Dear Huntsville,
Don’t be coy. Just cozy up here next to Tennessee and let a girl get to you. This pretending to be on the boarder, then sneaking south as I try to reach you is cute, but we’re too old to play chase each other down the interstate.
Plus, fuck, it’s a long way to you and home again in an evening.
Love,
B.
Just let me know if you’d like me to send you a stunt cooter for use in the future. I can crochet you one right up.
So, I’m doing what everyone does while sick, sitting on the toilet reading Davidson’s Gods and Myths of Northern Europe and two things catch my eye and have stuck with me all day. One is a small matter–of parts of Prussia not being Christianized until as late as the 1500s. This seems possible to me, considering the long and contentious history of trying to Christianize the Lithuanians (a brief recap–1009-1386–Lithuania hems and haws about becoming Christian. Sure, it seems like fun, but Lithuania has a cake in the oven and the baby is napping and now’s just not a good time. 1387–Lithuania is declared a Christian nation. Many Lithuanians still busy doing other things. 1413–Oh, all of us were supposed to convert? Sorry, we thought you just wanted those Lithuanians to become Christian. Okay, we’re getting right on it. 1569–No, look, seriously, we’re all Catholic, we swear. 1868–What? We’re just having a little solstice party here and catching up with some old Friends. We’ll be at church on Sunday.), but I’d love to see her sources on that.
The other is that she’s going on about shamans and using the male pronouns to count for both genders, but this time, reading through it, I catch that she’s saying that it’s widely known that men and women could be shamans and she’s talking about how shamans reach the spirit world and one way is said to be on the back of a goose.
I, for one, am all about riding around on the back of a goose. It tickles me how a woman with a pointy hat riding a goose is a good omen for children but a woman with a pointy hat riding a broom is a bad one. Does having a goose insulate you from the temptation to lure children to your candy house and eat them?
One wonders.
The Man from GM just got back from Sweden. He took these photos with his actual own camera.
And this:
I feel like I should talk some smack about the Man from GM, but I want him to take me with him next time. After all, I’ve been a good friend to him, over the years, kind of, if you overlook a bunch of stuff that I did and play up a bunch of stuff that he did and Sweden is the land of my ancestors, at least, the ones who weren’t German.
I want to say something bitingly clever about the 287(g) program, but I just don’t have it in me today. Last night, on all the news channels, they were talking about what a great success this has been, so great, in fact, that there’s now talk of petitioning the Feds to give us an immigration judge right here in Nashville, so that we can more quickly process the people who have immigrated here illegally.
So, see, everyone wins. The sheriff’s office now has something other than coordinating bulk trash pick-up to do. Politicians get to look like they’re doing something about the immigration problem. People who like to appear tough on crime get to appear tough on crime. Locals and Feds get to coordinate. Other communities get to go back to their tax payers and say, “Hey, if we raise taxes, we can get the computers we need to be hooked in with the Feds so that we can get 287(g) here, too!”
But before we all run off celebrating how awesome this all is, I just want to point out to you two unfortunate facts:
Via Braisted: “While Hall originally predicted around 4,000 unauthorized immigrants would be detained in the first year, only 3,000 were identified as non-legal residents.”
Via Lamb: “80 percent of those processed for deportation hearings were arrested on misdemeanor charges.”
In other words, oppressing and harassing brown people may not be the boom industry it’s being celebrated as.
Via the Unapologetic Mexican, we learn that, according to the geniuses at Fox News, facial hair is indicative of racial or ethnic identity.
I, myself, have a chin hair I have to pluck out when I notice it, every month or so.
I assumed this was just a part of being born a mammal–warm blood, nipples, hair–but no, apparently, it’s a way to signal to Obama that you share with him an American born father and a Mexican born mother. (I know. Just roll with it. It’s like magical realism or weird dream logic.)
This will come as a surprise to my grandma, who was there for the birth of my mother, and is convinced it took place in Chicago.
But who am I to argue with the truth as plain as the hair on my face?
The real question is whether your vet could get you into the VFW…
Exador informs us that you can adopt excess military dogs. I had no idea, but what an awesome program.
(In fair warning, both sites he links to have noise that starts instantly.)
Tiny Cat Pants 