The cat, not the update, is the unexpected part. He’s at the vet now, until tomorrow. He is a he. His face is indeed messed up. The tissue covering his lower jaw was almost completely torn away. One vet guy said it might have been an old wound, while another said it could have just gotten infected very quickly (it’s pus-infested and reeks to high heaven). He is only running a slight fever (as assessed by the usual uncomfortable method), and one vet said this is a fairly common kind of wound. I note he didn’t say it’s easy to fix.

The vet (Dr. Garza, in Edinburg; I’ve visited him before, and he seems to do a fine job) said that they would probably use something like stainless-steel wire to sew the flesh that used to cover his chin back where it should be, anchored in place by wrapping it around his lower fangs. Weird, and Franken-cool. I’m massively relieved that something is being done by someone who knows what to do. I guess he’s my cat for about 2 weeks, while his face attempts to heal (no word on how likely that is). I’m actively seeking another owner. He’s not my cat. I keep repeating that, like a mantra.

September 2006: Dexter. Backyard. Persistent. Adopted.

September 2007: Moses. Weeds at reservoir. Loud and fearless.

September 2008: Unnamed cat from campus. Grotesquely wounded.

He’s in the cat carrier, now. I’m off to the vet in a few minutes. My friend was showing me the cute, sociable kitten on campus, when he decided to do a Superman-type thing and landed face-first on concrete. He tore open his lower lip/face. It stopped bleeding soon, and he’s behaved pretty normally since then. No vets were open last night (except the $150-for-the-consultation-fee emergency service), but one told me on the phone he’d probably be all right. And sure enough he slept pretty much 13 solid hours, then at 7:00 began to destroy my bathroom.

No pictures, because his face looks… kinda horrific. But he is one of the yellow/orange stripey type cats. Maybe 8 to 12 weeks old? Young.

Hm. He’s stopped meowing. That won’t last once we get into the car.

I seriously do not go looking for these beasts, and stuff like this hasn’t happened between the Septembers. Sadly, I will not be keeping this little monster, either, even if (as I hope) he turns out healthy and not very seriously hurt. Two cats is enough.

Over at Mother Jones, there’s a highly informative article revisiting 18 of the more egregious inconsistencies and blunders the mainstream media in the U.S. have been responsible for, since the start of this whole “war on terror” thing¹.

I freely admit that my views of the U.S. political machinery and the war itself have changed, as things have gone along. But the Mother Jones article was a wake-up call, nevertheless. How quickly we forget the weasely words of the people in the magic box.

Second favorite:

The day before the invasion, Bill O’Reilly said, “If the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it’s clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation; I will not trust the Bush administration again, all right?”

As if we needed more evidence that Bill O’Reilly was an especially heinous, right-wing-ratings puppet. And, though it’s more of a mockery of the media, rather than a media blunder, per se, here’s my favorite:

Stephen Colbert’s routine at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in April 2006 is remembered for the in-his-face mockery of President Bush—but he also spanked the press, perhaps one reason his mainstream reviews were mixed at best. Addressing the correspondents directly, Colbert said, “Let’s review the rules. The president makes decisions; he’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Put them through a spell-check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know—fiction.”

Yeah.

The democratic machinery of the nation, by its very nature, is always “broken” to some extent, but there are functional measures of how much it’s broken. Currently, I think a strong case can be made that it’s more broken than it’s been in ages. Mainstream media organizations have often been the Bush Administration’s willing minions in this process.

It will take a long time to fix what we’ve broken in the past couple of decades (especially the last 7 years). Assuming we ever get around to fixing things.

1. It just occurred to me… is a “War on Terror” pretty much the same as “Attacking the Darkness?” Surely someone else has seen this parallel of meaningless abstraction in nomenclature before now [↩]

Looks like Kubrik’s monolith, don’t it?¹ And we are the monkeys dancing at its base :). It’s half of what I considered to be a wonderful — and even powerful — piece in the same park as the Chicago Mirror Bean. This was set at one end of a tiled plaza about fifty meters long, with a matching one facing it from the other end. I’m sure there’s an artist’s statement somewhere about what it’s supposed to represent, but I just enjoyed standing between two huge faces. I was surprised at how much of a visceral impact I felt when I stepped between them. The faces changed every few minutes, and each face shifted expressions every so often. After the jump, a few more pictures, including a close-up of the surface, which looks like bazillions of LEDs behind glass brick. Continue reading →

1. except the proportions aren’t 1 x 4 x 9 [↩]

Last Saturday I acquired (for better or worse) this Centurion Cavaletto for $40: Continue reading →

Diane Arbus would be proud.

I don’t know why I suddenly started to like this little snapshot. maybe because it looks so surreal, with the contrast of the three different qualities of light. I find interesting incongruities in the subject matter, too. Actually, it’s just Alex and me having dinner at a cabin in Tennessee, and I didn’t intend any of the interesting aspects of the photo; accidentally interesting.

In other news, this morning on my ride to work, I understood how I will eventually die. I will be lying in a hospital bed, and the doctor will have a grave look on his face (he will look like the doctor from BSG), and Alex and the children will be shaking their heads, sadly, as if they knew it all along. The medical chart will show that I have multiple cancers, respiratory problems, and probably some kind of brain damage, all due to biking to work while sucking down the exhaust of a hundred pickups and SUVs per day. In the next hospital room over, there will be a soccer mom and her yuppie husband, in for a checkup, and in perfect health. In fact, they’re so healthy, they’re scrapping their plans to start cycling, or taking walks. The doctor tells them they’ll live to be a hundred, as long as they avoid breathing any of the air outside. Cause that stuff’ll kill ya.