Daily Archives: December 11, 2006

Dec 11

The Main Reason I Wish You Didn’t Dump Your Litter Box Outside

My dog eats poop. She doesn’t go into the litter box at our place and just munch away–thank goodness–but your cat poop, unconfined and just tossed on the side of the road in a tiny mound?

She’ll happily snack on that.

I would rather she not do that.

What if I started throwing tuna fish at your house? It would give me great satisfaction to throw something at your house, Neighbor-With-Garbage-Disposal-Issues, and then you could wonder, whenever your cats were licking things off the porch, whether that was any good for them.

We could commiserate. It’d be very touching.

Or you could just throw your litter in the garbage like a normal human being.

Either way.

No Offense, Christians

But really, dogs eating poop disproves intelligent design.  In fact, much of how the world works seems more to indicate that Someone* spent much the week stoned out of his gourd, just throwing together things that made Him giggle.  Let us call it Unintelligent Design.

*I’m not mentioning any names *coughGodcough*.

Dec 11

Is the right to bear arms still necessary?

Well, well, well.  This news explains why some people are being such grouchy asses lately: D.C. wants the courts to decide that the second amendment just isn’t necessary any more.


I have a few thoughts.  I think it’s clear that the intent of the second amendment is to insure that ordinary citizens can pose a credible threat to the government, if it should ever become necessary.  As scary as I find guns, I think that, if we agree that that’s the point of the second amendment, there really should be no ban on what kinds of arms individuals can own.


The fact that there hasn’t been a gun-rights case before the Supreme Court in seventy years, though, that addresses the scope of the second amendment probably means it’s about damn time to hear from the Court.


Because what concerns me most of all is that local governments are attempting to circumvent the Constitution by declaring it no longer relevant.  We haven’t chucked the Third Amendment even though no one uses that any more (though, I’m still convinced that pro-choicers should). 


But here’s the city of Washington D.C. arguing that it has a right ban all guns because the Second Amendment isn’t relevant any more and it wants the courts to recognize that.


I’m sorry, but whether or not a chunk of the Constitution is “relevant” doesn’t get decided by the Courts.  That’s not how this is supposed to work.  If you think a part of the Constitution has run its course, then you follow Constitutional procedures for getting it changed or chucked out or whatever. 


It’s time for the Supreme Court to step in and remind these city governments just how the Constitution works.

Dec 11

Let’s All Go to Spain and Declare Tecla the Patron Saint of Bloggers!

So, it turns out that Tarragona, Spain holds an enormous festival in honor of Saint Tecla, who you may recall, gave her name to a small, but noticeable group of European women, a genus of butterfly found in India, and the peasant class in Steven Brust’s Taltos series of books, which I have not read.  You may also recall that my middle name is Teckla, which comes to me from my Swedish great-grandmother Theckla (who dropped the ‘h’ in solidarity with me; thanks Grandma!), and it must be a fairly popular name for Swedish women of a certain age, because Swedish women of a certain age, when they learn that’s my middle name, immediately recognize me as Swedish, even though most of my ancestors came from Germany*.


Anyway, back to Tarragona, it seems that this festival goes on for days and there’s dancing and music and giant puppets and fireworks and arms.


Yes, arms.  For Tarragona is the home to the relic which is the arm of St. Tecla, which, if wikipedia is to be believed, is given a parade every year and processed through the streets!


You may wonder, is Tarragona really a city capable of appropriately honoring the woman I’m indirectly named after? 


Perhaps the easiest way to judge is to look at the other big festival Terragona is known for.  After all, if they have one festival for St. Tecla and the other called, say, “National Day of Moroseness,” maybe they don’t quite have the right attitude towards festivities.  But, no, the other big festival in Terragona is the big Dixieland Jazz Festival they hold each year.


Tarragona, though I have never visited you, I secretly love you.


And, in Spain, in general, according to wikipedia Tecla “is sometimes facetiously referred to as the patron saint of computers (teclado means ‘keyboard’).”


Well, shoot.  I say that if she can facetiously be the patron saint of computers, she sure as hell can be the facetious patron saint of bloggers. 


But you can see why it’s probably necessary for me to go to Spain, specifically Terragona, and raise support for extending her duties to include overseeing blogging. 


 


 


 


*Bless my German ancestors’ hearts.  If there’s one this we can discern from looking back at both sides of my family, my German ancestors were invariably farting around being grouchy and headstrong when some brash, opinionated, but utterly witty and funny woman would waltz into their lives and charm their pants off.