Lady Sheherazahde's Journal

http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/greyhounds.asp

Alert warns that dogs not adopted after the closure of the Dairyland Greyhound Park will be euthanized.

Why did the M&M start going to school?

He wanted to be a smartie.

http://www.unshelved.com/archive.aspx?strip=20091129

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sluggy_freelance/~3/SeqhE2UuZ1k/COMIC091129

Ads by Project Wonderful! Your ad could be here, right now.

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/021042.html

Preppy gay guy: I thought she already had cancer?
Preppy fag hag, dawning realization: You're right! She did... definitely.

--Bleecker & Grove

Overheard by: jams

This is Angel. She is seven years old and right now symbolizes why I love and hate my veterinary job.



She came in with her very old owner last night and told me she wouldn't use her litter box, but everything else was fine with her. After the doctor came in, she said that we should do blood work and a urinalysis to see if there was any medical reason why she may not be using her box and if that wasn't the case, talk about what we can possibly do.

After the doctor tells the old man her plan, he says, "put her down." The doctor and I both balk and Dr. C says, "put her down?"

"Yeah, I gotta get rid of her," the old man says.

The doctor explained that we do not do convenience euthanasias and that he can sign her over to us. He said okay, he just had to get rid of her. We got him to sign a form and he was off...but asked for his cat carrier back.

The receptionist said he tried this a year ago with another cat over fleas!! The doctor and I wondered if the cat was even having litter box issues or if he was just trying to get rid of the cat. We got her blood work, which came back today beautiful and negative for FeLV and FIV. We weren't able to get a urinalysis because she can be pretty testy. I decided to bring her home for the weekend because how could I not feel sorry for her and want to give her a nice place to stay?

She's been using her box just fine, thank you very much and loves laying on the bed on our big comforter. Even when I'm in the bed. She loves making biscuits on the comforter and likes playing with kitty toys.

I got a text from a co-worker saying that a client that adopted her last foster kitten is interested in Angel, so she may have a home soon! Everyone cross your fingers for Angel and hope that old man doesn't get any more cats!

Unfortunately so far, Angel doesn't get that my cat Biscuit just wants to be her buddy.

( More pictures of Angel )

A week and a half ago, our computer, P.B., crashed. P.B. is a seven-year-old desktop Mac, one of the white gooseneck models. I usually call him Plastic Baby, but his formal name for company is Pangur Bán, Irish for "White Pangur." It's the title of a medieval poem written by an Irish monk to his cat some 1,200 years ago. (Wikipedia says that pangur means "waulker," but I've also come across the theory that "Pangur" was an Irish pronunciation of "Peter." Either way, it was apparently a common cat name.) When I first read the poem as a college student at Trinity, I was struck by its sweet simplicity. The last verse opens a little slit in time to that monk, hunched over an illuminated Gospel, patiently nursing his tiny light against the darkness. With his white cat by his side.

I'd like to say it's even better in the original Irish, but I've forgotten how to do anything in Irish beyond count to ten, and now I can't pronounce the original verses without getting my tongue caught in my larynx.

P.B. came back from the Powerbook Guy this afternoon, brand-new hard drive, data fully restored. Here's the poem for him.


Pangur Bán

I and Pangur Bán my cat,
Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.

Better far than praise of men
Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill will,
He too plies his simple skill.

Tis a merry thing to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.

Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur's way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.

'Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
'Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.

When a mouse darts from its den
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!

So in peace our tasks we ply,
Pangur Bán, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.

Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.

http://postsecret.blogspot.com/2009/11/sunday-secrets_29.html

PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people
mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard.








HopeLine Fundraiser on twitter this Thursday. Tell
your friends & follow @postsecret for more details.



















-----Email Message-----

Dear Frank,

Sunday I was with my boyfriend (we are both young Christians). I grabbed his laptop to go to the postsecret website. As I typed in the postsecret address the computer filled in the url with a pornography website.

I used my boyfriend's laptop again to look up postsecret and the computer filled in the url with recently visited sites about pre and post nuptial agreements.

In my attempts to read other people's secrets, I discovered his.

















Order Your Copy Today

http://postsecret.blogspot.com/2009/11/postsecret-events-incomplete.html

11-30-90
DeNaples Center
Scranton, PA
--Sold-Out--

12-4-09
Michigan Theater
Ann Arbor, MI
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1-10-10
New World Stage
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Become a PostSecret "Fan" on Facebook
for PostSecret Event updates (dates & schools).

Here's the latest cartoon which took half a day to write. I still want to fiddle with details but it's good enough for the internet. I'm especially proud of the committee and overthinking jokes.

In the next day or two I'll be posting some work in progress stuff under 'friends only'.

Can't believe I got this thing done early. Sniffles be damned, I'm having a beer.

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

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Am feeling blue.

And lonely.

And. Frustrated.

Nrrgh.

I've watched the first 7 episodes of Alias. I believe I'm going to take it off my Netflix queue.

The basic premise of the show is that Syndey Barstow was recruited by an international intelligence/espionage organization under the pretext that they were a covert branch of the CIA called "SD-6". Before the beginning of the series, she had been working for 6 years as an operative with the cover of being an account rep for an international bank (thus explaining the frequent foreign trips, her language training, etc). Her actual missions were short-term, a la James Bond and that ilk of agent. Soon after becoming engaged, she broke cover and told her fiancé she was a spy for the CIA. When SD-6 discovered this, they killed him. In fairness to SD-6, they did tell Syndey that would happen if her involvement with SD-6 leaked. She's enraged, discovers that SD-6 isn't really part of the CIA, and goes to the CIA to become a double agent to bring down SD-6. So far, the CIA has basically told her "Keep doing ops for SD-6, let us piggy-back onto it so we know what SD-6 is learning, and feed us info on SD-6". Oh yeah, her father also works for SD-6, was the one who let her know SD-6 wasn't CIA, and is also a CIA double agent, and she doesn't like or trust her father.

I'll forgive the existence of three rival large, well-funded, private, international non-governmental spy organizations, none of which has a clear explanation as to how they were formed, are funded, etc. Shadowy organizations like this are common fodder in this genre, although usually it is established that the shadowy organization really is working for the government, even if it is uber-covert. Nikita (at least in the movie) worked for the government, as did Bourne, for instance. But the Alliance of Twelve (which SD-6 is part of), FTL, and the K Directorate have no governmental affiliation, they just are.

I'll forgive the high-action, short-term ops they send Sydney on, despite her poor disguises, sloppy spycraft, and repeated run-ins with agents from the FTL and K Directorate whom she recognizes from previous ops. I'm not sure I've seen a single op where Sydney and handlers have been able to get in and out clean without setting off alarms, fighting guards, or getting captured and having to escape. And Sydney is supposed to be one of SD-6's top operatives! But without the ops, a lot of the action on the show would be gone. So it, too, is typical of the genre.

But what I find hard to forgive is Sydney's attitude towards death. So far, in the seven episodes I've seen, she has lost her fiancé, an SD-6 agent in Morocco she's working with, 4 CIA agents, and her new SD-6 partner on an op. I do not believe we have seen her kill anyone, despite working for an organization perfectly willing to use lethal force, often having lethal force used against her, and working against rival organizations which have no qualms with killing. Each time she is faced with the death of someone around her, she freezes and is overcome with grief and anger.

She believed, for 6 years, she was a field operative for a covert black-ops section of the CIA. She believed her operations were vital for national security. She is treated as one of the top operatives for her particular branch. She is told that if she broke cover, people would die. She routinely goes on dangerous ops where people try to kill her if she is caught. In the 7 episodes I've watched, she has been captured and tortured at least twice by people who have made no bones about killing her after they've extracted what they want from her. Are we expected to accept that she is not mentally capable of killing in self-defense and breaks down during an op if friendlies are killed? Are we expected to accept that after freezing in an op when someone is killed, SD-6 would immediately send her out on other ops instead of grounding her as unreliable? Is it reasonable for a super-spy to shoot the strap of the bag containing the McGuffin rather than the enemy super-spy escaping with the bag?

For me, that stretches my suspension of disbelief too far. It's central to her motivation and character, yet it breaks genre convention without any explanation. I can accept that she's not an assassin, and isn't sent on missions where the object is to kill the target. But I can't accept that she can't deal with or in death at all.

Wikipedia's synopsis of Syndey indicate that this changes in season 2, and she becomes a more "stereotypical" spy. It also indicates that by the end of season 2 everything in the synopsis above is history and not really relevant anymore. In a way, that sounds like the writers used season 2 to "reboot" the series and ditched most of the original premise. Perhaps the "new" Alias is better, but I'm don't see a need to watch that far to find out.

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/021041.html

Eldest son, Coming from church in Sunday best: So, dad, does Star Wars take place in the past or the future?
Dad: The past.
(pause)
Son: Wait... that doesn't make any sense!
Dad: "Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away..."

--Bedford Ave

Overheard by: NIckET

They say some guests make you happy when they arrive and others make you happy when they leave. We had one of the latter over for Thanksgiving. She's my father's cousin's wife and she is... very gracious. Unfortunately is a false graciousness as she is gracious about everything, but those are only her words, not her actions. My mom has asked her several times not to do things and she says she wouldn't and then does them anyway. The thing that broke the camel's back this time was she brought in some fruit and nuts. They were processed and packaged and didn't have a kosher mark. So, even though they were kosher per say, being packaged and processed, they needed to have a kosher mark, at least according to my mom's rules for her kitchen. She wanted to know why was that and that she said that my mom was wrong and she spoke to her orthodox rabbi who said so.

Then there was the point where they all had to leave but she sat around -stood around- talking on her cell phone. This irked my parents to no end. So we may not invite them over again. Which is sad, because my dad's cousin is really nice and things, it's just his wife that isn't.

This is a wonderful movie.

Dustin Hoffman plays Mr. Edward Magorium, the 243-year-old owner of the Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium. He hires an accountant, Henry Weston (played by Jason Bateman), to get his business in order before he "leaves", by which he means "dies". There does not appear to be anything wrong with him, as he explains to Henry he purchased enough shoes to last his whole life and he has reached his last pair. It doesn't really matter why he is dying, everyone dies eventually. His apprentice and store manager Molly Mahoney (played Natalie Portman) does not take the news well. She doesn't want him to go, which is perfectly natural. But doesn't change the fact that he is going. The store itself also doesn't want him to leave and starts turning gray and moping whenever he mentions it.
( cut for possible spoilers )

http://superstupor.com/sust11282009.shtml

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If there are any problems with the comic or website, or if you have any questions, comments, or complaints you would like to address directly to Randy, please email him at choochoobear@gmail.com.

It's not too late to join! http://community.livejournal.com/cat_lovers/6221198.html

I reply to each email I receive - if you did not get a reply from me, then I did not get your entry.

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