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While conversing with an acquaintance last week, I came to the sudden, horrible realization that I read way too many ridiculous animal blogs. I’m not talking about dailykitten or cuteoverlord type sites (warning: good pictures, unbearable writing/graphics), or even the ever-amusing LolCats. No, we’re talking about incredibly targeted, silly blogs about animals with very specific (dis)positions.

• Disapproving Rabbits
• Cats in Sinks
• My Cat Hates You
• FailDogs
• Beedogs
• This Peanut Looks Like a Duck

This Rabbit Disapproves of This Post

Oh, West Virginia. 2008 is turning into the year that I start to hate you.

At least the candidates are making my decisions easier, given that Hillary is a sore loser and McCain is older than dirt.

I finally upgraded my Wordpress today (albeit not without some human error induced headaches). The new admin interface is amazing. Highly recommended.

The Puffs is feeling much better… so much so that I had to disguise his pills in baby food to get him to take it, as he’s no longer allowing me to shove things down his throat at will. He should be able to get the metal staples out of his tummy soon, and is even starting to pick fights with the Fuzz. I’m fairly certain that he’ll be fully recovered sooner than my finances will. Pet insurance, man.

It’s been a funny month:

1. I went to Summit Point to watch the boy race. Sadly, I did not get to watch him roll over his own foot with his own car. Luckily, nothing’s broken but his dignity.
2. We threw the boy a birthday party. Mom and Dad came, and there was cooking, drinking, and dancing on the roof, as well as mirrors broken and chalkboards wiped clean. All and all, not a bad way to turn 29.
3. This kid made me miss the midwest.
4. Apple confused me. It’s one thing to post the KB article just to let you know there’s a problem, but it’s been five months!
5. The Puffs got sick with a UTI and had to go to the vet. He’s not laying around staring into space and refusing to eat while I try not to freak out. Vet says to keep offering food (Beech Nut Chicken & Chicken Broth, strangely), but he is spectacularly unimpressed. Although that may be better than his previously drugged-up state — I’ve never seen a cat hit his head on a glass tabletop repeatedly before. Ouch.

I’m probably going to hell, but I can’t resist:

Mullets are a family tradition for the Arnesons — Brady’s older brother Blake won the same award in 2005. Their father Scott Arneson also had a mullet as a child.

For some reason, I find this Powerpoint-inspired answer to life’s problems strangely compelling. I think it’s the narrator’s accent and phrasing; it’s so sympathetic and yet unnatural at the same time. This is how I imagine our eventual robot overlords will sound.

Keith Olbermann as a guinea pig:

Almost as distinguished as the real thing:

My friend, dancing compatriot, and one-time roommate/disastrous breakup savior Art Kuo was on NPR today for inventing a generator-equipped knee brace. Basically, it generates electricity by recapturing the braking energy you expend when you walk. It’s pretty big and clunky right now, but the proof of concept is still pretty awesome, as is the list of potential applications.

And here I’d been complaining about how he still hasn’t visited me in New York.

There’s no good way to resume updating your website after a long hiatus; even when you have something interesting to say, it gets buried under the weight of inertia and you wind up searching for that one really brilliant post that will justify all your slothfulness. Which, of course, can never happen, so here goes.

I went to Brighton Beach last December. It was sort of like Russian Disneyland… here were dancers, and fire, and rain coming from the ceiling. Not to mention the drag queen. And that was all before the club itself opened. I didn’t know such a thing existed in New York, and I’m pretty sure my life has somehow been changed by this new-found knowledge.

Threw a Soju party, with hilarious results. And by “hilarious,” I mean “disastrous,” at least for those of us who can’t remember how we made it home last night. Mental note: one bottle per person in the future. Order upfront, and do not waver.

Went to Chicago for a little HC reunion last weekend. It’s always a good weekend when your face hurts from laughing afterwards, even if it was too cold to do anything but cook, play video games, and tell the same old stories you’ve been telling for years. L brought his girlfriend, and R came as well, so it was a fun experiment in HC + SOs. R’s friends from Hoosierland came up as well, so there were multiple worlds colliding. It was so lovely I didn’t want to leave.

The boy and I are celebrating our one-year anniversary next weekend. Which is kind of awesome and kind of scary at the same time, because it seems like we just started dating in a lot of ways. Groundhogs, man. Trouble.

“Nearly half of African Americans born to middle-income parents in the late 1960s plunged into poverty or near-poverty as adults,” says the Washington Post this morning. Based on a study of income mobility done by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the article paints a grim picture of African American advancement in which black parents are unable to pass along their success to their children, unlike white parents of similar strata.

Two out of three Americans are upwardly mobile, meaning they had higher incomes than their parents. About half the time, moving up meant not only that they earned more money than their parents, but also that they were better off in relation to other Americans than their parents were.

That growth was most evident among lower-income people. Overall, four out of five children born into families at the bottom 20 percent of wage earners surpassed their parents’ income. Broken down by race, nine in 10 whites were better-paid than their parents were, compared with three out of four blacks.

These numbers are actually based on household income; median income for men in their 30s has actually declined 12% in the period studied.

So. Where does that put us? I’ve heard a lot of people tell me that affirmative action should be based on income/socioeconomic status and not on race, but it’s hard for me to read this and not come to the conclusion that race and status are still inextricably entwined. Using status as a proxy for race simply reinforces the belief that racism isn’t an issue anymore, making it easier to ignore the very real problems this study illustrates.

To: Parents of Students Scheduled to Take Exams
From: Residential Student Congress
Subject: Send a Care Package To Help Your Student Through FinalsTwo students showed up to get their care packages. One beamed when she received her package. The Other, whose family had not reserved a package, immediately used her cell phone and called Mom with a plaintive “You didn’t send me a Care Package?”

Because so many students receive Care Packages during exam time, it can hurt if a student is left out. This year, we have a solution to make sure every student feels supported at this critical time.

Too bad they left out the part where Mom smacks the kid for being an entitled brat.

Not to get all I-walked-uphill-both-ways-barefoot about it, but did Cornell just try to emotionally blackmail me into buying a box full of pre-packaged food for my little sister? And do they seriously expect me to fall for this nonsense? My mom medaled at the Passive-Aggressive Olympics — there’s no way they can compete. And for $47K a year, the Baby should get free Twizzlers, dammit!

There are some things in life nothing can prepare you for. Mexican/Irish weddings may very well be one of them. For example:

1. K’s family dancing to Jimmy Buffet in some sort of crazy Irish circle dance.
2. K’s dad deciding that it was getting too hot, whipping off his jacket Chippendales style, twirling it over his head a few times, and then throwing it into the crowd of guests… some of whom were still finishing their dinners.
3. “Cheers!”
   “My drink is empty. How does it always get so empty?”

Don’t worry, the Mexican side was plenty o fun too:

1. Mariachi band.
2. Mock funeral for the groom’s singlehood, complete with dirge music. I don’t know what was up with the one sock, though.
3. K in a circle. With a belt. Cracking the whip at her new husband, who is wearing an apron, holding a small child, and sweeping around her in a circle with a broom.
4. Mexican line dance to a Spanish version of “The Roof is on Fire”
5. Mexican hat dance
6. Some sort of “everyone-join-hands-and-run-around-the-hall-like-headless-chickens” dance. Chairs were toppled, yo.

Needless to say (although I will anyway), it was an amazing wedding, and incredibly wonderful to see K so happy and with such a wonderful man… not to mention a stepson, and an entire family of in-laws who adore her. I think my tiny little heart grew two sizes that day.