omgwtf!

Chris Matthews totally shreds belligerent simpleton and shrieking right-wingnut Kevin James on Hardball the other night.

Brilliant.

The Bush administration has no problem with torture, so what they should do is strap loyal toady Kevin James into a chopper, hook him up to an amp, and fly him over Afghanistan as an aural warfare device to torment the populace into finally giving up bin Laden. I bet it’d take less than a day before his voice began to drill smoking holes into their brains, even if they didnt listen to a word he said.

I can’t believe this guy actually does a radio show. I thought there were laws against noise pollution in this country.

“What did Neville Chamberlain Do?”

Turn down your volume. Seriously.

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M-a-r-r-y-i-ng!

Okay, so there’s one syllable too many, but that’s for the extra awesome in this story:

May 16, 2008
Marriage Equality Comes to California
By George Takei
Our California dream is reality. Brad Altman and I can now marry. We are overjoyed! At long last, the barrier to full marriage rights for same-sex couples has been torn down. We are equal with all citizens of our state!
The California Supreme Court has ruled that all Californians have a fundamental right to marry the person he or she loves. Brad and I have shared our lives together for over 21 years. We’ve worked in partnership; he manages the business side of my career and I do the performing. We’ve traveled the world together from Europe to Asia to Australia. We’ve shared the good times as well as struggled through the bad. He helped me care for my ailing mother who lived with us for the last years of her life. He is my love and I can’t imagine life without him. Now, we can have the dignity, as well as all the responsibilities, of marriage. We embrace it all heartily.
The California Supreme Court further ruled that our Constitution provides for equal protection for all and that it cannot have marriage for one group and another form - domestic partnership - for another group. No more “separate but equal.” No more second-class citizenship. Brad and I are going to be married as full citizens of our state.
As a Japanese American, I am keenly mindful of the subtle and not so subtle discrimination that the law can impose. During World War II, I grew up imprisoned behind the barbed wire fences of U.S. internment camps. Pearl Harbor had been bombed and Japanese Americans were rounded up and incarcerated simply because we happened to look like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor. Fear and war hysteria swept the nation. A Presidential Executive Order directed the internment of Japanese Americans as a matter of national security. Now, with the passage of time, we look back and see it as a shameful chapter of American history. President Gerald Ford rescinded the Executive Order that imprisoned us. President Ronald Reagan formally apologized for the unjust imprisonment. President George H.W. Bush signed the redress payment checks to the survivors. It was a tragic and dark taint on American history.
With time, I know the opposition to same sex marriage, too, will be seen as an antique and discreditable part of our history. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy remarked on same sex marriage, “Times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper, in fact, serve only to oppress.”
For now, Brad and I are enjoying the delicious dilemma of deciding where, when, and how we will be married. Marriage equality took a long time, but, like fine wine, its bouquet is simply exquisite.

George Takei

Yeah, the haters are already working to overturn everything, but this is still really, really cool.

I can see why two people, both of whom happen to be of the same gender, being in love together for a really long time in a committed relationship would be so threatening to the Christian conservatives that they’d be outraged about this, you know? Everyone knows that only straight people can have that kind of relationship.

Right?

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Yarrow was put to sleep on 17 April, 2008, the day before I flew to New York for a much-needed week-long break, spent with my friends.

That week was able to distract me, more or less, from missing Yarrow, but it wasn’t able to distract me entirely, and now that I’ve been home a week and his remains have been delivered from the crematory service I send all my ratties to, the box is now resting in one of his favourite spots next to my window.

Yarrow was only just over a year old. From the time he was very young I had always noticed that he breathed a little too rapidly, a little too heavily. I knew it was a congenital defect, a growth - something that would never be able to be cured, only handled and maintained until it grew too severe for him to cope with. I hoped that he would be able to live longer than he did, and tried to give him the best life that I could while I had him. When he really began showing signs of distress in the beginning of March of this year, I took him in to verify what I had suspected all along: Yarrow had a massive growth in his lung. The tumour was so large it was literally squeezing the breath out of him; it took up nearly his entire chest cavity and not only inhibited his lungs but pressed against his windpipe. It was only a matter of time before this tumour suffocated him to death.

When I got him, he grew to be a very, very special rat to me. All my rats are special to me, but Yarrow was one of the different ones. He was mischievous and very, very smart, and full of fun. He was a practical joker. He used to play pranks on me all the time; he’d invent games, he’d play tricks on the other rats - and whenever he was up to his shenanigans he’d have an expression on his face that made him look EXACTLY like Harpo Marx. He used to sit and stare at me with that little masked face of his, and as he began to decline his eyes would never leave me. He rarely left my side, because I always knew I wouldnt have much time with him, but toward the end he was literally with me night and day.

The vet was very kind. He gave me steroids to inhibit the growth of the tumour as long as possible. My rat guru gave me a lot of support and advice and wholeheartedly and without hesitation offered to care for him while I was in New York.

The trip to New York was tormenting me. How could I leave him? Even with my rat guru, who knows more about these creatures than any human being I have ever met, it was not the same as me being here. He counted on me; he’d start to panic if I wasn’t around. How could I go off to New York and have a good time just at the time he needed me most? For the first time in my entire life, I hated - really hated - the idea of going on a trip. For the first time, I hated having to go to New York.

The weekend before I was set to leave, Yarrow worsened. A day or two later, I knew there was pretty much nothing more that could be done for him. I waited, spending as much time with him as I could, and that Tuesday night, he began to show the first real signs of being unable to breathe. Wednesday, he grew worse and started having his first gasping episodes. He was eating, he wanted to play, he wanted to cuddle, he was a normal, healthy rat in every way - except that he had an alien in his chest that was squeezing the life out of him with each passing moment, and now he was suffering.

I put Yarrow to sleep on Thursday morning. He died easily, surrounded by love and familiarity, not strangers or a cold examination room being handled by people who he did not know. He simply went to sleep. He wanted to live. I wanted him to live. But there was nothing either one of us could do, and letting him die a death of slow suffocation was simply not an option. I wasn’t feeling guilty; just heartbroken.

The cruel irony of it all is that one thing Yarrow used to particularly enjoy was smelling the air. From when I first got him, every time a breeze would blow in through the window, he’d raise his head and sniff and sniff and sniff and sniff. He’d lie in front of the window by the hour, sleep in front of the window. He loved to breathe. I gave him all the air I possibly could for as long as I possibly could.

Well, this is a testament to my boy. I love my other rats completely, and I am trying hard not to neglect them, but I miss Yarrow very, very much. So now what is left of his physical form sits in a handsome box in his old spot in front of the window. He may not be able to breathe the air anymore, but still it surrounds him, and true to my word, I will never abandon him. He’ll be with me always, just like all my other rats will. I just wish that things could have been different.

Safe journeys, Yarrow, my shining little masked prankster. Thank you for coming my way.

This post was edited to correct the dates, because I’m a dumbass. No number shall escape me unmangled!

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From today’s Writer’s Almanac newsletter. I really like this one.

Posthumous

Would it surprise you to learn
that years beyond your longest winter
you still get letters from your bank, your old
philanthropies, cold flakes drifting
through the mail-slot with your name?
Though it’s been a long time since your face
interrupted the light in my door-frame,
and the last tremblings of your voice
have drained from my telephone wire,
from the lists of the likely, your name
is not missing. It circles in the shadow-world
of the machines, a wind-blown ghost. For generosity
will be exalted, and good credit
outlasts death. Caribbean cruises, recipes,
low-interest loans. For you who asked
so much of life, who lived acutely
even in duress, the brimming world
awaits your signature. Cancer and heart disease
are still counting on you for a cure.
B’nai Brith numbers you among the blessed.
They miss you. They want you back.

by Jean Nordhaus, from Innocence. © Ohio State University Press, 2006.

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