence for her claims that the IRS scandal was worse than Watergate, Noonan insisted that the president “was giving a dog whistle to people who could launch this thing.” The former Reagan-Bush speechwriter vividly summed up, in her thousand points of crazy style, where the IRS “scandal” went over the last few days: Obama didn’t need to order the tax agency to harass Tea Party groups (and his critics don’t need proof that he did so): his criticizing the group during the 2012 campaign, as well as blasting the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, represented an implicit order to do so.

What does the Rude Pundit say?:

So we've reached the point where the narrative on the IRS "scandal" is crystallizing into something completely impervious to proof. If you think about it, it's really pretty damn impressive, considering how Obama-hating conservatives were burned by the Benghazi Email That Wasn't There. Now, from right-wingers fringe and mainstream, they've created a way to blame Barack Obama for the IRS's overworked, underfunded agents' asking some Tea Party groups for extra information before bestowing tax exempt status on them that can't be disproved. Call it the Conspiracy of the Wink.

Apparently, in addition to his Kenyan hoodoo magic and his radical Muslim America-hating agenda, Barack Obama can order low-level government workers to stretch the law by merely implying that it's something that would please him. Yes, yes, like potentates of old, Obama's minions act on their interpretation of his whims in order to please him and get in his good graces. Or something. Who the fuck can tell at this point. Either way, Obama is evil, don't you know?

Liked The Headline

From SoCal:

"Big rig carrying fruit crashes on 210 Freeway, creates jam"

"Indomitable Gerwigian Charm"

Steve points out a pair of nice articles in the New York Post:

We get the sense that it’ll all work out for Frances, which is comforting. But despite the indomitable Gerwigian charm the character is barely on the right side of cliché — a manic pixie dream girl twirling her way through youth.

And:

A new Queen of Quirk is in town. Greta Gerwig is quickly conquering the indie film world with her laid-back look, goofy persona and Everygirl roles. She’s also drawn comparisons to another of Hollywood’s more oddball leading ladies, Diane Keaton.

Just Six?

Six Kinds Of Transplants Ruining LA:

6) The Hippie: Hippies are often thought to be mostly harmless, so long as they bathe once in a while. But the problem with the hippie is that he thinks he belongs here. In fact, hippies generally labor under the delusion that this land was built for them, ignorant of its origins as a homicidal cattle town built on the banks of a capricious river.

5) The Instant Hater: Here's a good rule of thumb: Until you've either conceived a child here, started a business or achieved enough to deserve your own Wikipedia page (of moderate length, not just two paragraphs you wrote yourself), you are a guest in our great city. Ask not why we do what we do; ask what you can learn from our strange and curious ways.

4) The Instant Connoisseur: So don't call anything "the best" until you've lived here for at least five years. In fact, you should have no opinions whatsoever about any goods or services sold within the borders of L.A. County. All you're allowed to say is, "Really? That sounds amazing. What's it called again?"

3) The Screenwriter: We get it. You have a dream: to spend three years of soul-wrenching work on 120 pages that an enormous multinational conglomeration will buy, hire five guys to rewrite, focus-group to within six inches of its life and turn into something commoditized and horrible that makes gobs of money overseas. Cool dream, bro. Too bad you have a better chance of getting hit by a meteor while scratching off a winning lottery ticket.

2) The Actor: No, our problem is that actors are self-obsessed, overly dramatic and frankly disingenuous people who pollute our environment with their spastic behavior, high-pitched laughter and funny voices. And say what you will about screenwriters but at least they pick up a book once in a while.

1) New Yorkers: The only thing New Yorkers love more than talking about New York is talking about how Los Angeles isn't New York, how our streets are too long; our public transit, nonexistent; our pizza shitty, our bagels shitty, our bars close too early, everything closes too early, no one dances at shows, everything is too slow, and everyone is too polite.

...Ours is a kind of freedom New Yorkers will never know. And that is why they hate us. They hate us because we are free.

And so they move here. Go figure.

Danish Teenager Finds Viking Coins

Got lost in the dirt lot surrounding a Viking phone booth?:

Danish museum officials say that an archaeological dig last year has revealed 365 items from the Viking era, including 60 rare coins.

Danish National Museum spokesman Jens Christian Moesgaard says the coins have a distinctive cross motif attributed to Norse King Harald Bluetooth, who is believed to have brought Christianity to Norway and Denmark.

Sixteen-year-old Michael Stokbro Larsen found the coins and other items with a metal detector in a field in northern Denmark.

Stokbro Larsen, who often explores with his detector, said friends find him “a bit nerdy.”

Moesgaard said Thursday that it was the first time since 1939 that so many Viking-era coins have been found, calling them “another important piece in the puzzle” of history.

Old Water

Interesting!:

The ancient water bubbling up from the floor of a zinc and copper mine near Timmins in Canada's Ontario province looks crystal clear, but it would not make a cool refreshing drink.

Scientists say it is warm to the touch and much saltier than seawater.

...Scientists have already found evidence of microbes living in much younger but similarly isolated underground waters in a mine in South Africa.

...Enter a team of British scientists who had developed a way of telling the age of water by measuring how many isotopes of noble gases had built up in it over time.

Using this technique, they concluded that the water is 1 billion to 2.6 billion years old.

...If it is as old as 2.6 billion years, it could have been trapped at the same time that the rock formed," Sherwood Lollar said.

Back then the entire area was covered by ocean waters, and the floor of the mine would have been the ocean floor.

The lead author of the study, Greg Holland of Lancaster University, thinks the discovery of this ancient water, and its potential to support life, could affect the search for other types of life on Earth, and on Mars.

"We have identified a way in which planets can create and preserve an environment friendly to microbial life for billions of years," he said in a statement. "This is regardless of how inhospitable the surface might be, opening up the possibility of similar environments on the subsurface of Mars."

Get Back To You In A Few Days On That

Google's power is so vast as to seem magical. Today, it referred to my blog this search: "show actual weather of May 25-29 2013 San juan puerto rico"

Busy Today With The CSF Application

At last, ever so little, the ball seems to be rolling against the Evil One, and I needed to do my part.

Greta Gerwig Discusses "Frances Ha"

Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach were on "Fresh Air" today:

"There's a grace period where being a mess is charming and interesting," Gerwig tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross, "and then I think when you hit around 27 it stops being charming and interesting, and it starts being kind of pathological, and you have to find a new way of life. Otherwise, you're going to be in a place where the rest of your peers have been moving on, and you're stuck."

Gerwig, who's also starred in films such as Damsels In Distress and Woody Allen's To Rome with Love, co-wrote the film with director Noah Baumbach. She's only 29 years old herself, and she says she was far from immune to post-college malaise and the bumpy transition to adulthood.

The tipping point for her, she says, came amid seemingly small indications that she was being taken seriously professionally.

"It sounds like I'm making a joke, but I'm not," she says. "Having health insurance made me feel like a real person. Up until then it felt like I was getting away with something, and if three things went wrong it would all fall apart. And so when I got health insurance a few years ago, I felt like a real person, but before then I felt like I was pretending.

Russian Ram Knows What To Do With Drunks

Sushi Cats

"Wearing Only Underwear, He Brings Down Evil"

World-Record Rope Jumping Dogs

Uchida Geinousha's 'Super Wan Wan Circus' based in Tsukuba City, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan, offers a unique act for its audience; the incredible sight of 13 dogs skipping on a rope.

Head Of GOP Latino Outreach Joins The Democrats

What choice did he have, really? Latinos are not welcome as Republicans, period:

Pablo Pantoja, who previously served as the State Director of Florida Hispanic Outreach for the Republican National Committee, has defected to the Democratic Party.

Citing the GOP's "culture of intolerance," Pantoja confirmed his party change in an email sent Monday to Florida Nation. Pantoja also drew reference to a much-maligned dissertation from the Heritage Foundation's Jason Richwine that sought to discourage non-whites from immigrating to the United States on the basis that those groups have lower IQs. Richwine resigned from his post at Heritage last week.

"I have wondered before about the seemingly harsh undertones about immigrants and others," Pantoja wrote. "Look no further; a well-known organization recently confirms the intolerance of that which seems different or strange to them."

Getting Annoyed With This IRS/Tea Party Tax "Scandal"

What is bothering me with regard to this so-called Tea Party/IRS ‘scandal’ is that there is a long record of ‘Patriot’ groups committing tax evasion. This practice was particularly prevalent in the early 90’s. They might still be doing so, for all I know.

I remember spending Christmas, 1993, in Stockton, CA, with the folks associated with the Pilot Connection. The bigger wigs ended up in prison within a few years. There were other organizations involved in this stuff too. Heck, Michelle Bachmann herself was an Untax Sympathizer working in the IRS offices. There are wingnut footprints all over this stuff.

All you have to have is just one IRS agent in the Cincinnati IRS office old enough to remember the early 90’s – just one - to explain why Patriot groups remained targets despite orders from above. It’s called being a diligent IRS employee. Doesn’t anyone remember the early 90’s anymore? (I know, I know, everything was different after 9/11, blah, blah, blah.)

Beer Taxes

Belly up!

Rasputin vs Stalin - Epic Rap Battles of History

Some background:

Shukoff was hungry for fresh material when, in 2010, Ahlquist described the rap battle segment in his improv show, Check One Two. Shukoff was convinced that Internet audiences would thrill to the random collisions of characters real and fictional who would only ever meet "at a party in transdimensional space."

...In what became the first installment, John Lennon threatened Bill O'Reilly, "I'll take Maxwell's Silver Hammer and give you a lobotomy," while O'Reilly retorted, "You longhair living in your yellow submarine, you're about to get sunk by the right-wing political machine." The video has gone on to reach 26.7 million views.

Thirty-two videos followed over the course of three years, including one in which rapper Snoop Dogg appeared as Moses dissing Santa Claus.

"Snoop rapped every word that we wrote," an awe-struck Shukoff says. "He Snoopified it and made it awesome."

..."Epic Rap Battles of History" — whose channel now boasts more subscribers than Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift or Skrillex — has achieved a broad audience by departing from one aspect of the traditional rap battles, in which the keen-eyed observer lambastes an opponent's appearance, reputation or background. Instead, its sketches mine humor from the oddball matchups and funny outfits, and in lampooning the foibles of well-known characters.

Farewell, Sweet Rabbit

RIP, Bailey the Rabbit. (Just seconds before the needle at VCA Animal Hospital in Elk Grove.)


Bailey the Rabbit has been a daily companion for the last two years. He loved kale and hated being picked up. He tolerated being petted, though, and so that's what I did at feeding time. Lately, his fur coat looked magnificent - just at the start of the shedding season, so it hadn't become tattered yet.

Bailey seemed to disappear this weekend, but with me being so busy at the theater, and all, I hardly noticed. He often did that. Disappeared from immediate view, only to reveal himself later.

This morning, bringing his kale down to his feeding bowls, I noticed he hadn't been eating - last night's kale was still there. I went hunting for him, and found him, hiding and listless in the yard. He was a mess. I cleaned him up, and noticed he had a massive, maggot-infested wound on his abdomen near his hind quarters. I drove him to Elk Grove, where they have staff at the animal hospital that specializes in rabbits.

The Veterinarian recommended immediate euthanasia. She suspected urea burn on his hind quarters created a weakness that was infested by flies. After a time, maggots punctured into the abdomen. By the time I brought him in, it had progressed too far. "He's having trouble even now - catching his breath - and see how pale he is," she said. Ominously, fleas were beginning to depart. I hadn't seen any recently, and I gave him flea medication a few weeks ago, but that's no hard guarantee, especially after last year's troubles.

The wound was so large, I had trouble believing maggots could do that. But it's also possible it came from some other source, like a small cut that became infected, or a cut from having been pursued by a predator. There had been a raccoon in the yard several weeks ago, but because Bailey's legs seemed uninjured, I suspect a raccoon wasn't involved. Or perhaps both a urea burn and an injury, together. Because maggots destroy all evidence, the source of the wound remains a mystery.

Bailey was a male rabbit, and they hate being turned over. In the Rabbit Kingdom, they do their own thing, as a general rule. So, I had a kind of compact with him: I would touch him, but almost never turned him over - because being turned over was so stressful, and rabbits don't handle stress well at all. But pets are like kids, where you sometimes have to force them to do the things that are good for them, but that they don't want to do themselves. Instead, I was too indulgent, and rarely turned him over, and examined him now and then. I remained unaware, even as a threat to his life developed.

I asked T. this weekend about her pet turkey. She was a bit reluctant to talk: they'd put the bird down. The turkey ate and ate so much that it couldn't walk properly anymore, and a minor fall broke its legs. So, in a way, her family indulged the bird, by not putting the bird on a diet, in a way similar to how I indulged the rabbit by not turning him over. We love our pets, but in giving them freer rein we don't always do the right thing for them.

The Vet did mention how pretty Bailey's fur coat was. Magnificent, actually (but with a fatal, unseen flaw).

"Oklahoma!" Sunset

Picture on Laura Sitts' camera.

Reminds Me Of My Freshman Year In College

Except we didn't have to be lured, but went willingly, to end up in the desert:

Laurence Fishburne and newcomer Brenton Thwaites (“Maleficent”) are starring in Will Eubank’s indie sci-fi thriller “The Signal,” which begins production next week in New Mexico.

...Story centers on three college freshmen becoming the targets of a rival computer hacker and being lured to an abandoned shack in the middle of the desert.

If I Did Drugs, I'd Do This

Hilarious:

He thought he was breaking into a Breaking Bad set, but an Albuquerque man reportedly high on meth needed to take his rake elsewhere.

Neighbors in the 1600 block of Coal Avenue said a confused looking man was digging with a rake outside a home in southeast Albuquerque, according to a criminal complaint.

That man, Christopher Moulin, later told police he was looking for a hidden key outside the home he thought was a set for the popular TV show Breaking Bad.

The homeowners said they did not know anything about a TV production set, nor did they know Moulin.

...The officer asked Moulin if he had any drugs in his possession, and he reportedly told the officer he had a bag of meth in his front pocket. The officer found three small bags of meth in Moulin’s right pocket and later found more drugs at his home, the criminal complaint states.

Sorry I Haven't Been Posting Much

First, there has been the end of "Oklahoma!", which finished this evening. But secondly, I decided to make a major push and finish a second draft of my memoir about the 2003 California Gubernatorial Election (nearly complete). I hope to finally publish it this summer: the tenth anniversary of that event.

Timing Is Everything

Watch the birdie!:

On Wednesday in Phoenix Municipal Court, while all eyes were on the Jodi Arias murder trial, Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne pleaded no contest to leaving the scene of an accident, a misdemeanor, and agreed to pay a several hundred dollar fine.

As reported by KTVK, at the incident occurred in March 2012, while Horne was being followed by FBI agents conducting a campaign finance investigation. An FBI report released in October said the reason Horne didn't stop after the accident was because he was having an affair with Assistant Attorney General Carmen Chenal, who was in the car at the time.

This Is Why I Never Took Up Fishing

Charles Ramsey

Satisfaction - Ukelele Orchestra Of Great Britain

Necessary To Explain Things These Days

On Saturday, I was setting up to mow the front lawn, when two bicyclists rode past. One bicyclist turned to the other just at the moment they passed, and shouted, "I wonder what it's like to be a kid these days?"

Normally, these kinds of oldster questions strike me as silly. Growing up today is really not much different than it has ever been. Times change, but the changes are more superficial than people realize. Weird things that happen today were weird things when they happened years ago too. It's just that the oldsters didn't encounter them, or no longer remember them, so they just seem weird.

But certain things are more noticeable today than they were in the past. More common. So, some things have to be explained more carefully and clearly.

The reason I mention all this is because a Facebook conversation keeps coming back to the same subject. I guess "no" is not being interpreted as "no". When I say no, I mean I'm not interested. So, let's spell it out more clearly.

Sexting is a bad idea! One must be very careful. Pictures can be used for blackmail, shown to enemies, or for half a dozen other purposes you can't even imagine. And once on the Web, pictures are permanent too. Once you release them, they are someone else's toy. I've seen pictures I had no business seeing, and don't want to see anymore. It's a bad practice, because it enslaves you to anonymous strangers' whims. You could lose jobs and friendships to whims. I guess the first time I encountered anything like it was in 1982, before the Web.

Besides, I'm 56. Really? Really?????

So, let's change the subject.

Joe The Plumber's Taxi Service

Several weeks ago, Joe the Plumber paid me some money back. Yesterday, he hoped to borrow some back again. He proposed: "$40 for gas?" I sighed, and said yes. But I asked for a favor: Would he drive me home? I hadn't driven into work yesterday because I was facing an uncertain driving-competency test with the tooth-pulling and all, and needed a lift. So, he came to pick me up.

I pushed Bella the Dog out of the front seat and climbed into his van. There were cans and bottle and papers and tools everywhere - his 'home' needed a cleaning. Hard for me to see out the cracked windshield, and the seat belt wouldn't work. But the real problem was that the vehicle barely ran at all. It chugged. Unburned gasoline gave the exhaust an exhilarating hydrocarbon-rich odor. The van was misfiring terribly. "I need new injectors," he explained. "Repair guy ripped me off. I ran out out of transmission fluid too. It's supposed to take eleven gallons: I had just enough money for three gallons. In order to shift gears, I have to increase the engine rpm first, then take my foot off the accelerator, so the gear lever can shift." He illustrated just how hard that shifting process was.

I guess this transportation debility explains why I haven't seen much of him lately. So, we chugged to the ATM, got the cash, and chugged over to my house, where he dropped me off.

Tooth Fairy Pays A Call

Trying to get a picture of the external resorption. The camera doesn't like to focus so closely. The shadow on the front part of the tooth shows where a sort-of tunnel was forming. It wasn't a cavity from tooth decay. It was a cavity from tooth death - external resorption. Trying to image that tunnel with X-Rays caused issues last week.  They took about ten X-rays.  I got about five years of hard radiation in five minutes, just to be sure they understood what they were seeing.

"Are you feeling pain?" I nodded yes. Can you feel your lips?" I nodded yes again. The contract dentist, a slight Asian woman who wasn't part of the usual staff but an itinerant tooth puller who came on Mondays, and her assistant, both looked perplexed. After all, they had shot my jaw full of Novocaine. Theoretically, I shouldn't be feeling much pain at all. Theoretically.

Interesting how tooth pulling is now a sub-specialty. The regular dentists, all women in this practice, are needed more for glad-handed interactions with the clients. Arranging for implants and inlays and the other expensive high-flying dental stuff. The nice part.  The brutal parts of dentistry are reserved for others.

I told a familiar story:  how I challenged my reluctant four-year-old sister to a boxing match when I was six years old (playing 'Fight of the Week', a program that used to be on TV when we were kids).  She popped me in the jaw, and that's how I lost my first tooth.  They liked that story.

So, it was a bit of an ordeal. Nice cracking sounds towards the end.  Like eating a crab.  Fortunately, there wasn't much post-operative pain at all. Because the contract dentist and her assistant knew what they were doing. They do it all the time and get lots of practice.

I likely won't get an implant. I don't sense the need - the molar isn't needed for cosmetic purposes - and it's quite expensive. But there is still a risk. The other teeth on the bottom may shift towards the void over time, and the molar above may grow into the void below because it no longer has opposition. But life is full of risks.

Despite good care, teeth aren't forever, especially when you are a 'bruxer', and grind your teeth at night.

Scaredy-Cat Bush

Come on, George, what are you afraid of?:

A planned trip by Bush to speak at the Switzerland-based United Israel Appeal later this week has been canceled after several human rights groups called for Swiss authorities to arrest Bush and investigate him for authorizing torture. Bush has traveled widely since leaving office, but not to Europe, where there is a strong tradition of international prosecutions.

The Swiss group and Bush’s spokesman claim that it was threats of protest, not of legal action, that prompted the cancellation. But facing protests is nothing new for Bush. What was different about this trip was that groups including Amnesty International and the Center for Constitutional Rights argued that Switzerland, as a party to the UN Convention against Torture, is obligated to investigate Bush for potential prosecution.

Just A Routine Traffic Stop

Right-wing gun fanatic runs a stop sign:

On March 10th, Middlefield, Ohio police made what appeared to be a routine traffic stop of a man who had run a stop sign. But then James Gilkerson emerged from his stopped car firing 37 rounds from an AK-47 rifle. Amazingly the two officers in the cruiser sustained only relatively minor injuries and fired off 54 rounds of their own, eventually killing Gilkerson.

...Perhaps not surprisingly, in Gilkerson’s car police found eight 40-round magazines for the AK-47 and a bunch of militia and terrorist related literature.

...TPM Reader JL notes that the 7th slide in the slideshow shows what appears to be a course manual for the Fighting Rifle course taught by a Tennessee outfit called Tactical Response.

...Well, remember back not long after the Newtown massacre, a crazy gun guy down in Tennessee who was the CEO of a ‘tactical’ firearms training operation said he was “gonna start killing people” if President Obama issued an executive order on guns. Well, that was James Yeager, CEO of, yep, Tactical Response.