January 2008 archive

my boy died this morning. he was a sweet soul. kind. abiding the silliness of us humans.

mae west in drag.

bouncing dog. always wanting food. was known to raid the kitty litter.

kind. really kind. gentle. funny. he loved me. i loved him.

strange. how it happened. last night at my aunt’s house (we were house sitting), he seemed not to be able to see. and i was down on the floor with him, trying to understand what had happened… that it had happened. the seizure was next. i found the animal hospital… we did xrays and full blood screen. nothing detectable, except he had no platelets… not good. not good at all. i left him there at 3am, sedated. i got up at 6:30am and he had done well the tech said over the phone. i was getting ready to leave and not five minutes later the vet called and said i should hurry… he had taken a turn for the worse.

he was gone when i got there. i wanted to be with him when he left this life. i went over to him on the steel table. they had covered him. and he looked peaceful… they said he went easy. and i was so grateful for that. but i wanted more time. i didn’t see this coming. and now he’s gone.

he saved me so many times. my humanity. my sense of humor. my sense of belonging. there is something eternal in the love of a dog. life makes sense next to them.

i miss him. i came back home. i had to. but it’s so quiet… so still.

i love  you Bear. Bear-Lo. Smuppy. Silly dog. Sweet dog.

The sun came out and it’s a bright day this day. Like when the cosmos gets back a really really special soul… it can’t help but to light up.

Some news and open thread.

Postcard from Nevada — Barack, Hillary, and John at the grown-up’s debate.

Inside today’s Four at Four:

1. Bush overrules federal court
2. White House email tapes erased
3. CIA torture tapes destroyed
4. A rat the size of a hippopotamus

Go on click below the fold and comment… I dare you!

Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) took the floor in the House of Representatives last night to call for the House Judiciary Committee to begin impeachment hearings against Vice President Dick Cheney…..to applause from the gallery.

From The Politico

At the Republican National Committee, press secretary Alex Conant dismissed Wexler’s impeachment call as a “publicity stunt.”

“Wexler is a partisan bomb-thrower hoping to earn points with the far Left,” Conant said. “His absurd calls for impeachment hearings are little more than a vain attempt to make himself relevant.”

I just started playing around with this program:  Ultra Fractal 4.  I don’t know the first thing about programming the fractals, but I downloaded a bunch of other people’s free code and I’m learning to manipulate it.    Mostly I’m just selecting sections, zooming in/out, and  playing with the color schemes.  I have a ridiculously big 30-inch monitor so the detail is really mesmerizing on my screen.    Hard to do it justice here – but if you click the pics you can get a slightly bigger size.  

Branches

Dragonfly

Hurricanes

Temple

One of the cool things you can do with the program is animation.  I haven’t tried that yet but there are a ton of these on YouTube (just search for Fractal Animation).

Abierto Threado – No recommendo.  

~OTB  

Last night during the debates, to an almost empty House Floor, Rep. Wexler introduced 190,000 signatures of people calling for the impeachment of Vice President Richard Cheney.

Rep. Wexler gave an amazing performance.  Completely shut out of the media this morning, only CBS seems to be about the only web-site with this story.  Of course it’s on Wexler’s website also.

Here is the video, it is brilliant, please pass this around.

On the day after his birthday celebration, and with the argument over his legacy going on amongst the big two Democratic candidates, perhaps it’s a good time to look at how MLKjr might look upon the Democratic candidates.