…You Might Be an Evil Jackass

If you can’t even wait until the names of the dead have been released after a grave tragedy before you’re yammering on about how your legislation might prevent similar tragedies… If you can’t even wait until the dead are in the ground before you start speaking for them in order to make your political points…

Tennessee, what do you even say in the face of that?

This asshole wants to legislate morality to us and he doesn’t even have the decency to wait 24 hours before turning other peoples’ tragedies into fodder for his political aspirations?

I’m done.  I’m done reading him.  I’m done writing about him.  I don’t want to hear his name mentioned.  I don’t want to see his name here.

I hear about Democratic politicians who don’t want to be referred to as Democrats.  Why?  Because you’d rather throw in with the likes of this guy?  And you can sleep at night knowing that you want to throw in with the likes of this guy?

At what point do politicians in this state ever look in the mirror and do some soul searching?

Our only hope now is that at least, in the writing of that stuff, he’s clearly admitted to being a Yankee.  If being an evil slumlord jackass who exploits others’ tragedies won’t get him unelected, maybe that will.

Gardening Question

Okay, so on your advice, we bought creeping phlox to put on the creek bank.  The question is–do we have to remove all of the grass from the slope or can we weed eat it short and slowly let the phlox crowd it out?

Also, is there anything that smells as surprisingly wonderful as lilac?  Magnolia, maybe.

John Rich Outrage Chart

I just want to state up front that I sense in the air that some day John Rich and Stacey Campfield will get together and… I don’t know what.  Maybe just have a beer.  It doesn’t matter, because on that day I will spend  my whole day, for reasons unknown to me, with a grimace on my face, clenching my fist, and shaking it at the world.

Please see the artist’s rendering below so that you will know what to watch out for (and please don’t injure yourself reaching for the screen when you are fooled by it’s awesome resemblace to real life).

But until that day, I bring you the John Rich Outrage Chart.

(h/t the marvelous folks at The9513.com)

The Tiny Cat Has A New Lease on Life

I almost said “new leash on life” because when you’re using the “new lease on life” cliche with pets, it’s practically manditory to turn the cliche into a cliche with a bad pun.  But I did not.  Because I love you guys.

Anyway, the tiny cat has decided to be affectionate.  Not just her annual trip out of whatever dark corner she’s been hiding in, but every morning, when I get up, she gets up, comes to the bathroom with me, has a little breakfast while I’m getting my breakfast ready and then sits on the arm of the couch while I eat and read my morning blogs.  Today she insisted that I rub her head.  And she purred.

This is one difference between cats and dogs.  When you get a dog, you know what you’re getting.  It’s a slow narrative arc from birth through puppy across a long adulthood of predictable behavior into old age and death.  But a cat?  Sometimes I think that when they talk about a cat having nine lives, this is what they really mean.  To think that this is the same cat who once spent a whole summer living in the back of my closet or another spring wedged in between the bookshelf and the window seems strange, to put it mildly.  That was another life, I think.

I bored the Butcher on Wednesday night with all my talk of the various kinds of moonflower and discovering that Beth had given us datura and what should be a minor plot point on CSI last night?  Datura.  “See?” I told him.  “My useless knowledge is useful.”

He went out yesterday and tried to turn the garden by hand.  I haven’t been back there to see how it went.  But since he said “tried” I’m going to imagine “not well.”

The creek that runs through the yard is, in parts, lined with bricks and concrete.  In other parts, it has a natural slope.  We’ve decided to plant the natural slopes with something other than grass and I hope to be busy with such a task on Saturday.  Since Jim Voorhies sent me to that site where I learned not to mix corn and sunflowers, I haven’t really had a good spot for the sunflowers, but I’m kind of thinking that sunflowers and moonflowers along the creek might be kind of cool and whimsical.