Oh, Shoot! I Should Have Used My Powers For Evil!

Look how it ended up!

1.  My emails were answered!  Especially by Grantham.

2.  Nikki Tinker gets her money from Republicans and Armenians and EMILY’s List, among others.

3.  Tim Chavez has fixed his link so you can view the video.  It’s not the smoking gun he claims, I don’t think.  But it did piss off the Sheriff’s spokesperson, so that’s good fun.  I’m imagining, right now, a tag team wrasslin match with Weikal and the Ask a Mexican dude in one corner and Chavez in the other.

4.  EMILY’s List condemns Tinker’s ad, but doesn’t ask for their money back.  That’s too bad.

5.  I was supposed to make a shirt this evening, but I broke my computer with all my cats wearing pants files are.  And by “broke” I mean “Doesn’t even start anymore.”  Which is pretty impressive, if you think about it.

I Command You To Do the Following

1.  Respond to my emails.  (Christian Grantham, I’m especially looking at you.)

2.  Tell me, where is Nikki Tinker getting her money and who exactly is okaying these ads?

3.  Fix your links, Tim Chavez, so I can see for myself what you’re talking about.

4.  Explain to me, EMILY’s List, how endorsing the aforementioned Nikki Tinker serves anyone’s best interest.  We’re trying to get away from the stereotype of women as evil harridans who, when given a little power, will stoop to the deepest depths to destroy everyone who stands in our way, aren’t we?  Did we give up on that goal of feminism and no one told me?

5.  Check this out.  Not only can you find this wonderful blog full of insight and words like ‘harridan’ by using either https://tinycatpants.wordpress.com or http://tinycatpants.net, my friends, after waiting out the fuckers who squatted on http://tinycatpants.com, it is now mine!  Mine! Mine!  All mine.  I need to make a new shirt in honor of the occasion.

Random Things of Note

1.  Yesterday was the first day that I had more people searching for “tiny cat pants” show up here (16) than people searching for hermaphrodite porn (8)!  I am tickled that some small number of folks are searching for my blog and finding it.

2.  If you are not following the Steve Cohen/Nikki Tinker race, you are missing out on the quintessential lesson in what is wrong with the Democratic Party in this state.  I can put it no more eloquently than how autoegocrat puts it.

3.  It tickles me that Alice Randall’s husband wants to join the Belle Meade Country Club.  Oh, that tickles me so much.  For those of you not from Nashville, let me sum it up for you thusly.  If he were to get in, he would be the second black man to ever be granted membership to the country club in its 107 year history.

4.  You have not lived until you’ve read Jim Ridley’s review of Beer for My Horses. It’s worthwhile to read the whole thing, but “they kidnap the brother from the local hoosegow and mount an invasion of Mexico fortified with bow-hunter Ted Nugent (cast against type as a mute) and a pooch who fights crime with his premonitive farts” is the best part, for sure.

5.  If you’re even remotely curious about the last Twilight book, might I recommend this take on it?  I laughed so hard at ” NO! NO COUNSELING! NO MORE COUNSELING! I’VE BEEN HERE WRITING FOR TEN HOURS, MY FINGERS ARE CEASING TO FING!” Fing.  Genius.

I Am So Tickled by Getting to Write this Post I can Barely Actually Write It

The question of my musical taste is one that comes up frequently. Often, when I have Mack’s kids in the back of my car (on my way to the kid rendering plant, of course), and I have the iPod hooked up into the car stereo and I’m trying to teach them to appreciate the joys of a well-executed Skip James song, they’re rolling their eyes so hard their whole heads are lolling against the back seat. And the younger one will say something like “Do you like any music that doesn’t suck?” and the older one will say “I can’t even understand what they’re saying.” and the younger one will say “Is that his real voice or is this a joke?” and the older one will come up with some other witty nonsense and basically my whole song-listening-to time is taken up with sass-listening-to.

And I would, of course, talk to their father about their lack of respect for my brilliant musical taste, but he has a startling lack of sympathy for my position.

But today, I read a post that brought tears to my eyes and then made me die of jealousy (but I recovered, obviously)–a rant on the dismissal from history of female artists.

Hurray, and, in honor of that, I will tell you about my favorite non-feminist, feminist (in that I don’t think she’d call herself a feminist, but good god, if she’s not, who is?)–Jeannie Seely.

Seely was the first woman to wear a miniskirt on the Opry stage (“‘Honey, you’re not allowed to wear a mini-skirt on the Opry.’ I thought he was joking at first. I said, ‘I never heard that rule.’ Finally I made a deal with him. I said, ‘Okay, if you don’t let anybody in the front door with a miniskirt on, I won’t come in the back door with one on.'”–Finding Her Voice, p. 301.) and the first woman to host the Opry.

See, you have to be an Opry member to host a segment of the Opry and, it used to be, you had to be a man. Folks, it was thought, just wouldn’t listen to a woman talking on the radio. But there was a snowstorm and she, as it happened, was the only Opry member who’d been able to get to the Opry House. And the choice was to either cancel the show or…

Horror of horrors, let Seely host it.

According to Bufwack and Oermann (pp. 300-301), here are some Seely-isms for your enjoyment.

“Of course I want you for your body. I’ve got a mind of my own.”

“I woke up on the right side of the wrong bed this morning.”

“An ex-husband is one mistake you don’t have to live with.”

And this is my favorite (from page 301):

“You knock me to my knees, but you cannot make me crawl while I’m down there.” (She goes on to say “‘Actually,’ she confides, ‘the way I really wrote it was, “They can knock me to my knees, but they cannot make me give head while I’m down there.” but I cleaned it up.'”)

Dang, she tickles me.

Almost as much as Dolly does.

Anyway, go, go, read that post. If you have the Krauss/Plant album, yes, that’s that Sister Rosetta.

(h/t the 9513) (Oh, and Bufwack and Oermann)

Is This a Reason to Move or to Stay?

World, if you own a dog, there will come a day when you want to punch your dog in the face.  You will have to accept that, in that moment, all that separates you from the scum who punch dogs in the face is a lack of ambition.  When you first get a dog and you are faced with a moment where you want to punch your dog in the face, it can be very distressing.  You cry, you wonder what kind of sicko you are secretly, you wonder if you should immediately turn your dog over to kind people who never once ever consider punching their dogs in the face.

By the time you’re staring back on almost a decade with the dog, you accept that there are going to be moments when you want to punch your dog in the face and moments when your dog wants to punch you in the face and you accept the small consolation that, while it would be nice if neither of you thought about punching the other, at least you never act on it.

Last night I was sleeping, soundly, in my bed when all of a sudden the dog went nuts barking like we had ninjas on the roof and only three seconds before they came through the window and kidnapped the Butcher.  And I’m like “Shut up” only I have my mask on so it sounds more like “sh gueogubhtp top” and she’s all like “bark bark bark bark bark” and I’m again with the “sh gueogubhtp top” and she’s still barking.

I try to ignore her.

I fantasize about punching her in the face.

I fantasize about whatever’s making that weird noise coming over and running her over.

And then, I’m wide awake.  What is that weird noise?

And Mrs. Wigglebottom is all like “See?  See, motherfucker.  I told you there was something freaky ass freaky going on.  But you wouldn’t listen.  No, you’re all convinced that I’m going to save you from shit while you sleep.  You want me to protect you?  Get me a gun.  Otherwise, when I bark, you get up and see what I’m barking about.  I swear to Dog, I about was going to punch you in the face.  Now, go check that out so I can get back to sleep.”

So, I get up.  I try to put my glasses on.  I realize that you can’t put your glasses on over the CPAP mask.  So, I have to disengage from all that stuff.  I put my glasses on.  I marvel, just for a second, at how awesome it is to have glasses in my prescription, which I have not had in years.

I look out the bedroom door.  The Butcher is still asleep.  The noise gets softer.  I go to the window.  The noise is now very loud. I look down.  No one is repossessing any cars out front.  Of course not.  It’s not like the dog is going to bother to bark when that happens, so that we at least have a second to go out and retrieve important things like, say, the Butcher’s cell phone.  No, no, why bother barking the one time it would have actually been useful to be woken up in the middle of the night?  It’s not like you’re a dog or anything, who barks at the slightest provocation.  No.

(And yes, it’s been almost exactly three years and I’m still bitter about that, dog.)

I look around.

Nothing.

And then I see it.  Just over the big brown junker, past the orange couch, beyond the fence that’s supposed to keep us away from the retaining wall that keeps the noise of the interstate from being overwhelming, and a little to the left, up in the brush, is a small front end loader (similar to this) or maybe a forklift, but I’m pretty sure a front end loader, struggling back and forth, up near the scrub trees, like it’s stuck in mud and is rocking to try to get some traction in order to get loose.

At first, I’m worried that there’s been some kind of accident, that some trucker has finally come over the retaining wall, and fucked up trying to get into the middle lane of 440, over-corrected, and come careening down our side of the wall.  But I don’t see anything up there.  Just the little cab light of the front end loader, wiggling back and forth.

Where did it come from?

There’s a plant that does galvanizing back behind us.  And it’s true that they might have something like that, but we are separated from them by the train tracks, which are deep enough in a gully behind us that we are about at eye level with the engineers.  Unless this frontend loader possessed powers of levitation, I don’t see how it could have gotten from there to here.  There’s no gradual slope down to the train tracks.  It’s pretty straight down.  And even then, how’s it getting behind the fence?  And who was driving?  Joy-riding hobos?

The dog and I went out to investigate this morning and while there is clearly a spot up in the brush that appears to be flattened out, like someone had recently driven a piece of small equipment around up there, I couldn’t discern the path it took either in or out.