Who Will Care For Muffy?

SO I know that you are always wondering, “When the Rapture happens and I go off to Heaven for all of eternity, what will happen to my beloved family pet, who, sadly, has no soul?”

Well here is the answer:Eternally Earth-Bount Pets

For a nominal fee, these animal-loving, committed atheists (who obviously won’t be taken off to Heaven) will come pick up your pet and take care of it since you have shuffled of this mortal coil.

Funny? Yes.
Brilliant? Yes.

Even Jesus is laughing about this.
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Thanks Paul for finding this!
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Put it in your pipe and smoke it!

So I heard this in my Pop Culture class:

The guy that started Starbucks called it Starbucks because he liked the novel Moby Dick, which he had read in college, and in the novel Moby Dick, there is a character named Starbuck who is always drinking coffee.

So the name “Starbucks” is a cutesy literary allusion.

Except, it turn out, that the character Starbuck is, in fact, not always drinking coffee, he is actually always smoking a pipe. The guy who named Starbucks has remembered this fact incorrectly and so the largest and fanciest and, dare I say, important coffee chain in the world is actually named for an incorrect literary allusion.

And I think that something about that is just perfect. It is sort of the perfect metaphor for the basically insincere imitation of beatnik coffeehouse culture that Starbucks has made a multitude of fortunes co-opting.

Now don’t get me wrong, I like a good Starbucks as much as the next guy and, for my money, you can’t find a better white mocha anyplace, but I have no illusions about it.

Anyway, I just thought that was funny in the way that only real life can be.
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Why is that in your ear?

So at work I mind my Ps & Qs but this guy was wearing his blue-tooth headset around in the office and it just bothered the fuck out of me at that moment and so I dove at one of my hot pink post-it notes and jotted “…is there some as-yet-undiscovered medical or glandular phenomenon whereby the pleasure centers of your lizaed brain are stimulated into an orgiastic frenzy of self-delusional rapture when you plug one of those things into your head? Does it tickle your brain into a fit of self-important, narcissistic fantasy where women want you and men want to be you? Is it no longer enough to wear your phone in a holster on your belt like you’re Gary Cooper or a Jedi with an MBA? We all know how unimportant you are, precisely because you’re wearing the fact next to your face. Important people don’t wait for the call. You, sir, have made your life about the wait for the call and we are all a little sadder today because we had to see you do it.”

This must be why employers seem to dislike hearing that employees have blogs.
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R.I.P. Ted Kennedy.

Man, talk about a bad month for the Kennedies.

And for the rest of us. It is rare that there are any effective bulldogs on the liberal side of the fence.

Here is a story about his life and his death.
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Oh good, you brought your gun.

So here we go again.

Below is the link for an article concerning the proliferation of guns at recent political rallies, including one in Arizona where a man protesting at a Presidential event was carrying an AR-15, which is basically the same thing that foot-soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan carry. Due to Arizona’s gun laws, the man had every right to prance around outside with a semi-automatic rifle.

The guy was quoted talking about his right to do that. Well, I support is right to prance.

The thing that is upsetting is that, yes, this guy has a right to do that, but he is not required to do that. There isn’t even any logical reason to do that. You and I both know that when these people show up with guns, it is because they want to look intimidating. They think that they are bad-ass patriots. They are trying to scare people.

How is that okay?

That, by the way, is how terrorism works.

If young gun-toting ACLU-members hade been parading outside of the Bush rally, how long do you think that would have lasted? Do you think that they would have been branded terrorists and disappeared from the worlds?

Sorry, I hate to sound like some conspiracy theorists.

Anyway, in the places where this is happening, these people have every right to carry these guns around. Fine. However, they have no reason to carry them around and it doesn’t help. It doesn’t make anything better, it just makes the situation worse.

So, yes, they have a right, but don’t they also have a civic responsibility to not act this way? I still like to think that in America we have an obligation to each other. Not a single great thing that this country has done has been done by a single person. This is a nation that owes its very existence to teamwork and the forging of a community. I think that we are all the caretakers of that community, and these people are failing to hold up their end of the bargain.

Here is the link.
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Pictures of Places.

Violet has up some of the pictures from our trip to Boston and greater New England.

Here is a very long exposure of nighttime Boston as seen from our hotel near the Commons.



Here is a shot from inside the actually awe-some Trinity Church. This is actually a must-see-before-you-die kind of place. I was amazed by it, and I have been to Big Ben (boring!) and The Empire State Building (boring!) and the St. Louis Arch (boring!) and the Eiffel Tower in Paris (snore!) and the Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas (kind of awesome actually) and I have seen the world’s largest banjo and the world’s largest free-standing Taco Bell. My point is, if you have the chance, visit this place.



And below is a photo of your humble author, doing some small bit of writing in the Boston Public Library.



Check out these and more on Violet's Flickr.
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Our Republican Congressman

Violet is in the other room screaming at a live webcast being given by our Congressman Buck McKeon who is, by all accounts so far, stupid.

Hey Buck McKeon, why don’t you go get Cancer and not have health insurance and then try being a Republican?
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