omgwtf!

I feel like my favourite, coolest, most awesome uncle just died. This was completely unexpected. This fucking sucks.

I wish he could have lived through this next election. I would have loved to hear what he had to say about it. I can’t believe that he’s gone. I really can’t.

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Just a potato sack with four five-week-old kittens inside, tossed them right into a busy intersection. A woman ran for the bag because she noticed it was moving, and rescued one. The rest, she said, were dead. She didnt elaborate, but if you saw the look on her face, she didnt really have to. She took the survivor to the vet and has adopted her, naming her Luna. Luna is on antibiotics and should have a good life - so she lucked out.

A Marine was recently discharged from the service for tossing a puppy over a cliff while someone videotaped him. That little nugget ended up on YouTube. You could hear the puppy yelping as he went over. The Marine was laughing, even as his fellow Marines chastised him for doing it. I’m sure he’s not laughing now, but I can assure you he’s not crying as hard as I want him to be.

I want to know what in the fuck is wrong with people who will do this. It’s bad enough that these creatures never did a fucking thing to you. These are babies. They are utterly defenseless. They offer no threat of any kind, no resistance, they are literally no match for you. What the fuck is wrong with you? What the fuck are you thinking?

I tell you what. These people are fucking lucky as shit that I’m not a superhero. They’re lucky, but I think I might have a goddamn stroke.

Edit: And while I normally take the side of non-humans over humans, to be fair, I wanted to include this gem I discovered this morning while wrapping up a hearing I was working on: a 27-year-old man stomped a one or two-year-old toddler to death by the side of a highway in California on Saturday night. Several passers-by pulled over and tried to stop this man, and the cops had a chopper in the area, swung by, saw what this man was doing, and landed in the field next to the road. The officer was on the ground for less than two minutes, they say, before he made the decision to shoot this man because nothing would stop him from stomping this toddler to death.

They shot and killed him, but it was too late for the baby. Witnesses say that before the police got there, the man declared the child had “demons” in him, and though they tried, they couldn’t even pull him off the boy. Nothing would stop him from punching and stomping the kid to death by the side of the road. The police think they know who he is, but the beating caused so much damage they say it’s impossible to get a visual ID. Apparently, there was blood all over the cab of the pickup truck as well as all over the man himself and on the highway. I guess he sure did get those demons. More than he bargained for, maybe. Either way, not enough of them.

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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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So a couple days ago, I tracked my brother down and found an email address for the cold-cunt bitch he lives with, and contacted her to let him contact me because I wanted to give him some information I thought he needed to have.

He’s still a complete and total asshole.   I can see now why they stuck together for so long.  They are both so selfish, pretentious, and insufferable that nobody else could possibly stand to be near them, and my brother is such a witless moron that the idea of his surviving on his own is pretty much out of the question.
It’s funny how a one-line email can impart so many things, isnt it?

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Bayberry died about 40 minutes ago. He had been diagnosed with renal cancer last weekend. I was hoping that the antibiotics he was on would help him, but they really didnt. At least his illness wasn’t long and lingering.

He was a good, good rat who loved his peas and always had a smile on. Farewell, my little Badbelly Rat. May the stars shine down upon your tiny galactic highway. I’ll see you on the other side. I’m so glad you’re not in pain anymore. I wish I could have helped you.

<3<3<3

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Dear Friends,
Thank you for your words of appreciations and for your encouragements.
Anything in this world will not be able to slow down my pain of losing a so
good husband, a so great friend.
I am wishing you all the very best, Marilena Librescu

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The massacre that occurred at Virginia Tech on Monday, 16 April 2007, has consumed me. I am reeling from it and it’s thrown my emotions into an uproar. For two days I have been angry, depressed, and heartbroken. I have so much to say about it, but I am so emotional over it right now that I can’t organize my thoughts into anything coherent.

This happens to me a lot whenever something strikes a deep chord within me, and what usually happens is that time slides by and I never say anything relevant.

That may well happen this time, too. But before that time slides by too quickly, there is one person I had to write about: Professor Liviu Librescu.

Thirty-two people were killed on Monday by one desperately troubled man named Cho Seung-Hui, who at the end took his own life even as police were bursting into the building on the floor below. For most of those who were murdered, we will never know the immense potential that could have been realized: what might they have been capable of, had they been allowed to flourish in this world? What would their discoveries have been?

One of the professors who was murdered was Kevin Granata, who was considered one of the top five biomechanics researchers in this country. His research centered around muscle and reflex response and robotics, including computer simulation of walking and running. His work helped thousands of children with CP walk again. He was only 45 years old. He may have been the man who would have given all victims of cerebral palsy the chance to be free to walk and run. We will never know.

Another of the murdered professors - there were five in all who were murdered in addition to all the students - was G.V. Loganathan, a professor of civil engineering and environmental engineering so well loved by the students he taught that they gave him the award for faculty member of the year over and over again, despite the difficulty of his classes. In 2006, he was one of three recipients for the Wine Awards for Excellence in Teaching. He won the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. He was killed while leading a class in advanced hydrology.

And then there was Professor Liviu Librescu.

Professor Librescu was a Romanian Jew, an Israeli citizen, and a professor of engineering whose work has been cited more than a thousand times in the technical journals.

Student Jo Anne Meirovitch remembers him as a man with such polished, old world manners that he would kiss your hand when he greeted you. He was attentive and considerate, always reaching out to his students, as was the habit of many of his colleagues on the faculty at Virginia Tech. He was extremely highly regarded by his peers and by his students, and was very much involved in their lives, their education, and their research.

Librescu was a survivor of the Shoah, interred in a Soviet labour camp after his father was deported by the Nazis, and later lived in Romania under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu. Because Ceausescu did not permit collaboration of scientists and engineers outside Romania, Librescu requested and was granted permission to emigrate to Israel - but only after being fired from his position and prevented from leaving the country for a year because, he was told, he had knowledge the government considered top secret. Menachem Begin personally intervened on his behalf, and he was finally allowed to leave Romania for Israel with his wife. During a sabbatical visit to the United States, Professor Librescu finally moved to Virginia in 1986 and began teaching at Virginia Tech.

At just after 9:00 on the morning of 16 April 2007, this man who had survived the Nazis and a brutal communist dictatorship was teaching a class when gunfire and screaming erupted from the classroom next to his in Norris Hall. As Cho Seung-Hui tried to break in, Librescu barricaded the door with his own body, urging his students to flee. They escaped out the windows, and as the last student to leave the classroom, Alec Calhoun - who looked over his shoulder and saw his professor holding door shut as Cho tried to force his way in - leapt from the sill, Liviu Librescu was shot through the door and killed.

Monday was Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Many, many bright lights were extinguished on Monday morning, and the loss is almost unbearable. But out of all of them, this is the death that has stricken me most. Since I learned about Liviu Librescu, I haven’t been able to get him out of my mind.. At random moments during the day, regardless of what I’m doing, I think of him and I begin to cry. To be very honest - and I never want to be tested this way - I dont know if I could have left him there alone. I dont know if I have the ability to do something like that. I wouldn’t be able to stand it; someone would have had to drag me away. And I know that I would have found it almost impossible to live with myself afterward if I had simply fled without doing anything at all to help him.

It’s not out of any sense of courage on my own part; it’s just ingrained in me that I cannot leave while someone else is in need. An elderly man who is struggling single-handedly against an armed intruder is in need. I dont think anything could have made me leave him alone while I saved myself. I do not point the finger at any of the students who fled, and I dont blame them for being terrified in any way. We cannot help who we are, and we all act very differently in panic situations than we would if we were thinking clearly.

But all the same, I cannot help but wonder why not one single student - not one, out of all of them whose lives he saved that day - remained behind with him, or insisted that he save himself instead. That makes me sadder than anything.

I just wanted to post about this man’s life, his struggles, and his murder - before time got by me and I lost it all to the hopelessly jumbled thoughts and emotions. The word “hero” is used so often now; if you stub your toe and someone offers you a lollipop, theyre a hero.

In a world that is suddenly full of heroes who do nothing at all, here was a giant of a man who espoused every single noble attribute that word could ever hope to entail. He stands out as a shining beacon of humanity on one of the darkest days in our country’s history, and he should be forever remembered for his selfless deeds.

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