Tiny Cat Warriors

They have different traffic problems in Texas than we do

In Rancho Mirage, we really only have a problem with ninja bunnies - looks like Texas has a whole 'nother sort of problem.  Good reason to stay the hell out of Texas.

The woman with the octuplets

More news has been coming out about the woman who had the octuplets last week.  Turns out she has six (6) other children, is unmarried, and lives with her parents in a three bedroom house.  Oh, and she took fertility treatments to get pregnant.  [Actually, at age 30, would she even have been a candidate normally for fertility treatments?  With six [6] other children, apparently getting pregnant has not been a problem for her in the past.]  And there'll be 14 children and 3 adults living in the three bedroom house.

There's just so much wrong with what she did that it's hard to know where to begin.  I'll just summarize it all by saying that if the children were cats, we'd be calling her a cat hoarder and the local animal control authorities would take the cats away from her.  Why should society be more careful about how a crazy cat lady hoarder takes care of her cats than about how many kids a crazy baby lady decides to have?

One additional scary thought - this woman is young enough to produce a few more litters have even more babies.

Peggy Noonan on the House stimulus bill

I can recommend Peggy Noonan's column (available online today to be published in the Wall Street Journal tomorrow).  Her comments on the House version of the stimulus bill are exactly correct:

The final bill was privately agreed by most and publicly conceded by many to be a big, messy, largely off-point and philosophically chaotic piece of legislation. The Congressional Budget Office says only 25% of the money will even go out in the first year. This newspaper, in its analysis, argues that only 12 cents of every dollar is for something that could plausibly be called stimulus.

What was needed? Not pork, not payoffs, not eccentric base-pleasing, group-greasing forays into birth control as stimulus, as the speaker of the House dizzily put it before being told to remove it.

Diane Sawyer - at it again? Yep, totally hammered.

After election night, last November, I posted about how entertaining it was to watch how drunk Diane Sawyer of ABC had been on election night.  Well, this seems to be a recurring problem.  I never catch the morning "news" shows, but apparently Diane was still drunk from the night before.  Here's a clip of her performance:



According to an ABC publicist, Diane was "fatigued". I'm sure she meant fatigued in a frat-boy-on-a-weekend-bender sort of way. The powers that be at ABC surely can't be unaware of Sawyer's problem - I think it's time for Diane to go away on a 28 day "vacation" to recover from her "fatigue". There ABC, I've written the press announcement for you - for the love of God get her off the air and into treatment. If you don't want to do it quietly, maybe book her on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew and you can cross-cover her rehab on Good Morning America. With GMA's ratings, that might be the best idea anyway.

Would the Press have let Bush get away with this?

Check here for the full story this comes from in the Sun Times, but here's the key excerpt:

As ferociously as we march like villagers with torches against Blagojevich, we have been, in the true spirit of the Bizarro universe, the polar opposite with the president-elect. Deferential, eager to please, prepared to keep a careful distance.

The Obama news conferences tell that story, making one yearn for the return of the always-irritating Sam Donaldson to awaken the slumbering press to the notion that decorum isn't all it's cracked up to be.

The press corps, most of us, don't even bother raising our hands any more to ask questions because Obama always has before him a list of correspondents who've been advised they will be called upon that day.

We reporters have earned our own membership in the Bizarro universe.

Who are we, after all? The ones rapid-firing at Rod Blagojevich with tough questions until we drive him from the room? Or the Miss Manners crowd, silent until called upon, quietly accepting that only a handful of questions will be taken at a time?

I'll answer my own question: if Bush had tried something like this at a press conference, the Secret Service would have ended up quelling the brawl that ensued.  David Shuster of NBC (he of the "Chelsea is being pimped out by her parents" fame) would have, rightly, stormed the stage if he thought Bush were calling on pre-selected journalists to ask pre-approved questions.  'Course he won't be doing that with Obama since he's nearly at the head of the line of boot lickers vying for Obama's benevolent gaze.  You won't see David Gregory complaining about Obama's press conference methodology either, since any pretense of objectivity as to Obama went out the window with him early last year.  Similarly with Chris Matthews, who hasn't been at a press conference in years, preferring to have that "tingle up his leg" vis a vis Obama in private.  Lapdogs?  Indeed.

Microsoft Songsmith - I totally thought this was a joke

Maybe it is, just unintentionally.  This is completely tragic - targeting a consumer software product at people who'd be better off culturally by putting their keyboard down and learning to play a real instrument.  Youtube video here:

Despite the absurdly schlocky ad, it's not a Saturday Night Live skit - it's real - check out this article in the Seattle PI here.

I guess Songsmith will join the growing list of Microsoft "success" stories that includes Bob, the Zune and Vista. As a Microsoft shareholder, please tell me that they're not hanging the future of the company on Songsmith.

moonrise

moonrise

Moonrise over Sonoma mountain on January 10, 2009.

January sunrise black and white

January sunrise black and white

Silver Efex Pro layer mask to render it in black and white. I like how this came out.

January sunrise

January sunrise

January frosty field

January frosty field