At the Litter & Poo Café...

... did you Obamadisonians clean up after yourself as well as the Tea Partiers do?

The clock on the mantle ticks, Teddy Roosevelt is a faded image of military readiness, the VP bows his head in (pseudo?) prayer...

... and the grim ladies in coral and turquoise look to their leader, Barack Obama...


(Enlarge.)

... who seems to be making a very precise point. Look at his hands:



And let's get a closer look at those BP executives (BP CEO Tony Hayward, BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, BP General Counsel Rupert Bondy):



Svanberg, especially, seems capable of overmatching the President's determination.

But, of course, they are all posing. Including the usually lethargic Janet Napolitano — at the right, turned from the camera, dressed in electric blue — who seems roused for action. Not as roused as Teddy Roosevelt and his horse... and think about how difficult it would have been for a horse to pose for a painting like that. It's all phony of course, all the way down to TR and the horse he rode in on.

The tiniest horse in the world.

I thought I was resistant to this sort of thing, but I vocalized a heartfelt "aw" — with my office door open, and I'm a little embarrassed. The teensy-tiniest bit.

"Are zoophiles attracted only to sexually mature animals — and if not, does this make them 'zoopedophiles'?"

"Do zoophiles find particular members of their preferred species more 'attractive' than other individuals from those species, and, if so, are they seduced by standard beauty cues, such as facial symmetry in horses? What is the percentage of homosexual zoophiles (those who prefer animal partners of the same sex) over heterosexual zoophiles?"

Questions, questions. I must say I've never thought about any of those questions before.

When a woman makes a statue, we don't say she sculpted it, do we?

I give a 1-minute lecture on that cowboy statue that's out in front of the Texas capitol building.

Sarah Palin's book is called "Going Rogue."

Why "rogue" and not "maverick"? "Maverick," of course, was John McCain's word, which Palin adopted and used in her speeches as she ran alongside him.

Here's a dictionary definition for "maverick":

1 : an unbranded range animal; especially : a motherless calf
2 : an independent individual who does not go along with a group or party

Here's a dictionary definition for "rogue":

1 : vagrant, tramp
2 : a dishonest or worthless person : scoundrel
3 : a mischievous person : scamp
4 : a horse inclined to shirk or misbehave
5 : an individual exhibiting a chance and usually inferior biological variation

"Rogue" has way more negative meanings in the dictionary, but "maverick" is the word long applied to John McCain, and for Palin, it can't signify her independence properly. Both words are applied to animals, and here the difference is good for Palin. The maverick animal is unbranded or motherless — unowned. This is a fate that falls upon the poor creature. The "rogue" is specifically a horse that resists being controlled by others. It is exhibiting its own will, and not the victim of happenstance. Now, fate touched Palin when McCain choose her, and she did get into trouble when she exhibited will, and the maverick's people called her "rogue":

The title of Palin's book is apparently a reference to stories that came out before Election Day that advisors to GOP Presidential Nominee John McCain felt Palin was "going rogue" and not following the advice and message of those running the campaign.

The idea of misbehaving works particularly well for a woman, especially a woman setting herself apart from the men. If we speak of a man misbehaving — being a rogue — we think of him straying sexually. But a misbehaving women — in my book — sounds like a great feminist: someone who thumbs her nose at the patriarchy.

And then there's Rogue, the X-Men character — "The more Rogue used her mutant power, the more her mind became filled with fragmentary psychic echoes of the people she absorbed." So the title is going to have a completely different feeling to the millions of people who know the word from the comics.

***

You can help support this blog if you use this link to buy "Going Rogue."

Horse legs!

You know you want them...



(Via Boing Boing.)

"Does the United States really want to be a country that sends horses to slaughter, here or abroad?"

"Throughout history, horses have paid an excruciating price as we built our civilizations on their backs, forced them into our bloody wars and bestowed on them the agonizing fate of being the predominant mode of transportation. Humanity owes the horse, and a 21st-century horse-loving nation ought to ensure a life, and death, of dignity for these animals."

A letter to the editor. Here's the underlying news story about slaughtering horses:

An estimated 100,000 horses a year are shipped to Canada and Mexico for slaughter, prompting Congress to consider a bill that would ban the sale and transport of horses for human consumption outside the country. But Arkansas, Georgia and eight other states are against such a ban, saying owners need affordable options for unwanted horses.

Last week in Montana, the Legislature approved a bill allowing the construction of horse-slaughter facilities....

“Bottom line is you have to separate the animal from the pet,” said State Representative Edward B. Butcher, a Republican who wrote the Montana bill.

Butcher....

“No one has to send a horse to a processing plant,” he added. “It’s just an option for horses that are unusable. And it’s much more humane than leaving them there to starve to death.”

There are a lot of issues here — including federalism, one of my favorite issues: Is this a matter that ought to be dealt with at the state or the national level?

But what I'm most interested in myself is the letter-writer's argument. Should we take a moral position on the individual animal in light of the historical contribution of the species? Is it okay to slaughter cattle — because they were always only about food — but not okay to slaughter horses — because of all the work they've done for us? Some horses have gone to battle, so all horses should be honored? Is this a good moral argument?

Adorable pony alert.

This link goes to a photo essay about a bike ride in the Madison area, and there's a lot more to it than the amazing cuteness of the pony. But, damn, what a cute pony!

Amongst the horses.

There's the horse we called "Bitey":



And lots of mellow horses:



And these guys:





There now, time for more wine and — this being Cincinnati — more chili.