In Which I Drug My Dog

Our beloved Mrs. Wigglebottom is severely limping.  Again.  Though it’s been a long time.  As you may recall, she’s got football knee and we’re trying to limp her along, so to speak, as long as possible, because, once the tendon tears completely, she’s got to have surgery of some sort, and the vet and I are fighting about whether one puts thousands of dollars into a dog’s knee to then put her through a painful rehab or if one puts a couple of hundred bucks into making a dog three-legged and pain free.

These are not easy decisions to make, or easy fights to have, and so we’ve just been keeping her off her knee as much as we can.

But she must have done something to aggrevate it today, between the time I left for work and the time the Butcher came home, because she really doesn’t want to put any weight on her back foot.

On the other hand, she doesn’t flinch or grouch when I’ve been poking and prodding at her.  But, this is also the girl who’s like “You have to cut me open and pour vodka on me to get rid of that tick?  Sure. I’ll just lay here and take it.”  And also the girl who’s like “No, god no, don’t cut my nails.  It’s so awful.”  Which is just to say you can’t count on her to give you an accurate assessment of the pain she might be in.

But I gave her an asperin and some cheese and she went to the bathroom and now she’s sleeping at my feet letting out the cutest honk-shoos ever, so let’s hope whatever is wrong is magically righted by a good nap and pain killers.

Potential for Abuse? Potential?

I don’t know how I missed this, but thanks to KAG over at Knoxville Talks, I’ve learned of the “success” of the latest efforts to weed out illegal immigrants from our state.

Five months after Tennessee’s “Illegal Alien Employment Act” became law and threatened to penalize business owners found more than once to have knowingly employed illegal workers, no company has been fined or lost its business license.

I bring this up in light of Yuri Cunza’s comment at the end of the article KAG links to.

Yuri Cunza, president of the Nashville Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, wants to see more substantial requirements for complaints.

“We can see the clear potential for abuse, for profiling, for very flimsy complaints. There does need to be enforcement of the law, controls on bad businesses owners. ? But these kinds of complaints are ? very medieval, primitive,” he said.

But look here at the beginning of the article.

One complaint claimed a Nashville restaurant and club worker overstayed their visa and that the businesses’ owner knew it. The other involved workers at a Murfreesboro logistics company and a pair of employment agencies that allegedly supplied it with illegal workers.

Senator files 2 complaints

Both complaints were filed by Murfreesboro state Sen. Bill Ketron. Unidentified individuals, not Ketron, filed the seven complaints that remain sealed, Bailey said.

On Feb. 8, Ketron filed a complaint alleging that a single employee worked at two businesses owned by a single owner–Tribe, a Church street restaurant and night club, and Play, a neighboring club–despite having an expired visa.

But, the complaint indicated that the owner was able to supply I-9s for all of the company’s 45 employees. No penalties were assessed. Attempts to reach Tribe and Play, its combined corporate office and the owner were unsuccessful.

Am I the only one who finds that just a hair suspect?

Of all the places in the state that might knowingly hire illegal immigrants, and of the nine complaints anyone actually bothered to file, one was against Tribe & Play?

Really.

That doesn’t strike anyone else as weird, that a Republican from Murfreesboro would be filing complaints about workers in Tribe or Play? Not to put too fine a point on it, but what’s Senator Ketron doing in Tribe or Play in the first place, to notice whether their employees seemed sufficiently legal?

In other words, I find it highly unlikely that Ketron was just enjoying a nice night out with the boys when he happened to notice a situation that seemed like it might be leading to the hiring of illegal immigrants and much more likely that this is an instance of a cudgel for wielding against one social “problem” being wielded against another.

And I’d be curious to know why.

See? Snidley

Tiny Pasture points out that Hobbs’s Snidley video never was up at the TNGOP website, so calls for him to remove it from there are in vain.

See, it’s up at YouTube’s website on the TNGOP channel.

Bwah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

God, I love this.

It’s like the TNGOP hired a petulant angry twelve year old to be their spokesman.

The Future is Now

Via Radley Balko, we learn that a woman in Mississippi has been convicted of manslaughter because she did drugs and gave birth to a stillborn baby.

Twelve years.

What if you’re in a car accident in Mississippi, your fault, and you give birth to a stillborn baby?

Are they going to try those women for manslaughter?

Flea has a great post today about why she won’t help denigrate radical feminists, even when she disagrees with them.

She says

I’m really sorry, but I just can’t help anybody tear down women who devoted their entire lives to making my life better. Because of radical feminism, women like me can own our own homes, acquire our own credit cards, choose the number of children we’d like to have, and walk around at night a little more safely.

I could not agree more.  We sometimes play this game where we run around being all like “We’re not like those other women.  Here, let us help you sling mud at them, just to prove how much we’re not like them.” and even as feminists, many of us have not lost that urge to curry favor by denigrating other women.

I try hard not to do that.  But for the reason Flea outlines here, but also just out of basic self-interest.

In feminist circles, I’m not a radical feminist.  In feminist circles, I’m a pretty wishy-washy feminist at best.

But here?

I know I look pretty damn close to the lunatic fringe of womanly behavior.

I don’t forget that.

Speaking out against radical feminists isn’t just about speaking out against the women feminists understand to be radical feminists–like Dworkin–but denouncing the women most folks understand to be radical feminists–like me.

But I will continue to advance the notion that a woman has a right to do with her own body what she wants, even if you don’t like it.

And I will continue to advance the notion that a woman doesn’t give up her right to do with her own body what she wants just because she’s pregnant.

And I sure as hell will continue to advance the notion that putting a woman in prison for twelve years because she couldn’t kick her addiction is pretty damn egregious.

And you can count on me to continue to point out that your “we have to protect the unborn babies” bullshit leads right to this: monitoring the behavior of pregnant women and punishing them when the pregnancies don’t result in live births.

And you need to think about that pretty long and hard, if that’s the road you’re fine traveling down–punishing women for not delivering live babies.

Bird Brain

By way of Archcrone, I bring you the story of a parrot who managed to get himself back home because he knew his address!

I have to admit, I’m kind of freaked out by birds, especially big parrots, because they seem like they might claw you or peck your eyes out, but my mom once had a crow befriend her, which I thought was cool.

My point is that I’m both freaked out by birds and fascinated by them and this story is cool.

Just Calling to Tell Me About Me

Before I start the meat of my story, can I just tell you that, when I was out walking the dog, we came upon some dead thing and she tried to make like she just wanted to sniff it, when clearly she wanted to taste it and I was all like “I wasn’t born yesterday, dog” and then I was all “I was born tomorrow!” which I thought was hilarious.

So, when my good friend, Mack, called me just now I told him that and he didn’t find it funny.

Because there’s something wrong with him.

I think, anyway, because, clearly? Funny.

Anyhow, he called me up to wish me a happy birthday because even though I’ve been telling him for six months that my birthday is the 22nd, he’s under the impression that I was born yesterday.

Which, now that I type that, is even more hilarious than the dog thinking I was born yesterday.

But I’m all, “No, I go house hunting tomorrow, on my birthday.”

And he’s all “Oh god, I wish I could liveblog that.  I can only imagine.  You walk into a great house with perfect amenities and you go straight to the kitchen cabinet and are all ‘My god, there are no Oreos in this house!  Next.'”

“Shut up!”

“No, wait.  Here’s the more likely truth.  You find a house in a gangland neighborhood with crack dealers on all sides and that house has a tiny kitchen and no bathrooms and you’re all like ‘But look at this porch.  I can tell a little story about the man who lived here seventy years ago and stood on this porch just like I am and how he rolled his own cigarettes and I feel so connected to him.  Blah blah blah.  I’ll take it.'”

“Shut up!  Okay, it’s true, but shut up.”

“What, you think you’re sitting there eating your Corn Chex and drinking your diet Dr Pepper…”

“Oh my god, I am sitting here eating my Corn Chex and drinking my diet Dr Pepper!”

“I know.”

“Shut up!  Did you just call me up to tell me about myself?”

“Pretty much.”

“So, you know me that well, but you don’t know when my damn birthday is?”

“I’m just saying, don’t put an offer on a house until someone with more sense has a chance to look at it.”