Feline Warrior

Oh GAWD. I’ve just become a conspiracy theorist.

Taylor Swift won Artist of the Year.

Clearly I should start making records. I can use the money from all those record sales, concerts, and such. And a sparkly guitar would be REALLY cool.

American Music Awards Nominees and Winners 2009 | HULIQ

Why, God, WHY?!?!

ABC.com - 2009 American Music Awards – Home

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091015/ap_on_re_us/us_interracial_rebuff

“NEW ORLEANS – A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have. Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.”

FAVORITE (bad) QUOTE: “I’m not a racist. I just don’t believe in mixing the races that way,” Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. “I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else.”

Sheer insanity. What year is it?

Just recently I drove several hours east of my home to fetch a friend who was being evicted from her place of residence. She’d lived there for 16 years and while she hadn’t accumulated as much stuff as I have (you’d have to really try to do that), she certainly had some belongings. The people who were evicting her told her that she needed to take what she wanted; no guarantees regarding anything she left behind.

Her belongings –everything that would fit in my PT Cruiser and 9 plastic bins another friend had been able to take for her (and drop off on my porch)- were in my garage for about 5 days and she slept on the floor on my featherbed.

It amazed and frightened me to see that one’s possessions –the things that most mattered to a person, collected items, family memories, important papers, etc.- could line one side of a garage. Knowing that we left a bunch of stuff behind added to my worries. This friend is 58.

I have another friend who owns a house but I’m sure earns far less than what she needs to pay her mortgage. She sometimes has to have her cable turned off, or maybe the internet connection, so that she can make ends meet. She often pawns jewelry for the same reason. Her family has means, so I don’t think that she’ll end up on the streets. This friend is a social person and enjoys inexpensive lunches with her friends, an expense that probably puts her closer to the edge that most of us realize. She’s in her late 50s and that she has to pawn her belongings or do without such simple stuff as cable, for crying out loud… it pisses me off.

Of course you all remember my mother, homeless at the age of 71, her boxes being shipped to and fro across the country. She’s still at my aunt & uncle’s house and they’re none too pleased about it. They’d like to have their house back; neither is well and they’d like to live out the rest of their days as a couple, not a couple with a roommate. She’s got an income made up solely of social security and for reasons only she knows, is not willing to do anything for work. Physical restrictions do play a part – with her knees having had surgery and still needing more, of course, she can’t stand for any length of time, for example.

When my mother was staying with us, I got annoyed sometimes because I thought, “Here she is, on

a fixed income, and yet she has to have a really good (read: expensive) bottle of Irish whiskey; she has to have a $50 salon haircut rather than a less expensive one at a budget-friendly shop; she wants to dine out all the time, buy the best cuts of meat,” and on and on. I wanted her to live on a real budget, save her money, get ready to be independent again.

Yet at the same time, I’d sometimes feel bad for even thinking those things. At her age, why CAN’T she enjoy a good bottle of whiskey or a really good haircut?

Naturally, these stories worry me because they give me cause to think ahead to my own older years. (And those late 50’s aren’t THAT far away, folks.)

But when I can stop thinking of myself for a minute, the real and original source of my anxiety splashes through the surface: How can it be that I know three women over the age of 55 who have recently either become homeless or are living so close to the edge that they have to pawn their belongings to keep the water on? What’s going on that someone can reach a more mature age, perhaps a time of life that I think should allow one some simple pleasures (lunching with friends, good haircuts, keeping ALL of one’s belongings), and have one’s security so unstable?

I’m sure there are plenty of men in the same boat, but I know women dealing with this. I think a bit of research is in order.

Michael Jackson, pop music legend, dead at 50 - CNN.com

Wow, a music icon, gone, just like that: *poof*

Here’s a fun old video, featuring Michael and his sister Janet. Back when he looked more like himself.

This might be my favorite headline regarding Jackson:

Jackson dies, almost takes Internet with him

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/06/26/michael.jackson.internet/index.html#cnnSTCText

Oh, hell, here’s the story:

By Linnie Rawlinson and Nick Hunt
CNN

LONDON, England (CNN) — How many people does it take to break the Internet? On June 25, we found out it’s just one — if that one is Michael Jackson.

The biggest showbiz story of the year saw the troubled star take a good slice of the Internet with him, as the ripples caused by the news of his death swept around the globe.

"Between approximately 2:40 p.m. PDT and 3:15 p.m. PDT today, some Google News users experienced difficulty accessing search results for queries related to Michael Jackson," a Google spokesman told CNET, which also reported that Google News users complained that the service was inaccessible for a time. At its peak, Google Trends rated the Jackson story as "volcanic."

As sites fell, users raced to other sites: TechCrunch reported that TMZ, which broke the story, had several outages; users then switched to Perez Hilton’s blog, which also struggled to deal with t

he requests it received.

CNN reported a fivefold rise in traffic and visitors in just over an hour, receiving 20 million page views in the hour the story broke.

Twitter crashed as users saw multiple "fail whales" — the illustrations the site uses as error messages — user FoieGrasie posting, "Irony: The protesters in Iran using twitter as com are unable to get online because of all the posts of ‘Michael Jackson RIP.’ Well done." The site’s status blog said that Twitter had had to temporarily disable its search results, saved searches and trend topics.

Wikipedia saw a flurry of activity, with close to 500 edits made to Jackson’s entry in less than 24 hours. CNET reported that by 3:15pm PDT, Wikipedia seemed to be "temporarily overloaded."

The LA Times, the first news organization to confirm Jackson’s death, suffered outages. The site also reported that AOL’s instant messenger service had been hit, quoting an AOL statement that said, "AIM was down for approximately 40 minutes this afternoon." The statement said, "Today was a seminal moment in Internet history. We’ve never seen anything like it in terms of scope or depth."

That was backed up by AOL consumer adviser Regina Lewis, who told CNN that, although the numbers weren’t in yet, the day should prove an historic milestone for mobile internet traffic.

"It could go down as the biggest mobile event in history," Lewis said. She felt that was down in part to people checking news headlines from work. "People wanted to keep tabs on this story, but if you’re an accountant you’re supposed to be working on your spreadsheet. So they were using their personal cellphones to do so," she explained.

Watch Lewis explain the overload »

While the scale of response to Jackson’s death might be unprecedented, the pattern of it was not, Lewis added.

"With the advent of social networking, we saw a sequence that we traditionally see around the death of celebrities," she said.

"One, people clamour for the latest news; two, they share it; three, they react; and then the next stage, which we’re seeing alive and well on video sites … are tributes. In the case of Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett, (people have) a lot to work with in terms of images and video," she said.

By Friday morning, news sites seemed to be coping with traffic but Jackson fan site mjfanclub.net was still performing sluggishly. Mashable.com reported that tributes to, and remarks upon, Michael Jackson’s death were responsible for 30 percent of tweets.

As with any breaking piece of news on the Web, the reports of Jackson’s death sparked something of a feeding frenzy — and with that came rumor that dragged in other celebrities completely unconnected to the King of Pop’s death.

One Wikipedia prankster wrote that Jackson had been "savagely murdered" by his brother Tito, who had strangled him "with a microphone cord."

Soon rumors spread online that movie star Jeff Goldblum had fallen from the Kauri Cliffs in New Zealand while filming his latest movie. On several search engines, "Jeff Goldblum" soon became the only non-Jackson-related term to crop up in the top 10.

The rumors forced Goldblum’s publicist to issue a statement to media outlets, saying: "Reports that Jeff Goldblum has passed away are completely untrue. He is fine and in Los Angeles."

At the same time Harrison Ford was also rumored to have fallen from a yacht off the south of France.

Web site snopes.com, which shoots down rumors, gossip and urban legends — and how they originated — said the likely culprit was a Web site which allows users to input celebrity names — and then inserts them into fake templated stories (a further variant has stars dying in a plane crash).

In a sense the feeding frenzy was understandable — Jackson’s death, coming only hours after that of 1970s icon Farah Fawcett, left many Web users, shocked by the news of Jackson’s death, asking what would happen next. In this febrile climate any rumor runs the risk of being seized on, believed and treated with more credulity than usual.

The need of the professional media to be first with the news — many did for a short time report the Goldblum rumor as fact — adds further veracity. And, of course, the whole process is speeded up by the Web.

There is also, of course, the old adage that celebrities die in threes, with the deaths of Gianni Versace, Princess Diana and Mother Teresa in 1997 frequently held up as an example of this.

But while Diana and Teresa passed away with seven days of each other in August and September, Versace was killed in early July. Their deaths were most keenly mourned by the same broad sections of the public — and hence were inextricably interlinked.

The Web can link disseminate news — but like any form of communication it can also help us create what we expect to see next.

CNN’s Tom Peck contributed to this report.

Ann Coulter on O’Reilly: Tiller Murder a ‘Termination’ — Politics Daily

Here’s a little preview of the venomous one’s spew:

"I don’t really like to think of it as a murder. It was terminating Tiller in the 203rd trimester."

When pressed by O’Reilly on this statement, Coulter replied,

"I am personally opposed to shooting abortionists, but I don’t want to impose my moral values on others."

Buzz Aldrin Opens Up About Alcoholism

Who knew?

“After retiring from NASA and the Air Force, the longtime military man found himself adrift with no structure in his life. Rather than feeling liberated, Aldrin was tormented by loneliness and uncertainty.

"I realized that I was experiencing the ‘melancholy of things done.’ I had done all that I had ever set out to do," he explains in the new book.

The old fighter pilot was trapped in a death spiral of mental illness and addiction.

"I moved from drinking to depression to heavier drinking to deeper depression," he writes. "I recognized the pattern, but I continually sabotaged my own efforts to do anything about it."”

I really like this post from Margaret Cho (who I happen to really did, anyway. If anyone can introduce me to her, please do.) I especially like the idea of throwing away food – if you only want a bite, just have a bite. There is so much guilt attached to food and eating, and in so many ways: First for wanting to eat, then for the actual eating; if you don’t clean your plate, guilt! If you do clean your plate, guilt!

Here is Margaret’s post about the “Fuck It’ diet, from http://www.margaretcho.com/blog/2003/11/06/the-fuck-it-diet/

I have lost some weight which has set off a strange wave of paranoia among people that I have either had my stomach stapled or shut off with a rubber band, or am on some freaky raw food diet or whatever.

What happened was that I was fucking sick and tired of dieting and working out. I fucking was sick and tired of buying clothes that were too small for me so I could ‘thin into them.’ I was fucking sick and tired of eating 5 to 7 small meals a day. I was sick and tired of no carbs. I was fucking sick and tired of thinking about food and not thinking about food. I was fucking sick and tired of my trainer and any type of exercise. I went to a nutritionist and I lost a lot - of money. I never left his office without dropping at least a grand on bullshit. Shakes, pills, supplements, food substitutes, exercise programs. I said “FUCKING FUCK THIS FUCK IT FUCK IT SERIOUSLY FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK FUCK FUCK IT!!!!”

I stopped going to Fred Segal and getting the one thing in the whole store that fit me. I started buying clothes that fucking fit me, like now. I put away all notions of what diets meant to me, what I was supposed to eat and not supposed to eat. I altogether lost the thought process that carried me through my life - my dieting and exercise regimen - and started thinking about the people I loved, hated, tolerated, laughed at, laughed with. There was a lot of time to read. I wanted to watch old movies. I ate a lot of shitty food. I gained some weight and it was scary. But it didn’t really make a difference. Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it. I stopped exercising, and started writing. I played with my dogs. I looked at shit on Ebay. I started to eat what I wanted - and kept doing it. Not a food vacation - not a respite between diets. I just was going to eat eat eat eat eat eat and fucking eat some more.

Then, I kind of started to get weirdly thinner. I get it now. Because I don’t care about food, it is there when I want it, I don’t crave it and want it and think about it. Since I can have everything, nothing is that important. I don’t need to eat a whole cake because I can eat a whole cake every day every meal if I want and I don’t care. I don’t prepare to eat because I might be hungry later and ‘they’ won’t have what I have to eat. When I am hungry, I eat. You know, that is what the weird diet is.

Here is what I usually eat every day. In the morning I have a bowl of cereal with two kinds mixed, granola and LIFE. If I am in a hotel, I have granola and yogurt, croissants, one chocolate and one regular and then a big cranberry juice. I drink a lot of water, and a lot of lemonade, regular COKE - no diet anything ever. After that, I usually eat a peanut butter cup or something like that. Then I get to work, which is writing usually, recording sometimes, interviews, etc.. I get hungry later around early afternoon, and so I eat what I think is a good thing at the moment, which could be mac and cheese, or pizza. I eat as much as I want, but it is usually too rich to eat all of it and since I am not dieting and I don’t need to cram the forbidden food in before the diet starts up again, I eat as much as I feel good eating and leave the rest. I leave a lot on the plate because I need not clean my plate. Why? I don’t have to. And the value of not having to finish all my food, probably has been the biggest contributor to my healing around food. I used to feel like I needed to eat all of it, all and then some, but actually, it doesn’t feel good to do that. It doesn’t taste good. I can have more when I am hungry again. I eat dinner late, usually with friends. I like appetizers. I will order 3-4 types, so I can have a variety of edible treats, instead of an entrée. If I order entrees, it would be more than one, because I deserve to eat what I like. I never eat leftovers. I never take anything home. I never eat anything that doesn’t taste heavenly. I never eat when I am not hungry. I never let myself get too hungry. I never deny myself a fucking thing because I have denied myself enough for 1000 lifetimes and there is no more denial for me in the way that I live. I deserve all the mozzarella sticks, all the fucking chocolate, all the fucking pizza, all the chicken a’la king, and I deserve to leave what I don’t finish on the plate.

So there you go. Big secret diet. Love. Love and the audacity to actually waste food.

Cheney: No link between Saddam Hussein, 9/11 - CNN.com

Anyone who knows me knows that this headline made me laugh. The kind of laughter that is a cover-up for tears…

I’m disgusted.

Here’s a peek at the story, from CNN Politics.com:

“WASHINGTON (CNN) – Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that he does not believe Saddam Hussein was involved in the planning or execution of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney says Saddam Hussein "provided sanctuary … and resources to terrorists."

He strongly defended the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq, however, arguing that Hussein’s previous support for known terrorists was a serious danger after 9/11.”

George Tiller Killed: Abortion Doctor Shot At Church

Follow the link for a bunch of updates, including a suspect being caught.

“WICHITA, Kansas — Dr. George Tiller, a Kansas doctor whose clinic received national attention for performing late-term abortions, was shot to death as he entered his Wichita church on Sunday.

"Members of the congregation who were inside the sanctuary at the time of the shooting were being kept inside the church by police," the Wichita Eagle reported, "and those arriving were being ushered into the parking lot."

Media reports said the suspected killer fled the scene in a blue Taurus. Police described him as a white male in his 50s or 60s.

Tiller has been among the few U.S. physicians performing late-term abortion, making him a favored target of anti-abortion protesters. He testified that he and his family have suffered years of harassment and threats. His clinic was the site of the 1991 "Summer of Mercy" protests marked by mass demonstrations and arrests. His clinic was bombed in 1985, and an abortion opponent shot him in both arms in 1993.

Tiller’s clinic also provided group and individual counseling, as well as chaplain and funeral services for people who were grieving.

The anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, which runs a "Tiller Watch" feature on its website, released a statement condemning the shooting. "We are shocked at this morning’s disturbing news that Mr. Tiller was gunned down. Operation Rescue has worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see him brought to justice. We denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning. We pray for Mr. Tiller’s family that they will find comfort and healing that can only be found in Jesus Christ."

Tiller remained prominent in the news in recent years, in part because of an investigation begun by former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, an abortion opponent.”

Marilyn French, feminist and novelist, dies at 79