(no subject)

I had a pretty lovely weekend and an extremely productive one. The Super Secret Project is advancing much better than expected, and despite getting a bit sunburned while working on it, I enjoyed every minute of this weekend's efforts. I really can't wait to show it off to people. Hee.

Beyond that I had a mostly good health weekend and I'm hoping it becomes a mostly good health week. Friday is endoscopy day and then hopefully I'll get some much needed answers and a firm diagnosis and then we can move into the treatment phase. Being in diagnosis limbo is frustrating as hell, I have to say.

On a brighter note, I got to see Silent Hill which was good, but I think I'd call it a "matinee movie". Ok, but not really worth the full price. It was as suspenseful as I'd hoped, and they did a good job of making it atmospheric rather than gorey (though it did have its fair share of gore), and the locations and sets were downright spooky, I mean I remembered them from the game, it was just dead on. And Laurie Holden looked entirely too hot in that motorcycle cop outfit. Entirely too hot...wow.

The liberal cabal

Tristero points to this Krugman piece that is definitely worth a read:

But the administration officials who told us that Saddam had an active nuclear program and insinuated that he was responsible for 9/11 weren't part of a covert alliance; they all worked for President Bush. The claim that these officials hyped the case for war isn't a conspiracy theory; it's simply an assertion that people in a position of power abused that position. And that assertion only seems wildly implausible if you take it as axiomatic that Mr. Bush and those around him wouldn't do such a thing.

The truth is that many of the people who throw around terms like 'loopy conspiracy theories' are lazy bullies who, as Zachary Roth put it on CJR Daily, The Columbia Journalism Review's Web site, want to 'confer instant illegitimacy on any argument with which they disagree.' Instead of facing up to hard questions, they try to suggest that anyone who asks those questions is crazy.

Indeed, right-wing pundits have consistently questioned the sanity of Bush critics; 'It looks as if Al Gore has gone off his lithium again,' said Charles Krauthammer, the Washington Post columnist, after Mr. Gore gave a perfectly sensible if hard-hitting speech. Even moderates have tended to dismiss the administration's harsh critics as victims of irrational Bush hatred.

But now those harsh critics have been vindicated. And it turns out that many of the administration supporters can't handle the truth. They won't admit that they built a personality cult around a man who has proved almost pathetically unequal to the job. Nor will they admit that opponents of the Iraq war, whom they called traitors for warning that invading Iraq was a mistake, have been proved right. So they have taken refuge in the belief that a vast conspiracy of America-haters in the media is hiding the good news from the public.

Unlike the crazy conspiracy theories of the left - which do exist, but are supported only by a tiny fringe - the crazy conspiracy theories of the right are supported by important people: powerful politicians, television personalities with large audiences. And we can safely predict that these people will never concede that they were wrong. When the Iraq venture comes to a bad end, they won't blame those who led us into the quagmire; they'll claim that it was all the fault of the liberal media, which stabbed our troops in the back.

Of course the other effort seems to be an attempt at re-labeling Bush as a liberal. Yes, you read that correctly, they're going to try to kick him over to our side of the political spectrum in order to firmly place the blame for the past 5 years of horrendous governing on us liberals. For a group of folks so intensely resistant to any kind of admission of fallibility, and having a strong propensity to re-write reality until it suits them, I suppose this shouldn't come as a shock.

An interesting evening

So I went out for my evening walk tonight and was about halfway through it when I met a most interesting little fellow. It was a skinny little baby squirrel making distressed noises and looking entirely lost. Instead of fleeing from me, he huddled near my feet as if for protection and refused to be chased off into the underbrush. I walked a few yards away hoping he'd scramble along on his way. He didn't.

Well what on earth could I do? I couldn't just leave him there right near the road, skinny and frightened. So I took off my sweatshirt and bent down next to him. He leapt into it so I figured that was a sign. I took him home and gave him a slice of bread. He acted like it was manna from heaven.



He made it through a good deal of the slice, until he'd nibble a bit, then start to nod off, wake up and nibble some more. Finally he crawled back into the folds of my sweatshirt, curled up and promptly fell asleep.

I couldn't bring myself to oust him so he's on my front porch right now, curled up absolutely adorably and feeling full and safe for the first time in who knows how long. I figure a sweatshirt is a small price to pay for that. I know I'll sleep better tonight knowing I helped him at least make it through the night. I wonder if he'll still be there in the morning...