Our Little Orphan Annie

I was hoping for an uneventful weekend. I should have known better.

Yesterday afternoon, my son was helping chase down a neighbor’s dog. Upon following the dog into the alley, he came across an abandoned litter of kittens. There were three of them, and they couldn’t be more than two or three weeks old. They were filthy, surrounded by swarming flies, and one kitten’s eyes were matted shut. It was so sad.

My son is a huge animal lover, and I’m quite fond of them myself. We couldn’t just leave them there, so we gathered them up in a towel, and took them into our utility room. They were barely moving and wouldn’t even take water.

Oh! My! FSM!

This has been an incredibly stressful day. I’m honestly surprised that I didn’t collapse half way through it. The good news is that it gave me some good blogging material. The only problem is that I am so drained from it all, I can’t possibly write coherently tonight. So I thought I’d write about how I can’t write about it, and write about it when I can. Yeah…

Stay Tuned!

How Do I Love Thee?

My Dearest Michael,

You are the most wonderful and loving person I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. We have grown together in many ways over the past seven years. Things have not always been easy for us, but loving you has been; it’s the easiest, most natural thing I’ve ever done.

I appreciate your patience and tenderness; I admire your strength and commitment to us and our future. You have loved me in ways I never knew possible, and I will always love you with a passion that I could never have imagined, until you came into my life.

You have a way of knowing what I think and how I feel, before I say a single word. The way we always “get” each other, like no-one else ever could, gives me comfort and peace. I know I can tell you anything at all; I can share my deepest feelings, greatest fears, craziest dreams, and wildest fantasies. You are kind and gentle, and your love gives me a feeling of security and safety that I never knew before.

You are the love of my life and my very best friend. I dedicate this song to you in celebration of our first month of marriage:

Two Kinds Of Texans

There are two kinds of Texans: those who are born here and stay, and those who are born here and get the hell out as fast as they can. Count me in with the latter.

Before I get started, I believe a couple of acknowledgments are in order.

First I would like to thank Mike, author of The Odd Blog, for his dedication to exposing fools and liars who insist on promoting creationist propaganda. Ben Stein’s Expelled! is but one example of the kind of garbage that Mike refuses to tolerate.

Upon checking in at The Odd Blog, as I routinely do, I found Mike’s latest entry, Ouchies. I do not share Mike’s talent for slicing and dicing these creationist fools, so I was delighted to learn of a way that I, too, can help expose at least one.

I would also like to thank PZ Myers, author of Pharyngula, one of the best science blogs I’ve seen. Professor Myers recently made a blog post calling for other bloggers to help promote a counter-site to Ben Stein’s “hideous little propaganda film” Expelled!. For instructions on how to participate, please see Professor Myers’s post, Bloggers, you have a job to do. While you’re there, please have a look around the rest of the site. You’ll be glad you did!

At this point, you may be wondering about the title of this post, and if I’m planning to tie it in somehow. Of course I am. I do tend to ramble, hence the title of this blog. I always know where I’m going, though, and I usually get there eventually.

Mountain Dew or Clorox – What’ll It Be?

As you may already know, I am strongly opposed to abstinence-only “education”. For those who need clarification, this does not mean that I oppose teaching abstinence; just abstinence only until marriage without any comprehensive sex education to back it up.

It doesn’t work. Instead of being horny but equipped to deal with it, the kids on the receiving end of this “education” just end up horny and ignorant. As a Texan, I can tell you that it’s a dangerous combination.

And now we have yet another example of the kind of nonsense that is circulated among teenagers and accepted as fact in the absence of comprehensive sex education: