I'm *squeeeeeeee!*ing

My fishing buddy bought me this 7' rod&reel combo. Called Femme Fatale by Okuma, it's super-cute and pink in all the right places.

I squee'd my pants. I'm going to look very cute catching or not catching fish. Full fishing report to follow.

True Story...

A woman I know called me up recently laughing her head off. She'd seen a commercial on television where a guy mistakenly brushes his teeth one morning with buttpaste instead of the tooth variety. Her young daughter asked what the paste was, and she explained. Then the daughter said "Oh, that's what daddy had me buy that time." She asked for an explanation, and learned that several years ago when she had sent her husband to the drug store for some Preparation H, he'd been too embarrassed to buy it, so he sent their daughter into the store to buy the stuff.

I know a woman whose ex-husband made great sport of occasions when she'd drop *ahem* ladytime products in the shopping cart. He'd take it like a football and run down the aisle, throwing the box back at her while yelling "go long!"

Silly rabbits.

**************

Went fishing Sunday night, and the sky was overcast and things cooled off nicely. The lake was windy and I fished with a crappie pole from the shore. I used some stinky discoball bait blobs with red glitter, but the fish stayed away in droves. My hook was robbed aplenty, but no fish would I catch, alas. I think the sparkles would have worked better if the sun had been brighter, but I was happy with cooler dimness and no fish than I would have been to catch a passel in direct sun and brutal heat.

To my dismay, I was informed that I don't get a refund on my fishing license if I never catch any fish. *harumph*

Sunday, Puppy Sunday: Praline can...

...take this pool from zero to filthy in 20 minutes or less.

The pups got a kiddie pool this week, and Miss Praline made short work of filling it with muck and oomska. In fact, shortly after she began playing in it, she looked like a mudball her ownself. Chuy was more take-it-or-leave-it with the pool. Praline's a water baby, though...

Since we are mid-lurch into flea&tick season, I need to pass along a word of caution from my sister. She sent an email with the following:

so now, since I'm obvs cheap, I got Sentry Pro XFC for de pups. Big mistake. I will be up all night. I think they will live, but they are VERY sick. Thank God for the Childrens Benedryl in that package of pet meds u gave me. I will NEVER use an otc pet med again. Researching this product online now that i'm watching the freak show(twitching, pacing, whimpering, swollen puffy ears? wtf, etc) is horrifying. Why is this product still available? I wish I had gone to law school. Never let anyone you know use this crap!!

So now I've passed it along. The funny thing about me giving her the Benadryl was that right after Valentine died in July, I found homes for all of her things, including leftover heartworm pills, etc, and in that bag was the Benadryl I kept on hand in case she ever had an allergic reaction. I didn't think I'd be getting another dog so soon (shows what I know). Anyway, the important thing is that if you must try an OTC med on your pet, just be sure to monitor them closely and to keep some benadryl and a good, mild doggie shampoo on hand, too. I'm glad this experience didn't end in disaster. I would be crushed to lose any of my dogs, and I would spare her or you that experience.

Enjoy your Sunday, and be sure to romp with your dogs. I intend to. :)

Gladiatrix Space-Hooker?

I report.

You decide.

Well, actually, I like them whether you do or not. Also, I'm enjoying my orange-lacquered toenails. They look so much nicer these days since I stopped chewing them...

More stuff from someone else who hits it out of the park:

Go over here at Snarkybytes to read how the healthcare Obama is shoving down our throats is not actually good enough for his kith and kin. Think about it. This is a monumental power-grab, long and short of it. Obama relies on the fact that he and his will never have to be subject to the plebian level of healthcare rationing that you or I would be subject to if his proposals are taken seriously and enacted, heaven forbid.

Then go to this post at Snarkybytes to read about the biggest tax hike in history, and one which will have the net effect of doubling the price mere mortals like us pay for energy costs. This is truly chilling. We can't afford to be inattentive for even a moment here. Daily our Senate and Congress are working to make these things happen. Let us not be apathetic about these very real threats whilst being spoon-fed the latest celebrity poop.

About that Twilight thingie...

When I went to this new job, the supervisor in charge of the group introduced herself to us the first day. D's a gregarious, engaging person and probably never met a stranger. D is our kind of girl. Love her. She told us a lot about her life and how great the company was to work for. She also said we might as well get used to the fact that she is obsessed with Edward from Twilight and wishes her husband were more like him. Apparently, her husband is aware of this benign obsession and indulges her.

Since I'm still in training (only 4 or 5 months of training to go-- yays!), I've been cloistered with the other n00bs in a training room, not yet having been unleashed into the general worker bee population where I'll no doubt one day fondly embrace my new role in life as cublicle whore. Still, we walk through the main workroom and there are quite a few Twilight posters dotted about, but D's cubicle is liberally festooned with Twilightery.

Stopping by a book/record store recently, I saw a raft of Twilight-themed products, including candy hearts with Edward on the box and sayings appropriate to the story line: "Bite Me" and, well, you get the picture.

Eureka!
Wouldn't it be lovely if Edward were to requite D's affection in some small way? Well, Edward bought a box of those candies and left them on D's desk last week with a greeting card declaring his utter besottedness with her. This week, Edward left a simple offering of a ripe, perfect plum, more sweet nothings scrawled lasciviously within the accompanying card.

Thursday D was talking to our group and saying what a superlative lot we are (none having been fired this first 8 weeks was in itself exceptional, apparently), and that, by the way, Edward has been leaving her gifties on her desk, and she asked our instructor if she was Edward. She searched our faces for recognition, but I sat, poker-faced, having known it was coming. No one admitted to being Edward, least of all your humble narrator.

One of my inner circle has ventured that I can't ever come clean now if I want to keep my job, but I think I will, one day. I think it's obviously an innocent and good-natured lark-- Edward doesn't exist at all, so it's not like she thinks this is really from him. I'm going to winnow it out a bit, though. It's fun for her and I'm getting a giggle out of it. Next week, Edward will probably leave another goodie on her computer along with a card valanced with unctuous, looping swags of Byron. *shrug* It blows my skirt up, anyhoo.

While I'm about the business...

of tasteless products, can someone 'splain me these shoes?:

Um, ew.

Why?

Why the split-toe action? I can't figure it out. I can't imagine what function would inspire such a form.

Not cute.

Crashing waves of wrongness

Just when you think you can't be shocked...

You see a bag of beef pizzles wot am in the pampered pet aisle at your food emporium. At first I thought they'd just come up with a cluelessly bad name for a new dog treat. Came home and searched zee webs, and whaddaya know if it ain't an aptly named product? Now you can get them in braided pizzle, too. I think I liked it better when I just thought it was a poor choice of catchy words for a dog treat name.

Ew. It's bad enough when your dog eats pig ears or cow hooves - the hooves always give them manure breath. I'm not sure I'm up to finding out what they'd smell like after one of these, but I'm sure they'd love it...

One of these days...

Blowfuzzy von Sassy will crank her own blog to life, and then the intarw3bz will get down to the serious bidness of uglyMean&nasty. In the meantime, she occasionally lobs her observations my way, and I simply must pass them along, such as the observation below. It's sad when a sitting president is likened, say, to Curious George or in some way lampooned as ignernt when the detractors know damned well the opposite is true. We should try to focus on valid arguments germane to the issues at hand, rather than stooping to MAD magazine style japery. Let's try to be kinder than others have been, shall we? Let's not post cruel, petty observations even if they'd give us a sinister giggle. Here's your chance to be a better person than me. Don't post stuff like this:

Be nice.

Feelgood Wednesday.

Because we all need to feel a little better for a change. Yeah, I've posted this before, but it's just that good.

See PJ Harvey.
See Polly Jean kick ass.
Kick ass, Polly Jean, kick ass!

In heels, as well.

Let me apologize in advance...

... if I should start sounding like a one-note symphony, but the entire USA healthcare power-grab thing is just sticking in my craw something fierce. Do mind your step-- the horses have been through here.

From the Congressional Quarterly (I shit you not, this is actually a headline):

White House Suggests Health Care Cost Isn't New Money

I'll let that sink in for a moment.


If it's not newly-printed, hot-off-the-press money, then where, pray tell, will they be stealing it from???

We are told Social Security is near collapse, its coffers having been been given a more thorough seeing-to by our legislators than does a windstorm for a panhandle screen door. One stark-raving asshat had the bloody nerve to suggest our military folk wounded serving our country should pay their own medical bills. If we are not fiscally sound enough to hold steadfastly to footing the bill for men and women who have been injured serving our country, why be so hell-bent to get out and subsidize the healthcare of the folks who lack the initiative to serve themselves, let alone their fellow Americans?

Pah! I'm disgusted.

Yeah: What he said.

There are few words adequate to describe the outrage in my heart for the senseless death of Neda Soltani. As I watched the video, I was stricken by the heartbreak in the voice of her father crying her name as she died in his arms on that Tehrani street on the same day we in the USA celebrated Father's Day. Horrors. The sooner a secular youth culture of Iran ousts the old guard, the better life will be for every Iranian, and the better off the world will be.

Any culture which murders young women on the street for daring to disagree with the upholding of tyrannical rule is not a culture worth preserving.

I could go on, but someone already said it better than I could ever do, so read this.

It's a crazy, mixed-up world.

In the Politico Monday, an article entitled "why we will win back healthcare this time" was published with what may presumably have been a straight face. The article breathlessly touts reform of the American healthcare system to provide affordable healthcare for all Americans. I think their idea of affordable healthcare is that a handful of people will tote the note for everyone else. Who is John Gall?

Golden chestnuts from the article:

Progressive eras also rise from a reaction against the excesses of conservatism, which in this case is the national rejection of the overreaching of the Bush administration.

and:

There is also unity on messaging, starting with reassuring Americans that they can keep the insurance they have if they like it. This is the best response to the opposition’s entire message, which is to scare the public about reform. The other weakness that opponents have in their message about “government-run health care” delays and denial of care is that there’s hardly anyone in America, including people with good insurance, who don’t believe that the private insurance industry is delaying and denying people care every day while driving health care costs through the roof.
[emphasis mine]

There was a time when good health insurance was part of the incentive to strive for a good job. These days, however, many people have the idea that health insurance is an entitlement. Rather than preserving our freedom to achieve (or not) as we each choose, lumping every American together in one nationalized healthcare system will cripple caregivers' ability to deliver service and rather than a rising tide which raises all boats, we will be effectively yoked together in a limiting and tragically rationed system.

I'll be honest - I genuinely liked George W. Bush as a person. I found him sincere. However, if his administration was over-reaching in any way, I think it was far too fiscally liberal. For the entirety of his terms as president, I was baffled by the hue and cry from the left, when it seemed to me GWB let slip the doors to the national coffers in the name of compassionate conservatism. Aspects of government which should have shrunk grew instead.

We really need to get a grip on spending. The healthcare industry is already effectively hobbled by our government. I'd like to box the ears of anyone who thinks healthcare will be better and the public better-served by that industry when it has been manacled by the embuggerances which the federal government so masterfully engineers.

As Ambulance Driver said, when our government takes over the health care industry, it will have the efficiency of FEMA with the compassion of the IRS.

We're so screwed.

What kind of moth is this?

Isn't this moth interesting? I thought it was a dried up leaf or a curled piece of bark, but it was too symmetrical. Do you know what sort it is? I've never seen one like it.

**************

Had a grand time in DFW this weekend visiting my family, but it was good to come home to Elsewhere.

Went for walkies Sunday night and two shirtless little neighborhood urchins were showing off the rattlesnake they'd killed earlier. I said one had bitten my dog and they asked what happened to it. They asked if I'd kept the rattle of the dead snake, I said yes and one said "Lucky!" Apparently he collects rattles. I didn't offer him my trophy.

Oh. and out for a walk near my house in a pasture, I found tracks of a gi-normous wild hog. This is not good. Bibbity-bobbity-bacon. No pig better come near my puppehs. I may not be able to make a silk purse of its ear, but I'll bet you a dollar I could make a coin purse of its cod. Just saying. I understand a 500 lb hog is hard to kill- do I need mount a little cannon on the back of my humble abode?